The 8th Circuit brief was filed in support of the Arkansas SAFE Act which prohibits gender surgeries and drugs for children.

“WoLF sees gender identity ideology as regressive and sexist, and rejects the notion that “gender identity” is innate. It supported the Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act, 2021 Ark. Act 626, because “gender transition” procedures for minors cause serious lifetime harm, despite a lack of evidence that they are medically necessary or effective at treating mental distress. Further, WoLF is concerned that women and girls are being disproportionately harmed by promises of “gender transition,” and it seeks to ensure that the female-specific issues in this matter receive due attention.”

- SAFE Act amicus brief, submitted by Women’s Liberation Front on 11/19/21

On April 6, 2021, the Arkansas state legislature adopted HB 1570, the Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act. State legislators wrote the bill when their constituents sounded the alarm about a recent rise in children and teens being diagnosed with “gender dysphoria” and seeking access to medical procedures for “gender transition.” In order to protect children from unsafe medical experimentation, the SAFE Act prohibits a variety of cosmetic surgeries and drugs from being prescribed to people under the age of 18, if they are prescribed for purposes of “gender transition.”  The SAFE Act thus serves as a vital tool in preventing the mengelian experimentation and sterilization of gender non-conforming young people. 

The ACLU sued immediately after the Act was passed, and on August 2, a federal district court in Arkansas issued an injunction barring its enforcement. The state of Arkansas appealed, and WoLF submitted an amicus brief to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Gender dysphoria” is a psychiatric condition in which people feel significant emotional distress at the thought of their natal sex. Historically most of those children desisted from their transgender identity after puberty, and the majority went on to live as healthy lesbian, gay, or bisexual adults. However, in recent years clinicians specializing in “gender medicine” have increasingly begun prescribing drugs to artificially halt normal puberty in children as young as eight, frequently followed by cross-sex hormones which have the potential to cause permanent sterility, and serious cosmetic surgeries such as double mastectomies have been carried out on girls as young as 13. 

While the brief focuses on presenting the feminist arguments in favor of this specific bill, it also addresses the unique ways in which so-called “child transition” increasingly impacts girls and young women. The brief further highlights the incoherence and quasi-religious nature of gender identity ideology, and illuminates the various harms it causes beyond just the sterilization of gender-nonconforming youth.

The brief can be read in full here.

Proponents of gender identity ideology increasingly invoke the narrative of ‘the transgender child.’

Back in February, Biden’s Assistant Secretary for Health and Human Services, Rachel Levine, refused to answer questioning from Senator Rand Paul about his support for cosmetic surgeries and administration of cross-sex hormones to minors. Polling shows overwhelmingly that Americans do not support potentially sterilizing procedures on children or the unnecessary amputation of their body parts. 

It is important to remember that these steps are taken for purely superficial reasons. There is no medical benefit to giving an otherwise normal young boy puberty blockers other than to prevent his body from “becom[ing] more perceptibly male,” nor is there any benefit to cutting off a young girl’s healthy breasts other than to give her a more masculine appearance. It does not flip some switch in their head to make them happy; it only makes them look different in the mirror and potentially makes others more likely to see them as their preferred sex. Even worse, the evidence for actual psychological improvement in children who receive puberty blockers is very low. It was this lack of evidence that moved the Arkansas legislature to put an immediate halt to “gender transition” procedures in the state. 

WoLF is firmly opposed to the use of cross-sex hormones or cosmetic surgeries as a means of "treating" mental distress caused by body dysmorphia. Given the permanence of these procedures, and the sky-high rate of desistance from dysphoria, their use on minor children is unconscionable. This is particularly urgent to remember because of the high rates of dysphoria found in vulnerable groups such as lesbians and bisexual girls; as noted in our brief, lesbians “are disproportionately represented among the population that is protected by the SAFE Act, and are disproportionately harmed by the district court’s injunction.” These kids are anxious, depressed, confused, and are being told that their bodies are the problem and that the solution can be found in stripping those bodies of femaleness.

Further harms and the illogic of gender identity ideology

The concept of “gender transition” not only lacks scientific evidence of effectiveness, it also lacks any solid grounding in reality or reason. Transgender activists claim that “gender identity” and “transgender status” are innate and they demand that these identities receive the same legal recognition as a person’s actual birth sex. These claims and demands are fatally flawed, as WoLF’s brief explains:   

“The only relationship between “transgender status” and sex is that of opposition and rejection. One who claims a transgender status opposes the material, biological concept of sex, and rejects the material reality of his or her own unambiguous natal sex in favor of adopting some “gender identity,” of which there exists an unlimited potential variety.” 

Further:

“In truth, as demonstrated throughout the district court record, the only defining characteristics of persons claiming legal transgender status are (1) the demand to be legally recognized as one’s subjective gender identity instead of one’s natal sex, and (2) the claim of entitlement to special exceptions from ordinary and permissible laws based on that self-identification.” 

Merely “identifying as” something has never traditionally served as a basis for legal protection in U.S. law, particularly in circumstances where one person’s claimed identity leads to legal demands that conflict with the interests of other historically-oppressed groups. In the case of “gender identity,” conflicts with women’s rights and interests are many. As WoLF’s brief notes,

“Gender activists demand that women’s and girls’ single-sex spaces be given over as ‘treatment’ facilities for men and boys who claim to identify as transgender.”

Under this belief system, women and girls have lost access to safe and dignified single-sex bathrooms, lockers, emergency housing, and even prison and jail cells. 

Thus, while the lifetime health of gender non-conforming children is enormously important on its own, the potential consequences of this lawsuit are even greater. WoLF’s brief, therefore, urges the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals to dismiss the ACLU’s attack on the SAFE Act, and to further reject transgender activists’ calls to give “transgender status” heightened legal protection.