Misconceptions and Inflammatory Language Follow Supreme Court Ruling on Gender-Affirming Care
The June 18 Supreme Court’s decision to uphold a Tennessee law banning gender-affirming care for minors led to one of the largest spikes in news reports and social media conversations about gender-affirming care in 2025 thus far. Many of the posts repeated misconceptions about gender-affirming care that underlie most similar bans, including the inaccurate belief that it is experimental or lacks sufficient evidence. In reality, many of the medical treatments involved, like puberty blockers and hormone therapies, have been used safely for decades in cisgender children and adults to treat conditions including delayed and precocious puberty. U.S. medical associations, including the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Psychological Association, support youth access to gender-affirming care, pointing to evidence that such care improves mental health outcomes for transgender youth. Research has found gender-affirming medical interventions to be associated with lower odds of depression and suicidality.
Posts also frequently used emotionally charged language to evoke fear, inaccurately referring to gender-affirming care as “mutilation,” “castration,” or “maiming,” and comparing it to female genital mutilation. Female genital mutilation includes non-medical procedures recognized as human rights violations. In the last 30 days, as of June 20, approximately 12% of social media posts about gender-affirming care identified by KFF included such terms, up from 7% in the previous 30 days. One podcaster with 3.7 million followers celebrated the ruling on X, calling it “a fatal blow to the child mutilation industry,” while Attorney General Pam Bondi said the decision “allows states to protect vulnerable children from genital mutilation.” Mentions of these terms previously spiked on June 2, after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) asked the public to report providers who they said “mutilate” children by offering gender-affirming surgery to minors.
The use of such language can suggest violence or harm and has been used in unsubstantiated claims that schools or healthcare providers are providing transition-related care without parental knowledge or consent. In reality, the most common forms of transition, especially for minors, are non-medical, such as altering clothing, hairstyle, or pronouns to better fit their gender identity. When medical interventions are pursued, they are consensual, medically supervised, and evidence-based treatments. Surgical interventions are relatively uncommon among adults and very rare among minors. One study of more than 22 million youth found that fewer than .01% of transgender and gender diverse adolescents ages 13 to 17 underwent gender-affirming surgery, and none under 12 received such care.