Originally published at: North Carolina Republicans want to deny care to transgender youth | Boing Boing
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If a child is afraid to talk to their parents about being trans or nonbinary, then it is indicative of an abusive home situation and the parents should be investigated for child abuse and the children potentially removed to be placed in a safe situation where they can get the medical care that they need.
If a parent neglects a child’s medical conditions or abuses them over them, that is abuse, and we need to stop pretending that this kind of stuff is OK.
Send the parents to jail if they refuse their kids medical care or abuse them over it’s need.
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They also want to redefine the word “minor” when it comes to trans youth, so you’ll be considered a minor for these purposes until you’re 21. Imagine, being able to legally own a gun but not your own body. And that’s before we even get into the whole “state employees being obligated to tell parents in writing when their child display non-conformative behavior” thing. It’s one step removed from “don’t worry, we identified and fixed the problem for you, no need to thank us.”
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It’s a bit naive to believe that abuse has to be a factor for someone to be closeted. Fear of coming out… of that conversation that changes things forever… has always been a factor in LGBT+ circles. It’s not a fear of being harmed, it’s a fear of their fear, of losing a connection that has always been there and may be lost forever.
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“demonstrates a desire to be treated in a manner incongruent with the minor’s sex”
This is language from dehumanized people who have supressed all understanding of childhood, all understanding of humanity.
Everyone in their childhood has done this. Kids don’t care about rigid ideas about gender, they don’t know about them, and/or they don’t understand them. They see clothes they like and they want to wear them. They see friends or siblings getting treated one way and they want to join them, and they don’t care if that means something a grownup feels is “incongruent.” They see a parent or adult they admire and they want to emulate them, and the fact that it’s a boy copying mom or a girl copying dad doesn’t mean anything to the kid.
This is nutty punitive controlling stuff.
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THIS SHIT NEEDS TO STOP. All of the ‘I fear this with no logic behind it so I’ll kill it’ garbage should be shut down immediately and extinguished with the raging fire of truth and science.
How do we create the Truth and Justice League? The left needs muscle.
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You know what? I don’t think the average 5 year old is emotionally ready to handle coming out to their parents. I don’t think the average 5 year old has the kind of adult reactions and fears to coming out that a 25 year old does.
But the 5 year old is probably confused as to why the teacher keeps treating them differently than the other girls and why they can’t dress like them and why everyone insists on calling them a boy. The 5 year old knows that something is wrong. The 5 year old needs help, and no one in their support structure even knows how to help them.
Imagine how much better that 5 year old’s life would be if they got some therapy and worked out these gender issues as a kid - or went on hormone suppressors until they were old enough to, with proper guidance and in a good environment, decide how to proceed. Imagine if they grew up in a society which accepted them.
That’s what I want. I want kids who need help to get it, and if the parents don’t like it, well, find ones who do.
And yes, for those wondering: kids know they are misgendered pretty much as soon as they know what gender is. And a kid who “grows out of the phase” is really more of a “learns to live the lie society want them to live” kind of person.
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If a child displays any sort of “gender nonconformity”, they are to out that child to their parent or legal guardian.
Here’s where they show themselves - it’s not (just) about being anti-trans, it’s much bigger than that. Because who gets to determine what is “gender conforming”? This is about Christian conservative notions of “gender” and broader notions of how men and women are “supposed” to behave. The context for this is this:
and this:
An insufficiently deferential girl? Couldn’t do anything about that before, but now she’s “gender nonconforming,” and that’s actionable. This is some real “Handmaid’s Tale” shit right here, under the surface.
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18-, 19-- and 20-year old adults do not have parents or guardians responsible for their medical decision making. Holy shit, this is infuriating!! 
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This could be interpreted as such banal things as a boy announcing he likes to bake cookies and pink icing is best, or a girl wanting to enrol in an auto mechanics course.
We should defend trans people as a matter of course, but if you think the plan is to stop there, you’re deluding yourself. There’s a reason these bills keep getting broader, more vague, and more invasive. The end goal is so that no one who is not white, cis-male, with a certain minimum income will have any bodily or even mental autonomy whatsoever.
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I didn’t figure myself out until I was 17. I knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t figure out exactly what. There is no rigid timescale for self-discovery, every individual is different. Regardless, a child who doesn’t want to have that conversation isn’t necessarily being abused, the situation isn’t that black and white, it’s (pardon the pun) not that binary.
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A lot of people who don’t care about what they see as “identity politics” better wake up to this fact real soon and stop being willing to trade away the rights of vulnerable group thinking that they are safe from such tyranny. They are not. It’s coming for ALL of us, sooner or later. We all are free or none of us are.
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A hundred years ago, it was a girl wanting to wear pants. In some circles, it still is. What about a long haired boy? A boy with piercings? A girl who doesn’t want to wear makeup? A boy wearing a salmon colored shirt? A girl who doesn’t do whatever a boy tells her to?
It’s just disturbing all the way down.
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But those people are hurting GOD, an omnipotent deity who knows everything and made the world perfect who gets the sads if people do things against what some people believe his divine plan is! /s
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You’re damn right! And I have a collection of stories, originally oral stories dating back a couple of millenia or more from one little part of the world, that finally started to get written down about 1700 years ago, that has been edited numerous times over the ages by people with a political agenda, that PROVES that it is applicable in the current setting, and should be the absolute law in a land whose rules state things like “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…” and " no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."…
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So let’s assume one of these “mandatory reporters” contacts me to say my child doesn’t conform to their understanding of gender roles. And let’s assume that I tell them to eff off. Are they then going to report us to Child Protective Services and have my children taken away? Will they have me arrested for child neglect?
That is what the TERs want, but they don’t have the support for that yet. There are still Republicans who would object to it as government overreach.
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It’s only shocking if you’re not paying attention. Just last week Arkansas signed what is essentially the same bill into law (even overriding the governor’s veto to do it).
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It’s all part of the GOP’s plan to turn back the clock on changes they don’t like. Pushing the legal and voting ages back up to 21 would get rid of those pesky, free-thinking college student voters, right? They would see that as a win-win. They’re all about paternalism and control, so they refuse to coexist with anyone who doesn’t conform to their views.
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Texas has decided that yes, that is what will happen:
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