Believing Trans Kids Isn’t The Same As Grooming Them
We finally have the research on parenting that conservatives demanded, so what’s next?
Hi, I’m Stephenie Magister ✨ (follow me), and below I’ll take you on a dive through:
- Landmark court cases on trans rights now bolstered by
- Pioneering research with trans and non-binary kids ages 3–12 years old
- That explores the WOW topic of Gender Variance within Nature vs Nurture
- And concludes that gender identities are just as self-actualizing for trans and non-binary kids as they are for cisgender kids
If that’s not enough, I’ll explain how all those bullet points answer an even BIGGER question.
How young is too young to believe a kid when they tell you they’re non-binary or trans?
Luna Younger deserved better than her dad
In May 2022, Jeff Younger narrowly lost a House GOP seat in Texas despite running an explicitly transphobic campaign — against his own transgender daughter.
As reported by the Texas Tribune:
[Luna’s father] launched a social media campaign to “save” his child from the supposed harm of transitioning. For a child of Luna’s age, this is solely social and consists of keeping her hair long, choosing her own clothing, and using a feminine name and pronouns.
However, the conservative campaign spread incorrect fears that [Luna’s mother] was seeking to immediately “chemically castrate” the child — a misinformed, scary-sounding reference to hormone medications that would suppress Luna’s testosterone production and replace it with estrogen, which would typically be years in Luna’s future, according to standard medical guidelines.
The only plans [Luna’s mother] had, according to court transcripts, was to take Luna to a Children’s Health clinic for transgender kids in Dallas. There, they would discuss a plan for potentially starting her on puberty blockers, which are reversible, in the next few years if Luna’s gender dysphoria persists.
Luna’s father, unfortunately, wasn’t saying anything unusual for the GOP.
Grand Old Party? Surely you mean Grand Old Playlist
I’ll bet you’ve heard the refrain: “But think of the children!”
Here’s another one: “We need to wait until we have enough data.”
When it comes to trans rights, conservatives love to play the greatest hits. Today’s greatest hit comes courtesy of a basic request for human decency: believing trans kids as much as we believe cisgender kids.
Listen to this next greatest hit: “Children aren’t old enough to make decisions about their gender.”
And if that’s not specific enough for you, let’s forever tarnish your memories of AC Slater (Mario Lopez) from Saved By The Bell by listening to him spew this nonsense:
“I’m never one to tell anyone how to parent their kids,” the television personality said as host of entertainment news show Extra. “But at the same time, my god, if you’re 3 years old and you’re saying…you think you’re a boy or a girl…I just think it’s dangerous as a parent to make that determination.”
At least his heart might be in the right place — especially given that the most recent reboot of Saved by the Bell featured a trans teenager as its main character.
Yes…really!
Saved by the (Transgender) Bell
The series deliberately did not publicize that the main character Lexi is trans — the producers, which included Mario Lopez, wanted to tell a story about a trans teenager that wasn’t centered on the trauma of transition.
Okay, Mario. I’ll keep an open mind about you. Except that by repeating the same kind of seemingly well-intentioned concern as countless bigots, you’re forgetting about that one time those same parents you’re referencing already took that decision away from their children — at birth.
Why would you commit to your child’s sex assigned at birth instead of listening to what becomes obvious as they grow up?
It gets worse
Now here’s the bigger ask. The one that sends conservatives into a goddamn frenzy.
Ask conservative parents whether it’s okay to admit they got their kid’s gender wrong.
Even if you’re a non-binary parent yourself, getting your children’s gender wrong happens too often for comfort. Kids of all shapes and sizes discover that the gender their parents assigned to them doesn’t match the gender that becomes apparent as they mature.
Before you beat yourself up, the research shows this isn’t a life-ending mistake. But only if parents take the necessary steps to support their child’s authentic gender.
One of those things is within a parent’s control. The other never will be.
How much control does any parent have over their child’s gender?
Here’s another greatest hit straight from my upbringing in Mississippi: if your child turns out queer, it’s always the mother’s fault.
I wish it was just my own dad who’d said that, but a 2019 study explored the challenges experienced by 10 mothers taken to trial when they affirmed their transgender and gender-nonconforming children.
The results broke my heart: “In each of the 10 cases, the child’s father blamed the affirming mother for ‘causing’ the child to be trans, and courts gave a favorable ruling to the father in four of those cases.”
Despite those court rulings — in part because of the horrifying outcomes from those rulings — the research is clear on the devastating impact of parents making the very determination Mario Lopez cautioned parents from making about their child’s gender.
Yes, AC Slater, choosing your child’s gender for them isn’t just wrong. It’s dangerous.
Wren Sanders (she/they), an award-winning journalist and the editor of Them’s Community Section, wrote: “What’s actually dangerous is rejecting or subverting a child’s own sense of their gender identity. Families who reject their trans kids’ identities have been shown to dramatically raise their likelihood of contemplating, planning, and attempting suicide. Conversely, familial acceptance and support has been shown to dramatically decrease trans folks’ likelihood of a host of psychological issues, including suicidality.”
The consequences of denying your child a chance to exist
Jeff Younger’s transphobic campaign and refusal to offer compassion and support to his own child cost him two things. First, his race for the GOP House seat — and then custody of Luna.
The court memorandum revealed that despite Younger’s insistence that he was protecting his daughter, he failed to fulfill the most basic requirements of previous court orders for child support. The memorandum reads: “Mr. Younger failed to timely make the payments of child support, medical support and interest as ordered and only paid his past due support after the motion for enforcement was filed.”
But of course, not everyone literally runs for political office just to deny their child a chance to exist. Some parents are simply worried about when and how to appropriately support their children.
Those parents are fair to point out that lots of things don’t make sense until we grow up. Luna was 5 when she understood she was trans.
What happens if we ask kids who are even younger?
How young is too young to believe a kid when they tell you they’re non-binary or trans?
That’s where recent pioneering research into transgender children ages 3–12 years old provided mind-blowing results.
Researchers followed a total of 822 children (aged 3–12) from the United States and Canada, 317 of whom were trans and 189 of their cisgender siblings, along with 316 other cisgender children (as a control). Their results point to a simple, though undeniably significant, conclusion:
Believe trans kids.
— Study Says Trans and Cisgender Children Have Equally Strong Gender Identities (Them Magazine)
Why is it so important we ask trans kids about their gender?
We need to make special efforts to study trans and other gender non-conforming kids because their unique experiences give us a chance to disentangle what variables impact our gender development.
Trans kids aged 3–12 years old differ from their cisgender peers in that they are assigned and socialized as one gender, but then empowered to transition to their authentic gender for the rest of their lives onward.
Well, as much as any of us are empowered to pursue gender-affirming treatment.
What if your kid doesn’t have ANY gender?
At least not the way anyone over 30 might define it.
Even kids who identify as a binary gender experience gender fluidity. The researchers in that study I keep quoting wrote that “while on average girls in all groups showed feminine responses, all groups included some girls who showed especially feminine responses and some girls who showed more masculine responses.”
Say it with me: tomboys are the shit.
Say this one next: butch is badass!
Indeed, recent research indicates that binary gender labels may be increasingly arbitrary and confounding when used for experimenter-created groups.
But the researchers didn’t understand this until they asked a surprising follow-up question.
How do you identify?
[W]hen we asked children how they identify, a few transgender and cisgender children identified as something other than the gender aligning with their current pronouns.
Had we used children’s self-categorizations of gender to divide our groups, for example, into boys, girls, and people who prefer a different term, these categorizations would likely have resulted in groups that cross our boundaries of cisgender and transgender. How this approach might impact findings is unknown and has implications for an ongoing discussion on how gender identity should be assessed in research.
In conclusion
All of that leaves just one question.
If being raised by a conservative can’t make you cisgender…
Can being raised by a trans parent make you trans?
Nope.
The research is clear that:
- there likely is not a unique gender socialization experience in the homes of transgender children that is changing gender development
- children develop a sense of identity at an early age [that]…is not necessarily determined by sex assigned at birth
- children may hold on to this identity even when it conflicts with others’ expectations
Despite the GOP’s efforts to control what was never within their control, the greatest determiner of a person’s gender comes from their internal sense of self. Whether empowered by a loving parent’s support or battling through a different parent’s neglect, children self-socialize to self-actualize.
And that means for the first time in Western cultures, we are experiencing the true abundance of gender variance beyond what we find in someone’s pants.
If that’s not clear enough, let me present my own Greatest Hits album
Like each Nickelback album, it only contains one track repeated 9 times:
- Believe Trans Kids
- Believe Trans Kids
- Believe Trans Kids
- …
The end (of the article)
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