They Target Children First
MAGA and Christian Nationalists Fight Their Culture War and Children Die
This is an essay about trans kids. Writing as a transgender adult the simple fact of writing on this topic highlights a problem regarding my use of possessive language. Transgender children are absolutely members of the transgender community. In nearly any other marginalized community an adult member of the community would not be questioned in using the inclusive possessive (“our children”) when talking about children who are members of their community. However, for precisely the reasons I get into in this essay, when trans adults use the inclusive possessive to talk about the children who are members of our community it inevitably leads to accusations that we are somehow attempting to “trans the kids”, to split up families, and worse. These accusations are, of course, libel, but they are also sticky and they are used to feed an oppressing narrative. At the same time, I do not accept conditions of existence under which I am somehow not permitted to acknowledge the shared membership of transgender children and transgender adults in the full trans community. Thus my concession to political reality consists only in this paragraph and it’s final sentence. Transgender children are just as much their parent’s children as cisgender children are; when speaking as a transgender adult and referring to transgender children are “our children” I am not implying in any way that they are one iota less the children of their parents, I am saying nothing more than that they are children who are also members of the transgender community.
Sometimes the things right in front of us are the hardest to see. To many people it likely feels almost natural that anti-trans legal and political activism has focused on children so allow me to point out what is directly in front of us: The politicians, religious leaders, TERFs, Gender Critical Activists, and others who hate trans-ness chose to begin their attack on trans rights by targeting our children. In any other context a group which begins their attack on a community by targeting the children in that community would be roundly, soundly, and almost univocally condemned. “Leave the children out of this”; “Only cowards attack children”; “How withered does your soul have to be to go after children as your primary target” we would hear.
But that isn’t how the public has reacted. Instead America has decided that it is normal to target children first when those children are trans. America has decided that trans children are a reasonable first target in the culture war battle1 against trans people. Trans adults are frequently told that our advocacy would be more effective if we would compromise on the rights of the children in our community. The whole paradigm through which the moderate and centrist cis world operates seems to be one in which it is not not only valid to attack trans children first but that trans children are cast as the least “legitimate” members of the trans community, whose rights we are most radical when defending.
And I am not naïf. I know that this outlook, this paradigm in which our children are viewed as the most legitimate targets in attacks on our community and our rights, is not new. I know that it feels natural and obvious to many because it grows out of a long tradition of using children to attack queer rights. I know that anti-trans bigots have worked hard and far too successfully to create a sick shadow world in which they position themselves as the defenders of children by attacking the legitimacy of trans children. I know that.
And my goal in this essay is for you to see that it is bullshit. Trans children are children and if there is any legitimacy at all to the claims of transgender people (that our flourishing is served by recognition of our gender identities, that gender transition, to the extent we want it, contributes to that flourishing, that as persons we have a right to be recognized for who we are) then surely our children are the most thoroughly deserving of our support. We are being told—we have been told again and again this last week—that if we would just abandon our fight for the rights of the children in our community, then we might be able to more reasonably secure our rights as transgender adults.
I want you to sit with that last sentence for a minute. Can you see the horror of it? If that offer was made to you on behalf of your community would you take it? What kind of moral monster is willing to sacrifice the rights of her community’s children in order to secure her own rights? And yet the people who suggest that we should “just” sacrifice the children, style themselves as “moderates” and “centrists”.
Today is the second day of Trans Awareness Week. Trans Day of Remembrance will be on Wednesday of next week. This is what I want you to be aware of. Calls to the Trevor Project (a support line for queer and transgender youth) were up 700% in the wake of the election. Our children are suffering. Transgender children who are affirmed and loved for who they are have mental health outcomes that mirror those of their cisgender peers. Meanwhile 40% of transgender youth who catch the bullets and arrows of the culture war against trans people, who are not affirmed, are not given access to transition options and healthcare, attempt suicide while over 80% consider it. Anti-trans rhetoric, tactics, and cruelty are literally killing our children. Don’t ask us to sacrifice them.
Erin Reed (a trans journalist whom you should absolutely follow) maintains and updates a map which assesses the safety of trans people by state. This is the risk map for transgender adults published just prior2 to the 2024 election:
and here is the risk map for trans youth:
Today I am asking you to take a step back and ask you what it says that the anti-trans movement as a whole has decided that the way forward for their movement is begin by attacking the children of the community they hate. Who starts a culture war by targeting their enemy’s children?
It is vital that everyone keep in mind that, in the culture war, transgender people and transgender human rights are one of the current battlefields and are not “the whole show” if the cultural fascists succeed in eroding trans rights, they will move on to attack others (my guess is that they will first move on to attack gay rights and then the civil and legal rights of cis women).
The outlook has become significantly more grim for trans folx in the wake of the election.
"For Carthage also was a high civilisation, indeed a much more highly
civilised civilisation. And Carthage also founded that civilisation on
a religion of fear, sending up everywhere the smoke of human sacrifice.
... But without dwelling much longer in these dark corners,
it may be noted as not irrelevant here that certain anti-human
antagonisms seem to recur in this tradition of black magic.
There may be suspected as running through it everywhere,
for instance, a mystical hatred of the idea of childhood.
... The Hebrew prophets were perpetually protesting against
the Hebrew race relapsing into an idolatry that involved such a war
upon children... in the form of what is called ritual murder...
This sense that the forces of evil especially threaten childhood
is found again in the enormous popularity of the Child Martyr
of the Middle Ages. ... The civilisation that centered in Tyre
and Sidon was above all things practical.... They believed,
in the appropriate modern phrase, in people who delivered the goods.
In their dealings with their god Moloch, they themselves were always
careful to deliver the goods. It was an interesting transaction,
upon which we shall have to touch more than once in the rest of
the narrative; it is enough to say here that it involved the theory
I have suggested, about a certain attitude towards children."
G.K.Chesterton "The Everlasting Man", Chapter VI "The Demons
and the Philosophers"
I always thought that IF the trans athlete argument was actually about fairness, if we compromised on that and kept our rights and healthcare, I could live with that. But it was never about athletics. We all know they won’t stop at children and our best chance is put to g ourselves in front of vulnerable trans kids.