Gill-Peterson adds that anxiety about trans children may owe less to gender issues than to society's ideas about childhood. She argues that the idea that children are incapable of making their own decisions and are effectively the property of their parents, justified by the idea that they are inherently "innocent" and incomplete beings, is a recent and specifically Western invention that forces children into a state of artificial dependence and makes them vulnerable to abuse. "Unfortunately the truth is that Western culture treats children horrifically," says Gill-Peterson. "And of course, everyone knows it, but it's a really disturbing thing to know... that's where some of these conspiracy theories become so bizarre. "Not simply because they're untrue and over-the-top, but because there are actual, real, widespread forms of suffering and harm that children endure every day, which do not elicit that kind of response: the mass incarceration of black and brown children, the impunity with which police murder black children, or the institutionalised sexual assault and abuse of children that happens in places like churches and schools and sports teams, or in the institution of the family itself." That, she contends, is also how parents who oppose their children's transitions can justify sending them to conversion therapists, or how Texas politicians can order that trans children should be taken away from parents who support their transitions. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/transgender-far-right-qanon-violence-b2108235.html
Really perfectly put, thanks, Andy. Transphobia is such a bizarre, irrational, baseless pogrom against vulnerable individuals - invented and sensationalized for political and economic reasons🏳️⚧️.
"Unfortunately the truth is that Western culture treats children horrifically”.
#TransRights
#FightHate
