Don’t hurt me yet.

I will take all the criticism necessary at the end of the post. It does feel strange to enter the culture wars and believe that Trump is right on a couple of things. It would help if he wasn’t shouting angrily and sounded like he actually cared and knew this issue could hurt people both ways.

Here are the 44 seconds (Of a 3:00 video) that have a few good points in them, IMO:

Now. Of course, Gorka’s insistence is wrong. That issue was settled hundreds of years ago in South Pacific culture, primarily Hawai’i, Samoa, and American Samoa, along with the rings of islands around them. This culture has long recognized the faÊ»afafine or “third gender” which is usually – not always – a man who takes on the life of a woman because that is who she is inside. But they will not call themselves a “woman.” They are fa’afafine and people understand.

Additionally, Trump says that at birth, the United States will only allow “Male/Female” on the birth certificate, and on that part, it makes sense because misgendered primarily occurs when a child is old enough to understand gender (it can be as young as four, a boy absolutely insisting he’s a girl to the point that it’s his/her entire dilemma as a four/five-year-old), but unless there are severe anatomical abnormalities at birth, it should probably be marked male or female at birth. I don’t have a huge issue with that.

Trump then goes on to talk about the importance of the nuclear family. This is a man with kids from three wives, all of which were basically ignored until adulthood (except Ivanka, and that attention was not “right.”) None of us have any time to be lectured by Trump about the importance of the nuclear family.

But then he said something that made a lot of sense to me. I do not understand the laws in all 50 states (they’re a mess), but Trump said that gender therapy should only be done with the consent of the parents until age of 18. I think that’s probably right, though I might lower it to 16. I went through a stage last year where my daughter was having stress/anxiety issues about school, and the messages went crossways at the hospital. I was literally shut out of the process as the social worker took over and called her mother 200 miles away and never mentioned in-patient treatment, which I thought would be harmful. I think parents have critical insight into what is best for their children. My interests weren’t wanted. They knew best.

Having said that, IF the parents fully believe that gender therapy is best for their child and the doctors agree, then there should be no barriers to treatment. (Trump didn’t say anything about when parents fully agree). Alabama has a law now that restricts parents more so than kids! Parents can fully believe that it is in their child’s best interests to get therapy, and yet it is illegal (except the law is currently stayed by court order). I think Alabama couldn’t be more wrong on this law.

 In April 2022, the Alabama governor signed a bill into law that prevents transgender minors from receiving gender affirming care, including puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgical intervention.

I just believe that parents are the most informed as to where their child “is” in their psycho-social world. I knew my daughter wasn’t in danger of hurting herself, but that determination was made 30 minutes before talking to me. (They also played games in who they told what, it was awful). I don’t think it’s unreasonable for a law to require parents to sign off on gender therapy. (Maybe every other state requires parents to sign off on it. All I know is that is what Trump said.) I would be opposed to an eight-year-old and a doctor recommending one thing and two loving parents not sure it’s right… Remember, there is NO perfect answer.

Trump then also addressed the sports issue and said “boys/men” will not be allowed to participate in women’s sports.

I may get pilloried for this, but if gender hormone therapy isn’t started very young, there is clearly an unfair advantage for a transgendered teen who is transitioning late in her teen years, and, being a girl dad, it really isn’t fair to see a girl lose a state swimming title or tennis title to someone who is still anatomically more male then female. Liberals aren’t supposed to talk about this but when I’ve mentioned it under my breath, I’ve said, “there has to be a better solution because it really isn’t fair to the girls who have not had that kind of development.” A LOT of liberals agree. It’s just that we’re always in a competition about who is “most progressive,” not healthy IMO.

And I don’t think it is the hill we want to die on! I think we should be advocating and educating people on the science regarding therapy and getting that issue settled so that parents can make a more informed and less prejudiced determination. In the grand scheme of things, the issue of someone’s true identity being treated is so much more important than the question about sports that I just think we need to let it go for minors.

So Trump said three things with which I agree. Gender at birth will be assigned male/female (Okay). He doesn’t want that ever to change, which is where we part ways, and I said anatomical abnormalities (not “defects”) could complicate it, but that is best for newborns. Then make it subject to alteration.

I agree that minors should require a parent’s consent. I think that doctors and minors need to sit down with the parents with counselors and medical professionals to educate the parents and decrease fears, but I still think that in the end, it’s the parents’ call, at least until age 16 or so when we start trusting them with driving etc. But not age nine. Remember, there is no perfect answer to that issue.

And sports? We are so far behind in the science that hormone therapy often starts rather late, and a girl still has her original bone structure from the testosterone that it just isn’t fair to the girls who have been so their entire lives. We’ve seen record broken after record, and I think it’s an unfair situation that gets in the way of the really, really important one above.

Indeed, I think conservatives use the sports issue to get away from having to really discuss the transgender therapy issue.

I’m sorry. But it seems like that on about half of his points… I agree. Having said that, I don’t think Joe Biden would disagree with all of them, either.
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[email protected], @JasonMiciak, SUBSTACK: PROGRAM FOR YOUR HOUSE INVESTIGATION PRO WRESTLING TOURNAMENT

 

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15 COMMENTS

  1. I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you, but remember a lot of parents will force kids to leave if they’re LGBTQ – and that’s what the Rs are backing, with their lies.

  2. I appreciate all your comments. this is a complex issue that often gets turned into hateful barbs instead of thoughtful discussion. I have researched and thought about the sports question. I agree there will be some natural physical advantage for mtf athletes. at the same time, there are very few athletes in competition. so I would suggest that it be handled on a case by case basis. I suppose you could have trans only sports, I don’t have an easy answer.

  3. as far as parents consent. I live in Texas, I don’t think much is done without parents consent here. I was talking to. a trans woman recently who transitioned at 14 with her mother’s consent and support. she did not discuss her father. how do we deal with the issue when both parties do not agree and the child is suffering?

  4. overall I think we should consider humanity and kindness. these laws banning gender affirming care are hurtful to what are often very vulnerable children and families are just hurtful.

  5. Jason, don’t assume that all parents are created equal. I watched my brother descend into mental illness and die in a mental institution at the age of 32. My parents were utterly incapable of dealing with his condition. It was some constitutional inability to deal with mental or emotional problems on their part. Maybe if he had developed a physical illness, maybe they could have coped with that. They were clueless as to how to help him and I was ten years younger than he was, so he was wayyyy far gone before I reached adulthood.

    • I am not assuming all parents are created equal. There must be far more education and time spent demonstrating the harm so they can see it. Completely unrelated to my experience (Honest) there is nothing the law takes more seriously than the privacy and choices made in parenting even when you find them horrific.

      Balancing that means that it may take a year of regular psychologist/doctors’ appointments and a support group for the child to give the parents every opportunity to understand. But to take a child at age 9 and fundamentally alter them like that against a parents wish?

      That’s a very slipper slope.

  6. “I may get pilloried for this, but if gender hormone therapy isn’t started very young, there is clearly an unfair advantage for a transgendered teen who is transitioning late in her teen years, and, being a girl dad, it really isn’t fair to see a girl lose a state swimming title or tennis title to someone who is still anatomically more male then female.”

    Okay. When EXACTLY do you suggest the trans child begin transitioning to lose that “unfair advantage” (which, if you’ll note, is NEVER applied to transwomen in any other arena–and ALWAYS seems to ignore the very existence of transmen) if–as YOU state–the child should only begin transitioning WITH parental consent at even 16? Sixteen is still going to offer a transgirl an “unfair advantage” (having gone through at least 3 years of XY-based puberty) over her cisgirl fellow athletes.

    But, as Old grey dude notes, there are a lot of LGBTQ+ teens who do NOT get any kind of support from their parents. You keep wrongly continuing to suggest that DeSantis’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill had any merit–even though there is NOTHING in the bill beyond the nebulous phrase “age-appropriate” regarding education; HIGH-SCHOOL teachers aren’t even sure how much support they can give, or even how much discussion they can have with, their HIGH-SCHOOL age students before they incur the wrath of some “concerned” parent (the bill, if you’d bother to actually look at it, can require high-school teachers to report a student’s choice of pronoun usage TO THEIR PARENTS if the pronoun choice doesn’t match their “assigned” gender). Teachers and coaches have traditionally been a major line of support for students, especially in their teen years and ESPECIALLY when the students face troubles at home but this Florida law turns teachers and coaches into the enemies of the parents when the students fall into the “troubled” category. (Bear in mind that, in most states, teachers and coaches are REQUIRED by state law to report suspected physical/emotional/sexual abuse and the conservative idiots–I know, somewhat oxymoronic–in Florida have decided that a child’s being LGBTQ+ is equivalent to “abuse” but “abuse” developed by the media and foisted on the “poor innocent children” by “groomers.”)

    You are WRONG on this issue. Talk to some people, especially transwomen and transmen who are actually affected by the discrimination they face. Talk to the high-school students who’ve been harassed by school authorities for daring to talk about being gay/lesbian. Talk to LGBTQ+ students who’ve been bullied by their peers and then who get ignored by the school authorities (and the teachers whose hands are bound by these “Don’t Say Gay” laws). Quite frankly, I don’t give a rat’s ass about your PERSONAL issues–they have no more bearing on anything to the other kids whose lives are essentially the other side of the mirror to your own kids’. Why should your kids be more important than other kids?

    We’ve already seen DeSantis moving on from harassing the LGBTQ+ community to harassing the African-American community (first with the “No CRT in our schools” and now with the bill that would ban an Advanced Placement class on African-American history, presumably because it would cause *certain* elements in the White community who don’t want to be reminded of how most African-Americans have been treated over the past 4 centuries and don’t want the African-Americans to start getting more “uppity” over their white peers).

    What’s next on the agenda? A white kid tries out for a spot on the school’s football or basketball team but gets beaten out by an African-American kid so we need to start limiting the African-American kids from competing on sports teams until they go to college? An African-American girl tries out for her school baseball team (because she doesn’t like softball) and beats out a boy for the spot, so we have to block her from the team (bearing in mind that Title IX prevents that unless the school offers a girl’s *baseball* team)? What about the girls who make their school wrestling teams?

    • I intentionally confined myself to the 44 seconds above.

      I don’t have a problem with the criticism but it’s the dripping superiority in that “YOu are wrong” on issues where the solutions are “less bad” at best.

      As for sports, if you think you have the golden nuggets solution, great. But expect me to draw you a clear line isn’t an argument against it. All I know is that if I’m the parent of a girl who spent her entire life since six loses the state title to a person that until 3 yrs ago was competing in boys, I’m going to be pretty upset.

      But most of all, your entire tone is premised upon the fact that you care more than I do and that is what I reject. We both care but these are extremely complex issues – that the GOP would like to make simple – and I believe they are far more complex. I’ve lived part of the “Take the parent out of the equation” and – though my daughter isn’t an athlete – if she was, I could see scenarios where I would think it was unfair to her.

      I could remind you that being “unfair to her” is every bit as important as being unfair to our trans family. It’s just very hard finding a balance.

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      • In opening dialogue, I hear you is a good first response. We had intramural sports back 40 years ago when I was in college. My taller and more talented girlfriend could beat me every time at basketball. Women and girls dont need to be protected all the time.
        There is considerable overlap between boys and girls sports, especially at the high school level. The marathon times for women have surpassed the records set for men every year.
        Are you the parent of a child competing in any event? I will take you at your word. Otherwise, this is about hypotheticals. There is a very rare occurance when trans women compete in sport, trans women are a very small population overall and for the most part not likely to enter into competitive sports. In that case as I said before. Lets look at it case by case. If a 7 foot trans woman wants to compete in basketball, then maybe we should look into it.
        lets look at the other side of it, lets decide to deny sport to .5% of the population. I guess that sacrifice is okay. at least per your argument. that is sad, I loved all sports growing up. Maybe look up I am jazz and jazz jennings who just wanted to play. keeping from a child for playing is just sad.

        • You say your girlfriend could beat you every time. Ok, you might not be sports inclined for any number of reasons. Now put your girlfriend up against a man that is sports inclined. What do you think her chances would be there? Some girls in HS can compete. I love it. They’re a lot of factors there. How about college? I havent heard of any there but I dont pay attention to sports so maybe I missed that

  7. You all may have seen the case where a female to male trans teen is a wrestler. They have been forced to compete with girls. This young person has the muscular development of a male and dominates the opponents. I agree that this is a very complex issue.

  8. Mack Beggs was a wrestler here in Texas. He was taking male hormones, He wanted to compete against male athletes, but was not allowed to by Texas UIL rules.

  9. Just as an aside, girls (young women) often compete in boys highschool football in rural districts here in Texas. They don’t need protections.

    • I totally agree that sports participation in terms of a man transitioning to woman can be completely unfair to the genetic women. As a woman, it totally ticks me off that men are stronger, can run faster and etc. The fact is that testosterone gives men this advantage. No matter how hard a woman trains and sacrifices, she cannot win against an equally trained man. It sucks but it is a fact. I admit that I am unclear in some ways about the transgender issue but I feel that family members and medical professionals that work with them are to be more trusted than me when it comes to working with this community. But in terms of sports, the person has what? gone through puberty? If they have been a biological male long enough to have a clear hormonal advantage, then no, they should not be competing against the females. Such a hard area but girls need to be treated fairly also.

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