Republicans, no longer content with hating Liberals, gay people, black people, brown people, Muslims, immigrants and women, have decided to hate transgender kids too. They’ve had a grand old time hating and hurting all those other groups, but they tend to fight back, and bullies hate it when their victims fight back. Bullies like submission.
So Republicans have focused their cruelty on a group that’s so small, so weak, so vulnerable that they have no way to fight back. Bullies love to kick down, and the more helpless their victims are the better they like it.
Trans kids already walk one of the most fraught paths imaginable. Most of them begin to experience gender dysphoria at a very young age, which can cause confusion, shame, alienation and depression. They feel like they’re stuck in the wrong body, and as children they don’t know what to do about it.
If they’re very lucky, they may be capable of articulating what they are feeling to their parents, and if they’re very, very lucky, they might have parents who will be understanding and take them seriously. Many are not that lucky, and as their dysphoria gets worse, they have nowhere to turn for help. Trans kids have the highest suicide rate of any group in the country.
Republicans have begun attacking these vulnerable kids with state-level legislation, denying them therapy, and in some states, criminalizing treatment. Parents who are sympathetic to their child’s condition and try to help them can be subject to criminal charges, and might have their child taken away from them.
To justify their attacks on the rights of trans kids, Republicans have been spreading disinformation about them, and about the treatments that are available to them. They claim that children can’t possibly know what they’re feeling, because they’re children. Worse, they claim that kids might choose to become trans because it’s what the cool kids are doing, and they want to fit in at school. I just heard Bill Maher, of all people, spouting some of this misinformation on his show. I’ve done some reading on this subject, and these blatant lies really piss me off.
Children most certainly do know what they’re feeling. Interviews with trans kids after they’ve grown up have shown that while they might not have been able to articulate what they felt, or were afraid to tell anyone, they knew instinctively that they were a different sex than the body they lived in. And the idea that a child would choose to change their sex to fit in at school… Have Republicans ever been to school? Jesus.
Republicans have deliberately mischaracterized the nature of transgender medical treatment. They like to claim, in an outraged voice, that a trans child shouldn’t be allowed to make irreversible decisions about their gender, or initiate surgery that will permanently change their genitals, based on some transitory feeling. It would be hard to argue with that statement on the face of it, but it’s just a straw-man. The truth is, no child ever makes irreversible decisions about their gender or submits to surgery in childhood. That’s not how it works.
There are drugs available called “hormone blockers.” They’re not new, doctors have been prescribing them for years in cases of a condition called Early Onset Puberty. For a trans child, these hormone blockers are not prescribed until the child is at an age where puberty is about to set in, usually around 13 or 14. The drug doesn’t make any irreversible changes, all it does is delay puberty. If the child stops taking it, puberty will resume as normal.
The trans child will take the hormone blockers, under a therapist’s care, until they reach age 18. If a child tells their parents about their gender dysphoria at 8 0r 10 years old, and their parents decide to help them, then they still have 8 or 10 more years to make their final decision. During those years, the child will usually begin living as the gender they feel they are. In most cases, this will be a joyous revelation for them, and they will feel like themselves for the first time in their lives. It will likely also be a crucible for them, as the kids at school adjust to the trans kid’s new gender role.
By the time a trans kid is 18, they usually have a pretty good idea what gender they are. Only then, when they are officially adults, can the final decision be made. When they stop taking the blockers, they will usually begin taking the hormones for the sex they believe themselves to be. Genital surgery is optional.
When you lay out these facts to Republicans, they like to point out that hormone blockers can weaken the child’s bones, making them more inclined to breakage. While this is true, the only examples we have of this so far is from children who took the blockers to stop Early Onset Puberty, and they started taking them when they were very young, far younger than a trans kid would. We don’t know yet how much the bones of a kid who starts taking the blockers at puberty will be affected in the long run, but it’s probably considerably less, if at all.
Republicans, when you deny a trans kid with gender dysphoria the therapy they need, you are denying them the happy and fulfilling life that modern science can give them. You’re stealing their dream, dooming them to the misery of living a lie, and you’re doing it for no other reason than your own selfish political advantage. Why don’t you leave these already-marginalized kids alone and find some other path to power that doesn’t require destroying the lives of others?