Last week, Florida governor and little man with funny boots who wants to be President,
Ron DeSantis, signed a series of bills into law that impose further restrictions on the rights of
transgender people, including severely limiting their access to gender affirming health care.
One provision of the new laws makes it illegal for children to receive gender affirming care,
and allows courts to remove trans kids who do receive gender affirming care from the
custody of their parents. Another bars public school teachers, faculty members,
and even students from referring to people using pronouns that don’t
align with their birth-assigned gender. And another bans trans people from using
bathrooms or changing rooms in government buildings that match their gender identity.
Most people who care about trans issues and actually seek to engage in discussions about them
in good faith already know this, but just so it’s clear: trans kids receiving gender affirming care,
including being prescribed puberty blockers, is not controversial in the medical community,
it’s the result of decisions made that include the trans child, their parents,
and their doctors, it’s not done lightly, it’s not done because of a fad, it’s not something adults
are forcing on their kids to try and “make them trans.” Gender affirming care for trans people,
children and adults, is accepted and supported by professional medical associations all
over the world, including the World Health Organization, the American Medical Association,
the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of
Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and I could go on but you get the idea.
The current conservative obsession with oppressing, harassing and erasing trans people,
which has infected not only the culture of my country the United States but also
the U.K. as well as many other parts of the world, is completely out of line with the
current medical and scientific consensus on the subjects of sex and gender, and how trans people
ought to be treated, medically and socially speaking.
But, it lines up perfectly with what I consider to be one of the defining characteristics of
the conservative worldview: the compulsive and hypocritical need to mind other people’s business.
Give a Republican half a chance and they’ll drone on for hours about the sacred value of
individual liberty, and how the greatness of the United States lies in the fact that all people
are allowed to make their own choices and live their lives as they see fit,
without the government inserting itself into people’s private affairs with regulations and
restrictions. And look, some people do actually live out those values — some Republicans,
libertarians, conservatives, whatever label they choose to identify with,
seem to make a genuine effort to give others the same consideration they demand for themselves,
and generally stay out of other people’s business unless absolutely necessary, and good for them.
I mean, they still vote for right-wing candidates and serve as obstacles for
necessary and overdue progress, so fuck ‘em in general — but on this one thing, good for them.
However, there are quite a few Republicans, conservatives,
et cetera, who seem to have carved out some fairly spacious exceptions in their devotion
to the principle of individual liberty. For such a person — and they’d probably never
express it like this — individual liberty means that all people are allowed to make their own
choices and live their lives as they see fit . . . “As long as I agree with those choices,
and they live their lives in ways that I understand and which don’t make me uncomfortable.”
The persecution of trans people, and most cruelly trans kids, is just one manifestation
of this mindset, this presumed right to tell other people how to live. It pops up in more innocuous
forms all over the place: the disapproval of what color the neighbor paints their house,
or how they landscape their yard; the people across the street who used to go to your church,
but haven’t been to services lately; the shopper in line ahead of you at the grocery
store checkout who paid for their expensive steak and seafood with an EBT card. It’s the suspicion,
the judgment, the offense taken at harmless things that have nothing to do with you.
They hold no statutory power by themselves, but it is thoughts and feelings like that which sit
at the root of laws like those in that anti-trans legislation just enacted in Florida by DeSantis.
It’s the sadism of it, when these judgments of innocent people doing innocuous things
are inscribed into law, that I find the most upsetting. Yes, there’s hypocrisy,
but hypocrisy confined to your own mind, or your own dinner table, or your own circle of
equally shitty friends has no power to affect anyone else’s life. If you want to judge others
by standards from which you exempt yourself, that’s between you and whatever shitty god
you imagine is up there smiling approvingly every time you make that “I identify as an
attack helicopter” joke. When the state starts enforcing your hypocritical judgments on others,
that’s when it goes from your problem to our problem — and specifically,
since I’m the motherfucker making this video right now, my problem.
Trans people, as a group, are not a threat to anyone.
Statistically speaking they’re far more likely to be the victims of crimes than the perpetrators of
it. They have higher rates of sexual abuse, and suicide. They’re more likely to live in poverty
than most cis people. And every problem a trans person has to deal with that a cis person would
also have to deal with in their situation is made worse by the fact that they are a trans
person in a viciously transphobic society. All most trans people want to do is exist,
and be allowed to be who they are. They just want to go about their lives and mind their
own business. They’re prevented from doing that by people who refuse to mind their own business.
And there’s no reason for it other than sadism — to inflict cruelty on a marginalized group,
to appeal to voters who get off on it. “Vote for me and I’ll hurt the people you want
me to hurt” — the unofficial campaign slogan for every Republican candidate.
Even if we spot them their bigotry,
it serves no purpose. Go ahead and hate trans people. Think they’re unnatural, think they’re
confused, think they’re deviants, think they’re abominations, think whatever backwards, ignorant
horseshit about them you want — what does a trans person living their life have to do with you?
How does a trans person being allowed to receive the medical care they need, or use the bathroom
that matches their gender identity, or be called by their right name and pronouns,
affect your life? What do you gain by seeing a trans person denied those basic things — things
which you would never tolerate being denied yourself, I’m quite sure. What good does it do?
“Oh, but Steve, if adults want to live their lives like that, it’s up to them — what about
the children, though?” What about the children? Won’t someone think of the children — how much
hatred and bigotry has been justified over the years with that? You want to
convince me you give a shit about the welfare of children? Maybe start by showing trans kids
the most infinitesimal particle of respect and acknowledging that they fucking exist.
World Health Organization, American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics,
and so on and so on — professional medical associations all around the world acknowledge that
trans people exist, that trans kids exist, and that trans people, including kids, are entitled
to gender affirming care. So, that being the case, if a trans child, and the parents of that
trans child, and the doctor or doctors of that trans child all agree that they ought to receive
gender affirming care, and all agree on what form that gender affirming care ought to take,
my question to Ron DeSantis and other like-minded people is this: who the fuck asked your opinion?
If the kids, and their parents, and their doctors all decide puberty blockers or
some other form of gender affirming care is appropriate, what’s that got to do with you?
“I dunno, I’ve heard some of these treatments can cause permanent changes,
you know, I don’t think it’s right to do that to a child, I mean what if they change their minds?”
First of all, there’s not a human being ever born who has any reason
why they need to give a shit about what you’ve heard. Second of all,
since you’re so concerned about kids receiving medical care that could cause permanent changes
to their bodies which they might later regret, I assume you’re all for outlawing circumcision?
Or are you okay with circumcision — a totally arbitrary procedure that has no legitimate
purpose — but opposed to gender affirming care — which can actually be life-saving.
Then again, who cares if a trans person kills themselves,
right? They were just confused anyway. They’re better off, if you think about it.
What do the medical decisions made by a family with a trans child between them and
their doctor have to do with you? They’re over there living their lives, and you’re over here
living yours. And according to what you claim your values are, you should be good with that.
Because they’re not hurting you. They’re not stopping you from doing anything you want to
do. They’re not infringing on your rights — so why do you insist that their rights be infringed upon?
Can anyone imagine the outcry if a state passed laws banning medical
treatments that were needed by members of the in-group rather than the out-group?
What if instead of gender affirming care, the state outlawed allergy treatments? Sorry, but
you know what? People who have allergies are born that way, and if it’s god’s will that you should
have allergies, it’s not right for us to try and change that. Allergy treatments are unnatural,
and from now on if parents give their children medication to treat their allergies, the courts
will consider that a form of child abuse and those parents will lose custody of their children.
Just in case I need to make this clear: I’m not saying being trans and having
allergies are the same or are even remotely similar experiences — I don’t think they are,
but I don’t actually know — I only have allergies, I’m not trans — I’m
just comparing them in terms of the attitudes people hold toward their treatment. Okay? Okay.
Can you imagine if I told someone they were an unfit parent for treating their child’s allergies?
Can you imagine the outrage? The offense? Can you imagine what they might say in response?
Probably something about how I don’t know their child or
anything about their problems. What do I think gives me the right to make
decisions for their family? How is their child’s medical care any of my business?
And they’d be right. It’s not my business. As long as no harm is being done to the child,
it shouldn’t be the state’s business, either. And no conservative — hell, no one but Christian
Scientists or crackpots of a similar type who oppose medicine on principle — would
argue with that. So, why don’t we show trans people and their families the same respect?
Sadism. And arrogance — the assumption by the Ron DeSantises of the world that their bigoted,
ignorant opinions are relevant or sought. That’s what’s behind these anti-trans laws
that are being proposed and enacted not just in Florida, but in an alarmingly high number
of places. And the persecution of trans people now is fundamentally no different
than the persecution of gay people, or racial minorities, or ethnic minorities, or any other
group of people throughout human history that has been deemed too different to be tolerated.
And underneath it all, feeding that sadistic, arrogant entitlement, is that defining hypocrisy
of the political right: the idea that you had better keep out of my business,
but I can stick my nose in yours whenever it suits me.
Look, I’m not a small-government conservative. I’m a big-government liberal. I don’t trust the
free market to regulate itself. I don’t think the way to achieve an ideal society is to just
leave everyone to fend for themselves and do whatever they want. But when I think about
issues like trans rights, I can’t help but wonder how much better the world would be if
more conservatives actually practiced what they preached, and left other people the fuck alone.