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    • His father is terrified of Trump’s plans for transgender youth
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    His father is terrified of Trump’s plans for transgender youth

    Umito Posted on

    We hear the fear, the anguish in his voice when he talks about his daughter. He’s afraid for her because he thinks doing his job as a father — keeping his daughter happy, healthy and safe — is going to become extremely difficult under President-elect Donald Trump’s administration.

    His daughter – a bright elementary school student who loves riding her bike, playing with her friends and hugging him every night when he comes home from work – is transgender. And Trump, who decisively won last week’s election, vowed to roll back protections for members of the LGBTQ+ communityparticularly those of transgender minors, fueling what many see as an already hateful environment.

    “It’s my job to protect (my daughter) and now everything is so much more dangerous that we don’t know what’s going to happen next,” said the father, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he fears for the safety of their child. “It’s scary. It’s terrifying.”

    He added: “My daughter… she’s a regular kid… The fact that she’s trans isn’t the most interesting thing about her… It’s just who she is and what if If it weren’t for the fact that half the country seems to think she’s somehow a threat, I don’t think we’d really think about it.”

    What Trump says

    Throughout his campaign, Trump has been clear about his anti-transgender position, even while pretending, falsely, that the schools Are, without parental approval, sex reassignment surgeries for students.

    The president-elect has pledged to ban gender-affirming care for minors and to exclude from Medicaid and Medicare programs any hospitals or health care providers that participate in such programs. care of minorswhich most often involves puberty blockers or hormonal treatment. A study from the Harvard School of Public Health found that gender affirmation surgery is rarely performed on minors.

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    Trump also pledged to establish a new “teacher accreditation body” which will “promote positive education about the nuclear family, the roles of mothers and fathers, and celebrate rather than erase the things that make men and women different and unique.”

    And he pledged to ask Congress to pass a law stating that the only genders recognized by the U.S. government are male and female and that those genders are assigned at birth.

    Members of the LGBTQ+ community say the campaign, which included numerous anti-trans ads with the slogan “Kamala is for them; Trump is for you,” has eroded public acceptance of trans people.

    “I think over the years we’ve learned with Trump that there’s no way to fully understand what motivates him on a daily basis,” said Mark Erwin, executive director of the Highland-based Ruth Ellis Center Park and who helps LGBTQ+ teenagers. “But I can tell you that the political rhetoric used by his campaign has caused… harm, in particular, to trans youth across the United States.”

    » Said Erin Knott, executive director of Equality Michigan, which works to advocate for and reduce violence against the LGBTQ+ community; “I have a 13-year-old trans teenager who is very close to me in my daily life… and he told me that ‘it’s a matter of life and death.’ It’s hard enough being 13…you’re supposed to be a kid. But on top of that, they now worry about what will happen to them. »

    Making an already vulnerable group even more vulnerable

    The fear and uncertainty comes at a time when transgender youth, due to lack of acceptance and stigma, are already more likely to suffer from depression and suicidal behavior, more likely to be victims of violence and abuse . homeless than their cisgender peers, peers who identify with the sex they were assigned at birth.

    In 2023, about 3% of high school students identified as transgender and about 2% reported questioning their sexual orientation, according to a study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    The study also found:

    ∎ About 25% of transgender and questioning students reported skipping school because they felt unsafe, compared to 8.5% of cisgender male students;

    ∎ About 40% of transgender and questioning students reported being bullied at school;

    ∎ About 70% of transgender and questioning students reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness;

    ∎ About 26% of transgender and questioning students have attempted suicide in the past year, compared to 5% of cisgender students and 11% of cisgender female students.

    Research shows that gender-affirming therapies help minimize the risk of depression and suicidal behaviors. According to a study published in 2022 by the Journal of the American Medical Association, Youth who received gender-affirming therapy were 60% less likely to have depression and 73% less likely to have suicidal ideation or behavior than youth who did not receive gender-affirming care. gender.

    “What I hope,” Erwin said, is that “his administration will take a moment to reflect on what it has done, what it has caused and the impact of its words on our community and will take a minute to reevaluate its priorities so they serve all Americans, not just those who are part of the MAGA movement.”

    On the LGBTQ+ community, he added: “We have made significant progress over the last 10 years. There is still a lot of work to do, but we are a community of resilience and we are a community that leans on each other and together we will take it step by step.

    “I see my baby”

    The anonymous father of a trans child at a Detroit elementary school did what he could to protect his daughter from hate. Father and daughter enjoy watching the Detroit Lions together, but to keep his daughter from seeing the anti-train commercials that air during football games, he recorded the games and watched them on delay to fast forward through the commercials.

    Outside of immediate family, few people know of her daughter’s transgender status. To keep this circle small, the family moved to a new school district that seemed trans-friendly and where no one knew the girl. There, an administrator knows she is trans, but her teacher does not.

    “I’ll never tell her not to be who she is, but at the same time we have to make a lot of decisions for her about what’s safe and what’s not safe, because she’s a child and we are the adults we have to understand this stuff,” the father said.

    But after the elections, he is particularly worried. “I want her to get proper care,” he said of his daughter. “I trust his pediatrician and I trust adult trans people who say how much hormones have changed their lives and teenagers who say the same thing. I read a thing once where basically if your child comes out as trans, you You can have a trans child who feels supported and loved or you can have a trans child who feels rejected and alone.”

    That’s really all he wants, a happy, healthy child.

    “He was a baby like everyone else,” the man said. “And we took her home and we took care of her and she learned to walk and talk and became this whole person. And it’s not because she’s not exactly who we thought she was going to be that her and that baby is no longer the same person Where some people want you to see a threat, I just see my baby sleeping on me, my toddler organizing a. birthday party for his stuffed animals and my little kid going to his first day of school party I wish everyone could see this.

    Contact Georgea Kovanis: [email protected]

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    Umito
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