Texas Case Pits Transgender Rights Against Parental Rights
A custody case out of Texas raises issues about how to react to and treat a child who identifies as a gender different from their biological sex.
A custody case out of Texas is raising issues regarding the treatment of children who appear to be exhibiting signs of being transgender as well as the proper role of government in these sorts of matters:
There is little that Jeffrey Younger and Anne Georgulas agree on about one of their twins.
To start: Is the 7-year-old transgender?
It’s a question that has divided the Coppell, Tex., parents — on how Luna, who was named James at birth, should be dressed to school and wear their hair. On whether the child should receive gender-affirming care, which could eventually lead to medical treatment to delay puberty. On which parent should get to live with the twins, and who should have a say in decisions over their health.
At least one of those conflicts was resolved on Tuesday, as a jury in Dallas effectively granted Georgulas sole custody of Luna in a deeply personal case of gender identity, family conflict and viral misinformation that has lit conservative circles aflame.
Since the start of the trial last week, a number of conservative media outlets have cried foul about the situation, claiming that Georgulas, a pediatrician with a private practice in a Dallas suburb, was going to have Luna “mutilated” or “chemically castrated.” The case even made its way to at least three Texas Republicans, including Sen. Ted Cruz, who called the child “a pawn in a left-wing political agenda.”
Gov. Greg Abbott (R), meanwhile, said late on Wednesday that state agencies were looking into the situation. Neither office immediately responded to a request for comment. Attorneys for both parents also did not immediately respond.
But as Younger turned the parents’ fight into one over irreversible medical procedures, experts on health care for transgender children told The Washington Post that Georgulas’s approach to the child would not involve any kind of surgery or hormones for years.
“Many people wrongly assume that prepubescent transgender or gender-diverse children will receive medical interventions,” Katherine Kuvalanka, a social work professor at Miami University in Ohio, said in an email to The Washington Post. “The only interventions for young children is affirmation and acceptance for who they are.”In its 11-to-1 decision, a jury all but gave Georgulas the right to sign off on any medical and psychological decisions. If a judge upholds that decision on Thursday, the verdict would end a bitter, two-year saga between the parents, who had their brief marriage annulled over their child’s gender identity, a case that wades deep into thorny, polarized and little-known questions about the impact of medical transitions on young children.
It all began, Younger says on his blog, on the twins’ third birthday, when Luna expressed a desire to be a girl.
At that point, the father was paying maximum child support and had standard custody in Texas: He saw the twins once a week for two hours and had them sleep over at his apartment two weekends a month. They spent the rest of their time with Georgulas, who had noticed that the child, known by the name James at the time, wanted to wear dresses and look like the female characters from the Disney movie “Frozen.”
Georgulas took Luna to see a therapist, who diagnosed the child with gender dysphoria — a mismatch between the gender assigned at birth and the one they identified with. From there, the therapist laid out steps on how to make the child feel affirmed, like letting Luna paint their nails and putting them in a dress, as the mother did when the twins turned 5.
But Younger has repeatedly told a different story in interviews with conservative media outlets, including LifeSiteNews, a website run by a Canadian antiabortion organization that advocates for “traditional family values” and against same-sex marriage.
“James presents as a boy with me and he presents as a girl with his mom,” Younger said to the website last month. “He gets dressed as a boy at his mother’s home and he comes out to me as a boy. That means that he’s comfortable as a boy at his mother’s home.”
It is important to note that there is nothing going on in this case that is permanent. At the present time, according to the available reports about the case from non-biased sources, all that is happening is that James/Luna is being permitted to live as a girl, to be referred to as female, and to be allowed to dress as a girl. Contrary to the implication that has been made by some activists, Luna is not being given any drugs or treatments that would block the onset of puberty or promote the development of female physical characteristics. According to the experts quoted in the Washington Post report, such treatment would only come when the child is much older and, even then, only if medical professionals sign off on it and prescribe the necessary medication(s). Even then, use of the medication could stop at any time and Luna would develop as a male through the process of puberty. Right now, the idea is that if the child identifies as a female then her parents, as well as society and school authorities, should respect that identification and let her develop as she sees fit. As she becomes older and the time comes to make a decision about medication and related medical procedures, then the decision can be made appropriately,
This is admittedly not an easy case. The entire idea of being transgender is still so relatively new to most people that it’s hard to understand how anyone could identify as a gender that does not correspond to their biological sex. This is especially true for someone at the young age of just seven years old. However, the fact that we don’t understand something doesn’t mean it isn’t real, and it doesn’t mean that there is something wrong with the way Luna is being treated that amounts to child abuse, as the conservative media sites such as Lifesite, Washington Examiner, and Hot Air have alleged in their coverage of the story. In fact, the mother seems to be following the advice of medical professionals, and, given its verdict, the jury would seem to obviously agree.
As I said above, cases like this aren’t easy and reasonable people can disagree about what the proper decision is in the case of a young child who appears to be identifying with a gender different from their biological sex. In this case, though, it would appear that the mother is doing the right thing and that the father is exploiting conservative media coverage of this matter to try to score points against his ex-wife. It’s also apparent to me that this ought to be an issue left in the hands of medical profession, the child, and the custodial parent(s). Absent clear evidence of abuse, which doesn’t exist in this case, the government should keep out of these cases and let individuals deal with what is an obviously complicated and emotional issue on their own.
So many fears. So much misinformation.
Nobody does anything permanent to a minor child. Hormone blockers are not permanent, and Luna doesn’t need to go on them for several years. But nothing permanent is done to a minor child. Seriously, this does not happen. I’m amazed at how resistant some people are to this message – how hard they find it to believe.
And in the meantime, everyone will keep an eye on her to see whether living as a girl makes her happier or not, and whether she gets bored with it or not. Most of the time, it’s not a remotely close call. The child is way, way happier, open, and outgoing when allowed to express their felt gender.
And no, I don’t know how this works any more than anyone else. I have some hints. For instance, it has been established by neuroscience that there is a model of your body held in your brain, and you execute movements by first manipulating that model in your brain. But what if, for some reason, the model in your head doesn’t match your physical body. Amputees can experience things like “ghost limbs”. This is suggestive to me. I read about one trans man that assumed he would grow a penis at puberty.
@Jay L Gischer: Perhaps related, I read years ago that a large chunk of brain capacity goes into defining me/not me. If a part of this stops working, you can have an out of body experience. Nothing mystical, just a temporary glitch in the wetware.
IIRC Molly Ivins explained it as gender not being a binary 1 or 0, but more like a 1 to 10 scale. Most people are 1 or 2 or 9 or 10, but a lot of people are 4 thru 7. As I get older and this is discussed more, I see it as a bunch of 1-10 scales, with complicated interactions.
Gawd I miss Molly Ivins. Where is she when we need her?
Rod Dreher over at TAC has been doing the expected “civilisation is DOOMED!” reaction. It’s taken several more laid-back commentators to point out that a) the father has an established background as a fabulist, and b) there might be very good reasons that the mother may be granted full custody.
(Honestly, it’s like anything about transgenderism or single-sex marriage just shuts Rod’s brain down. He can’t even do the basic research you think an ex-journalist would carry out. So much for professional ethics….)
In general I would agree that
However, I wonder at what point should anything be done until the child reaches an appropriate age so that valid consent can be expressed.
There are cases of babies born with hermaphroditic features that are immediately “taken care of” where a sex is chosen within weeks after birth. I’ve read arguments that the choosing should be delayed until the recipient can choose.
On a less consequential decision, is male circumcision considered ethical? I’ve heard both arguments some arguing for the primacy of “religious liberty”.
Then we can get into vaccines. Does the parent have the right to withold them or any other medically necessary procedure?
@Scott: Vaccines are a clear cut case, using the usual analogy, of your fist hitting the general publics nose.
Am I the only one experiencing deja vu reading this? Do the names Elián González and Terry Schiavo ring any bells?
@gVOR08: The scale of 1-10 is solid. Here’s a different way to look at it: We have three bits
A: What a person’s physical sexual organs are.
B: What a person’s gender identity is.
C: What a person’s sexual preference is.
None of these are precisely binary, but if you treat them as such, since all combinations are possible, you get 8 different types.
I tend to think of this as a sort of double jigsaw puzzle. There’s a jigsaw puzzle with about 100 pieces, but two copies of each piece – the male and the female version. Each pair of pieces has exactly the same shape and goes in the same place in the final puzzle, but they make the person in the finished picture look a bit different.
I recall reading about a neuroscientist from Harvard who mapped this all out for animals like lions or something. She avoided humans because human experimentation is hard, and she wanted to avoid press attention and controversy. But she came up with a couple of hundred or so brain structures that varied with sex type. Except they didn’t all vary in every specimen. They didn’t even cluster that much. Yes, a Y chromosome influenced the choice of “puzzle piece” but the choice of one puzzle piece appeared to be independent of others.
And that’s the non-binary nature of gender in a mathematical model.
@Scott:
I always think of this in terms of, “Does the parent have the right to let their children play in a busy street?”
Then we can get into vaccines. Does the parent have the right to withold (sic) them…
I believe that one of the issues with vaccines is that not only is the unvaccinated child at risk for disease and possibly death so are citizens who cannot be vaccinated.
Personally I think that citizens who oppose vaccination are in favor of spreading disease that can kill children. I have said this to more than a few nut jobs.
They didn’t like it much.
While I know we agree, Doug, and I appreciated your responses to Jazz’s insanity earlier on twitter, let me quibble with part of your conclusion. 🙂
I don’t think so. I think “reasonable people” would follow medical advice in such areas.
Physicians may disagree on the appropriate course of treatment for specific individuals after engaging in their care, but for the lay people, who are the ones up in arms here, they don’t get to have an opinion unless they are the parents. And a parent that refuses medical advice (absent a conflict in that advice from treating physicians) isn’t acting reasonably.
Frankly, the father in this case is essentially an anti-vaxxer but with more harm risk to their own child and less to the community.
@Scott:
Immediately if failing to act causes that child harm. And we know that in such cases, failing to acknowledge the child’s feelings risk serious harm.
The answer to all of these is that, yes, the parents have the rights to do what they believe is best absent the harm, to the child or the community, rising to a serious enough level that parental rights are restricted/removed by the State – an exercise in power that should be used very, very cautiously and rarely.
Not an easy case? Of course it’s an easy case. It all boils down to one simple concept:
It’s none of anyone’s fucking business.
That is, it’s not Ted Cruz’ business or Greg Abbot’s business or the Hot Air scumbags’ business or any one of a thousand evangelicals’ business.
Is there an issue to be worked out between parents and child, in this case adjudicated by a court because they can’t come to a decision? Yes, and for those individual parties I will concede it is not an easy case.
But for you and me and all these Republican parasites who are victimizing this poor kid because they want to distract suckers from the fact that Republican governance has now boiled down to theft and treason, it’s really easy — it’s none of their business.
Love how many dirtball conservatives have diagnosed this kid from afar, while screaming about the mother and her brainwashing techniques. Do these people live like this in reality? Do they have kids? Children have actual psychologies but apparently there’s no way a kid could express feelings that don’t exist in the Bible. It’s terrifying to think that this is how these people treat the world around them.
@Scott:
There are two mistakes here.
One, whatever’s “done” in this case flows from the child’s express desires, so that is consent appropriate to the age. think back to when you were five, or find a five yer old, and ask if at that age one can tell gender apart or not.
The second is that keeping a transgender child in their assigned gender is also “doing something,” with as much an impact as allowing the child to express the gender they identify with.
@Mister Bluster :
THIS. I’m not immune to Measles despite getting the vaccine multiple times. My aunt just got a lung transplant and is immuno-compromised. My sister is going to Disneyland in a week, they’ve just had a measles outbreak and I’m pet-sitting. What does that mean? When she comes back, we’re going to have to work out some complicated way to get her pets back to her and I can’t get whatever presents she brings back for a while. She can’t come over to the house until we are *sure* she’s not carrying anything. Any chance of exposure can be devastating, if not fatal.
I’m *pissed*. This is going to needlessly add worry and risk to our lives because some parent somewhere is dumb enough to believe Jenny McCarthy over a doctor. I do not give a shit if you think autism is a terrible thing – it’s not worse then *death*. Even if you buy the BS that vaccines cause autism, you are deliberating spreading disease and endangering lives because you don’t want your child to be *different*.
Vaccines should be mandatory unless there is a literal medical problem preventing them. You do not own your child and do not have the right to endanger their health because of your beliefs.
And this is why liberals should not get sexually involved with conservatives (at least cultural conservatives, but it often seems like that comes along later).
Values matter.
If you think opposites attract, then you shouldn’t be having kids. Birth control exists for a reason, and this is it. Have fun, explore, etc., but postpone your long term consequences until you’ve figured shit out.
(Curiously, I feel the same way about transgender kids. I don’t know what’s going on, but part of being a kid is learning by exploring different roles. Support that, give them space to explore, and hold off on permanent decisions as long as you can. I’m not willing to say other approaches are child abuse, though.)
Now this poor kid is going to be really screwed up in the head because they have to choose between their parents, each of whom believes the other would be abusing the kid, which is going to have as many consequences as the transgender stuff.
The parents are morons.
This is all going to turn out that they are using the kid as a proxy because the guy was horrible and his wife decided she would rather sleep with someone else, isn’t it?
Morons.
If only one person in a couple giggles at “god created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, am I right?” then they should just break up.
Morons.
@Modulo Myself :
Most of those people think of children as property, as something that belongs to the parent rather then a future adult you’re have the honor of supervising for a bit. They think the child exists only in relation to the parent; the parent’s beliefs and worldview are all important and what’s best for the child doesn’t matter. A true test of a parent is if something your child needs goes against your beliefs – do you compromise yourself rather then them? If not, why not?
@Gustopher: It’s interesting. Before Republican politicians got hold of this and decided bathroom bills were a good way to scare people into voting R, the fault lines about trans people didn’t necessarily break left/right.
For instance, parents who are highly feminist (and presumably left-leaning) can have quite a difficult time accepting their child’s wish. Because the child often expresses gender in terms of “I don’t want to play baseball, I want to play with dolls.” To a feminist parent, the answer is “then play with dolls! But be proud of who you are!”
TERFs lean left somewhat, but we all understand their rejection of the entire phenomenon. I’ve met some really very conservative parents, even religious ones, who say, “Well, my child might be a sinner, but I’m still gonna love them.”
Of course, thanks to our political scene, things are less likely to break that way.
@Kathy: Really, the only parenting that doesn’t involve “doing something” is to lay eggs and hope someone comes by and fertilizes them.
Even leaving your child in the woods to be raised by wolves is doing something (reckless child abandonment, and likely manslaughter if not higher charges…) For every kid left in the wild that founds Rome, or comes back to complete some terrible prophesy, there were probably hundreds that were just wolf snacks… We just don’t have the Myth of the Well-Fed Wolf.
@Modulo Myself:
Can’t speak for all of them, but I know that when I was in my 20s and 30s presented with this conundrum, I would have made the wrong decision because I knew everything about Christian doctrine and almost nothing about how to live as a Christian. It has taken most of a lifetime and leaving the Fundamentalist/Evangelical community for better and wiser interpretations of my faith to get to where I no longer need to live in a world with no ambiguity. I still share some passing kinship and shared beliefs with my brothers and sisters in the Fundy/Evangelical world, but mostly these days I grieve for their hard heartedness and anger.
TL/DR: Yes, they have children and yes, they do live like this in reality. Pray that God will protect them from needing to face this situation. They’re not up to it.
I’m Trans and I cannot begin to express how distressing this disingenuous right wing nonsense about this case and Trans athletes is. Did someone dump something in their water recently that got them riled up? There has been an active, concerted anti-trans push over the last two weeks. I’ve had to spend so much time trying to fight against it that I’m burned out and, honestly, terrified.
Regarding Luna, I didn’t start my medical transition until I was 40. I spent my teenage years wildly suicidal because I couldn’t understand/deal with being Trans. I realized at a very early age that I was unsafe and that my parents would not/could not help me (they didn’t and still don’t want to deal with their mental health issues). Because of that, I don’t remember huge chunks of my life. My body was there, but no one was home. The mind does amazing things to protect the body. If I would have had supportive parents/family/friends/society, I wouldn’t have been nearly the suicidal jerk I was. The most important thing you can do with Trans kids is believe them and love them.
@Jay L Gischer So, your thing about phantom limbs is accurate for me. For me, my chest was a huge problem. I would look down and it was there, but objectively not. It killed me. I was on estrogen for 3 days and I looked down and went, “oh, everything is correct”. Objectively, nothing had changed except for a little bit of estrogen and a little less testosterone. For the first time in my life my body felt correct. It is impossible to fully describe to cis people that your body isn’t correct.
@Jay L Gischer:
You have to further break A down into A1 Genotype (what their genes are encoding) and A2 Phenotype (what proteins are active in their body) because those may not even match up. The most notable example would be AIS, where the individual has XY DNA, but the androgen receptor proteins don’t work so the cells all act like they’re XX
@Gustopher:
No, they’re humans. Wait a minute… That’s the same thing.
Must be nice living in a world where there is only one answer to every question. My own separation, divorce, and lengthy custody battles (and yes, that plural is not an accident) started with my Ex getting involved with drugs and engaging in illegal activities and only ended years later when she finally went to prison.
Just as with marriage there are a hundred thousand and one reasons for divorce and most of them have nothing to do with sex, but all of them come down to “I can’t live with this moron anymore.”
Encouraging a 7 year old to be a transgender person is criminal idiocy. At that age, they barely understand rules about not playing in the street traffic. That the child’s mother is a pediatrician is horrific and, among other things, she should lose her license to practice medicine.
@OzarkHillbilly: Yes, there are lots of reasons for divorce. But, a lot of those reasons have a brief stop in infidelity, which can harden “we aren’t working” to “I been wronged.” But it usually starts with someone changing, or very different values ending up in conflict.
The crazed vitriol from the husband sounds like “I been wronged.”
Sorry the former Mrs. Hillbilly had drug issues. I hope she’s doing better.
@john430: There’s a difference between allowing, encouraging, and forcing.
Forcing a trans kid to live as their birth gender would be as bad as forcing a cis kid to live as a different gender.
@john430: You see, I thought exactly like you do now when I was in my 20s and 30s, too. Hopefully, you will be able to become wiser, feel less threatened, whatever as you become older and be able to at least admit that you don’t understand something like this in the future.
@Gary Seven: Yes, that is exactly what I want for the child. Or to live a life that makes them happy.
It’s either that or forcing crippled children to walk because you deny them appropriate health care.
One issue that is getting more attention is the male athletes who “identify” as women and “clean up” in their events. The female students are losing out on scholarships. The NCAA has not dealt with this. Women’s advocate groups are concerned. This threatens the progress made under Title IX.
“transgender power lifter asks, ‘Where do we draw the line?’” “we were duped, say officials” Washington Post
“One of them switched [gender] right before high school…and it was a shocker…We watched the kids lining up at the start[ing] line and all of a sudden there is a one at the finish line and all the girls halfway down the track. All of the parents looked at each other and said, “What just happened?” So we went home and looked online at the stats on Terry Miller and there was no Terry Miller. So, we went through the male athletes list and there was his name on the boys’ events, for three seasons, where he had competed as a male.” (“Confronting a new threat to female athletics” Quillett)
@Gustopher:
She isn’t in prison anymore, but she’s the same manipulative c**t she’s always been. Yes, I am an enlightened moron, why do you ask?
@Gustopher: “forcing” a seven year old? Maternal “forcing” would be forcing him to take a bath. He’s seven! Gender forcing is criminal AND insane!
@Just nutha: Deliver me from your “wisdom” if you think making a seven year old into a transgender child is normal parenting.
@john430: no. Just no. You don’t know what you are talking about. Bluntly you are ignorant and dangerous because you don’t recognize that ignorance.
Gender dysphoria is a real thing. Ignoring it doesn’t make it go away. Refusing to accept it doesn’t change the reality.
When a parent is faced with dealing with a kid that is different in any material way, refusing to accept it and forcing them to conform is stupid and cruel.
@john430: Okaaaaaaayy, so maybe you won’t become wiser and feel less threatened. My bad.
ETA: But please don’t put words into my mouth. My comment never said anything about MAKING anyone into anything. MAKING people things seems to be your schtick, not mine
@Beth: “Trans athletes”: see what I wrote above and the referenced articles. Is it fair for men to identify as women and compete in the women’s athletic events, winning by a large margin? If you think that is okay, then how about women’s teams competing against the men? It will never happen and we know why.
“One of them switched [gender] right before high school…and it was a shocker…We watched the kids lining up at the start[ing] line and all of a sudden there is a one at the finish line and all the girls halfway down the track. All of the parents looked at each other and said, “What just happened?” So we went home and looked online at the stats on Terry Miller and there was no Terry Miller. So, we went through the male athletes list and there was his name on the boys’ events, for three seasons, where he had competed as a male.” (“Confronting a new threat to female athletics” Quillett)
@Tyrell: @Tyrell: Those articles are full of bad faith BS and nonsense. There are no cisgender men pretending to be women to do anything. Those are trans-women who deserve to compete. Moreover, most of those articles are full of full of outright lies. Trans-women are not winning at absurd rates.
The way these articles are written specifically erases trans people. We are women or men, we are pretenders who’s only goal is to destroy women. Note, none of these articles talk about trans-men. This is all about scaring people.
Because I’ve had to confront this before, I’ve got this to share: I’d like to share something you likely don’t think about: hormone levels, specifically mine, and how they effect strength.
Prior to starting HRT I would not consider myself particularly strong, but I could easily carry 80 pound bags of cement mix. At that time, my testosterone level was approximately 409 ng/dl (14.2 nmol/l) my estrogen level was 26 pg/ml. I started HRT on about Feb 6, by about a week later I discovered I could barely lift said bag of cement.
My testosterone level hit a low of 34 ng/dl (1.2 nmol/l) and my last test (10/1) showed it was 128 ng/dl (4.4 nmol/l) and my estrogen level was 121 pg/ml. At that appointment my estrogen dosage was increased and I started progesterone. One week later I could barely carry a fully loaded laundry basket up the stairs.
The standard for trans-female athletes to be allowed to compete in the Olympics is 10 nmol/l for 12 months. I started at 14.2 nmol/l and am now bouncing around 1-4 nmol/l. It’s not going to be too much longer before I’ll lose an arm wrestling contest with [my 6yr old son]. I can’t stress enough that my former physical strength is gone, and it’s not coming back.
The narrative being pushed by bigots, TERFS, white nationalists and their bad faith allies on the Right is that trans-women are destroying women’s sport. The nothing being pushed is that trans-women have some sort of mythic strength due to our exposure to testosterone. Let me tell you, once that testosterone is gone, that bonus strength is gone too.
The point of this [BS] narrative is fear. Keep trans women afraid of existing and keeping cis women afraid of us. I mean, its working on me. I’m surrounded by supportive people and I’m still terrified.
If you’ve made it through this screed, I want you to think of me when you come across these nonsense scaremonger articles. If you have any questions ask me, I’m willing to talk about any trans issues (as you can see by me posting my medical history).