We live in a dangerous time for trans and nonbinary people, and for children who identify as trans or nonbinary in particular. In state after state governed by Republican-controlled legislatures, versions of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill are being introduced and considered. In Texas, gender-affirming treatment for minors is being criminalized.
Republicans, of course, are weaponizing the trans issue in the hopes of driving large numbers of their base to the polls in November, but in the process, they are traumatizing many trans kids, and often their families as well. As long as the GOP is successful in obtaining and holding on to power, they don’t much care who gets hurt in the process. They are relying on their voters’ ignorance on the topic of transgender science and issues, and so they are actively lying, but they also rely on claims made in scientific studies, mostly published long ago, usually marked by both conscious or unconscious biases regarding the researchers expected definitions of sex and gender. Much of this research, started in the 1950s, has caused a great deal of damage to trans people over the decades, and it is slowly being replaced with a more open-minded understanding of how gender is different from sex. However, those GOP legislators are dragging out the conclusions of all these old, bad studies to support their hateful efforts to silence and isolate trans kids.
This video from Scientific American explains:
For the sake of these children, we can’t let these efforts succeed.
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