Throughout human history, LGBTQ+ people have been existing and minding their business. They’re told they must love and partner with someone of the opposite sex, and they’re like “nah, I’ll take a same sex one”. They’re told they are the gender assigned at birth, and they’re like “nah, I’m a different one”. They’re like “I’m into same and different gender” or “I’m into no one of any gender“. Breaking the confines of the imaginary social construct that is gender. Badass.
And a wedge issue.
A library might host a drag queen reading a story to children. Then that library gets death threats.
JK Rowling was once a beloved author with a massive fandom and goodwill that most would give all of their limbs for. Then she decided to throw all that away because she’d rather be a transphobic piece of shit.
Are schoolchildren subjected to gender reassignment procedures at the school nurse’s office? Of course not, that’s absurd. So absurd that the Orange Thing sure enough spouted that claim on the campaign trail last year.
And we push back on all that. The lies. The hate. The idea that whether someone’s pronouns “match” what’s in their pants is anyone’s business, let alone a reason to exclude or vilify someone.
But what about the children, they say? Surely we can’t have children finding out about this stuff and getting any ideas that they might not be the gender assigned at birth.
After all, doesn’t all this homophobic and transphobic garbage become totally fine and acceptable as long as they pretend the real goal is to protect children, that they focus on children, on protecting them from “sexualization”, from “grooming”?
What is grooming?
Grooming refers to the practice of gaining a child’s trust and undermining their trust in others for the purpose of abusing them. They are manipulated into trusting someone who seeks to take advantage of them, and they are left with lasting mental health issues, among other things being made to feel it was their own fault and having lost their ability to trust others at all.
So, naturally, reactionary dipshits are weaponizing this concept as a means of curtailing youth and LGBTQ+ rights, by claiming that affirming a trans child’s identity is somehow in itself an act of sexual abuse, of “grooming”, rather than genuine support.
Which, I don’t know, kind of feels a bit manipulative and like a form of grooming in and of itself?
Oh, but it’s out of concern, right? There’s no such thing as a trans child, they say. If a child is trans, it’s only because their parents or other adults have made them to be. Really they’re the ones protecting the child’s rights then, from this “gender ideology” being “forced” upon them.
That’s funny. Even if we pretend for a moment any of that nonsense is true, where the hell are any of these people literally any other time parents or other adults are forcing a child into something?
And that’s obviously not what they believe. In fact, if the parents in these cases were forcing this on their children, I doubt these people would have much problem with it. With a trans adult, yeah, these people are still shitty about it, but at the end of the day, they might have to concede that as an adult it’s their own life and business. But a child coming out as trans, freely, confidently, with support from loved ones? That’s what’s terrifying.
What about the grooming? What about children being manipulated and coerced by a malevolent adult who seeks to take advantage of them to satisfy their own questionable intentions? Or at the very least being primed to be more vulnerable to such a predator?
