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"Support Trans Kids" and Its Limits
Feb. 10th, 2025 03:59 pmOne of my major frustrations with the slogan "support trans kids" is that it encourages cis adults to only focus on the children who appear to them as legibly trans. These tend to be children with supportive parents, or supportive teachers, or some other adult who gives their transness legitimacy. These children still need support, but they're already receiving a fair amount of support as trans kids go. "Support trans kids" is not so well suited to the forcibly closeted child who smiles through all the misgendering, and doesn't know if *you* are a safe adult to share their secret with, or if you'll just single them out for more punishment. Or the child kept in artificial ignorance who will never have the knowledge to figure out they're trans until they escape their parents' control. Or the child of a liberal family whose parents' support for trans people in the abstract is matched only by their conviction that their own child is not trans. These are all children in desperate need of support, but to the adult ally, "support trans kids" need not apply to the child who merely appears depressed, or withdrawn, or weird, or confused.
The oppression of trans youth is something I believe can only be solved with radical youth empowerment and radical gender autonomy for *everyone*. Support trans kids, yes, but support every kid's right to be trans. Let children wear clothes of the "wrong" gender if they want, and let their reasons for doing so be none of your business. Let them tell you which pronouns to call you, even if it's "just a phase". Learn to resist the urge to tell children who and what they are, and learn to make room for them to tell you.
Make knowledge of transness available to all children, not just the "really trans" ones. Make hormones and puberty blockers a standard part of puberty education, less "here's what's gonna happen to your body", more "here are your options". Let all children have a wide network of trusted adults they can turn to, and let that network include trans adults. Hire us to be your childcare workers, your educators, your babysitter. Reach out to us, because we can't take for granted that we'll be allowed to exist around kids. Supporting trans kids also means supporting trans adults because your child is looking at us to see if they have a future.
A realization I had recently is that I didn't always know I was a girl, but I did always know that I deserved more autonomy than I was getting. I knew that I needed more freedom to choose what clothes I wore, but it was only when I was an adult with the freedom to "dress funny" that I was able to figure out by trial and error that I wanted to wear skirts and dresses, then wear bras and camisoles, then grow breasts to fill them. I didn't know that I was a girl, but I did know that people were too quick to tell me what I am, and that this was making it harder for me know myself.
Throughout my gender journey "trans rights" was less useful to me than the right to be trans. Indeed, "trans rights" was a mixed blessing because even while it showed me there were people ready to support me on the other side, it was just as easily weaponized against me to discourage gender deviance. The cisgender liberal social scene I was in had an unfortunate habit of defining respect for trans people in terms of policing the gender expression of the cis-by-default. Are you wearing a dress in a way that respects real trans women? Maybe you shouldn't wear it at all. The joy you take in describing your mannerisms as feminine is kind of problematic, almost like you're the one forcing gender norms on everything. "Trans rights" as a set of special privileges reserved for the Genuinely Trans, is very easily twisted around to assuage cis comfort, especially if it rests upon the idea that being trans is acceptable because it's rare. Would you still support trans rights if it meant that you'd wake up tomorrow and half the women in the ladies' room had penises? You should.
So yeah. "Support trans kids" is the bare minimum. Listen to kids of all genders and take them seriously. Give them the freedom to practice being weird and cringe without requiring some pre-existing gender minority status to justify it. Listen to trans adults when we talk about the roadblocks we faced as children, and don't just assume that "it was a different time"; many of those roadblocks are still here today, or they've mutated to fit the current political climate. Be skeptical of the feeling that you have all the answers when it comes to gender or children. Support kids. Or get out of the way. Or both.
The oppression of trans youth is something I believe can only be solved with radical youth empowerment and radical gender autonomy for *everyone*. Support trans kids, yes, but support every kid's right to be trans. Let children wear clothes of the "wrong" gender if they want, and let their reasons for doing so be none of your business. Let them tell you which pronouns to call you, even if it's "just a phase". Learn to resist the urge to tell children who and what they are, and learn to make room for them to tell you.
Make knowledge of transness available to all children, not just the "really trans" ones. Make hormones and puberty blockers a standard part of puberty education, less "here's what's gonna happen to your body", more "here are your options". Let all children have a wide network of trusted adults they can turn to, and let that network include trans adults. Hire us to be your childcare workers, your educators, your babysitter. Reach out to us, because we can't take for granted that we'll be allowed to exist around kids. Supporting trans kids also means supporting trans adults because your child is looking at us to see if they have a future.
A realization I had recently is that I didn't always know I was a girl, but I did always know that I deserved more autonomy than I was getting. I knew that I needed more freedom to choose what clothes I wore, but it was only when I was an adult with the freedom to "dress funny" that I was able to figure out by trial and error that I wanted to wear skirts and dresses, then wear bras and camisoles, then grow breasts to fill them. I didn't know that I was a girl, but I did know that people were too quick to tell me what I am, and that this was making it harder for me know myself.
Throughout my gender journey "trans rights" was less useful to me than the right to be trans. Indeed, "trans rights" was a mixed blessing because even while it showed me there were people ready to support me on the other side, it was just as easily weaponized against me to discourage gender deviance. The cisgender liberal social scene I was in had an unfortunate habit of defining respect for trans people in terms of policing the gender expression of the cis-by-default. Are you wearing a dress in a way that respects real trans women? Maybe you shouldn't wear it at all. The joy you take in describing your mannerisms as feminine is kind of problematic, almost like you're the one forcing gender norms on everything. "Trans rights" as a set of special privileges reserved for the Genuinely Trans, is very easily twisted around to assuage cis comfort, especially if it rests upon the idea that being trans is acceptable because it's rare. Would you still support trans rights if it meant that you'd wake up tomorrow and half the women in the ladies' room had penises? You should.
So yeah. "Support trans kids" is the bare minimum. Listen to kids of all genders and take them seriously. Give them the freedom to practice being weird and cringe without requiring some pre-existing gender minority status to justify it. Listen to trans adults when we talk about the roadblocks we faced as children, and don't just assume that "it was a different time"; many of those roadblocks are still here today, or they've mutated to fit the current political climate. Be skeptical of the feeling that you have all the answers when it comes to gender or children. Support kids. Or get out of the way. Or both.
