Reports and Resources
The Gender Study Hub is a virtual filing cabinet of reports and useful resources. Multidisciplinary teams of experts have contributed towards our knowledge about gender diversity. Practitioners with practical experience working directly with the gender-expansive population have built our current understanding with over a century of documenting their life stories. This offers us guidance in modern medicine.
Standards of Care
Standards of Care are compiled by the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) under advisement of world-renowned doctors, researchers, and medical personnel since 1979. The scientific evidence in support of gender-affirming healthcare is extensive with decades of examination contributing to current medical protocols.
Citation:
Coleman, E., et al. (2022). Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People, Version 8. International Journal of Transgender Health, 23, S1–S258.
To view or download the Care document, visit: https://doi.org/10.1080/26895269.2022.2100644
Scientific Integrity
A comprehensive review of scientific literature in multiple disciplines is necessary for a thorough understanding of gender-expansive people
Most public arguments made against gender medical transition are in fact social, not medical. They are rooted in gender critical ideas that promote an immutable binary (male, female) concept that is conflated with biological sex. This leads to a denial of gender identity, as well as it can foster prejudice and even violence against gender-expansive people. Social, biological, and medical sciences do not support gender as being binary.
Biological integrity is new terminology (2023) used to depict the gender critical position, which essentially privileges the cisgender population. This language is another attempt to rebrand conversion therapy practices.
The Medical Community
Careful consideration of scientific evidence leads experts to conclude that gender-affirming healthcare, when applied according to Care standards, is safe and effective. Nearly every professional medical organization (30+) has endorsed gender-affirming healthcare. To review positional statements, click here and/or here.
Inherent risk in all medical procedures is being used today to justify political healthcare bans for the gender-expansive population. That is a social position, not medical. A known health disparity has been intensified as a result by removing long-term research opportunity.​
Gender critical narratives often will showcase the small number of patients who regret their medical decisions, rather than the majority of positive personal experiences from the gender diverse community as cataloged in scientific literature.​ Fear rhetoric (detransition, sterilization, grooming, pedophilia, social contagion, woke, etc.) is also employed to confirm healthcare bans.
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In February 2024, in response to increased political action, the American Psychological Association released a policy statement that re-affirms support towards gender-affirming healthcare with reference to common misinformation.
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Medical organizations that do not endorse gender-affirming healthcare include American College of Pediatricians (not to be confused with American Academy of Pediatrics) and the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine (recently listed as a biased, anti-trans group by The Southern Poverty Law Center).
Some religious institutions adhere to gender critical doctrine. Medical conclusions are determined accordingly. See relevant policy statements by the Christian Medical & Dental Associations, Catholic Medical Association, and National Catholic Bioethics Center.
We are not aware of similar (gender critical) formal policy statements in other religions, only statements of gender affirmation. Contact us if you have a related resource to include in this Study Hub.
The Patients
"Gender-affirming care for transgender and gender diverse people should be inclusive, community led and evidence informed to support mental health and wellbeing." This statement is from a paper published in Nature Medicine (Keuroghlian, 2022). It portrays a medical approach that is in response to a gender diverse humanity.
​An alternative to gender-affirming healthcare is conversion therapy, a practice that is banned in most medical settings. This treatment incorporates biological integrity (gender critical thought) into clinical approaches that attempt to change gender identity to match gender assigned at birth, which is harmful to patients.
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The American Psychological Association has denounced conversion therapy. For an in-depth look at conversion therapy, read Banning Transgender Conversion Practices by Florence Ashley (2022) and/or the review "'Made to Feel Broken': Ending Conversion Practices and Saving Transgender Lives" presented by Harvard Law Review.
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​​Research studies of gender-expansive people indicate an overall satisfaction with gender-affirming medical choices and increased quality of life including for youth as they grow into adulthood; UCLA Williams Institute, Innovations in Clinical Neuroscience, 2015 Transgender Survey, JAMA Surgery, and 2022 Transgender Survey.
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​Gender critical groups typically do not include trans voices in their work. Mentally ill is a label used by gender critical proponents to describe gender-expansive individuals. This then justifies the exclusion of their experiences from medical decisions creating bias.
Trustworthy sources of information are those that include gender-expansive people in the design, execution, and analysis of research, such as WPATH, Advocates for Trans Equality, Human Rights Campaign, Bulletin of Applied Transgender Studies, International Journal of Transgender Health, and Transgender Health.
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Citation:
Keuroghlian, et. al. (2022). The context, science and practice of gender-affirming care. Nature Medicine, 28(12), 2464–2467. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-022-02082-w
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