A-Infos (en) France, UCL AL #349 - Spotlight, Transphobic offensive in the Senate: Specious report for a despicable law (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Announced in May 2023, the first legislative attack against the rights 
of trans people in France is launched. At the helm, an anti-trans 
organization close to the Manif pour Tous, hidden behind the senators of 
the LR group. ---- Senator LR Jacqueline Eustache-Brinio, known for her 
uninhibited Islamophobia and opposed to the constitutionalization of 
abortion, released her report in March on the "transidentification of 
minors". She also tabled a bill to prohibit access to healthcare for 
trans people under the age of 18. The report, 370 pages long (with a lot 
of copying and pasting) was not designed to be read - the eight-page 
"summary and conclusion" document is there for that. Its real role is to 
serve as a totem of legitimacy to disseminate disinformation in the 
media, hoping to trigger a moral panic. For the moment, it does not seem 
to have taken hold. However, little by little, these speeches plant 
seeds among uninformed people.

During the ExisTransInter march, in Paris, May 14, 2022
Estelle Ruiz
We will therefore have to work to weed all of that. What does this 
report tell us? Lots of things we already knew! First of all, that it 
was not written by the senator. It was the Little Mermaid Observatory 
(OPS), an organization opposed to trans rights, that did everything: 
from choosing the people to audition, to the auditions themselves, to 
writing the report. If this is obvious when reading it, the OPS even 
gave us the pleasure of admitting it[1]. Then, that they - the OPS 
therefore - hide their game very poorly. Ms. Eustache-Brinio claims on 
BFM that she is not targeting trans adults, but the report argues for 
the ban on transitions up to the age of 25, assumed claim of the OPS 
(and which even there is only a step).

Likewise, the introduction claims to differentiate between "real trans" 
people and young people "victims of social contagion" (a theory that has 
been discredited many times), qualified by the degrading term 
"transidentified". This term is then used for all trans people mentioned 
in the report, implying that "real trans" people do not exist.

INTERNATIONAL PRE-CHECKED WORK
Above all, this report completes proof of the links between the OPS and 
the rest of the international transphobic network, many of whose 
well-known members were interviewed. For example, this list includes at 
least four members of the "Society for Evidence based Gender Medicine" 
(SEGM), the most central anti-trans group in this network, founded by 
the same fundamentalist evangelists who fight against abortion in the 
UNITED STATES.

There is also Genspect (United Kingdom) and "the Association for a 
Measured Approach to Gender Issues among Young People" (AMQG, 
Switzerland). These organizations and their allies have developed 
strategies to advance their reactionary ideas: production of 
documentaries, design of biased "scientific" studies, recruitment of 
parents who reject their trans child, infiltration into health 
structures, collaboration with "feminists", progressive escalation of 
demands... Their latest feat of arms: the Cass Review, a biased 
literature review released on April 9 on the order of the National 
Health Service (NHS), which rejects 98% of serious studies to conclude 
that rejection of care for trans people under 25.

The LR report therefore only repeats the work and techniques of 
transphobes internationally. We find the same pseudo-studies there. For 
example, those of Kenneth Zucker, a Canadian psychologist, who claims 
that 80% of young trans people end up detransitioning.

In reality, the vast majority of his cohort have never been trans, but 
were brought to his clinic for "disorders" such as being too feminine or 
masculine or preferring the "wrong" toys. Worse, an investigation in 
2015 showed that he underwent conversion therapy and engaged in sexual 
abuse of minors; he was fired and his clinic was closed.

Today, he parades in transphobic circles and was interviewed as if 
nothing had happened for the LR report. Another example: the figure of 
84% of French doctors who would oppose hormonal treatments for minors 
comes from a survey on a blog where anyone can self-declare as a health 
professional to respond. The bigger it is, the more it's acceptable! In 
this regard, note the sixteen pages of arguments from the far-right 
association Alternative libertaire n°349 "May 2024 3"

SOS Education, which presents Dilcrah, the Defender of Rights and Santé 
Publique France as "transidentity activist associations". If the report 
gives the floor to five members of trans associations, it is to ignore 
them or even relay their comments in their own way. Above all, they are 
buried under 30 to 40 hearings from people directly opposed to 
transidentity, the majority of whom were already publicly known for this 
commitment. Seven are even part of the OPS and twelve are invited to 
their next conference.

AN UNCERTAIN LEGISLATIVE BATTLE
The LR report sets out fifteen "recommendations", including the repeal 
of the Blanquer circular, the gender binary on forms, or the 
"protection" of toilets. The bill, which will be studied in the Senate 
from May 22, currently only includes the most important and dangerous 
ones: the ban on puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries for trans 
minors (see the UCL leaflet[2]).

Protect trans kids sign during the Toulouse Pride March in 2023.
Luna Lyons
She justifies this by referring transidentity to a mental illness: she 
plans a "plan for child psychiatry" which, if entrusted to the authors 
of the report, would result in a national conversion therapy campaign. 
The upcoming legislative battle will be long and the ball will 
unfortunately be in Renaissance's court.

Aurore Bergé - known for her transphobic connections - has certainly 
declared that she would oppose it, but her office has indicated that it 
at least approves of the ban on surgeries. The risk of seeing a 
"lighter" version emerge is real. In addition to the direct consequences 
that this law would have, the debates risk bringing France fully into 
the same logic of violence and escalation as in the United Kingdom or 
the United States. Our role, as activists, is to denounce the farce that 
is this report and this law. We must mobilize to put pressure against 
its adoption, to allow the extension of access to care and to counter 
misinformation among the general public.

To validate

[1]Élodie Hervé, "The antitrans trance of Senator LR", Les Jours, March 
28, 2024

[2]"For access to care for trans minors", April 3, 2024, to read on 
Unioncommunistelibertaire.org.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Offensive-transphobe-au-Senat-Rapport-specieux-pour-une-loi-abjecte
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