Tiny useful fact #1

The question we get asked the most at Gender Defiant is: There’s so much bad news. What can I do to help? I don’t know where to start.

Great question. In response, we’re releasing a series of tiny useful facts, one at a time. A tiny fact easy to absorb and easy to use in conversation.

Yikes, conversation?

We get it. And we thought of that. So in addition to the fact, we give you a non-confrontational way to use it.

Spreading tiny useful facts creates a million tiny cracks in the wall of hate. Plus it’s free. And it honestly works. Here we go.

Tiny useful fact #1: The vast majority of gender affirming surgeries for youth are on cisgender boys.

Anti-trans propaganda wants us to believe gender affirming surgeries for youth are widespread. That’s not true. A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows only about 150 such surgeries happen each year on all youth total, trans or cis. (By the way, minors under 12 get zero gender affirming surgeries. None. More on the study here.)

Of those 150 surgeries, 146—or 97%—are chest reductions for cisgender boys who have a common condition, gynecomastia: extra breast tissue.

Drop the fact into a conversation.

Your co-worker or sister in law or Uber driver says: “I believe in live and let live, but I don’t know if young kids should get those surgeries.”

You say: “I used to think that too. But then I learned almost all these surgeries are on cisgender boys, not trans kids. If boys have extra breast tissue, and it bothers them, they have it removed. That’s the same safe surgery doctors recommend for trans youth with dysphoria.”

If you want, throw in that the surgeries are for kids 13-17, not 12 or under, because youth under 12 don’t get them, or that there are only around 150 gender-affirming surgeries total for all youth in the U.S. each year. A microscopic number.

Even major news outlets like The New York Times spread the idea of widespread, willy-nilly gender affirming surgeries for trans kids. Reasonable people get exposed to transphobia and pass it around. It’s insdious how propaganda spreads and makes us hate and distrust each other.

Thanks for your courage to let loose tiny facts. People don’t often change their mind in real time, but they do think about things.

If you try spreading a fact, let us know how it goes: We.Are.Gender.Defiant@proton.me