Trilogy of essays debunking “Rushing Kids into Transition”

Please check out my LATEST ESSAY: What Covid “Lab Leak” and “Rushing Kids into Transition” Have in Common (and more general thoughts about conspiracy theories and negativity bias) (on both Substack & Medium). It is the third piece in an unintended trilogy of sorts, so I figured I’d briefly share my thought process on it.

In 2023, I published one of my most comprehensive essays ever: Gender-Affirming Care for Trans Youth Is Neither New nor Experimental: A Timeline and Compilation of Studies. In it, I provide a timeline of how the gender-affirmative model came to be, counter the most common misconceptions and talking points against it, and include well over 100 references (including position statements from major health professional organizations) in support of it. In other words, that essay is a science- and logic-based deep-dive into the subject.

But as we all know, some people won’t accept the science on this matter regardless of how many studies are done and how high quality they are. In fact, I’ve increasingly noticed that these opponents routinely fantasize about finding some kind of “smoking gun” (whether it be the “WPATH Files,” Jamie Reed, the Cass report, etc.) that would magically appear and somehow invalidate all the past research showing that gender-affirming care is efficacious, even though that’s not how science works. In other words, they seem to treat the issue like a conspiracy theory—I made this case in my 2024 essay The Cass Review, WPATH Files, and the Perpetual Debate over Gender-Affirming Care.

My latest essay expands upon this. Specifically, I show how a basic cognitive bias known as negativity bias—our tendency to dwell more on negative outcomes than positive or neutral ones, and to presume that negative events must have been caused by something or someone rather than occurring naturally or inexplicably—can explain the behaviors of opponents of gender-affirming care and their relentless belief that kids are being “rushed into transition” despite all evidence to the contrary. I also examine the striking parallels between how “rushing kids into transition” and the Covid “lab leak” theories have spread like wildfire in the mainstream media despite the scientific consensuses against them. You can read it at:

Medium (friend link that circumvents the paywall): https://juliaserano.medium.com/what-covid-lab-leak-and-rushing-kids-into-transition-have-in-common-2eb4e08ee3f4?sk=c866d22b9e29cc428fd73e02abba9881

or Substack (no paywall): https://juliaserano.substack.com/p/what-covid-lab-leak-and-rushing-kids

As always, please share widely and give it lots of claps and likes and such! And if you appreciate that I make essays like this freely available online, please consider supporting me on Patreon (for as little as $1/month)!

regarding Substack and writer-centric boycotts

photo of the CEOs of Meta (Facebook/Instagram),
Amazon, Google (YouTube), & "X",
all of whom "platform Nazis",
prominently supporting Trump
at his 2025 inauguration

Hello and welcome to my blog! If this is your first time here, well, that’s likely because I hardly ever post here these days.

For years, this was where I routinely penned my essays. But by the mid-2010s, readers had tapered off from visiting blogs, even when I would share links to my posts on other platforms. Increasingly, people tended to stick to their preferred social media ecosystems. And for those interested in reading and/or writing articles and essays, Medium was the most popular ecosystem at the time. There, you could follow other writers and they could follow you back. And because so many people had created their own Medium accounts, they were more likely to click on and share your posts and potentially follow you. So naturally, I began publishing my essays there.

I am still on Medium. But gradually, most of those readers and writers have since migrated to Substack, which is why I began cross-posting my essays there a couple years ago. I explained my reasons for doing so in my first Substack post. Later on, amidst a new round of protests against the platform, I penned a 2,500 word essay on the matter, entitled On Being an Artist, Author, and Activist in a World Where All the Major Online Media Platforms Suck. Don’t worry, that link will take you to an archived version of the essay, so you don’t need to actually visit Substack to read it.

In that post, I made a few main points that I will quickly touch on here TL;DR-style:

why do straight people sexualize LGBTQ+ people? (a video & essay)

Last month was the 3rd year anniversary of the release of Sexed Up: How Society Sexualizes Us, and How We Can Fight Back. And since this is Pride month, I figured I'd share this video of me reading from the “queer chapter” of Sexed Up! The video is called Why Do Straight People Sexualize Queer People? LGBTQ+ Stereotypes, Sexualization & (imagined) “Contagiousness” – please watch & like & subscribe & share widely!

The YouTube show notes contain the following "chapters" of the video – you can use the time stamps there to skip ahead to particular sections if you wish: 

• 0:00 Introduction (defining sexualization & the Predator/Prey mindset)
• 3:07 Queer people are “marked by sex” and stereotyped as “fakes”
• 6:30 Sexualized stereotypes of gay men
• 7:00 Sexualized stereotypes of lesbians
• 8:45 Sexualized stereotypes of asexuals
• 10:10 Sexualized stereotypes of bisexuals
• 13:30 Trans people and the “worst of both worlds” & “sexual deceiver” tropes 
• 16:40 Anti-queer stigma is viewed “contagious”
• 19:15 Recurring claims that LGBTQIA+ & people of color “prey on women & children”
• 23:50 Critiques of “respectability politics” and “contagiousness politics”
• 29:00 Sexualization-centric approaches to queer activism

As if that wasn't enough, I wrote a companion essay entitled The Worst of Both Worlds: How Straight People Sexualize Queer and Trans People that places my Stigma-Contamination model of sexualization (discussed in the book and video) in the context of other feminist perspectives on sexualization. It also shares a different excerpt from the chapter (on how trans & intersex people face "The Worst of Both Worlds") that is not covered in the video. You can read it on Substack (no paywall) at the above link, or via this friend link to Medium.

As always, please share widely and give it lots of claps and likes and such!

Julia for Hire!

So last week, in the hopes of drumming up some more income, I posted “Julia for Hire!” on my Substack and Medium channels. I encourage you to read and share it! Rather than reiterating the entire post, here are the main points:

• As always, if you appreciate my work, you can support me on Patreon (for as little as $1 per month)!
• I routinely speak at colleges, conferences, companies, and Pride events. If your organization is interested in potentially hosting me (in person or virtually), please check out my booking webpage, which includes descriptions of my most frequently requested talks.
• I am open to doing freelance or contractual work (e.g., writing, consulting, editing, reading, research, fact-checking, etc.) in fields or genres that I am knowledgeable about.
• Finally, if you have or know about a part- or full-time job opening that I might be particularly suited for, here’s my CV and here’s my bibliography, feel free to reach out to me and we can discuss!

Once again, here’s the original post, please share widely!