LGBT

Clarify something for me, Texas GOP

Zinnia Jones, , , 26 Comments

The Texas Republican Party’s 2012 platform reads:

We support the definition of marriage as a God-ordained, legal and moral commitment only between a natural man and a natural woman, which is the foundational unit of a healthy society, and we oppose the assault on marriage by judicial activists.

This may seem pretty straightforward, in that their obvious intention was “no gays allowed”, but it’s actually not that simple. What defines a “natural man” and a “natural woman” for the purposes of marriage? Everyone is “natural”, after all, but as far as these things go, this is one of the slights that’s so common it barely stings anymore. Do they mean someone who was assigned male, or female, at birth? Or do they mean cis men and cis women only?

Their platform document (PDF) makes no explicit reference to trans people. Given their insistence that “natural” men and women are the only ones eligible for marriage, how do they feel about trans people getting married? Do they support allowing trans people to change their legal gender? If not, are they comfortable with the idea of same-sex couples where one partner is trans being allowed to marry, since they’re still legally considered a “natural” man or woman? And where does this leave intersex people?

Does the Texas Republican Party even know what “intersex” means? Or “cisgender”, for that matter?

Clarify something for me, Texas GOP
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Here’s hoping for greater diligence from CFI Ontario on trans issues

Zinnia Jones, , , 41 Comments

Yesterday, multiple people alerted me to an event announcement by the Centre for Inquiry’s Ontario branch about their participation in Toronto’s Annual Pride Parade. The announcement originally read:

This year we’re going to have a bit of fun- and show our support for the trans community BY DRESSING IN DRAG. Transphobia is an insidious and often overlooked problem which effects thousands of Canadians. Step out of your comfort zone for a few hours and into a pair of pumps- or sport a handsome handlebar mustache!

Note: You don’t HAVE to dress in drag or be gay to march in the parade- you just need to be awesome 🙂

Some hours later, it was revised to remove all mention of trans people or transphobia, reading:

This year we’re going to have a bit of fun BY DRESSING IN DRAG. Step out of your comfort zone for a few hours and into a pair of pumps- or sport a handsome handlebar mustache!

CFI Ontario executive director Jaimy Warner later issued a semi-apology/explanation on Facebook, reading in part:

I’d like to note that the intention of this event theme was never to mock. CFI has been working tirelessly with the LGBT community and the Ontario GSA Coalition over the past several months to get Bill 13 passed, we have a long track record of supporting LGBT rights and we’re very sensitive to in supporting issues of sexual/gender orientation. I admit that I could have worded the content better-it was not my intention to suggest drag and trans are the same (although ‘trans’ as in the transgender community does include drag performers and cross dressers) but to express that we don’t feel there is anything shameful or abnormal about cross dressing or playing with cultural gender norms. I can see how the juxtaposition of ‘drag’ and ‘trans’ could have easily been interpreted as offensive, and I have since removed that particular content from this event, the website and our newsletter.

That being said: we’ve marched in the parade for many years and I felt that it was time for CFI to really get into the spirit of things. Pride is fun, playful and expressive. We’re not donning a ‘gay costume’ we’re adopting a beloved aspect of LGBT culture as a visible sign of appreciation and acceptance (I completely agree that drag is an art). In another environment I can certainly see how ‘dressing in drag’ could quickly degrade into mockery- but this is not a frat house kegger nor are we a collection of close minded bigots. We’re a science educational charity marching in a Gay Pride Parade (with a professional drag queen helping us prepare, I should add) demonstrating we’re open minded and accepting.

A more substantial apology from Warner followed:

Please let me being by apologizing.

You’re right. My initial response was not an apology but a selfish attempt to explain the stance of my organization and our perspective. At the start of the planning phase for this event I spoke to a number of people in the LGBT community who thought this was a good idea-I thought it was a good idea- so it was easy for me to disregard the first negative responses I received here today. I fell victim to confirmation bias and ignored evidence that this may be a bad idea- this behaviour goes against the grain of what I stand for and I regret this truly. This event and my response to genuine concern has hurt, enraged and polarized people. This was a bad idea and I’m sorry so many people were hurt and made to feel excluded before I realized this.

CFI will not dress in drag.

I get the impression that CFI Ontario and its leadership still don’t quite understand what was wrong with this particular approach to showing solidarity with trans people. Really, I’m confused and taken aback that this could even happen in the first place without anyone at CFI Ontario or their contacts explaining why this is, to put it mildly, a bad idea. It seems some clarification may be in order.

Drag performers and trans people have a complex and sometimes openly hostile relationship, arising from their similarities, differences, and how mainstream society has (mis)categorized and regarded them. The definitions themselves are still unclear at times, and not always agreed upon. Warner states that the “transgender community” also includes drag performers and cross-dressers, but this is just one definition that many people don’t share or endorse. Yes, some people have advanced a “transgender umbrella” model that encompasses drag performers, cross-dressers, transvestites, genderqueer and non-binary people, transsexual people, and anyone whose identity or expression diverges from conventional gender roles. Others have pointed out that such a concept potentially includes any man or woman who doesn’t adhere to strictly masculine or feminine roles, presentations and behaviors, making the definition of “transgender” much broader than what was originally intended.

But regardless of how one defines what it means to be transgender, the mere fact that both drag performers and transsexual people have at times been considered “transgender” does not mean that performing drag is a meaningful, appropriate, or sensitive way to express solidarity with trans people. They may have been grouped together due to certain (extremely broad) similarities, but there are still a great many differences – including differences that are substantial enough to preclude the use of drag as a viable means of fighting transphobia.

Many people don’t constrain their understanding of “drag” to a certain established style of exaggerated performance, and instead use it to refer to any instance of what they perceive as cross-dressing – no matter how the person doing it identifies, whether they intended it as any sort of performance or recreational practice, or whether they even consider themselves to be cross-dressing. This last point is crucial: it’s extremely easy for people with little understanding of trans issues or gender identity to conflate trans people with cis (non-trans) drag performers or cross-dressers. In reality, they’re almost nothing alike.

Again, drag is a performance – a costume, an event, a temporary engagement for the purposes of entertainment. Being trans is none of these things. A trans person who dresses in accordance with their gender identity is simply wearing clothes that their culture has coded as representing the gender that they are, much like any cis person who does the same. A cis woman who wears clothing conventionally associated with women isn’t cross-dressing or doing drag. And neither is a trans woman. Trans people are not dressing “cross” to their gender, they are dressing as their gender. They are not wearing their clothes as some kind of costume, or to entertain anyone, or to put on a show. They are wearing the clothes they wear for the same mundane reasons that cis people wear the clothes they wear. Dressing in a way that reflects their gender is just as much of an everyday, non-noteworthy thing for trans people as it is for cis people.

Most trans people look nothing whatsoever like drag performers, a fact that’s rarely noticed and taken into account because trans people simply don’t stand out. Since people generally don’t have the opportunity to take note of all the trans people they don’t see as trans, those who have no (known) experience with trans people tend to derive their perception of us from people they do see and mistakenly identify as trans – like drag performers. Many trans people have come to resent drag itself for being a major source of harmful misconceptions about who we are and what we’re like. Some drag performers have only exacerbated this by frequently and unapologetically using anti-trans slurs despite not being transsexual themselves, or participating in advertisements with blatantly transphobic overtones and refusing to acknowledge that there’s anything wrong with this.

Whether drag in general is inherently problematic is a separate issue to be resolved, but there’s one thing I want to make very clear: Dressing in drag to “support” trans people is not acceptable, ever. It is perhaps one of the most unacceptable things I can imagine. It is so unacceptable that I struggle to find a suitably analogous situation to compare it to. If a cis man decided to don women’s clothing for the stated purpose of showing that he supports me as a trans woman, I would be deeply insulted by the near-total lack of comprehension and the implication that there is anything remotely similar about myself and that.

Drag queens are men in women’s clothes. Trans women are women in whatever they may be wearing. Linking drag to being trans, as CFI Ontario did, implies that we are somehow comparable to drag performers. By any relevant metric, we are not, but thoughtless ideas like this only reinforce what is perhaps the most common articulation of transphobia: that trans women, too, are just men in women’s clothes. While CFI Ontario probably didn’t mean to say that, they’ve certainly encouraged it. Such a denial of our identities is just as insulting as it would be to presume that a cis person’s gender is inauthentic and that you know their gender better than they do. It’s even more deeply wounding because of the price we pay for living in a way that’s consistent with who we are, a price measured in violence, discrimination, open ridicule, and the risk and indignity of being seen as less than human in our daily interactions with the rest of the world.

This is not something that happens because we’re in costume. It’s because we refuse to go through life wearing a costume that hides our true selves. Someone who performs in drag at a club or dresses up for Pride will have no understanding whatsoever of the unbearable pressure of ceaseless marginalization and constant fear, and for them to parallel themselves with us, even implicitly, only trivializes that brutal reality. It cannot possibly be a show of support, because all it shows is that they know nothing of our lives.

That’s what makes it so shocking for a CFI branch to propose something like this. I expect that as a skeptical and freethought group, they would comprehend what drag actually is before suggesting that their members dress in drag. I expect that they would understand who trans people really are before deciding how best to support us. I expect that they would do their research and recognize why the interaction of drag and trans issues in this context makes their idea utterly, shamefully inappropriate. Basically, I expect them to know what they’re talking about, before they talk about it. In this case, that did not happen. Given their claims of extensive collaboration with LGBT groups, it becomes even more incomprehensible that something like this could slip through the cracks.

While I’m glad to see that they eventually acknowledged that this was a mistake and eliminated the drag aspect of their event, it would have been better if this had never happened in the first place, and I’d like to know what CFI Ontario plans to do in order to prevent any similar errors in the future. Their desire to support us is admirable, but its implementation was badly mishandled here. If you really want to show your support, please do what we strive to do every day: Simply be yourself.

Here’s hoping for greater diligence from CFI Ontario on trans issues

Here's hoping for greater diligence from CFI Ontario on trans issues

Zinnia Jones, , , 41 Comments

Yesterday, multiple people alerted me to an event announcement by the Centre for Inquiry’s Ontario branch about their participation in Toronto’s Annual Pride Parade. The announcement originally read:

This year we’re going to have a bit of fun- and show our support for the trans community BY DRESSING IN DRAG. Transphobia is an insidious and often overlooked problem which effects thousands of Canadians. Step out of your comfort zone for a few hours and into a pair of pumps- or sport a handsome handlebar mustache!

Note: You don’t HAVE to dress in drag or be gay to march in the parade- you just need to be awesome 🙂

Some hours later, it was revised to remove all mention of trans people or transphobia, reading:

This year we’re going to have a bit of fun BY DRESSING IN DRAG. Step out of your comfort zone for a few hours and into a pair of pumps- or sport a handsome handlebar mustache!

CFI Ontario executive director Jaimy Warner later issued a semi-apology/explanation on Facebook, reading in part:

I’d like to note that the intention of this event theme was never to mock. CFI has been working tirelessly with the LGBT community and the Ontario GSA Coalition over the past several months to get Bill 13 passed, we have a long track record of supporting LGBT rights and we’re very sensitive to in supporting issues of sexual/gender orientation. I admit that I could have worded the content better-it was not my intention to suggest drag and trans are the same (although ‘trans’ as in the transgender community does include drag performers and cross dressers) but to express that we don’t feel there is anything shameful or abnormal about cross dressing or playing with cultural gender norms. I can see how the juxtaposition of ‘drag’ and ‘trans’ could have easily been interpreted as offensive, and I have since removed that particular content from this event, the website and our newsletter.

That being said: we’ve marched in the parade for many years and I felt that it was time for CFI to really get into the spirit of things. Pride is fun, playful and expressive. We’re not donning a ‘gay costume’ we’re adopting a beloved aspect of LGBT culture as a visible sign of appreciation and acceptance (I completely agree that drag is an art). In another environment I can certainly see how ‘dressing in drag’ could quickly degrade into mockery- but this is not a frat house kegger nor are we a collection of close minded bigots. We’re a science educational charity marching in a Gay Pride Parade (with a professional drag queen helping us prepare, I should add) demonstrating we’re open minded and accepting.

A more substantial apology from Warner followed:

Please let me being by apologizing.

You’re right. My initial response was not an apology but a selfish attempt to explain the stance of my organization and our perspective. At the start of the planning phase for this event I spoke to a number of people in the LGBT community who thought this was a good idea-I thought it was a good idea- so it was easy for me to disregard the first negative responses I received here today. I fell victim to confirmation bias and ignored evidence that this may be a bad idea- this behaviour goes against the grain of what I stand for and I regret this truly. This event and my response to genuine concern has hurt, enraged and polarized people. This was a bad idea and I’m sorry so many people were hurt and made to feel excluded before I realized this.

CFI will not dress in drag.

I get the impression that CFI Ontario and its leadership still don’t quite understand what was wrong with this particular approach to showing solidarity with trans people. Really, I’m confused and taken aback that this could even happen in the first place without anyone at CFI Ontario or their contacts explaining why this is, to put it mildly, a bad idea. It seems some clarification may be in order.

Drag performers and trans people have a complex and sometimes openly hostile relationship, arising from their similarities, differences, and how mainstream society has (mis)categorized and regarded them. The definitions themselves are still unclear at times, and not always agreed upon. Warner states that the “transgender community” also includes drag performers and cross-dressers, but this is just one definition that many people don’t share or endorse. Yes, some people have advanced a “transgender umbrella” model that encompasses drag performers, cross-dressers, transvestites, genderqueer and non-binary people, transsexual people, and anyone whose identity or expression diverges from conventional gender roles. Others have pointed out that such a concept potentially includes any man or woman who doesn’t adhere to strictly masculine or feminine roles, presentations and behaviors, making the definition of “transgender” much broader than what was originally intended.

But regardless of how one defines what it means to be transgender, the mere fact that both drag performers and transsexual people have at times been considered “transgender” does not mean that performing drag is a meaningful, appropriate, or sensitive way to express solidarity with trans people. They may have been grouped together due to certain (extremely broad) similarities, but there are still a great many differences – including differences that are substantial enough to preclude the use of drag as a viable means of fighting transphobia.

Many people don’t constrain their understanding of “drag” to a certain established style of exaggerated performance, and instead use it to refer to any instance of what they perceive as cross-dressing – no matter how the person doing it identifies, whether they intended it as any sort of performance or recreational practice, or whether they even consider themselves to be cross-dressing. This last point is crucial: it’s extremely easy for people with little understanding of trans issues or gender identity to conflate trans people with cis (non-trans) drag performers or cross-dressers. In reality, they’re almost nothing alike.

Again, drag is a performance – a costume, an event, a temporary engagement for the purposes of entertainment. Being trans is none of these things. A trans person who dresses in accordance with their gender identity is simply wearing clothes that their culture has coded as representing the gender that they are, much like any cis person who does the same. A cis woman who wears clothing conventionally associated with women isn’t cross-dressing or doing drag. And neither is a trans woman. Trans people are not dressing “cross” to their gender, they are dressing as their gender. They are not wearing their clothes as some kind of costume, or to entertain anyone, or to put on a show. They are wearing the clothes they wear for the same mundane reasons that cis people wear the clothes they wear. Dressing in a way that reflects their gender is just as much of an everyday, non-noteworthy thing for trans people as it is for cis people.

Most trans people look nothing whatsoever like drag performers, a fact that’s rarely noticed and taken into account because trans people simply don’t stand out. Since people generally don’t have the opportunity to take note of all the trans people they don’t see as trans, those who have no (known) experience with trans people tend to derive their perception of us from people they do see and mistakenly identify as trans – like drag performers. Many trans people have come to resent drag itself for being a major source of harmful misconceptions about who we are and what we’re like. Some drag performers have only exacerbated this by frequently and unapologetically using anti-trans slurs despite not being transsexual themselves, or participating in advertisements with blatantly transphobic overtones and refusing to acknowledge that there’s anything wrong with this.

Whether drag in general is inherently problematic is a separate issue to be resolved, but there’s one thing I want to make very clear: Dressing in drag to “support” trans people is not acceptable, ever. It is perhaps one of the most unacceptable things I can imagine. It is so unacceptable that I struggle to find a suitably analogous situation to compare it to. If a cis man decided to don women’s clothing for the stated purpose of showing that he supports me as a trans woman, I would be deeply insulted by the near-total lack of comprehension and the implication that there is anything remotely similar about myself and that.

Drag queens are men in women’s clothes. Trans women are women in whatever they may be wearing. Linking drag to being trans, as CFI Ontario did, implies that we are somehow comparable to drag performers. By any relevant metric, we are not, but thoughtless ideas like this only reinforce what is perhaps the most common articulation of transphobia: that trans women, too, are just men in women’s clothes. While CFI Ontario probably didn’t mean to say that, they’ve certainly encouraged it. Such a denial of our identities is just as insulting as it would be to presume that a cis person’s gender is inauthentic and that you know their gender better than they do. It’s even more deeply wounding because of the price we pay for living in a way that’s consistent with who we are, a price measured in violence, discrimination, open ridicule, and the risk and indignity of being seen as less than human in our daily interactions with the rest of the world.

This is not something that happens because we’re in costume. It’s because we refuse to go through life wearing a costume that hides our true selves. Someone who performs in drag at a club or dresses up for Pride will have no understanding whatsoever of the unbearable pressure of ceaseless marginalization and constant fear, and for them to parallel themselves with us, even implicitly, only trivializes that brutal reality. It cannot possibly be a show of support, because all it shows is that they know nothing of our lives.

That’s what makes it so shocking for a CFI branch to propose something like this. I expect that as a skeptical and freethought group, they would comprehend what drag actually is before suggesting that their members dress in drag. I expect that they would understand who trans people really are before deciding how best to support us. I expect that they would do their research and recognize why the interaction of drag and trans issues in this context makes their idea utterly, shamefully inappropriate. Basically, I expect them to know what they’re talking about, before they talk about it. In this case, that did not happen. Given their claims of extensive collaboration with LGBT groups, it becomes even more incomprehensible that something like this could slip through the cracks.

While I’m glad to see that they eventually acknowledged that this was a mistake and eliminated the drag aspect of their event, it would have been better if this had never happened in the first place, and I’d like to know what CFI Ontario plans to do in order to prevent any similar errors in the future. Their desire to support us is admirable, but its implementation was badly mishandled here. If you really want to show your support, please do what we strive to do every day: Simply be yourself.

Here's hoping for greater diligence from CFI Ontario on trans issues

Professional heterosexual Matt Barber writes about tackling gay people

Zinnia Jones, 18 Comments

In a letter to “average, ordinary gay people”, he says:

If you have a loved one, blindfolded and running full speed toward cliff’s edge, do you not yell, stop! Would you not run after them, even tackling them if need be to prevent them from plummeting to certain death? What would we think of the person who said: “Keep running; all is well.”

All is not well, and you know it. On this path, “it” decidedly does not “get better.” It only gets worse. You will fall and you will die – perhaps not physical death, straight away – but certainly, an emotional and spiritual death. Homosexual activists, “progressives,” Hollywood, the media, academia and popular culture are telling you to keep running.

I’m yelling, stop!

Professional heterosexual Matt Barber writes about tackling gay people

Using “gay” as an insult should never be tolerated

Zinnia Jones, 52 Comments

A Tumblr user wrote today:

this is like when the lgbt community gets really, really angry about the word ‘gay’. Is it privileged and bigoted? Yes. Are you really getting anything done by yelling at straight people (and gay people) that use the word? No. You are just pissing people off and turning them off your cause, even the people that should, by all rights, be PART of your cause.

The use of “gay” as an insult is an issue that’s important enough to take a stand on even if it does cost us potential allies. When we tell people that it’s hurtful and harmful for them to use the very word we’re named as a synonym for anything and everything that’s negative and dislikable, that is a matter of basic respect. It is probably about as basic as this can possibly get: don’t use who we are to mean something bad. Taking a minority group’s name for your own use as an all-occasions pejorative is not merely disrespectful – it’s just about the most obvious way that you can tell us, “WE THINK WHAT YOU ARE IS BAD.”

If that isn’t what you mean to convey, then you need to stop using language in such a way that you openly associate the very names of minorities with everything you dislike. This goes beyond merely implying that gay people are bad. It’s tantamount to stating it outright. Is it okay to say that someone “Jewed” you out of something? Or that something that isn’t working must be “n*****-rigged”? Would any amount of “I didn’t mean it like that” rationalization make that alright? No one should ever think this is acceptable, yet so many people are under the impression that it’s a-okay to do this to gay people. Why? Because it’s a more recent development in language? Because social disapproval of this usage isn’t widespread enough yet? Because they just really like using the word? It doesn’t matter. It’s not okay.

If being asked to stop using our identity as an insult is all it takes to alienate potential allies, let me make it very clear that I do not care. I do not intend to sacrifice my own self-respect just to gain the support of people who can’t even bring themselves to listen to us and respect us in this most basic and minimal way. Are those the allies we want? Can they even be called allies in any meaningful sense?

Using “gay” as an insult should never be tolerated

Using "gay" as an insult should never be tolerated

Zinnia Jones, 52 Comments

A Tumblr user wrote today:

this is like when the lgbt community gets really, really angry about the word ‘gay’. Is it privileged and bigoted? Yes. Are you really getting anything done by yelling at straight people (and gay people) that use the word? No. You are just pissing people off and turning them off your cause, even the people that should, by all rights, be PART of your cause.

The use of “gay” as an insult is an issue that’s important enough to take a stand on even if it does cost us potential allies. When we tell people that it’s hurtful and harmful for them to use the very word we’re named as a synonym for anything and everything that’s negative and dislikable, that is a matter of basic respect. It is probably about as basic as this can possibly get: don’t use who we are to mean something bad. Taking a minority group’s name for your own use as an all-occasions pejorative is not merely disrespectful – it’s just about the most obvious way that you can tell us, “WE THINK WHAT YOU ARE IS BAD.”

If that isn’t what you mean to convey, then you need to stop using language in such a way that you openly associate the very names of minorities with everything you dislike. This goes beyond merely implying that gay people are bad. It’s tantamount to stating it outright. Is it okay to say that someone “Jewed” you out of something? Or that something that isn’t working must be “n*****-rigged”? Would any amount of “I didn’t mean it like that” rationalization make that alright? No one should ever think this is acceptable, yet so many people are under the impression that it’s a-okay to do this to gay people. Why? Because it’s a more recent development in language? Because social disapproval of this usage isn’t widespread enough yet? Because they just really like using the word? It doesn’t matter. It’s not okay.

If being asked to stop using our identity as an insult is all it takes to alienate potential allies, let me make it very clear that I do not care. I do not intend to sacrifice my own self-respect just to gain the support of people who can’t even bring themselves to listen to us and respect us in this most basic and minimal way. Are those the allies we want? Can they even be called allies in any meaningful sense?

Using "gay" as an insult should never be tolerated

Heritage Foundation baffled by criticism of flawed “same-sex parenting” study

Zinnia Jones, , 18 Comments

The homophobic right-wing seems genuinely taken aback at how poorly received their precious Regnerus study has been. Clearly, being widely and loudly called out on shoddy science with a hateful agenda isn’t something they’re used to. And in another decade, these results might have been accepted at face value despite the study’s many flaws, simply because it aligned with the conventional wisdom of the time that gay people must be bad for children, society, and everything. This is no longer the case – these traditional assumptions aren’t assumed anymore, and the anti-gay movement have found themselves out of their element.

In their shock that someone would dare question their latest instrument of propaganda, the Heritage Foundation asks, “Why the Liberal Intolerance for New Family Structures Study?” To them, criticism of methodology is actually just a matter of partisan politics. This isn’t just deception, but self-deception: by characterizing any disagreement with this study as rooted purely in personal political opinion, it becomes completely acceptable for them to endorse its results without acknowledging or understanding its numerous errors. It’s no longer a question of reality and sound science – it’s “us vs. them”:

The author of a new study showing some negative outcomes for young adults whose parents had same-sex relationships is under attack because his findings conflict with what, in some corners, has become conventional wisdom.

Wrong! This study is not being criticized because some people found its results to be disagreeable. It is being criticized because its definitions, analysis, and conclusions are misleading and unsupported by the data. It’s been criticized because it used even a single occurrence of any same-sex relationship involving a parent to define that parent as a “lesbian mother” or a “gay father”. It’s been criticized because Regnerus treated these parents as representative of “same-sex parents” when a vast majority of their children spent fewer than four years living in a household with same-sex parents. It’s been criticized because its sample of “same-sex parents”, even by Regnerus’ distorted and practically useless definition, is too small to draw valid conclusions from.

Apparently, the idea that there is “no difference” between children of same-sex parents and their peers raised in traditional married mother-and-father households has become so entrenched among some advocates that new research presenting a contrasting picture is unwelcome—to put it mildly.

No! This study is not unwelcome because it contradicts an “entrenched” idea. It is unwelcome because it uses bad science to portray same-sex parents as being incompetent. It is unwelcome because Regnerus openly admits to boosting the sample sizes of his “lesbian mothers” and “gay fathers” groups (which, again, were defined in a ridiculous manner that defies all sense) by packing them with the children of divorced families, step-families and single parents, and because he then compared these groups to children whose biological parents were married throughout their entire childhood. It is unwelcome because he did not compare children who were raised by their married biological parents until the age of 18 to children who were raised by married same-sex couples until the age of 18. It is unwelcome because he ruthlessly stacked the deck against these badly defined “lesbian mothers” and “gay fathers” groups in a way that no one could avoid noticing, and then used these erroneous conclusions to attack actual same-sex parents who were underrepresented in his study, to the extent that they were represented at all.

And these are the folks who urge us to be tolerant of differences and respect scientific research.

Incorrect! We do not accept methodological flaws as simply a matter of personal “differences”. We do not respect “scientific research” that is poorly interpreted and used – indeed, seemingly designed – to perpetuate untruths. We do not respect just any damn thing that someone manages to publish in a journal, without examining its contents and verifying the soundness of the research. And we do not consider blind acceptance of faulty science, with results that will be deceptively used as a weapon of ignorance against same-sex parents and our children for the rest of our natural lives, to be a requirement of tolerance. The Heritage Foundation ought to tolerate Regnerus’ own admission that his study was completely unable to produce useful data about children from stable households with same-sex parents, and respect the fact that the study’s design does not support their assertion that its results are representative of the children of same-sex parents.

It’s telling that intolerance for lying and wronging innocent people is apparently limited to “liberals”.

Heritage Foundation baffled by criticism of flawed “same-sex parenting” study

Heritage Foundation baffled by criticism of flawed "same-sex parenting" study

Zinnia Jones, , 18 Comments

The homophobic right-wing seems genuinely taken aback at how poorly received their precious Regnerus study has been. Clearly, being widely and loudly called out on shoddy science with a hateful agenda isn’t something they’re used to. And in another decade, these results might have been accepted at face value despite the study’s many flaws, simply because it aligned with the conventional wisdom of the time that gay people must be bad for children, society, and everything. This is no longer the case – these traditional assumptions aren’t assumed anymore, and the anti-gay movement have found themselves out of their element.

In their shock that someone would dare question their latest instrument of propaganda, the Heritage Foundation asks, “Why the Liberal Intolerance for New Family Structures Study?” To them, criticism of methodology is actually just a matter of partisan politics. This isn’t just deception, but self-deception: by characterizing any disagreement with this study as rooted purely in personal political opinion, it becomes completely acceptable for them to endorse its results without acknowledging or understanding its numerous errors. It’s no longer a question of reality and sound science – it’s “us vs. them”:

The author of a new study showing some negative outcomes for young adults whose parents had same-sex relationships is under attack because his findings conflict with what, in some corners, has become conventional wisdom.

Wrong! This study is not being criticized because some people found its results to be disagreeable. It is being criticized because its definitions, analysis, and conclusions are misleading and unsupported by the data. It’s been criticized because it used even a single occurrence of any same-sex relationship involving a parent to define that parent as a “lesbian mother” or a “gay father”. It’s been criticized because Regnerus treated these parents as representative of “same-sex parents” when a vast majority of their children spent fewer than four years living in a household with same-sex parents. It’s been criticized because its sample of “same-sex parents”, even by Regnerus’ distorted and practically useless definition, is too small to draw valid conclusions from.

Apparently, the idea that there is “no difference” between children of same-sex parents and their peers raised in traditional married mother-and-father households has become so entrenched among some advocates that new research presenting a contrasting picture is unwelcome—to put it mildly.

No! This study is not unwelcome because it contradicts an “entrenched” idea. It is unwelcome because it uses bad science to portray same-sex parents as being incompetent. It is unwelcome because Regnerus openly admits to boosting the sample sizes of his “lesbian mothers” and “gay fathers” groups (which, again, were defined in a ridiculous manner that defies all sense) by packing them with the children of divorced families, step-families and single parents, and because he then compared these groups to children whose biological parents were married throughout their entire childhood. It is unwelcome because he did not compare children who were raised by their married biological parents until the age of 18 to children who were raised by married same-sex couples until the age of 18. It is unwelcome because he ruthlessly stacked the deck against these badly defined “lesbian mothers” and “gay fathers” groups in a way that no one could avoid noticing, and then used these erroneous conclusions to attack actual same-sex parents who were underrepresented in his study, to the extent that they were represented at all.

And these are the folks who urge us to be tolerant of differences and respect scientific research.

Incorrect! We do not accept methodological flaws as simply a matter of personal “differences”. We do not respect “scientific research” that is poorly interpreted and used – indeed, seemingly designed – to perpetuate untruths. We do not respect just any damn thing that someone manages to publish in a journal, without examining its contents and verifying the soundness of the research. And we do not consider blind acceptance of faulty science, with results that will be deceptively used as a weapon of ignorance against same-sex parents and our children for the rest of our natural lives, to be a requirement of tolerance. The Heritage Foundation ought to tolerate Regnerus’ own admission that his study was completely unable to produce useful data about children from stable households with same-sex parents, and respect the fact that the study’s design does not support their assertion that its results are representative of the children of same-sex parents.

It’s telling that intolerance for lying and wronging innocent people is apparently limited to “liberals”.

Heritage Foundation baffled by criticism of flawed "same-sex parenting" study

Regnerus deconstructed: How a new study misrepresents same-sex parents

Zinnia Jones, , 29 Comments

A recently published study by sociology professor Mark Regnerus purports to show that children of same-sex parents experience a significant degree of negative outcomes, contrary to numerous earlier studies on LGBT parenting. Most notably, the new study alleges that the children of lesbian mothers are more likely to be on public assistance, more likely to be unemployed, less likely to be employed full-time, more likely to be cohabitating, less likely to be married, more likely to have had an affair, more likely to have had an STI, more likely to have been in therapy recently, more likely to have recently thought about suicide, more likely to have been raped, and more likely to have been molested by an adult.

These findings would certainly be surprising – if they were supported by the evidence. While these results have been widely reported as representative of the parenting skills of same-sex parents, the study itself can tell us almost nothing about this. The shortcomings of its design make this impossible.

The study was conducted by surveying a representative sample of nearly 3,000 young adults aged 18 to 39, who were sorted into 8 categories of family structures: an intact biological family of a married mother and father, lesbian mothers, gay fathers, adoptive families, biological parents who divorced after their children were grown, stepfamilies, single parents, and all other kinds of families.

However, the groups designated as “lesbian mothers” and “gay fathers” are actually defined by whether one of the respondent’s biological parents ever had a same-sex relationship during the respondent’s childhood. Little information is given about the nature and duration of these relationships, and the set of people whose parents once had any kind of same-sex relationship is not identical to the set of people who were raised in a household with same-sex parents. Same-sex relationships aren’t limited to committed same-sex couples raising children. This definition could also encompass a same-sex affair outside of an opposite-sex marriage, a parent who services clients of the same sex in the course of sex work, or same-sex activity within the context of an open relationship. For the purposes of this study, these situations are all lumped in with committed same-sex partners raising children.

The labels of “lesbian mothers” or “gay fathers” also ignore the fact that having had at least one same-sex relationship does not necessarily make someone gay, any more than one opposite-sex relationship makes someone straight. In an article in Slate Magazine, Regnerus says, “our research team was less concerned with the complicated politics of sexual identity than with same-sex behavior.” But the study says nothing about the nature or extent of that behavior aside from whether it was ever present to the slightest degree, or completely absent as far as the respondents were aware.

What little data the study does provide in this area mostly pertains to the length of time the respondents spent in a household with same-sex partners, which turns out to be… not much. Of the respondents in the so-called “lesbian mothers” group, who numbered 163, only 57% reported living with their biological mother and her same-sex partner for at least 4 months, and 23% lived with them for at least 3 years. In the “gay fathers” group, numbering 73 people, 23% said they lived with their biological father and his same-sex partner for at least 4 months, and less than 2% lived with them for at least 3 years.

There are two flaws in comparing these respondents to those in the “intact biological families” group as a measure of the effects of same-sex parenting. First, this suggests that while the 18 years spent with one’s married heterosexual parents are responsible for these positive outcomes, the mere months that many respondents spent in a household with same-sex parents must be responsible for their negative outcomes. This completely ignores the effects of whatever other family structures they were a part of during the many years that they did not spend with their same-sex parents. And in the case of those who spent no time living with a parent’s same-sex partner, how could any of their outcomes possibly be attributed to same-sex parenting?

Second, Regnerus’ 8 categories of family structures are not mutually exclusive. A respondent with a parent who had at least one same-sex relationship could also have lived with their married biological parents for their entire childhood, or had a stepfamily, an adoptive family, a single parent, or some other kind of family. Regnerus acknowledges this, and states that he “forced their mutual exclusivity” for the sake of “maximizing the sample size” of the “lesbian mothers” and “gay fathers” groups. Unfortunately, this makes any comparison between the “intact biological families” group and either of the “gay” parent groups practically useless.

Regnerus has filtered the other six groups – biological parents, stepfamilies, adoptive families, later divorced parents, single parents, and all others – so that they consist only of parents who are believed to be exclusively heterosexual. But he’s constructed the two “gay” parent groups so that they consist of a hodgepodge of these family structures. Every other group contains only one type of family. The “gay” parent groups contain potentially all of them.

Regnerus’ treatment of these groups thus fails to separate the possible effects of having a stepfamily, a single parent, divorced parents, married biological parents, or being adopted, from the effects of a parent having at least one same-sex relationship. As a result, the outcomes that he attributes to same-sex parenting could just as well be due to family instability. He isn’t comparing married heterosexual parents whose children lived with them for 18 years to committed same-sex couples whose children lived with them for 18 years. He’s packed the “gay” groups with divorces, remarriages, adoptions and single parenthood, and then compared them to intact heterosexual families. Of course the results would reflect unfavorably on the groups he’s designated as gay. But they don’t tell us anything about the outcomes for children who were raised by committed same-sex parents for a substantial portion of their childhood.

Regnerus himself has admitted to these shortcomings, but claims that there was no way to overcome these limitations. On his blog, he wrote:

One of the key methodological criticisms circulating is that-basically-in a population-based sample, I haven’t really evaluated how the adult children of stably-intact coupled self-identified lesbians have fared. […] And I’m telling you that it cannot be feasibly accomplished. It is a methodological (practical) impossibility at present, for reasons I describe: they really didn’t exist in numbers that could be amply obtained *randomly*. It may well be a flaw-a limitation, I think-but it is unavoidable. We maxxed Knowledge Networks’ ability, and no firm is positioned to do better. It would have cost untold millions of dollars, and still may not generate the number of cases needed for statistical analyses.

Considering how many inaccurate stories about same-sex parents have been published because of what his study falsely claims to show, this is an especially weak excuse. If the data aren’t there, then the data just aren’t there. This doesn’t mean you can misrepresent committed same-sex parents by grouping them with all kinds of disrupted families and different living situations. It means your study simply isn’t capable of examining the competence of same-sex parents. And Regnerus should have admitted that in the first place.

Regnerus deconstructed: How a new study misrepresents same-sex parents

The Traditional Values Coalition’s beauty standards

Zinnia Jones, , 12 Comments

Warning: Transphobia and social conservatism ahead.

The “Traditional Values Coalition” once again has their hackles up over the proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and this is the unapologetically hateful email they sent out yesterday:

Terrifying, isn’t it? If we can’t discriminate against trans people, then they might be able to hold a job, possibly even one that involves working with children! It’s almost like they think they’re human or something.

While there’s no information about the person depicted in their email or how they identify (and I doubt the TVC bothered to ask before using their picture), the attempt to police the appearance of trans people is obvious. It’s also a distraction. “Look, trans women are scary!” isn’t their true objection at all. Would they be equally upset about cis women being allowed to teach children if these women don’t meet a mainstream standard of feminine attractiveness? No. And would they suddenly be okay with trans women teaching children if they were  all beauty pageant contestants? Not a chance. They don’t have a problem with trans people because of how they look. They have a problem with trans people because we exist.

(via Jeremy Hooper/Good As You)

The Traditional Values Coalition’s beauty standards