Every parent, no matter who they are, wants just one thing. They want the most expedient, obstacle-free, most easily defined path for their children to feel happiness and fulfillment. That's it. No politics, no agenda, nothing "woke"; just help me find a way for my child to be happy. That's true if the child is dyslexic and prone to being overweight like I was, or autistic, athletic, or even transgender. They just want their child to be happy.
I've spent nearly sixty years studying monsters. You could say I'm an expert, so maybe what I have to say is worth listening to. Someone is writing bills to make some Mississippi children, who didn't do anything wrong, feel like monsters. They're doing it for easy political gain, not to address any real issue the state or the state's other children are facing.
It started when cable television programmers tried to make channels dedicated to art and history, culture and science flopped. People said they wanted to watch these things, but when presented with that choice on their home televisions, they chose more salacious programming, like wrestling and gossip shows.
Because they'd already spent a great deal of money creating and placing these channels, their executives decided to borrow a page from PT. Barnham and started filling their channels about art and history, and science with freak shows. One Thousand Pound Sisters. Big World, Little People. Honey Boo Boo, Doctor Pimple Popper, and a show about a small transgender child called Jazz.
Like the people in the other shows, The parents of Jazz, and Jazz herself, believed they were raising awareness of the issue, normalizing it, and educating people about it to help other transgender kids on their journey, but the suits back in New York knew exactly what they were doing. They were charging people a penny a head to see the freak show, and although Jazz wasn't as successful as Honey BooBoo, the pain and trauma this child was going through made them a great deal of money. It made some money for Jazz and her parents, but nothing compared to what the producers were taking in.
I Am Jazz, on the Learning Channel, did help raise awareness in some people, but it raised alarm in others. The increase in public awareness of Jazz and her journey made some people afraid that these transgender children would invade their world, and very soon, you started to see legislation about where transgender children can pee, what sports they can participate in, and most recently, who can pay for their medical care and when.
The best and most recent scientific study suggests that approximately .8 to 1.3 percent of all American children are or may self-describe as transgender. To put this in perspective, in the most recent study, 19.7 percent of American children are obese, yet despite their much larger numbers, there is almost no legislation restricting the lives of obese children and very little legislation providing for the education and treatment of obese children, and zero legislation restricting the medical treatment of obese children, although there are some very sketchy and questionable treatments available for the condition.
When I was coming up, there was precisely one openly transgender person at my school. He was female to male, and to my perception, they seemed very isolated. Hardly anyone ever talked to them. In retrospect, I wish I had, but introducing myself to anyone without a specific business plan or purpose was pretty much just not going to happen in those days. It's pretty rare now. I had a teammate who liked to bully them, but in ways where he couldn't get in trouble for bullying, "Are you a dude? You look like a dude. Why do you want to be a dude? Are you gonna play football, dude?"
Watching all this was pretty uncomfortable for me. I loved my school. I've recently made moves to reconcile myself with it. There was one area where St. Andrews was flawed in those days, though. When there was a student with particular challenges, like autism or deafness, or transgenderism, nobody ever took us aside and said, "this is what's going on with your classmate, and this is the best way to respond." Sometimes my parents would address these issues with me, and there were times when Mitch Myers would unofficially take us aside and talk about what a classmate was going through, but more often than not, most of these things we kids worked out on our own and poorly.
The legislation you see coming out of certain conservative states, states like Mississippi, has the effect of making transgender kids seem like a threat to people who may not have any exposure to them. There are conservative politicians actively working to make parents afraid of transgender children and promising legislation to help protect their children from these monstrous, woke, transgender children. No child is a monster, but I know some politicians that are
Making people worried or afraid of where transgender children pee or what sports they play, or what medical procedures they have is just plain evil. Whatever else they are, they are children. The best people to design the life path for transgender children are their parents, their doctors, their teachers, and themselves, not some fearmongering politician looking to attract votes with a meme about transgender kids.
The parents of transgender children want what every parent wants. They want a chance for their child to feel happy, to have friends, to feel fulfilled and accomplished in life. They're not forcing their children on your children out of some twisted political agenda. They're just searching for a world where their child can exist and have a chance at happiness, just like yours. They're not monsters. They deserve better than what they're getting in Mississippi.
