Dear editor:
It is unfortunate that Chloe Cole was misdiagnosed as transgender, and as a result received mistreatment, as detailed on the front-page of this website on 20 January.
It is also unfortunate that other people are misdiagnosed with medical conditions all the time.
It is very fortunate that whenever someone is misdiagnosed and mistreated, the government jumps in to make sure it never happens again, by banning that treatment for one and all.
Oh wait. We don't actually do that do we?
Yes, it is sad what happened to Chloe. She can sue, and I believe that she is doing so.
However, nobody is paying attention to what will happen to all the properly-diagnosed transgender-children, if Chloe's Law is enacted in Wyoming, and these children are denied the care they need.
When I was Chloe's age, fifty years ago, there was no such thing as gender-transition for youth. I was forced, against my will, to go through the wrong puberty.
I was forced against my will to try and live in the wrong gender, and consequently create trainwrecks in the lives of people around me, especially those of women who loved me, and their families.
My only consolation is that science didn't know better then.
My parents went to their graves, unable to accept me for what I am. The last words my father ever spoke to me were “You are not really trans, you just want sympathy for losing your job”, after I had been fired from my job as a college-librarian when it came out that I was starting transition, at the age of 46.
My mother made certain she would have the last word on the subject, when she put a special codicil in her will, which stated:
“I am deliberately not leaving anything to my son, [deadname used here], because I was so generous with him, when he was a child.”
I think it's tragic that the society in which my parents grew-up did not allow them to become the kind of people who could accept me. In their view, a crazy transgender-woman had murdered their only son.
My only consolation is that we didn't know better then.
In the last decade, when I have seen parents fighting for the rights of their children, for those children to be who the children truly are – it makes me weep with joy. Now we know better.
It is clear to me that Republican politicians who are pushing anti-trans legislation do not care about protecting children. These politicians are responding to the minority-view that there are too many trans-people, and a stop must be put to it, by any means possible.
When Trump shouts, at every rally, “I will keep MEN out of womens'-sports!” and the crowd responds with wild cheering – it is clear to me that neither he nor they are actually talking about sports.
It's a dogwhistle that transwomen are really men. Sports is a pretext for repression, and so is protecting kids from misprescribed transition. It is pure pretext.
My only consolation is that most people know better.
I knew I was trans when I was three. I was three weeks older than John Kennedy Jr. My family was watching JFK's funeral. When John-John gave his famous short-pants salute, my Jewish-grandmother pointed to him and said, “He's a little mensch, just like you!”
I said “No, I am like Caroline,” because I was seeing everything through her eyes. That's how kids know, by who the identify with, who they empathize with. I didn't read The Hardy Boys, I read Nancy Drew. My favorite shows were Petticoat Junction and That Girl I didn't identify with Tarzan, I identified with Jane.
This could be measured scientifically, if anyone cared. Recent science is trying to understand 'mirror neurons' which fire both when we perform an action and when we observe someone else performing the same action.
This neural mirroring might contribute to our ability to empathize with others by simulating their experiences within our own minds and our parasympathetic nervous systems.
At puberty, when I started growing hair on my face and body, and could no longer even privately dress as a girl and imagine I was female, I wanted to die.
My dad knew what I was about, and so he and his brothers worked triple-time to teach me how to be a man. This included learning about guns, and every time he put his 38-revolver in my hand, I felt like the gun was trying to put itself in my mouth and blow my brains out.
Eventually I yielded to what seemed inevitable, and tried to be a man. I got married twice. The messes that made, across the entirety of my in-laws' families and their friends, can never be undone. I will never get back the beautiful singing-voice I used to have. Despite thousands of dollars for painful treatments, I will never get rid of all the hair on my face.
If the politicians actually cared about the kids, they would not ban puberty-blockers. Puberty is irreversible, puberty-blockers are reversible.
If Chloe would have received puberty-blockers, she would not have had to have top-surgery. But no. If you want to be trans, you have to pay for it by suffering through the wrong puberty, and then pay for it again, doing what you can to minimize the effects of that puberty, for the rest of your life.
America was built on science. We conquered this land because of better weapons, trains, and manufacturing technology. The North won the Civil War for the same reason, and WWII, and the Cold War.
But now, people want to turn their backs on science they don't like. Transgender-people suffer from one of several birth-defects, caused by hormone imbalances in the womb. Nobody wants to hear it. I am not different from my cousin Jackie, who was born blind from diabetes. But ask Jackie, she wouldn't trade lives with me.
All this anti-trans backlash taking place in red-states is nothing more than politicians virtue-signaling their loyalty to Trump. Now that he has given them abortion-bans, Trump needs fresh-meat to throw to the religious-right to keep their fervent support.
Trans-people are chum for the sharks. There are no evil corporate-entities making gazillions on the supposed transgender-industry. There are not enough trans-people to make a market big-enough to make money. Nobody WANTS a transgender-child, because of the supposed cool-status conveyed by it.
It's a bad thing that nobody would choose, but all you can do is make the best of it. These kids are suffering, their families are suffering, but red-politicians do the math on what's best for that politician personally, and make the kids' and the families' suffering worse.
And you, yes you, you sit back and let happen, because fortunately for you, it doesn't make any difference to you. Unless somebody like this is in your life, transkids and their families might as well be Uighurs in China. I get it. The world is full of suffering, and since you can't fix all of it, there is no sense trying to fix any of it.
My only consolation is that my passport says female and I can get to the Canadian-border to seek asylum with a full tank of gas and one fill-up. I'm Jewish, and Never-Again is NOW!
Sincerely,
Gina Douglas, Casper
