Senator Kaine
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Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia may be the latest Democrat to fall for anti-trans propaganda—for a brief but crucial moment. At a Republican-led Senate hearing on Wednesday, Kaine called professional “detransitioner” activist Chloe Cole’s story a “tragic” example of “malpractice,” apparently falling for the “detrans” movement’s manufactured crisis around gender-affirming care.
“We have a legal system that is set up to compensate and then hopefully prevent people being treated the way you were being treated. And I think that system works and I suspect it’s going to work in your case,” he said during the Wednesday hearing titled, “Protecting Our Children: Exposing the Dangers of Irreversible Gender Transition Procedures on Minors.”
Kaine listened alongside the captive audience of the Senate Health Committee to Dr. Kurt Miceli, chief medical officer at Do No Harm (a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group); Shannon Minter, a venerated movement veteran and legal director at the National Center for LGBTQ Rights; and Chloe Cole, a “detransitioner” activist who, in the footsteps of the “ex-gay” activists that came before her, renounced her queer identity and converted to Christianity (reportedly a rapid onset process catalyzed by LSD-induced hallucinations).
The now 21-year-old then became a well-compensated spokesperson for the anti-trans movement. And while paid activism is not novel or even necessarily exceptional, it’s important to remember that she’s the center of an elaborate media campaign by the anti-trans lobby.
In other words, this isn’t an everyday American sharing her life story. Like the anti-trans former collegiate athlete Riley Gaines, Cole is a professional, one of many in a sprawling and well-funded apparatus furthering Christian nationalism and authoritarian control.
It’s unclear whether Kaine simply forgot this, was ill-informed, or made some sort of political calculation at Wednesday’s Senate hearing when he ceded ground to Cole. After Cole testified about “the transgender cult,” Kaine took the mic and said:
“Miss Cole, listen. I want to say this to you. Your story is tragic. It is a tragic story. It is a classic case, as you tell it, of medical malpractice, and I know you have a medical malpractice claim pending. Being lied to, not being informed about consequences, having your parents told that if they did not consent to the surgery that you would likely commit suicide. That is outrageous.
*Similar cases have led to massive malpractice verdicts against physicians who did what you were describing happened to you. Just recently, in a very blue state, New York, someone with a case somewhat similar to yours received a $2.6 million jury verdict. We have a legal system that is set up to compensate and then hopefully prevent people being treated the way you were being treated. And I think that system works and I suspect it’s going to work in your case.
I know the pendency of the lawsuit’s still a way off, but based on your description, you were horribly mistreated by the medical profession. And I believe there’s going to be compensation. And compensation does not return you to the status that you would wish. But I have deep sympathy for that.*
I think the solution here is malpractice cases. I think the solution is standards of care by the AMA and the plastic surgeons and the pediatricians which are evolving as more research is done. I don’t think the right answer is a federal one-size-fits-all. And Mr. Chair, I’d like to introduce for the record a letter from a Virginian who wrote me about being the parent of a 21-year-old who’s undergone gender-affirming care. And I just want to read—it’s a very long letter that is as powerful, in many ways, as Miss Cole’s testimony today.”
Kaine then pivoted to talking about the careful, methodical considerations of gender-affirming care providers and parents, and he emphasized the extremist rhetoric deployed by the right to vilify trans people.
Cole is a superspreader of that rhetoric, a part of a swelling anti-trans industrial complex. Lawsuits are one of the many lucrative ways they are terrorizing providers. While lawyers and federal prosecutors launch attacks on health care institutions, lobbyists are attempting to push laws or policies that establish unprecedented malpractice allowances and payouts to “detransitioners.” The thinking goes that, even if they can’t outright ban care right now, they can try to make insurance for such care untenable, shoehorning providers into dropping it.
Meanwhile, such “massive malpractice verdicts” arguably have not materialized. He appears to refer to the Fox Varian lawsuit in New York, wherein it was found that a gender-affirming care provider failed to live up to WPATH guidelines. That case, which concluded this past January, is the first-ever successful trial verdict for a “detransitioner” malpractice lawsuit in the United States. But the assertion that there is a wave of these verdicts against physicians who provide gender-affirming care, only for a patient to later revert to identifying as cisgender, is false.
As far as public record goes, there has been exactly one; and in that case, the verdict was rendered not on the merits of gender-affirming care, but on the actions of one specific doctor in one specific incident, who violated the industry’s own standards of care.
Kaine also lent credence to claims about Cole’s case that are already highly publicized for their misleading nature. The “rushed” process she described transpired over the course of years. When doctors tried to slow her down further, her parents pushed back and went to another provider. And the idea that gender-affirming care lowers the risk of suicide is not a scare tactic; it is well-documented.
For every high-profile “detransitioner” who dominates the news cycle with meticulously calculated soundbites, there are untold numbers of transgender young people who don’t have access to care because they come from unsupportive families, or face prohibitive medical hurdles, or who can’t afford it, or who come from states that have banned their care, or who died by suicide because of some combination of all of the above.
Kaine’s allyship and support of the trans community are not to be discounted. His record on the issue is laudable; he has repeatedly co-sponsored legislation to protect transgender rights and safety.
Indeed, some prominent movement leaders praised him. The sole witness testifying in favor of equal access to health care for trans people was Shannon Minter, the aforementioned legal director of the National Center for LGBTQ Rights.
“I thought Senator Kaine was so powerful,” Minter told The Advocate. “I thought that was perhaps the single most powerful moment on the Democratic side.”
“They made it so clear that this is not a genuine concern about healthcare, that it’s part of a larger pattern of dehumanizing and harassing a vulnerable minority group,” Minter said.
But anti-trans propaganda runs deep; Democrats need to talk and act incisively, or else risk stoking those flames.
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