The Kids Know.

All these anti-trans laws, the children know that they are bogus. When you are with trans children all day you get to know us as a person not some vague idea presented by ideologues.

Expect More Right-Wing Anti-Trans, Anti-"Critical Race Theory" Pushes in 2023 – and 2024
In this op-ed, political scientist Zein Murib explains the Republican legislative focus on trans people and “Critical Race Theory.”
TeenVogue
By Zein Murib
January 6, 2023


Republican candidates tried to make the 2022 midterm elections a referendum on health care for transgender youth, drag queen story time at public libraries, and critical race theory (CRT). Although the anticipated “red wave” failed to materialize in November, many of the most vehemently anti-trans and anti-CRT candidates won gubernatorial races in Florida, Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. And with Donald Trump announcing his third presidential run and making anti-trans discourse a central part of that announcement, it is safe to assume, as we approach the 2024 presidential election, we haven’t seen the end of using trans lives and an anti-racist curriculum as political footballs. 

[…]

Since 2020, however, Republicans at all levels of government have politicized transgender people, especially trans kids. They have introduced and in some states passed legislation that bans transgender girls from sports, which legalizes discrimination based on the fallacy that these laws protect non-transgender girls by ensuring fairness in sports. They have also sought to criminalize doctors who provide health care to transgender youth, even though the American Academy of Pediatrics describes these interventions as vital health care. 

But we are not the only targets of the right-wing conservatives… other minorities.

This is where the connection to anti-CRT legislation becomes clear. In most cases, anti-trans legislation and policies are passed in the same places where bans on teaching the history and legacies of slavery in the US are passed. The people who want these bills passed argue that they are protecting young people from feeling distress over the history of slavery in the US and its enduring legacies. For example, one school district in North Texas recently voted yes on a policy that would ban teaching “gender fluidity,” no longer require teachers to use a student’s pronouns when they do not correspond to their sex assigned at birth (even when requested by parents), and eliminate “equity audits” designed to ensure that school curriculum reflects the racial, cultural, and socioeconomic composition of the school district.

There is a song from the musical South Pacific that goes, “You've got to be taught to hate and fear” and that is what these anti-LGBTQ and anti-CRT are doing, they are teaching the children to discriminate against those who are different. The song goes on to sing,

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade
You've got to be carefully taught

And that is what all these Republican laws are doing teaching the children that it is okay to bully others  who skin is a different shade than their’s, or who loves differently from them, or those who see gender as a spectrum instead of binary.

Scholars and pundits are still unpacking the 2022 midterm election results. But we already know that the historic youth turnout helped Democrats secure victories. This means that young people are now in a position to demand that Democrats show up for issues they care about: protecting transgender youth, queer folks, and ensuring that young people learn American history that is rooted in facts. 

Back in the sixties and early seventies it was the youth that got us out of Vietnam, today it will be the youth to get us out of the quagmire that we are now in.

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate—
You’ve got to be carefully taught!
You’ve got to be carefully taught!

VOTE!
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The NCTE had this to say about the TeenVogue article in a January 14 Facebook post…

In Teen Vogue, Zein Murib explains how attempts to criminalize trans lives and censor the reality of racism are deeply connected. Extremist lawmakers have chosen to attack trans people and censor our classrooms, and it's always been clear that racism and transphobia are closely related. 

"Since 2020, Republicans at all levels of government have politicized transgender people, especially trans kids. They have introduced and in some states passed legislation that bans transgender girls from sports, which legalizes discrimination based on the fallacy that these laws protect non-transgender girls by ensuring fairness in sports. They have also sought to criminalize doctors who provide health care to transgender youth, even though the American Academy of Pediatrics describes these interventions as vital health care. 

Proponents suggest that these laws and policies will protect young people, but, in a version of a question I am always asking students to consider, which young people? Here, the answer lies in the claim that banning trans girls from sports will preserve fairness for non-trans girls. These contradicting goals — protecting non-trans girls by passing laws that will harm trans girls — reveal the aim of these bills is to preserve binary gender norms through the stigmatization and erasure of all those who do not conform. Digging further, because gender norms intersect with white supremacy to elevate white beauty standards for girls and women, these bills implicitly elevate the interests of white [cis] girls. 

This is where the connection to anti-CRT legislation becomes clear. In most cases, anti-trans legislation and policies are passed in the same places where bans on teaching the history and legacies of slavery in the US are passed."

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Right now I am at a zoom meeting for the Governor’s council on hate crimes, later in the week the LGBTQ Health and Human Services Network, one of my concerns for the network is that it is being steered by the large Pride centers in the state.

My concern is that the network will be dominated by the larger pride centers and the smaller LGBTQ organizations will not have a voice. When I was director of CTAC it was hard to have the voice of the trans community heard, now that I am representing LGBTQ Aging Advocacy it is even harder for the LGBTQ seniors and trans communities to be head. That it will become the voice of "GAY Inc."