I'm a Lesbian, I Want to Have a Baby, and I'm Grateful for Danielle Smith's Proposed Policies
Stop stealing the future of kids who would just grow up to be like me
Ever since Alberta Premier Danielle Smith introduced a comprehensive set of policies to tackle gender ideology in Alberta, a relentless chorus of voices has accused her of being transphobic, homophobic, and pretty much the worst bigot ever.
Keep in mind that one of the main goals of these policies is to keep children whole and healthy by curtailing the use of endocrine disrupters, cross-sex hormones, and surgical interventions simply because a child is deemed not to perfectly fit into sex stereotypes. And yet, there has been no end to the gross accusations that these policies will result in children possibly taking their own lives. Even more abhorrent are the accusations that this is actually the Premier’s goal.
If you listen to the mainstream media and the mainstream activists, you would think the only way for a lesbian to react to this is with the same level of vitriol. But what I want to express is my gratitude to the Premier for surely saving so many little girls like I once was.
As I have written in greater detail over at Reality’s Last Stand, I would have been a “trans kid.”
I find myself in a constant state of disbelief that society has not only medicalized childhood gender-nonconformity, but that many now consider this “progressive.”
This hits especially close to home for me because if I had been born later, I could have easily been one of these girls. I hated skirts and dresses. I loved having short hair. I had mostly male friends, I liked sports, and I had other hobbies and interests that were more typical of my male peers. I often fantasized about being the prince—not the princess—from Disney movies, and I identified much more strongly with the male characters in my favorite TV shows.
Big surprise: I grew up to be a lesbian.
Had I been told at the time that it was possible to become a boy, or that I already was a boy, I would have grabbed onto the idea and not let go. What today’s trans activists think is the best course for a child like that, a child like me, is to put them on a pathway that begins with social transition, continues to endocrine disrupters, cross-sex hormones, and surgical interventions, and ends in sexual dysfunction and sterility.
Today, I want to start a family and have a baby, and I feel deep contempt for the activists who would have flippantly stolen that from me while patting themselves on the back about how kind and loving they are. They would have stolen my long-term, loving, adult intimate relationship, and they would have stolen my actual reproductive capacity.
But I was lucky enough to be born early enough to escape their destructive clutches. This is not the case for so many children today.
I think it’s easy for activists and ideologues to brush away my concerns about what might have happened to me because it didn’t actually happen. But to brush away that this could be happening to many young girls who are just like I was takes a special kind of wilful ignorance that can only be described as evil. The hubris it takes to think that every child who receives these incredibly drastic interventions truly needs them and will truly benefit from them is beyond comprehension.
And the bottom line is that no child needs these interventions. No child needs to have their perfectly healthy development halted and then forcibly altered, whether they are a gender non-conforming girl who will grow up to be a lesbian or an autistic boy who doesn’t feel like he fits in. No child deserves such cruelty for being a little different.
I only offer myself and my unique circumstances as an example because, sometimes, people need that real-life example of the potential consequences of ideologically driven beliefs.
This topic is particularly on my mind at the moment because the WPATH Files were released yesterday, and of course one of the issues it addresses is that “gender medicine” is openly admitted by those practicing it to cause sterility. Yet this reality is often waved away, as if was on this horrific clip featuring Daniel L. Metzger, an Investigator and Pediatric Endocrinologist at the BC Children's Hospital.
(Please check out the full report. It was written by my friend Mia Hughes and she did an incredible job. It is going to be integral to putting a stop to this medical scandal.)
So, dear trans activists, please let girls like me grow up whole and with the possibility of pursuing loving relationships and experiencing motherhood if they want to. Don’t steal their future from them because you think their likes, interests, or behaviors make them too different from other girls. They deserve the chance to learn to accept their bodies and to mature and grow just like their peers who you would call “cis.”
And dear Premier Smith, thank you for caring enough about girls like me to propose the necessary steps to protect that future for them.
I, too, am fortunate that I was a little sissy boy in the late 1950s and early 1960s and not today. Not only was I very blond and very pretty, I never exhibited typical little-boy behaviors of my era such as the compulsion to chase after balls and play other sports, roughhouse with other boys, fidget and be disruptive in class and idolize sports figures. I threw away my cap guns well before I was ten because I didn't like the violence they symbolized. My open minded mother bought me the Barbie doll I wanted so badly. I once put on a runway show on the dining table. My two Cub Scout merit badges were for my butterfly collection and for being able to sew on a button, boil an egg and iron a hankie.
It probably helped that we were living in a South American capital and was attending the British School there. My mother surely knew that if she'd sent me to the school for American expats I would have been a target of the little thugs in the informal gender police. As it was, except for one very unpleasant early scene on the school bus in which the children came up with a chant that told me I was a "little lady," I escaped harassment for being gender nonconforming. One of the jocks in my 6th grade class informed me I was a "pansy" when he paused in front of our house to observe me planting annuals with my mother, but it was a simple matter-of-fact statement (he was right, after all) and he never brought up the matter again. Thank you, Eddie!
Now, I never had any doubts that I was a boy and I knew even then that I was same-sex attracted. My fascination with Barbie had to do with the esthetic appeal and variety of her wardrobe. I wanted to dress Barbie, not be her.
However, since I was a very polite little boy who was quick to do what adults expected of me, it's an open question what would have happened had one or more of the authority figures in my life told me that boys are sometimes really little girls (and vice versa) and suggested that I explore my gender identity. I think I would have resisted.
As grateful that my understanding of my sex role and sex wasn't challenged during my childhood and adolescence, I wouldn't wish my closeted high school, college and law school years in the 70s on anyone.
Another excellent article.
The strangest thing for me to grasp is that is that any attempt to use our LG lived experiences as a defence against medicalizing and sterilizing children and youth (as you have done here) is shot down and, still, the anti-trans, TERF hater label is wielded against us by some of the most intelligent and compassionate people I know.
I spend a lot of time contemplating why this is. Is it internalized homophobia for some? Is it fear of having to admit that it was ethically wrong to allow this to happen and that irreparable harm has been caused? Are many afraid to speak out for fear of being attacked and shamed?
As more and more detransitioners and desistors are allowed to speak, my sense is it is going to blow and there’s going to be a lot of finger pointing for who bears responsibility for what as I see is a crime against humanity.