What’s so scary about a transgender child?

We should worry about what happens when we don't let kids transition. Help us reach our goal We’re committed to keeping our work, including our midterm coverage, free, because we believe that an informed electorate is critical to the future of American democracy. Will you help us reach our goal of 5,000 gifts by September 30? [Yes, I'll Give]( In the last 10 years, the national conversation about trans kids has exploded. But, as my colleague [Emily St. James points out](, that conversation rarely gives trans children any semblance of autonomy. Essentially, the children who will be most affected by debates around legislation and medical care aren’t given the opportunity to be a real part of what happens next. This neglect puts trans kids at risk, and can damage their emotional and mental health. Society has always struggled when it comes to deciphering the needs of kids. Adults aren’t good at listening to children. When it comes to trans youths, that’s especially true. [St. James spoke to a half-dozen transgender people who didn’t have the opportunity to transition as youths]( and writes, “While it is easy to view the conversation about trans youth on a statewide or even national scale, it’s important not to forget that it is also a very intimate conversation, one had in individual houses across the country. For trans children, the stakes of those conversations — whether held in statehouses or in living rooms — are literally life and death.” —[Alex Abad-Santos](twitter.com/alex_abads, senior correspondent   What’s so scary about a transgender child? [A triangle with a child in pink and blue clouds]( Illustration by Christina Animashaun When Mae Sallean was a teenager, her body and mind began to slip away from each other. Her body and face began to sprout thick hair, her voice dropped, and she felt dissociated from her physical form. Something had gone wrong, and she could not reconcile the person she was with the person the world perceived her as. The disconnect left her profoundly depressed and deeply lonely. Mae knew, somewhere deep down, that she needed to be a girl. She lacked the language for it. In Mae’s heavily religious Texas community, the existence of queer people was barely acknowledged, and trans people, she says, were only seen “in pornography and on Maury.” But she knew, all the same. When Mae was 15, her mother discovered a secret box full of women’s clothing that Mae wore when no one else was at home. Though very Christian, Mae’s mother didn’t freak out. She wanted to help. So she found a Christian counselor for Mae. The counselor, who had no formal training, tried to convince Mae that being trans was one of the worst things she could be and that if she didn’t change her ways, she would go to hell. “He framed it on the same level as pedophilia,” Mae says. “That was the number one thing that stuck from those meetings until I started transitioning: I am on the same level as a pedophile.” [The conversation about trans kids right now is fundamentally broken.]( Because it is led, by and large, by cis people, it focuses on the potential regret children and adolescents might have after transitioning, and ignores the social, physical, emotional, and psychological costs of not transitioning. It ignores the reams of studies that underline the need to support trans kids. It ignores the lived experiences of many trans people, who despair that they were kept from transitioning as youths. Until this year, this conversation about trans kids had mostly been carried out in the media, with publications from the New York Times to the Atlantic to the Los Angeles Times publishing stories that suggested medical practitioners aren’t doing enough to vet potential transitioners under the age of 18. Lawmakers were listening, and the 2022 legislative session introduced a new spate of bills aimed at stopping children from accessing trans-affirming health care, among plenty of other anti-trans legislation, especially against an incredibly small number of trans kids playing sports in school. In all, 34 states have considered anti-trans legislation in some form. Steps taken by the state of Texas to prosecute providing health care to trans kids as child abuse mark the most extreme end of this push. Entered as supporting evidence for Texas’s measure? A recent piece on trans kids from the New York Times. But those stories weren’t about passing legislation, at least on their face; they were typically aimed at a presumed audience of parents. The Atlantic emblazoned on a 2018 cover the words: “Your child says [he’s] trans. [He] wants hormones and surgery. [He’s] 13.” Only it didn’t use the right pronouns to refer to the real trans boy who served as its model. Parents have been receiving an onslaught of messages about what could go wrong if their child was to transition; they’ve rarely been asked to consider what could go wrong if they weren’t able to. [We are running, in real time, an experiment on what happens when you don’t accept trans kids.]( [Read the full story »]( [Learn more about RevenueStripe...](   Mandatory overtime is garbage Your boss is the boss of your job, not of your life. [Read the full story »](   Looking for a sense of belonging? Start with being a good guest. Practical questions for creating community, according to Priya Parker. 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