Intersex

• "We know that menopause affects women, individuals with medical menopause related to personal health needs, as well as some non-binary, intersex, and transgender people.
• This means approximately half of the workforce is impacted by menopause," says Karen Mann , senior vice president, Human Resources Research, Learning & Advisory Services at McLean & Company.
• "While there is often more support for menopause in the workplace in regions such as Northern Europe, New Zealand, and Australia, menopausal support is critically lacking in North American environments.
• These challenges can span multiple years across four phases, which are pre-menopause, perimenopause, menopause, and post-menopause, and can be managed through tailored workplace support.

• It has become an “overdetermined” concept, “absorbing wildly different ideas of what threatens the world”, writes American feminist philospher Judith Butler.
• For the Vatican, the traditional family will be ruined and children are now vulnerable to “ideological colonization”.
• And for right-wing politicians and heads of state, (from Liberal senator Alex Antic, who believes gender dysphoria is a “trend”, to Marjorie Taylor Greene and Vladimir Putin), gender is a weapon of social destruction.

• Butler’s overarching argument is that “gender” – the overdetermined concept to which “anti-gender ideologists” object –  is really a nightmarish bogeyman, a “phantasm with destructive powers, one way of collecting and escalating multitudes of modern panics”.
• Read more:
  Judith Butler: their philosophy of gender explained

Misplaced fears and misunderstandings

• The first, to which much of the book is dedicated, is to expose the absurdity of arguments against gender ideology.
• Butler demonstrates the ways “gender ideology” critics invert, externalise and project the very harms they claim “gender ideologists” pose.
• Then there’s the supposed threat of sexual violence to cisgender women if transgender women are allowed into single-sex spaces like prisons.
• Read more:
  'Toxic masculinity': what does it mean, where did it come from – and is the term useful or harmful?

More than two sexes

• Feminists like Butler reject “sexual dimorphism”: the belief there are two, and only two, sexes.
• But we expect to find two sexes because that is how many sexes we have learned to see.
• And we look for two sexes because we only recognise two genders.
• And because we expect to find two sexes in humanity, we automatically start to explain away any evidence (like intersex diversity) that would contradict this received truth.

Fighting back

• These rules, we think, apply both to ourselves and others.
• To critics, “gender ideologues” are breaking all the organisational rules of gender, inverting all sense and order.
• When we question gender as an organising principle, it introduces further questions about the right way to live.

• Ultimately, Butler’s point is that while gender seems scary to many, the reality is: it’s not.
• Take a pause and ask, they suggest: what are the agendas of those who may try to convince you otherwise?
• But in imagining a shared future together, we can “emerge into a world committed to cohabitation and equality across difference”.

Louise Richardson-Self receives funding from the Australian Research Council for two projects: DE190100719: Hate Speech Against Women Online: Concepts and Countermeasures; and DP200100395: Religious Freedom, LGBT+ Employees, and the Right to Discriminate.

• In the past century, there have been three waves of opposition to transgender health care.
• In 1933, when the Nazis rose to power, they cracked down on transgender medical research and clinical practice in Europe.
• In 1979, a research report critical of transgender medicine led to the closure of the most well-respected clinics in the United States.

The 1930s − eugenics and sexology collide

• In the field of sexology – the study of human sexuality, founded in 19th century Europe – scientists were excited about research on animals demonstrating that removing or transplanting gonads could effectively change an organism’s sex.
• Several trans women also received care at the institute, including orchiectomies that halted the production of testosterone in their bodies.

• Nazi ideology was based on another prominent field of science of that time: eugenics, the belief that certain superior populations should survive while inferior populations must be exterminated.
• In fact, Hirschfeld’s sexology and Nazi race science had common roots in the Enlightenment-era effort to classify and categorize the world’s life forms.
• But in the late 19th century, many scientists went a step further and developed a hierarchy of human types based on race, gender and sexuality.

The 1970s − making model citizens

• In 1966, Johns Hopkins became the first university hospital in the world to offer trans health care.
• By the 1970s, trans medicine went mainstream.
• Nearly two dozen university hospitals were operating gender identity clinics and treating thousands of transgender Americans.
• Jon Meyer, a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins, was skeptical of whether medical interventions really helped transgender people.

• Meyer and Reter believed that gender-affirming surgeries were successful only if they made model citizens out of transgender people: straight, married and law-abiding.
• In their results, the authors found no negative effects from surgery, and no patients expressed regret.
• They concluded that “sex reassignment surgery confers no objective advantage in terms of social rehabilitation,” but it is “subjectively satisfying” to the patients themselves.

The 2020s − distrust in science

• Legislators have removed books with LGBTQ content from libraries and disparaged them as “filth.” A recent law in Florida threatens trans people with arrest for using public restrooms.
• Donald Trump’s campaign platform calls for a nationwide ban on trans health care for minors and severe restrictions for adults.
• But widespread distrust in science and medicine in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic has affected how Americans perceive trans health care.

• Instead, many trans activists today call for diminishing the role of medical authority altogether in gatekeeping access to trans health care.
• Medical gatekeeping occurs through stringent guidelines that govern access to trans health care, including mandated psychiatric evaluations and extended waiting periods that limit and control patient choice.
• For now, trans health care remains a question dominated by medical experts on one hand and people who question science on the other.

G. Samantha Rosenthal does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• Starting today, federally regulated employers are now required to provide pads and tampons to any employee who needs them while on the job at their workplace.
• Employers are required to provide these products at no cost to employees in an accessible and private workplace location, such as a washroom or office supply cabinet.
• We're providing menstrual products to employees in federally regulated workplaces because periods are a fact of life and there should be no stigma."
• By making these products free and accessible in federally regulated workspaces, we are taking another step forward to end period poverty and advance menstrual equity.