Posted on Feb 27, 2022
Opinion | How Texas' war on trans youth feels when you have a trans child
958
17
2
8
8
0
The Republican Party has been waging a war on trans children. The latest escalation occurred in Texas last week, where Gov. Greg Abbott issued a letter confirming his attorney general’s opinion that gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers, hormone treatments and surgical interventions, should be treated as child abuse. The governor also claimed medical professionals, educators, and members of the public are required to report what Abbott sneeringly refers to as “so-called ‘sex change’ procedures” to state authorities. Those authorities could potentially prosecute parents, or even remove children from their parents' care, although any such prosecution would face immediate challenges in court.
Opinion | How Texas' war on trans youth feels when you have a trans child
Posted from nbcnews.com
State of Texas
Transgender
LGBTQ+
Gender
Children
Posted 2 y ago
Responses: 2
2
2
0
PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."As the parent of a teenage trans daughter, I find Abbott’s comments frightening and enraging. We don’t live in Texas — and we’re unlikely to visit a state that has targeted our child. But I can imagine how much more difficult, and even life-threatening, it would be for our daughter to face transition in such a climate of fear, paranoia and state-enabled terror. Abbott’s order frames supportive parents such as myself as reckless child abusers. And it puts up further barriers to receiving care for a process that I can personally confirm is already fraught, difficult and slow — even with parental support.
Abbott’s directive is built on a belief that trans identity is false or fake. And anti-trans activists have claimed over the past few years that young people and irresponsible parents are rushing recklessly to unnecessary medical interventions because of peer pressure or “social contagion.”
But the truth is that there is a widespread medical consensus that gender-affirming care has enormous mental health benefits for trans youth. And the social contagion argument has been extensively debunked.
My wife and I were both strongly supportive of trans people before my daughter came out. My wife is bisexual herself, and we’d talked to our daughter extensively about queer and trans issues. We had made it clear that if my daughter was trans, we would support her. She had several trans friends and had experimented with feminine gender expression. In seventh grade, a bunch of her female friends spent the afternoon giving her a makeup makeover. She came home glowing and almost breathless with happiness.
Yet, despite an affirming environment, our daughter took years to come out as trans to us, or to anyone. She first realized she was a girl as a freshman in high school and briefly changed her pronouns at school. But a peer was unsupportive, and she went back into the closet for three years of increasing discomfort and escalating mental distress. She finally came out to us in her junior year, basically because she just couldn’t bear to be treated as a boy anymore."...
..."As the parent of a teenage trans daughter, I find Abbott’s comments frightening and enraging. We don’t live in Texas — and we’re unlikely to visit a state that has targeted our child. But I can imagine how much more difficult, and even life-threatening, it would be for our daughter to face transition in such a climate of fear, paranoia and state-enabled terror. Abbott’s order frames supportive parents such as myself as reckless child abusers. And it puts up further barriers to receiving care for a process that I can personally confirm is already fraught, difficult and slow — even with parental support.
Abbott’s directive is built on a belief that trans identity is false or fake. And anti-trans activists have claimed over the past few years that young people and irresponsible parents are rushing recklessly to unnecessary medical interventions because of peer pressure or “social contagion.”
But the truth is that there is a widespread medical consensus that gender-affirming care has enormous mental health benefits for trans youth. And the social contagion argument has been extensively debunked.
My wife and I were both strongly supportive of trans people before my daughter came out. My wife is bisexual herself, and we’d talked to our daughter extensively about queer and trans issues. We had made it clear that if my daughter was trans, we would support her. She had several trans friends and had experimented with feminine gender expression. In seventh grade, a bunch of her female friends spent the afternoon giving her a makeup makeover. She came home glowing and almost breathless with happiness.
Yet, despite an affirming environment, our daughter took years to come out as trans to us, or to anyone. She first realized she was a girl as a freshman in high school and briefly changed her pronouns at school. But a peer was unsupportive, and she went back into the closet for three years of increasing discomfort and escalating mental distress. She finally came out to us in her junior year, basically because she just couldn’t bear to be treated as a boy anymore."...
(2)
(0)
0
0
0
Read This Next
Continue with Facebook 
Continue with Google