“Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day in school,’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation? Can you even imagine this? What the hell is wrong with our country?” - Donald Trump speaking disinformation at a Wisconsin rally on Sept 9.
“We will keep critical race theory and transgender insanity out of our school” - Donald Trump speaking at a Tucson rally on Sept 16.
This is the rhetoric of a former president. The disinformation campaign on trans individuals and the LGBTQIA+ community as a whole has infiltrated the highest elected office along with state houses across the country, including those in the 4 states I visited earlier this summer.
In this piece, I’m going deep into The Bad in order to highlight this reality: When the government established to protect and defend us actively and explicitly works to deny a marginalized community’s existence, it is no wonder that our gender-diverse youth struggle with anxiety, depression and suicidality at such alarming rates.
In interview after interview, I have heard how the weaponization of transness for political gain impacts gender-diverse kids. Reviewing the data from the 16 interviews I’ve conducted since August 2023, 11 parents spoke directly about the suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, and/or inpatient hospitalizations that their child has endured. 6 of those interviews were Midwest parents and 4 of them reported that their child has dealt with suicidality.
For one family, their child’s anxiety brought them into mental health treatment in elementary school. By middle school, “Rebecca (pseudonym) was getting bullied. Kids were telling [them], why don't you just kill yourself? … [Then] anorexia happened and then cutting happened, and then suicide ideations and hospitalizations … I was actually at a meeting with the school when they overdosed and took all of [their] medication.”
While it is possible for some members of the gender-diverse population to have an underlying mood disorder such as anxiety or depression, I think it’s important here to debunk the pervasive idea that being trans is synonymous with mental illness. There are those who believe that if you treat the depression, you will eliminate the transness. Or, that transness is a consequence of social contagion. One way or another, the implied reasoning in these ideas is that nobody would be trans unless they were also crazy. These ideas pathologize transness; making it a disease, a treatment failure, or simply a problem. I want to emphasize instead that society’s pervasive transphobia is deadly. Rebecca's story is remarkably similar to so many stories I've heard both as a writer and as a therapist. If we treat transphobia, not transness, we will raise happier, more confident, gender-expansive kids. (If you want more on this, read my blog Society is My Problem, Not My Kid.)
While kids may not understand the details of transphobic laws and rhetoric, they do grasp the threat to their personhood. Case in point, when Angela (pseudonym) understood for herself at a young age that she was trans, she waited to tell her mom because of fears that she would be taken away or sent to conversion therapy. She didn’t think that her mom would reject her but she did fear society would. “She held onto [these fears for 2 years thinking] if anyone found out she was transgender, she'd be taken away because she's watching [the nightly news and seeing] the politics that are happening in Florida,” explained her mom. Another parent poignantly shared, “It tears me apart that no matter how loving and inclusive we make our home, society’s louder in his head.”
The devastating impact of these kinds of laws cannot be overstated. The Trevor Project’s 2023 U.S. National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ Young People revealed that 41% of LGBTQIA+ youth (age 13-24) “seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, including roughly half of the trans and nonbinary youth.” To bring this home, this means that within the queer friend group of my nonbinary 17yo, it is likely 2+ out of 6 have seriously considered suicide.
Please keep in mind that I intentionally did NOT ask parents about whether or not their kids had experienced suicidality out of respect for their privacy and the sensitivity surrounding the topic. With that in mind, it seems probable that some parents opted not to share their own experiences with me because I didn’t ask them to. In other words, there are likely more unidentified examples of suicidality in my sample.
These grim statistics on teen suicide should be causing a worldwide outpouring of efforts to boost the overall wellbeing of our LGBTQIA+ youth. Instead, according to the ACLU, as of September 5, 2024, legislators in 41 states have proposed nearly 600 anti-LGBTQIA bills. More shockingly, 2024 is the fifth straight year of unprecedented transphobic hate at the legislative level, with 658 specifically antitrans bills proposed in 43 states; 45 having passed. Here is a sample of the transphobia being spread by elected leaders in IA, MO, NE and SD (gratefully, none of these bills were passed into law):
In IA, HF2396, 2139, and 620 all aimed to prohibit the possibility of disciplinary action taken against educators, administrators or students who fail to use the requested pronouns and/or name of a student in official documents. It aims to protect the educators' “right” to maintain the use of the name or pronouns that may appear on a student’s legal documents.
In NE, LB575 would have adopted the language and intent of identically-named bills from other states: the Sports and Spaces Act. This bill would ban students in public schools from participating in any school-sponsored athletic team not matched to their sex assigned at birth, as well as prohibit the use of any school bathroom or locker room not matched with their sex assigned at birth.
In SD, SB184 would have prohibited drag shows in an attempt to protect minors from performances “where a performer, in a lewd and lascivious manner, and in the presence of others, exhibits a gender identity that is different from the performer's biological sex through the use of clothing, makeup, or other physical markers.”
In many cases, these bills are framed by their supporters as protecting children. But the signs are clear that they do the exact opposite by creating a hostile environment. LGBTQIA+ kids living in supportive, accepting, and loving environments have a far greater chance of beating the odds related to mental illness and suicidality.
In addition to creating a life-threatening environment, these laws create unreasonable barriers for parents of gender-expansive kids to cross in order to meet the basics of healthcare and education. For example, some SD, NE and IA parents travel to MN in order to access gender-affirming care for their kids. In MO, parents travel to IL or CO. Assuming you are not already doing this for your family, imagine having to travel a minimum of 4 hours, one way, in order for your kid to have their annual physical. This means time off of work and school. Money for hotel, food, and gas. Because none of these costs are reimbursed by insurance, organizations like South Dakota Transformation Project have established funds to cover the gas and lodging costs. In addition, the Campaign for Southern Equality also has recently established a nationally-available fund for families in these types of situations called the Trans Youth Emergency Project. While these efforts by nonprofit organizations are amazing, it’s abhorrent that families need them in the first place.
Furthermore, gender-affirming providers practicing in these states are under intense scrutiny. For example, the bans on gender-affirming care for minors in IA, MO, NE and SD all have specific provisions within their laws that criminalize the provision of this type of care. This has led providers to close their practices. It has led others to move out of state. And it has left families with little means for accessing quality care for their kids. One parent had a discovery during our interview, stating, “Our psychiatrist that supports [our kid]... diagnosed [her] with gender dysphoria … so that it was in our chart [and would enable us to access the care she needs.] And that happened after the bill [banning gender-affirming care for minors] passed. So, there are probably interactions we're having with providers that could potentially get them into sticky waters.” Mind you, this is just a diagnosis. This psychiatrist and the pediatrician this child sees do not provide any medical intervention that is aligned with gender-affirming care because the child is under 10yo.
If or when this family needs to secure medically-necessary care (such as puberty blockers or hormones) for their child, they will need to travel out of state. The waitlists for providers in states like Minnesota and Illinois are as much as one year long. For example, this same parent shared, “We're on a waitlist to go to Children's Minnesota Hospital. I wanna get [our daughter] established as a patient [before she needs medical intervention.] We've been on the waitlist now for 8 months … I tried to get her into the transgender clinic at the Mayo Clinic but they're not taking anybody who isn't 17 and a half or older because they only have the capacity right now to take in the most urgent cases, which tend to be older kids going through puberty who are then starting hormonal therapy. Whereas [our daughter] doesn't need any physical care right now.” This mom added that after her daughter made comments about feeling like she didn’t “belong in this world … I called every single clinic I could think of or find in Kansas City, in Denver, in Chicago, in Minnesota. I mean, I was just making call after call after call ‘cause [I felt like we had to get] her on lists so that we can get connected to the right providers.”
You might ask, “Why don’t they just move?” None of the parents I interviewed from the Midwest indicated a plan to relocate because of these bans. However, I have interviewed 2 parents over the past year who did just that. Because of experienced threats and the fear of ongoing challenges, they moved their families to states that guarantee gender-affirming care, as well as legal protections from gender-identity-based discrimination in school and in public spaces.
These laws and rhetoric have also created an underground network of parents who utilize a rigorous vetting process in order to protect their kids and families. I experienced this firsthand. For instance, I received a cricket response from many parent groups in the Midwest, even when I named an existing contact I had within their network. My proven legitimacy didn’t immediately open doors for my visit to their towns. Additionally, while there was an initially positive response online to several events during my tour, many parents opted not to actually attend out of fear of being manipulated or of me misrepresenting myself. For these parents, too many times major national media outlets (including the likes of The New York Times) used their stories to twist the narrative against their kids. Understandably, they weren’t willing to risk having that happen again by meeting me for coffee.
This information, while hard to process and digest, might also be hard to believe. Especially for those of us living in states like Massachusetts where these bans are not our reality. But, check them out for yourself. The legislation and its impact are real.
Many parents implored me to use my book as a means of motivating people in blue states like MA into using our privilege of gender-affirming protections in defense of those living in places like IA, MO, NE and SD. They want these stories to serve as a battle cry for all parents raising gender-expansive kids. During my tour, I began to realize how these parents have been thrust into very vulnerable advocacy roles for their kids. Meaning, they have had to take up confrontational meetings with teachers and administrators at their kids’ schools. Most have testified in front of their state legislature; meaning they have shared their family’s most private information in an attempt to stop the passage of damning legislation. And many have been interviewed by local and national news outlets. Because of their willingness to speak up in defense of their kids, some have received violent threats and are under the protection of the FBI.
I now understand on a more human level how families across the US are navigating the current political climate. Because of that understanding, I better appreciate the plea to do more because I recognize that the defeat of transphobic rhetoric and laws requires the voices and influence of many.
To put it bluntly, we’ve got work to do and it’s going to take all of us to do it. With that in mind, don’t despair but do keep an eye out for my third blog in this series: The Hopeful. In it, I’m going to tell you about the amazing work being done in these 4 states. And I’m going to tell you about a few things all of us can do to have a powerful impact in the service of trans kids everywhere. Until then, in solidarity.
This post is part of my collection of blogs about cis parents of trans, nonbinary and gender-expansive kids called: Parenting Through Transitions. If you liked this post, please subscribe to receive my monthly email newsletter, as well as follow me on social @rachel_hulsteinlowe_llc.
Please take 10 seconds to complete this poll in response to my article. Thank you!
What do you know now about transphobic laws that you didn't know before reading this blog?
0%The mental health impact of these laws on trans kids.
0%That over 600 transphobic bills were proposed in 2024.
0%Trans families travel out of state to access health care.
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