Extreme makeover

Starbucks recently expanded its benefits to cover additional procedures for transgender employees, including cosmetic changes, the company announced late last month.

The company has covered sex change surgery since 2012 and will now include breast augmentation or reduction, hair transplants, facial feminization, and electrolysis.

Starbucks called the new benefits life-saving. According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s 2014 report, 41 percent of 6,500 transgender persons attempted suicide versus 4.6 percent of the overall population. The researchers noticed that higher rates of suicide correlated with those who wanted surgery and speculated a factor may be “distress related to barriers to obtaining transition-related health care.”

But no studies have yet shown that sex change surgery improves suicide rates for transgender people. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention did not ask questions about the timing of suicide attempts and “were unable to determine whether suicidal behavior is significantly reduced following transition-related surgeries,” the study’s authors wrote. A long-term study in Sweden found that 10 to 15 years after sex change surgery, study participants had a suicide rate nearly 20 times that of comparable peers.

That hasn’t stopped Starbucks and other employers from positioning themselves as champions for transgender people. Starbucks benefit director Alyssa Brock called the new coverage “true to our mission and values of nurturing the human spirit.”

Since 2011, The Human Rights Campaign has pushed corporations to offer transgender-inclusive insurance plans in order to score perfectly on the Corporate Equality Index. The plan must include options for either paid leave, counseling, hormone therapy, or transition surgery.

In 2002, zero companies surveyed by HRC offered transgender-related coverage compared to 750 companies, or 79 percent, in 2018.

Robotics engineer Barbie Mattel

No more pink and blue?

Mattel launched a new line of robotics engineer Barbies on June 26 to represent girls taking on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) careers.

“We wanted to shine a light on this underrepresented career and field for women,” Lisa McKnight, Barbie’s general manager and senior vice president, said in an interview with Glamour.

These dolls represent a recent trend toward toys that defy gender stereotypes or even the existence of distinct genders.

In the 2017 BBC documentary No More Boys and Girls, physician Javid Abdelmoneim experimented with removing gender distinctions from an elementary school classroom. The BBC website described a scene in which a leading UK neurologist informed the viewers that the brain does not not distinguish between males and females. Instead, it is “a plastic organ, shaped and molded by experiences, in which childhood is key.”

What does this mean for parents? Gender-neutral toys “help counteract some stereotypes that limit children’s thinking about what and who they can and should be,” Ann Barbour, professor emerita of Early Childhood Education Charter College of Education, told Care.com.

“Let Toys Be Toys” is a campaign in the U.K. that promotes toys and books that reverse gender stereotypes. In December, the group published a gift guide for books supporting their worldview, which included titles like Sleeping Handsome and the Princess Engineer. In that version of Sleeping Beauty, the princess rescues the sleeping prince. Another book on the gift guide featured a character called “Spacegirl” and her two moms.

While Christians should lead the charge against true sexism, parents must be careful to train their children in a Biblical view of gender: that God created male and female with distinct biologies and roles.

“We love children, and we want them to flourish,” said Denny Burk, author of multiple books about Biblical sexual ethics. “In today’s climate, that means parents have to be vigilant even over the toys that children play with, especially when those toys send messages contrary to the Biblical ones they are teaching at home.” —Charissa Crotts

Robotics engineer Barbie Mattel

A same-sex royal wedding

The British royal family in late June announced the first same-sex royal wedding. Lord Ivar Mountbatten will marry James Coyle later this summer, just a few months after Meghan Markle, the bride of Prince Harry, became the first biracial American woman to wed a member of the royal family.

Mountbatten is a distant cousin of Queen Elizabeth and the great-great-great grandson of Queen Victoria. In 2016, Mountbatten was the first member of the extended British royal family to publicly come out as gay after divorcing his wife, Penny, in 2011. At the suggestion of their three daughters, who range in age from 15 to 22, Penny Mountbatten will walk her ex-husband down the aisle at the ceremony on his estate in southwest England.

Mountbatten told The Daily Mail the marriage has the support of the royal family, though Queen Elizabeth and her immediate family are not expected to attend. The Succession to the Crown Act of 2013 requires the six people closest in the line for the British throne to seek permission from the ruling monarch to marry, but the act does not apply to extended members of the family such as Mountbatten. —H.P.

Robotics engineer Barbie Mattel

Fair for whom?

Are children of transgender people allowed to share memories from before their parent transitioned?

Kylie Jenner learned the answer when she posted online an old photo with her dad, former Olympic athlete Bruce Jenner, for Father’s Day. Jenner, who has lived as a woman named Caitlyn since 2015, has six children from three previous marriages. With permission, the kids kept calling Jenner “Dad” after the transition.

Kylie’s Instagram followers reacted strongly. Some called her disrespectful and asked why she didn’t post a more current photo. “No offense,” said one comment. “But you should respect HER and not … post before her transition.”

Others sympathized with Kylie: “These are her memories growing up. … She had no pictures growing up with Caitlyn … give her a break.”

Culture says calling someone by the name or gender they chose to change is rude, but asking someone to erase their happy childhood memories is hardly loving, either. —C.C.