Lunacy from Moira Donegan (Guardian) on US Supreme Court Skrmetti

[ProfesoraLou]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/19/us-supreme-court-gender-equality. In case you don't want to read (and there are so many good reasons not to), she says that the judgment undermines gender equality (seeming to mean traditional, as in between biological men and women) because it bans gender affirming care for minors "on the basis of sex". She says it is sexist because male hormones are only banned for biological girls, and female hormones are only banned for biological boys.
Now, the conservative majority on this supreme court has delivered major blows to equality between men and women, notably with Dobbs, but seemingly Moira Donegan wouldn't think it was sexist if oestrogen was banned for teenage girls, denying them access to birth control?
Did no one proof read this nonsense?

Like I mean, that's the kind of thing you'd expect an evil, conservative supreme court to do : we want to ban dangerous cross sex hormones to children but we don't want to be sexist so we'll also ban contraception for teenage girls past the age of consent. But it didn't. This time the evil court just protected the kids. But this "progressive feminist" calls that sexist?

The guardian have lost it. They've lost their sense and reason to gender ideology. So disappointed in them, especially as I was a lifelong reader of over 20 years. No more.

Remember that Donegan is part of Guardian US which is like an island of Hiroo Onodas.

I started reading that when it was first published and just couldn't continue with it because I was so horrified that the guardian would publish something so nonsensical.

It felt on a par with publishing some anti-vaccine rubbish or other. Content that was so polemical, so divorced from reason, that it seemed just like an algorithm come to life.

https://gender.stanford.edu/people/moira-donegan

That alone will have a devastating impact on trans children, whom studies consistently show fare best under an affirmative model of care that retains the option to delay puberty or pursue cross-sex hormones

do they now.

I am not highly educated, I don’t always understand complex arguments but I am affronted by her final assertion that “all cis women who desire to be free have had their dignity demeaned”. Er, no. My dignity as a woman is demeaned by being told that [insert your chosen irreversible surgery here, happy acquiescence to law changes, being told I am now marrying to a lesbian with a dick etc] is a good thing for me and for my sex as a whole. I am deeply affronted.

As I said, I am not highly educated or anything but I did have a go at reading Sotomayer’s dissent. The woman was on another planet during the hearing, surely? Anyway, in https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Informed+dissent, a very bright legal mind affirmed my opinion asking “or is she just thick?” I was pretty chuffed hearing that. Some very interesting points made toward the end of the podcast.

If ever I was in a pickle, I would take Jonathan Skrmetti any day if he was on my side. He looks the very personification of The Quiet Achiever.

Thanks for sharing. It is quite mind blowing that she can write that and think she actually sounds sane.

Oh dear. "Guardian US columnist".

"whom studies consistently show fare best under an affirmative model of care that retains the option to delay puberty or pursue cross-sex hormones"

I always wonder whether a newspaper has a responsibility to correct columnists when they say something that is demonstrably untrue. Does it make a difference that this was presumably published in the US version, not the UK version?

She doesn't seem to understand the difference between sex and gender.

At the very least, this week, the court ruled that gender conformity can be enforced, at least on children, by the state.

What on earth has "gender conformity" got to do with giving children puberty blockers and cross sex hormones?

Is she just telling us that, despite all their protests to the contrary, "trans kids" really are just those who don't conform to gender stereotypes?

She's a backwards misogynist who identifies as a progressive feminist. It's basically quicker to assume that she is using any noun or adjective which has an opposite to mean its opposite.

"At the very least, this week, the court ruled that gender conformity can be enforced, at least on children, by the state."

This is where I find things confusing as I'm not entirely sure what the Tennessee law addresses:

The Tennessee law bans any procedure that enables "a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor's sex" or that treats "purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor's sex and asserted identity".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crr7ej97y0eo

Is the Tennessee law saying that a minor's identity should be consistent with their sex (gender conservative), or that there is no right or wrong identity for a sex (gender critical)?

"Tennessee’s ban explicitly prohibits patients from accessing medicine on the basis of their sex, prohibiting male-assigned patients from accessing estrogen while permitting female-assigned patients to access it, and barring female-assigned patients from accessing testosterone while allowing it to be prescribed to male-assigned ones. Sex is the sole determining characteristic: it is sex that, under Tennessee’s law, licenses conduct for some individuals and prohibits the same conduct for others."

As far as I understand, women and men have both oestrogen and testosterone, and both can be prescribed both hormones for reasons that have nothing to do with gender affirmation. I don't think this is banned in any part of the United States, but I assume that sex is very much taken into account when prescribing, because otherwise you would endanger the health, and possibly life of the patient.

Apparently this woman is paid to make these arguments?

This is not discrimination on the basis of sex, this is discrimination on the basis of how the drugs are intended to be used. Contraception? Treating prostate cancer? Precocious puberty? Fine and dandy for all who need it. Giving it to kids who think they have the wrong body. Noooo.

This is like saying reserving fentanyl for the treatment of severe pain is discrimination against those who just want to use it to get off their face.

Is the Tennessee law saying that a minor's identity should be consistent with their sex (gender conservative), or that there is no right or wrong identity for a sex (gender critical)?

I'm not sure I agree with these definitions. I'd say that "a minor's identity should be consistent with their sex" is both gender conservative and gender critical. I don't think any child should be encouraged to spend their life pretending to be the opposite sex.

"There is no right or wrong identity for a sex" is the genderist position, that anyone can identify as the opposite sex and should be treated by the rest of society as though they are the opposite sex.

I think it depends whether identity is intrinsically linked to your sex, and what you mean by identity.

I am using identity to mean personality, character traits and presentation. I don't understand how I could have a wrong identity for a woman.

no right or wrong identity for a sex (gender critical)?

I disagree with your reasoning.There is no identity for a sex at all. It’s a material reality. It can’t be right or wrong, it just is. Everyone has a sex, it is a fixed thing (in mammals) and no amount or identifying one way or another affects it.

Tennessee has banned cross sex hormones for minors. Good. They cause irreparable damage and should not be given to young people.

That is what I mean - but I'm not sure whether the Tennessee legislation is suggesting that there is a right way to identify with your sex.

I think including the word "identity" muddies the waters.

It would be better to just say we are banning dangerous experimental treatment for minors.

It isn’t. It’s saying any hormone treatment to encourage a minor to identify as the opposite sex is stopped. The “identity” is the fallacious claim to be a male woman or a female man.

Agree

This has to be a strong contender for stupidest argument I've ever heard from the TRA camp (maybe pipped at the post by clownfish).

I suppose it's also sexist that men can't get abortions.

In genderism, "identity" is normally used to mean "I identify as...". So a man pretending to be a woman would say his identity is "woman". I think the legislation is saying that children shouldn't be identifying as the opposite sex, pretending to be the opposite sex and given medication to halt or change their natural development at puberty. I agree with that. Transsexualism is not for children.

From her Guardian profile: "Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist".

That tells us all we need to know. The US branch of the Guardian is a lost cause.