Quick To Listen

This week, 10 states announced that they would sue the Obama administration following its executive order mandating that school districts allow transgender students to use their bathroom of their preferred gender. On Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed an amendment aimed at preventing the US government from withholding federal funds from North Carolina, after the state passed its controversial “bathroom bill,” requiring people to use the bathroom that matches their birth certificate this March. This comes on the heels of the Justice Department’s decision to sue the state for the law for “state-sponsored discrimination.” Few of these political fights have helped anyone better understand the nuances of transgenderism, says Mark Yarhouse, the author of Understanding Gender Dysphoria and founder of the Institute for the Study of Sexual Identity. “People experience legislation as an attack on the things that they believe in, and other people think that legislation is symbolic of the things that matter t