Over the weekend, Donald Trump addressed the Moms For Liberty summit in Washington DC in a special interview with co-founder Tiffany Justice. It was not an especially coherent interview and most of it focused on ridiculous lies about immigration, but he did eventually latch on to a subject that the Moms For Liberty were eager to dish on — transgender people!
Transitioning from a rant about how electric cars are maybe okay so long as there are gas powered cars and hybrids, Trump suddenly started talking about the Olympics. He talked about how horrified he was to see Algerian boxer Imane Khelif punch Italian boxer Angela Carini so hard she dropped out of the bout — only to “find out” later that Khelif was a transgender woman … which she very much isn’t. But when you’re policing people’s gender, everybody becomes fair game!
The “Joyful Warriors,” naturally, immediately burst into an applause, and Tiffany Justice, whose real name is Tiffany Justice, probed further, asking Trump what he could do about this issue as president.
“So, can we talk about that for a second,” Justice interjected. “Because you were talking about Elon. Elon Musk recently did an interview with Jordan Peterson and he talked about the fact that one of his children has decided that they’re transgender, he talked about the ‘woke mind virus.’ When you look at Tim Walz, who is now Kamala Harris’s running partner, he has made his state a sanctuary state for children where they can go there and have gender surgeries paid for by the government. And so, I just ask you, there’s been an explosion in the number of children who identify as transgender, and children are being taught that they were born in the wrong body, it’s an incredibly abusive message to send. So let’s talk a little bit about some of the things you can do as president.”
“Well, you can do everything,” he responded ominously. “President has such power. It does. It has such power.”
It was at this point that he veered off track and started talking about immigration again, before finally circling back to the trans kids.
“The transgender thing is incredible,” he finally said. “Think about it, your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child and many of these children, 15 years later, say ‘What the hell happened? Who did this to me?'‘”
I’m gonna say that, unless your kids go to boarding school like Trump’s did, if your kid goes to school and “comes home a few days later,” that has to be your first problem.
Second, 25 percent of schools don’t even have a school nurse, okay? Kids are not getting top surgery at school or any other kind of surgery. It’s not happening. The state of Minnesota is also not paying for gender affirmation surgery, though the state House did introduce a bill earlier this year that would require health insurance companies to cover it.
The “Sanctuary State” thing means that people who live in states that have banned gender-affirming surgery for minors can come to Minnesota and get their kids treated there without fear of being punished by their home state. That’s it.
Also, no one is telling anyone that they were born in the wrong body. People feel that way themselves, get extensive therapy for it, try out some non-permanent transitioning and then ultimately may decide to actually go in for surgery. But it’s pretty serious surgery that no one is getting (or, frankly, paying for) on a damn whim.
Top surgery, for example, can cost $6,000 - $10,000, while $45,080 is the average cost of vaginoplasty and $63,432 for phalloplasty. That’s a lot of fucking money. Now, if your dad is Donald Trump, maybe you have the kind of money that allows you to spend that kind of money on surgical procedures without your parents finding out about it. But that’s not most kids and it’s not most families.
Fifty-six percent of Americans can’t afford an emergency $1000 medical expense and he thinks kids are going around getting their genitals hacked off in between algebra and geography? Really?
So, just to recap, so we’re clear — the president cannot personally stop your kid from being trans, Minnesota is not paying for gender transition surgeries, and if your kid does not attend boarding school and doesn’t come home for a few days, maybe worry about that more than the infinitesimal possibility that they scored 63K with which to get a penis fashioned by a doctor who won’t check for parental approval.
But ultimately, these women don’t care that Trump is lying to them, because they’re all lying to themselves. They’re creating a whole entire fantasy world in hopes of preventing their kids from growing up to hate them for being weird bigots, which they probably will.
I don't know shit about trans surgery or the needs of trans people. I don't need to. I'm not a surgeon, I'm not trans, and nobody near enough to me for it to be my business is.
What I do know, I know as a dad to kids who have friends who are trans, and as a friend to parents whose kids are trans.
What I know is, those kids were a mess. They were miserable. They were obviously heading for either prison or the grave, one way or another. Risk-taking behavior. Alienating everyone. Chasing away everyone who cared. We could all see the gathering storm clouds and nothing anyone did seemed to do anything but more harm.
Until a mental health professional, at the end of their rope and troubleshooting checklist, started checking out gender issues. It seemed to fit. And when they started on hormone therapy, with every one of these kids, it was like a switch flipped. All of a sudden they could function, and act right, and do stuff like a normal person.
Along the way of course, some of the kids either didn't make it, or turned out to have had other issues. It was only the kids for whom nothing else worked that anyone even suggested the issue was that they were trans.
I've been to enough kid funerals for one lifetime. I don't need to go to any more, though no doubt I will. If there's a way to prevent just one kid funeral, I'd there for it. Especially if the One Weird Trick requires absolutely nothing of me, other than that I call a kid by a name different from the one I'd gotten used to.
These people are depraved ghouls obsessed with other people's pain and children's genitals.
"Schools shouldn't feed poor children because they can't afford it! The children should instead starve and live out their lives fighting against childhood food insecurity trauma." - The GOP
"Schools regularly do massive surgeries in their chemistry labs with their medical staff based on the whims of a teacher!" - The GOP
"These people shouldn't be around children, schools, animals, or really anyone else. My god." - The Me