Gender-affirming care is based on dangerously uncertain science. So say lawmakers in the 26 states that have banned medical interventions for minors. The U.S. Supreme Court will soon decide whether to uphold these regulations of what critics have called “experimental” healthcare. To the contrary, leading domestic and international medical associations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and World Professional Association for Transgender Health firmly support gender-affirming care for minors as medically necessary and potentially lifesaving. If the medical establishment isn’t driving this narrative of dangerous uncertainty, who is? This talk will detail and interrogate popular scientific arguments against gender-affirming care and reveal how those arguments tend to distort scientific evidence and exaggerate real uncertainties and risks.

Joanna Wuest is Assistant Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Stony Brook University where she writes and teaches on sexuality and gender politics and law, health, and political economy. Previously, she held positions at Princeton University and Mount Holyoke College, and received a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania in 2019. She is the author of Born This Way: Science, Citizenship, and Inequality in the American LGBTQ+ Movement (University of Chicago Press, 2023), which was featured on an episode of Radiolab and in the New York Times. She is currently writing a book titled Church Against State: How Religious Liberty Turned Against Social Welfare & Civil Rights.