Claim 1: The US government is forcefully taking children away from their parents and performing gender-affirming surgeries on them.
Claim 2: Secondly, this trans agenda has taken root in Pakistan. The US allocated $200 million, according to OpIndia; and the Biden administration allocated a $500,000 grant for English teachers, which focuses on the transgender youth in Pakistan.
Fact 1: There is no evidence showing that the US federal and state governments are forcefully taking children away from their parents and performing gender-affirming surgeries on them.
Fact 2: The $200 million passed by the US Senate is for the Gender Equity And Equality Action Fund, and was not specifically allocated for Pakistan.
Finally, US President Joe Biden did not allocate $500,000 for any “transgender agenda” in Pakistan. The said amount was part of a funding opportunity for US’ eligible partners. Only $25,000 to $75,000 out of $500,000 have been set aside to “support professional development” of “transgender youth and for Afghan teachers, students (including girls), and young professionals residing in Pakistan,” according to the US State Department.
On 8 November, Pakistani fashion designer and anti-transgender voice Maria Butt posted a video (archive) claiming that under a “transgender agenda,” the US government was stealing kids away from their parents, and schools were performing gender-affirming surgeries to make males and females transition.
In the video, Butt lauded US-President elect Donald Trump’s inflammatory, anti-transgender statement in which he said: “We will get Critical Race Theory and the transgender insanity the hell out of our schools, and we will keep men out of women’s sports.”
She further added that the US government was funding this agenda in Pakistan, while citing two articles to substantiate her claim. The content of these articles will also be investigated in this fact-check.
Butt, like Trump, has made unsubstantiated, false and inflammatory anti-trans statements central to her public self-promotion videos. Soch Fact Check has debunked Butt’s claims on transgender issues here, here, and here.
Such misleading statements can endanger the safety of a community whose fundamental rights have limited visibility in Pakistan.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check investigated the following claims by made by Maria Butt:
Claim 1: The US government steals children from their parents, and performs gender-affirming surgery on them.
This is completely false. There is no evidence showing that the United States federal and state governments are forcefully taking children away from their parents or that schools are performing gender-affirming surgeries on them.
Across the US, 26 out of 50 states have enacted laws and policies that prevent minors from accessing gender-affirming care, according to Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), a health policy organisation in the US.
Gender-affirming care (GAC) includes “any single or combination of a number of social, psychological, behavioural or medical (including hormonal treatment or surgery) interventions designed to support and affirm an individual’s gender identity,” and it’s a “life-saving healthcare for transgender people… It is not a single category of services but instead is a range of services, including mental health care, medical care, and social services.” It is important to note that gender-affirming care may, but does not always include surgery.
Alabama’s senate passed two bills in 2022 that made the provision of gender-affirming care to minors a felony; medical professionals could face up to 10 years in prison. Similarly, in Idaho, a person providing GAC could also face up to 10 years in prison, according to the bill passed by the state’s senate in 2023.
At least four states, Alabama, Montana, Mississippi, and Texas, have state laws that directly impact school officials, teachers and counsellors. Montana’s law bans a school counsellor from promoting or providing GAC. In Mississippi, the “law prohibits aiding and abetting youth access to gender-affirming care by any person, teachers and other school officials.”
Still, in states where GAC is accessible, recent research by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found “little to no utilization of gender-affirming surgeries by transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) minors in the US.” Additionally, in many cases, parents of the minors have to consent for their child to undergo GAC.
The controversy surrounding parents losing custody of their children and the government taking them away, initially surfaced in 2022 when California’s legislature passed the Senate Bill 107, which protected individuals who were seeking GAC. “Parents know what’s best for their kids, and they should be able to make decisions around the health of their children without fear,” said California Governor Gavin Newsom, who signed the bill into law in September 2022.
This bill’s passage came when states across the US were passing laws that banned GAC.
At the time, Tanner DiBella, the founder of the American Council, an organisation “dedicated to increasing voter turnout among Christian evangelicals” misrepresented the statutes of the bill by claiming: “In the State of California, your child can now be taken from your custody, if you do not affirm gender reassignment surgery. We are living in Babylon.”
However, PolitiFact debunked the claim as false in 2022. The fact-check found the “law on transgender youths” did not “remove a parent’s custody.”
In January 2024, PolitiFact debunked a similar claim by conservative groups that a bill passed by Maine’s legislature allowed the state to take custody of a child if the parents “opposed” GAC.
Republicans, particularly US President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance, were at the forefront of spreading this claim during the election season. Vance misleadingly claimed that Minnesota’s law, signed by his Democratic vice-presidential opponent Tim Walz, allowed the state to “kidnap children to change their gender.” Politifact termed the claim false.
Soch Fact Check, The Washington Post, PolitiFact also debunked the claim. ABC News was “accused” of spreading “misinformation” for fact-checking a similar claim.
Walz was the target of this misinformation when Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, who lost the election to Trump, announced the Minnesota Governor as her running mate. In 2023, Walz passed an executive order and signed a Trans Refuge Bill that made Minnesota a safe haven for those seeking gender-affirming care, amid a wave of legislation passed across the US that barred individuals from seeking gender-affirming care, The Washington Post reported. The bill in question “allows courts to have ‘temporary emergency jurisdiction’ if a child has been unable to obtain gender-affirming care.”
Trump made similar baseless claims about schools performing gender-affirming surgeries on children. CNN fact-checked this false statement in September; when asked for a comment, Trump’s campaign could not substantiate his claims with any evidence of a school deciding to send a child into surgery without their parents’ consent.
According to the same CNN article, there are no conclusive figures on how many minors undertake the surgery.
However, a study by JAMA Network Open, a medical journal published by American Medical Association, found that only 7% of 48,019 patients who undertook gender-affirming surgeries in the US from 2016 to 2019 were between 12 to 18 years old. This “number” for the adolescent group sounded “high,” according to a report by CNN, which further added that the “majority of these surgeries tended to be among 17- and 18-year-olds and were the less-invasive procedures like breast or chest procedures.”
Finally, what figures like Butt, Trump and Vance do not mention in their claims is that gender-affirming care can be a life-saving practice “for population with high suicide rates,” according to the report by Endocrine Society, an international not-for-profit organisation. The report found that “approximately nine in ten transgender adults who wanted puberty-delaying treatment, but did not receive it, reported lifetime suicidal ideation.”
Claim 2: Butt’s video includes headlines of two misleading articles:
a) OpIndia’s headline about the “US allotting $200 million for gender equity and equality programs in Pakistan”
Butt’s claims that the US is funding the “transgender agenda” in Pakistan rest on an OpIndia article that is misleading in itself.
OpIndia’s piece misleadingly quoted US Representative Dan Bishop, who analysed the 4,155-page long, $1.7 trillion government funding bill released by Congress in 2022 in his X posts. A staunch Trump supporter, Bishop is a conservative Republican, who lost the North Carolina’s attorney general election to Democratic US Representative Jeff Jackson.
In December 2022, Bishop wrote in his X post, “Gender programs in Pakistan and a $200 million for a Gender Equity Fund.” He shared two screenshots from the bill. First, a section of page 1502, that stated “Funds appropriated by title III of this Act shall be made available for programs to promote democracy and for gender programs in Pakistan.” Finally, part of page 1553, which briefly mentions “Gender Equity And Equality Action Fund,” also referred to as the GEEA.
Bishop’s X post states that $200 million were allotted for a Gender Equity Fund. He does not claim $200 million were specifically allocated for Pakistan, unlike how Butt and OpIndia’s article is misleadingly claiming so.
Moreover, Soch Fact Check analysed the bill in question and found several inconsistencies in the claim by Butt and OpIndia:
- The bill has not allocated $200 million for Pakistan, specifically, or only for the transgender community in the country. Instead, the bill has allocated the amount for the GEEA fund. The goal of the fund is to advance “economic security for women and girls by increasing their access to resources, services, and leadership opportunities and by addressing the barriers that limit their ability to participate fully in the economy.” The US Agency for International Development and the State Department implements the GEEA fund. The fund is being administered in at least 60 partner countries, including Pakistan, according to its website. In the Fiscal Year 2022, the State Department’s request for appropriating $200 million for the GEEA fund was for advancing “gender equity and equality globally,” and not just in Pakistan, as is stated on page 85.
- The bill does mention “programs” for “promoting democracy and for gender programs in Pakistan.” However, it does not mention allocating a specific amount of funds or any amount particularly to the transgender community in Pakistan (page 1502). It’s not clear how much USAID has spent on gender equity programs specifically. For the Fiscal Year 2023, total spending on Pakistan for various categories collectively stood at $231 million and for 2022, the spending was approximately $183 million. These figures are way below the Butt’s claim that “$200 million” were allocated for gender equity and equality programs in Pakistan alone. Soch Fact Check has contacted USAID, we will update the fact-check if and when they respond to our request for comment.
USAID’s total Fiscal Year 2022 spending for Pakistan
USAID’s total Fiscal Year 2023 spending for Pakistan
- Further, the bill does not mention specifically allocating funds for the transgender community. GEEA fund’s goal is to advance “women’s economic security by increasing women’s and girls’ access to resources, services, and leadership opportunities.”
- Additionally, whatever amount was allocated to Pakistan, the US Senate bill added a disclaimer about withholding $33 million (Page 1502) from Pakistan until Shakil Afridi, who helped the CIA to track down Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, was released from prison. As of the writing time, Afridi is still in jail.
Besides this, OpIndia is a far-right Indian publication well-known for spreading disinformation. A recent investigation by Bellingcat found that OpIndia is one of the four publications thriving under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s regime, “with content promoting Hindu nationalism and vilifying minority groups.”
Interestingly, the publication that Butt quoted is itself “in fact receiving foreign donations or operating in ways that may be inconsistent with Indian laws.”
Soch Fact Check, therefore, concludes that the claim by Butt and OpIndia is misleading.
b)“Biden offers $500,000 grant for English teachers in Pakistan that focuses on transgender youth”
Soch Fact Check investigated this in early 2023, when Butt first shared the claim to her audience.
A Notice of Funding Opportunity detailed $500,000 funding opportunity for US’ eligible partners. The opportunity was titled “Pakistan English Language Professional Development for Teachers, Students, and Young Professionals.” The funding was for the professional development of “English language teachers from non-mainstream institutions, novice English teachers, and for transgender Youth and for Afghan teachers, students, and young professionals residing in Pakistan.” The funding component for the transgender youth allocated not more than $25,000 to $75,000.
Moreover, in an email to Soch Fact Check, the US State Department had said: “As outlined in the NOFO, of the $500k funds, $25-75k will support professional development for transgender youth and for Afghan teachers, students (including girls), and young professionals residing in Pakistan. These funds will only be used for this purpose.”
Soch Fact Check, therefore, concludes that the claim that Biden approved $500,000 for English teachers focusing on transgender youth is misleading.
Virality
Maria Butt’s Instagram post (archive) was viewed over 434,000 times and garnered more than 27,200 likes and 7,200 shares.
Her X post (archive) was viewed 88,300 times, liked 3,800 times and got 1,600 reposts.
The News International and Dawn, like OpIndia’s article, misleadingly reported that the US had allotted $200 million for “gender equality” programs in Pakistan.
Conclusion: Maria Butt’s claim that the US government takes children away from their parents and performs gender-affirming surgeries on them is false. Moreover, the claim that the US has allocated funds for spreading this “agenda” in Pakistan is misleading.
The cover image was designed by Syed Mashhood Hussain Jafri, Creative Lead at Soch Videos.
To appeal against our fact-check, please send an email to appeals@sochfactcheck.com