This ACLU 'Trans Kids' Podcast Is Homophobic Hate Speech
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This ACLU 'Trans Kids' Podcast Is Homophobic Hate Speech
Why is it so hard to just leave the children alone?
You can come to Washington, DC on 11 August 2023 and remind the ACLU what democracy looks like. Click here to use the Eventbrite.
In its full and unequivocal embrace of gender ideology, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACUL) has shown time and again that it is unfit for purpose. In fact, as my friend and editor Matt Osborne writes, the ACLU is now a homophobic hate organization:
Homophobia has changed its face. It is now “woke,” punishing girlish boys with chemical castration and surgical sterilization. The ACLU says that objections to this are “hate,” while normal human puberty is “conversion therapy.” Josef Mengele could not come up with a better false flag for gay sterilization.
As I have previously written as well, gender non-conforming and other vulnerable children all have their unique issues and needs completely hidden under the label “trans,” which sets them up for sterilization and a lifetime of regret:
Children who progress from puberty blockers to cross-sex hormones and on to “gender-affirming” surgeries are having their fertility and sexual function stolen from them, and they are going to have to grapple with that as adults. In fact, we already have a growing number of detransitioning young adults who are having to come to terms with exactly this.
Despite these very serious potential consequences, the ACLU is resolutely trucking ahead with the promotion of “trans kids.” On June 8, the organization’s At Liberty podcast released an episode titled, “Let Trans Kids Speak for Themselves.”
Podcast host Kendall Ciesemier begins the episode by bemoaning the fact that there are currently 118 bills “seeking to restrict or ban gender-affirming care for trans kids” at legislatures across the country. Gender-affirming care, keep in mind, means disrupting the endocrine system and performing irreversible surgeries on sex organs.
“Trans kids are simply kids,” Kendall continued, “and they’d like everyone else to just let them be that. They don’t want to have to grow up fast or be thrust into the spotlight.”
In the next breath, she thrusts three such young people into the spotlight.
“So today we’re passing them the mic because, well, the adults are talking too much, and we all need to sit down and listen.”
Ah yes, we all know that it’s minors who should be making decisions about highly contentious social issues.
Kendall introduces Dylan, a seventeen-year-old trans-identified teen girl who because transitioning in the eighth grade, Jayden, a fifteen-year-old trans-identified boy who uses she/it/they pronouns and hopes to pursue a computer science degree, and Hobbes, a sixteen-year-old trans-identified girl and the organizer of Trans Prom.
She begins by asking them a bit about their lives. Hobbes goes first, revealing that she has a “very supportive school system” as she is in New Jersey, a “very blue state.” She says that her biggest supporter and advocate is her own father, who is “constantly educating himself about everything within the transgender community.”
Dylan then recounts that “growing up, I was friends with all the guys, you know. Third, fourth grade, I grew up playing football outside at recess with them.” This is, of course, the classic tomboy story. Unfortunately, her group of guy friends did not accept her self-declared identity as a boy.
However, she says that the school has been very supportive:
Teachers at my school, I have my principal. I love her with my entire heart from the moment that I came to her one day and was like “hey, this is going on,” she made it a point to check in with me all the time. If there was ever a situation that needed to be handled, she handled it right then and there. I’ve gotten very close with all the office ladies in my school. Every single time I come in, they just open the door for me. I don’t even have to say what I’m doing. They just open it, and they’re like “hey,” and we have a ten-minute conversation. And—I just they—they’re all just so supportive. Those people have made it to where I want to be that. And so that’s why I want to go into education so bad is because of those people. And I let them know that so much because—they’re just—they’re kind of inspirations for me. They’ve made my school experience way better than it would have if I didn’t have them around.
“I love that,” says Kendall. “I love that you’ve found some supportive people.”
The fact that school staff members are uncritically affirming a young girl’s body issues does not bother her at all. In fact, it’s a wonderful thing, and more teachers should do it!
“That’s so encouraging for people who might be listening, who are in education,” Kendall continues. “We have a lot of people who listen to this podcast that are teachers, and, you know, they’re being met with a lot of different kinds of efforts to control how they show up in classrooms. And a lot of them write to us, and they’re very concerned and they want to really stand up for their students.”
Jayden then recounts that middle school was challenging for him because none of the teachers or fellow students saw him the way he saw himself. “And it was really difficult,” he said, “for me to try to get by that, with everybody seeing me as the opposite gender of what I identified as.”
However, he moved to a different state for high school and was able to introduce himself with his new identity, eventually garnering a friend group that affirmed him:
Last year, I think, it was me and a bunch of friends, I had them come over so we could have dinner. We were going to go to homecoming as a group together, and so I had them bring all their makeup and we ate food at my house and we got ready and I didn’t have any at the time because I’m like, I don’t-I don’t know how to use it. So they let me use their makeup, and they made sure that I felt pretty, and they made sure that I was confident in the way that I looked because they just cared about me.
“It sounds so meaningful,” Kendall responded to the anecdote. “It’s so meaningful to be affirming of people’s experiences and to help people along the way… I think it’s so awesome to hear your story, Jayden, because I think young people who are listening can take cues and say, ‘okay, how can I be a better friend to my other friends?’ That’s such a simple, but powerful, story and a way that they can do that.”
Someone who actually had the best interest of young people at heart would tell teens like Jayden that your sense of self should not hinge on how others see you and encourage them to develop an internal locus of control. Likewise, other teens should not have to play the role of “affirming” the identities of their peers.
Kendall then changed course and said, “I want to talk about the adults for a second. A lot of people are working really hard to ban healthcare.” She noted that Dylan is a named plaintiff in an Arkansas case that the ACLU is arguing, Brandt v. Rutledge, “to fight for gender-affirming healthcare.”
“It has been a life-saving thing for me,” said Dylan about “gender-affirming” care. “I have been the happiest person I think I’ve ever been. I’ve seen so many changes with myself, not only physical, but, like, mentally and emotionally.”
There likely is some truth to what Dylan is saying—testosterone has anti-depressant effects. Unfortunately, this means it is a possibility that teen girls who take male levels of the steroid might instead read these effects as a sign that they are “really trans” and that “gender-affirming” care was the right choice for them.
“I would never be doing this three years ago,” Dylan continued. “It wouldn’t happen. There’s no way. I was so concerned with the way that other people saw me and the way that I saw myself that even going out was not an option. It was not a possibility in my mind.”
It is clear that Dylan was struggling as a young teen, and it is unfortunate that she was offered steroids instead of help dealing with these sorts of thoughts and emotions. What society seems to be telling young people like this is that instead of coming to terms with yourself and learning not to care how people see you and think of you, you need to take drastic pharmaceutical steps to change the perception of others.
Some more from Dylan:
I went to prom this year as a last-minute decision, was able to find a suit and go and feel so comfortable. I felt good. It was just one of those things where I put that on, and I was like, “wow, like, this feels good. This feels nice.” And so, for the adults that are trying to take this away, they don’t see how good I’m doing now because they didn’t see me before… They need to sit down and listen to people’s stories because I feel like if they did, maybe it would make them think a little bit, because I was not doing well before this. Like I said, very insecure. I didn’t want to go out. I didn’t really want to talk to anybody. I was just very hidden within myself. And since that, since I’ve been able to start my hormones, my confidence has shot up. It’s been-it’s been a crazy experience, and just being able to feel the way I do on the inside and present that on the outside is just something that’s just unexplainable.
The adults are listening, Dylan. It’s just that some of us know that security has to come from within yourself, and we believe that we should be teaching young girls they can wear whatever they want and face the world with confidence without needing to appear to the world as male.
Next, Kendall speaks to Jayden about the passing of a “trans healthcare ban” in Idaho.
Jayden responds:
It was shocking because I didn’t know how a bill like this could come out in the first place. It’s, you know, it’s blatantly attacking trans people. And I don’t get how anybody could see it any other way. It’s either people refuse to see it for how it is or just don’t care… It’s really harmful to think that the people who govern your state don’t have your best interest in mind and that they’re out there for everybody else who is in the majority and are willing to attack people in the minority in order to appease those in the majority.
I feel for young people like Jayden. It is not nice to make people believe that the only reason legislators could be passing these bills is out of a nefarious desire to attack minorities. I have no animosity towards him and other “trans” kids and teens who have been so badly led astray, but I have plenty for the adults who have led them there.
Yes, it’s a sad truth of the world that many people are uncomfortable with and bigoted against people who don’t neatly fit into gender norms. But the push to ban medical transition for minors is coming from the desire to protect exactly those kinds of kids from being medicalized just for being different.
Hobbes spoke next, harkening back to what the previous two had discussed. She said that she felt “a thousand times better” after starting hormone therapy.
I felt like I was finally able to open the door, start my way, progressed towards the person that I know I am and-and form that proper self. So to imagine, even just to fathom the fact that in certain places they’re trying to or are actively barring other people from it and inhibiting your ability to feel yourself, I know it’s sort of malevolent. It hurts me to even just hear, you know.
She goes on to express that nobody is really open about being trans in her life. However, a few seconds later she tells Kendall that her girlfriend’s little brother is trans and that a lot of her other friends have “trans siblings or trans family members.”
Jayden also shares that he does have a few trans friends at school but that he feels “there are probably more, and they’re just not out to everybody yet.”
Interesting that having a “gender identity” which doesn’t match your body should be such a common condition that you would expect several kids in one school to have it.
Kendall heaps praise and affirmation on the three young people she is speaking to, calling them mature and “really brave.”
They each offer some final thoughts:
Hobbes: I feel that at the end of the day, I am just sixteen years old. You know, I am still just a junior in high school.
Jayden: I feel like it’s important to remember, like what Hobbes said, we’re just teenagers, right? And we have had not very much life experience, if any.
Dylan: I’ve had to grow up a lot faster than a lot of people around me, which kind of sucks because I’m seventeen years old, and I am involved in suing a state at seventeen years old.
As they say themselves, these are just teenagers with very limited life experience. That doesn’t mean their voices and experiences don’t matter, but it does call into question why so many adults have completely abdicated responsibility to minors, particularly on an issue like this one. It’s one thing when teens take up silly fads and fashion trends among themselves—it’s quite another when we are asking them to direct legislation in regard to procedures that might offer temporary gratification in exchange for a lifetime of regret.
None of that matters to Kendall, of course, as she signs off with a directive to “cisgender” people:
It’s time to use your privilege to really speak out and speak up for what’s right. And especially if you’re among people who don’t understand, take it upon yourself to explain, because it is a lot of heavy lifting.
I will, Kendall, I will speak out for what’s right. As a lesbian who had the privilege of growing up before people like you would support putting me on sterilizing drugs and cheer me on through irreversible surgeries, I will speak out for the young people that you are doing your best to lead down just such a path.
This ACLU 'Trans Kids' Podcast Is Homophobic Hate Speech
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Four kids aged between 5 and 10 taken into care after being found at a drag party with a dead trans woman's body on the floor and drugs and sex toys scattered throughout 'hoarder' home Boston Massachusetts.