Monday, April 22, 2024
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This week we take a deep dive into the national implications of the fight for Trans rights in a New York City school district.
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Human Rights Not for Debate: NYC Must Stand Up for Trans Kids
On March 20, 2024, the parental oversight committee of the largest school district in New York City, District 2 Community Education Council (CEC) in Manhattan, voted 8-3 to study whether Trans kids should have the right to participate in the sport that matches their gender identity. Chase Strangio, ACLU Trans rights lawyer, noted during his testimony that members of the hate group Moms for Liberty, designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center, are tied to the council.
Trans kids thought this was settled in 2019 when the school district rolled out biology rooted, Trans affirming policies that allow kids to choose their proper sports venue. Now the trauma of debate over their right to exist as normal kids is open again.Last week, a month after passing the resolution to study Trans kids, the District 2 CEC released a now-deleted horrifying Facebook statement.
District 2 CEC’s Statement
Trigger warning. While this post is from parents of school-aged children, it is a highly charged statement and may be triggering. Disclaimer. This statement is not rooted in known science or fact.
“True compassion means not letting children self diagnose their own medical condition. It means letting effeminate boys grow up and find out that they are just gay and having their male genitals intact. It means addressing underlying mental health issues and autism that radical gender medical practitioners ignore that still lead to suicide after "gender affirming care." It means not engaging in human experimentation on children that's banned by the Nuremberg Code with unproven sterilizing, mutilating & permanent hormonal & medical castration treatment and surgery. True compassion means teaching and supporting kids to love themselves as they are and letting them grow up unharmed.”
Chase states, “This is what people feel emboldened to say in New York City. In response to testimony before a government body about creating safe and inclusive schools for trans students, they’re referencing children’s genitals, mutilation, sterilization, castration.”
If you are looking for actual scientific, care-oriented studies please see the American Academy of Pediatrics.
- Research shows that transgender youth who received treatments to pause puberty were significantly less likely to experience thoughts of suicide throughout their lives
- Trans children who socially transition and receive support for their gender identity show normal levels of depression and only slight increases in anxiety
- Trans identifying adolescents reported significantly higher rates of psychological, physical, and sexual abuse compared to heterosexual cisgender adolescents
How did New York get here?
Let’s take a step back and put this story in context. How did this vote happen in New York City of all places?
New York, New York – Bastion of Liberalism
For the modern anti-Trans, anti-drag, anti-CRT, anti-DEI, anti-abortion American conservative ideologue, New York City is a bastion of liberalism run amok. Conservative ideologues like Christopher Rufo or Candice Owens or Moms for Liberty never really tell the public the evidence for this elusive liberal New York, yet they never miss an opportunity to state their belief in this liberalism on any media outlet.
At Perspectives, we find that New York's Democratic Party has shifted rightward: a former Republican cop is mayor, the NY governor heavily utilizes policing and the National Guard, all amid a peak in Islamophobia. Rudy Guiliani and Michael Bloomberg were 2 of 4 most recent mayors. Yet the mainstream media entertains and repeats the factually unfounded liberal utopia NYC narrative.
In our critique, we find these repeated factual errors are due to the both-sides extremism that has taken hold of the American Media zeitgeist. Both-sides extremism requires that everything go into team dem or team republican and somewhere between those two is some sort of objective universal truth. In reality, we have found that two sides can simply equal two lies. The modern media views their responsibility to “both-sides” every political story, not to seek the truth at all costs.
This is a costly and even deadly distraction for vulnerable groups in our country, but it is very profitable for those who already hold dominant economic and social power.
Divide and Conquer – A Timeless White Bourgeoise Colonial Strategy
While the media argues with itself using both-sides extremism as its framework, conservative ideologues have used their time and economic advantage to parse our coalitions and study who within these coalitions we are most likely to turn against. It is the tried and true, divide and conquer colonialist strategy.
In his lecture, The History of Whiteness, Tim Wise shows the origins of the divide and conquer strategy is tied to the creation of whiteness. He notes that European history up until the turn of the 16th century was bloody and hateful. Wise states, “They suddenly create this thing called whiteness and they say now you're part of the club. Now we're gonna let you testify in court, enter into contracts, vote at least if you're a man who owns a little bit of land, and we're going to get rid of indentured servitude. Powerful capital-owning colonial white men theorized that if they didn’t create a distraction, enslaved blacks and indentured whites would come together and violently overthrow them. But if they separated poor whites from enslaved Blacks in law and policy, they had a shot at controlling the capital of colonial America long-term. Thus, racism combined with divide and conquer reached a uniquely American economic and political form.
American conservatives are using the same playbook of divide and conquer across their anti-Trans, anti-drag, anti-CRT, anti-DEI, and anti-abortion efforts. And for Trans people, especially Trans kids, our distraction combined with these conservative attacks are deadly. Conservatives see Trans people and Trans kids as the part of the progressive coalition they can demonize freely and turn people who should be allies of Trans kids into detractors or quiet non-objectors. Conservative idealogues create demonized views in cis-gender parents heads of boys faking their Trans identity, grabbing wigs, and violently tackling girls so that they can win sports. This has never happened and for Trans girls, this story does not and cannot scientifically exist. Yet this story drives cis-gender parents to believe that they should put the universal rights of Trans kids up to committee votes and cis-gender scrutiny simply because Trans kids exist. This sort of dehumanization and disregard for fact is simply unacceptable from parents charged with shaping policy that protects all children.
We can easily see how this kind of dehumanization leads to higher abuse rates from cis parents, higher suicide rates, higher rates of violent attacks, and higher rates of murder for Trans kids and Trans people broadly.
Strategies for Intersectional Fighting
Right now, you can sign Chase’s petition and publicly declare your support for kids in District 2. You should definitely follow Chase on social media. Get involved with intersectional, queer friendly movements like Freedom to Learn which has a day of action coming up Friday, May 3rd.
And share this newsletter and other sources of accurate information about Trans youth and Trans rights. We’ll be following the story of anti-Trans backlash and positive Trans resistance as it crosses America.
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