It should be self-evident from the tone and tenor of the "discourse" (read: hysteria) over trans people right now that what we're experiencing is a moral panic, in the same vein of the Satanic panic of the 80s. For one thing, the whole shebang is being led by unhinged QAnon-adjacent actors like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. and the "Libs of TikTok" lady, people who ignore actual real world sexual abuse in order to indulge in blood libel-style accusations painting LGBTQ people as pedophiles. For another, the supposed "whistleblowers" the right trots out are reminiscent of the sort of shady grifters that always step forward during these moral panics, such as the liars who claimed they used to be Satanists, the "ex-gays" or people who say embryos scream during abortions.
Seriously, Jamie Reed, the lady they're using to make false accusations at gender-affirmation clinics, is saying kids "identify" as helicopters. One wonders if she's testing how much nonsense people will swallow because they want their prejudices affirmed so badly. As Irin Carmon of New York magazine recently detailed, anti-trans activists are using "the same playbook" they used to stigmatize abortion by "fomenting moral panic around the most vulnerable and co-opting progressive tropes to help fuel it."
Sadly, there's been robust traffic for centrists and concern trolls who are ready to ignore all the red flags. It's all because they want so badly to write "just asking questions" columns that imply, falsely, that the left is taking this trans acceptance thing "too far." (Seriously, Carmon's colleague at New York Magazine, Jonathan Chait, even went so far as to elevate the "kids are helicopters" lady.) Gosh, they wonder, have people actually considered the downsides of letting trans kids play sports or use bathrooms? Or, in their eagerness to be inclusive, are liberals a little too eager to let kids access gender-affirming care?
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This hand-wringing never slows down, despite repeatedly being debunked by people who actually understand the issue. That alone should be a sign that we're in midst of a baseless moral panic. But, in case anyone needs more evidence, the recent case out of West Virginia that the Supreme Court (wisely, for once) declined to take up should prove it.
There's been robust traffic for centrists and concern trolls who are ready to ignore all the red flags. It's all because they want so badly to write "just asking questions" columns that imply, falsely, that the left is taking this trans acceptance thing "too far."
Becky Pepper-Jackson v. West Virginia exposes how, in their mindless hysteria, two of the biggest arguments anti-trans people make contradict each other. The case in West Virginia is straightforward: Pepper-Jackson is a 12-year-old transgender girl who sued the state over a law barring her from running track. Laws like this are cropping up across the country, and every time, the people behind them deny that bigotry towards trans kids is the impetus. Instead, they claim to be "concerned" about protecting cis women from having to compete with "biological males," whose puberty allegedly makes them so big and strong that no one assigned female at birth could ever hope to compare.
This silliness of this argument was laid bare by Pepper-Jackson, who is an enthusiastic runner, but, as the Washington Post delicately put it, "not among the top performers." As part of her gender-affirming care, after all, Pepper-Jackson is on puberty blockers and estrogen hormone therapy. As her court filing indicated, she "has not experienced and will not experience endogenous puberty."
If people were objecting to trans girls on sports teams in good faith, they should feel relieved by this outcome. Turns out they had nothing to worry about in the first place! The standard gender-affirming care that trans girls get renders the issue moot by taking puberty out of the equation. If anything, trans girls are at a competitive disadvantage, because they're competing against girls who do have pubescent growth spurts. But no, the same people who claim to be "worried" about trans girls going through puberty turn right around and "worry" about trans girls not going through puberty. Because they definitely don't want kids having access to those puberty blockers, either.
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Last week, there was another supposed "whistleblower" elevated in the Free Press, a reactionary outlet masquerading as investigative journalism, run by Bari Weiss. Emily Yoffe reported on a divorced mother, "Caroline," who alleged that she had been "bullied" into allowing her child to get a puberty blocker, which she then blamed for the child's poor grades, weight gain, and mental health issues. Even reading the original story, however, it was fairly easy to see that Caroline's actual grievance with the clinic was not how they rendered care. She was just mad that they accepted her child's trans identity. Throughout, she speaks as if being trans were merely a phase, grousing that the clinic didn't eject her child from the consultation so she could make decisions about their body without them present.
This is an important debate between serious people. It's sadly getting hijacked by unserious people.
Soon, however, a person claiming to be the kid in question (with good corroborating evidence) popped up on Twitter, denying Caroline's account and the "false perceptions that my mom has about the doctors and clinic." They attributed their poor grades and mental health troubles to the isolation of the pandemic. Research shows that gender-affirming care improves mental health outcomes, something the scare stories about puberty blockers tend to ignore.
But what is truly telling about all this is how the anti-trans concern trolls flat-out ignore how puberty blockers are also the solution to their other stated concern: Trans girls will have a hormonal advantage over cis girls in sports. Of course, not if they're on puberty blockers!
On Thursday, President Joe Biden's administration proposed a rule change to Title IX meant to clarify some of these questions. On one hand, schools would not be allowed to categorically bar trans athletes from competing. On the other hand, the rules would give schools leeway to handle the situation on a case-by-case basis, by assessing the child's age and medical treatment to determine if they do have an unfair advantage or present a safety risk to other kids.
This rule change was welcomed by some trans advocates and criticized by others. However one feels about the rule, however, reading the actual details suggests this change is less about politics and more a direct response to the rise in localized controversies that ensnare actual children. The Pepper-Jackson case shows that, with proper medical care, a trans kid's participation in a school sport is unlikely to be a threat to fairness or safety. The Biden directive should be read as legitimizing those kids' spots on the team. But, as many activists pointed out, bad faith readings by transphobic schools could be given too much wiggle room to deny kids a chance to play, even if the kids are receiving hormones that address any real world questions.
This is an important debate between serious people. It's sadly getting hijacked by unserious people, such as Substacker Matt Ygelsias, who didn't seem to read past the headlines and were taking their potshots.
This kind of rhetoric is both deeply silly but also deeply dangerous. As Carmon warned in her New York Magazine piece, centrist pundits who validate anti-trans talking points like this only serve to launder what is, in fact, vicious bigotry against an incredibly vulnerable minority. "Don't be a mark" for this "coordinated, well-designed plan" run by the religious right to strip people of basic human rights, she pleads. Sadly, there's too much attention and money to generate by winking at anti-trans bigotry. As long as that's true, far too many supposed "liberals" are going to ignore this call for basic human decency.
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