Nothing endangers more transgender people than hate given media airtime.
We have come to expect it from Fox News. Fox and Friends invited Michelle Malkin to help hate on the new law in California which legally entitles transgender students to access facilities and programs appropriate to their gender.
The hosts of “Fox and Friends” are so mad that transgender students in California are now legally entitled to use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity. And they are also so confused about what being transgender even means! (No one will explain it to them, either. No one! Not a single segment producer or Fox News intern or even the Internet!)
Malkin is outraged that parents and educators are willing to listen and trust transgender students rather than harass them and shame them about their gender identity and expression.
I think this is social engineering run amuck. Apparently according to the bill that was signed, transgender is defined anyway they want to! As long as a child has the self-perception that they are transgender, they will be able to go into any bathroom that they want. Really, I think it’s a usurpation of local, parental and community control.
--Malkin
Gretchen Carlson jumped right in.
We know that kids like to pull pranks,. Can you imagine now, the boys want to go into the girls bathroom and the girls want to go into the boys bathroom, and they can just say, ‘Oh, well, I was transgender for the moment.’
I just can’t get my head around this.
--Carlson
Yeah, that's what kids are going to do, because we all know how popular they will become when they are labeled as transgender in their communities.
It's more disappointing to see CNN invite the leader of the anti-LGBT hate group, Save California to debate the new law with a transgender man, supposedly in the name of "equal time."
On CNN Newsroom Randy Thomasson spewed the usual anti-transgender garbage about us being "sexually confused."
Media Matters enumerates some past outrageous statements from Thomasson.
1. In February 2013, Thomasson blasted LGBT equality supporters, who had "infiltrated" the political and legal system with an eye toward starting a new civil war.
2. Appearing on The Janet Mefferd Show in October 2012, Thomasson lambasted California Democrats for supporting a ban on "conversion therapy" for gays, saying that their efforts were part of "the Devil's work."
3. As the California measure banning conversion therapy made its way through the legislature in July 2012, Thomasson appealed to his supporters to kill "this horrible bill locking children into homosexual bondage."
4. In September 2011, Thomasson appeared on The Janet Mefferd Show, where he strongly suggested that California teen Larry King was asking for it before a fellow student murdered him.
5. In 2009, as California's legislature was taking up a bill to create a day in honor of slain San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, Thomasson said that the measure would "honor a sexual predator" and "could mean ... cross-dressing exercises" at California public schools.
This is the man chosen to present the other side to equal treatment of gender-variant people. Masen Davis of the Transgender Law Center spoke on our side.
You might notice at the very end that Thomasson just couldn't help a personal jab at Mr. Davis when he said, "Hey, good to talk to you ladies."
This is exactly the sort of media coverage that generates the behavior of people like the parents in Bakersfield's Panama-Buena Vista Union School District who are threatening to remove their children from schools in the district in protest of the law.
I have some major concerns with this, because this is opening up a can of worms.
--David Mongold, parent
I urge this board to flub your nose at Jerry Brown and tell him we will not be told how, when and where to raise our children.
--Chase Baker, parent
Parents were demanding that each board member state if they supported the new law.
Are they going to have an assembly to let our children know, to let our daughters know that if a boy feels like he identifies as a girl, can he be in her restroom?
--Mongold
By the way, there is no indication that there are any transgender students in this school district. I sure hope not.
There is video at the previous link that I did not embed because it starts automatically. Again we encounter the claim that boys will claim, "I feel transgender today," in order to access the girls bathroom. One mother predicts that there will be rapes because of the new law.
In actuality the new law requires transgender kids to be evaluated by a professional before they are accorded transgender status. One cannot be "transgender for a day."
There was also controversy in the Kern County School District near Bakersfield.
In this case the media actually bothered to interview an advocate as well as some outraged parents.
These are important opportunities for transgender students to be whole human beings and they are absolutely necessary. This is not people who are looking to get a thrill by going into the opposite gender bathroom. These are people who truly feel that they have belonged in the opposite bathroom all along.
--Whitney Weddell
You don't know. The doctor doesn't know if they go in there acting like they are.
--Rosa Lomas, grandparent
We know for damn sure that Ms. Lomas knows nothing about transgender people.
I think they should wait until they are at least 18 so they they can know for sure if that's what they want because they don't get embarrassed when they are older and say, oh I wasn't really sure.
--Arlene Vasquez, parent
Ms. Vasquez not only knows nothing about transgender people, she thinks there should be a minimum age for people to become themselves.
That's for her comfort, of course…not the comfort of the actual transgender students.
Given all this crap, I predict a startling increase in the amount of harassment of transgender students in particular and Californian transpeople in general. Violent acts are not out of the question.