OPINION: It was the winter of 2012, and I was sitting in my car in a parking lot – I find if you sit in a parking lot without a car you attract suspicion – waiting for my daughter to emerge from a swim meet after-party.
I flipped on NPR (National Public Radio) and spent the next hour listening, dumbfounded, to transgender kids and their parents tell stories from what seemed to be the first-ever gathering of those who shared their unique journey.
I certainly already knew there were transgender people, but I’m equally certain I didn’t know there were trans kids of single-digit age, and the stories from this conference – where clearly some of them realised for the first time they weren’t alone in this – were gut-wrenching.
A couple of years later, our daughter asked if her friend Kye could stay with us over summer, and being the cool parents we are, we said of course. Kye had recently undergone sex reassignment surgery, and while clearly a delightful human, was understandably shy during his stay with us. I remember going to clean his bathroom and seeing an astonishing lineup of prescription bottles and the epiphany this provoked.
I have throughout my life been plagued with self-doubt on most human stuff, but two things I never really questioned were my gender and sexuality.
How utterly unmooring it would be to not know if you were born the “correct” gender (at the time, I didn’t realise non-binary was a thing) or, perhaps even worse, to know you’d been born the wrong one. I like to think I went even further out of my way than normal to be nice to Kye after that, but the memory is too dim to be conclusive.
I bring this up because after a decade or so of fairly decent progress, the trans community, especially its youngest members, have become a favourite target of the Make America Grrrrr Again crowd. In 2018, there were 19 anti-trans bills introduced in US state legislatures. In 2023, the total has already topped 450.
You don’t hear any MAGA types complaining about that kind of inflation. I think if left to their own devices, they’d be happy enough just hating gay people, but by now most of them know and probably even like a gay relative or neighbour or two, so they had to find folk even more vulnerable and preyed upon.
I get that people fear what they don’t understand, and I further get that for many Americans this one is truly mind-bending – UK nonprofit LGBT Hero lists 15 kinds of non-binary genders. What I don’t get is the fury and hatred that this particular lack of understanding produces. In addition to the legislative barrage, trans Americans are four times more likely than their cisgender peers to be victims of violent crime. More than 40% have attempted suicide.
As usual, this brutal charge is being led by some of our finest political leaders. Take Texas governor Greg Abbott, who issued a directive requiring child welfare agents to investigate gender-affirming medical procedures as child abuse – an order that could take trans children away from parents for the mortal sin of trying to help.
I don’t really have words to describe how horrible an experience that would be, and I don’t want to waste words on the actions of those who are willing to pursue political fortune at the expense of kids in crisis, as their particular evil is clearly irreparable.
Instead, if I could, I’d ask those Americans who seem to want to punish these children and their families to think of times in their lives when they were really sad or scared or alone, or all three, and what they hoped for in that intense emotional crucible.
Would they hope those who could make a difference in their lives would choose cruelty and fear, or kindness and compassion? I know what Jacinda Ardern would say.
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