The latest developments in the case of the 12-year-old transgender girl in Oklahoma are the result of what happens when feelings are presented as fact and both “sides” behave in an irresponsible manner, contradicting logic and humanity, compassion and reality.
Maddie was born male and has, according to news sources, been living as a girl for the last two years. Maddie typically uses the staff bathroom at school but could not locate it at the new middle school so the student used a girls’ restroom. When one of the parents discovered this, outrage followed and the Dallas Morning News reports parents of students at Maddie’s school threatened and demeaned Maddie online. An airline pilot was suspended for comments he made about threatening the student and Maddie’s mother filed a protective order after the pilot confronted her in person. Maddie’s family may move.
It’s disappointing to see adults react in such a manner about a child who is twelve years old, transgender or not. Verbal abuse or threats to harm a child or family members are wrong and should not be tolerated. At the same time, and I say this treading lightly here – because again, verbal abuse or threats are inexcusable – the continued presupposition that transgender students automatically can shift the paradigm without pause or question is also wrong.
[Also read: Cynthia Nixon announces son is transgender on ‘Trans Day of Action’]
The way to handle this cultural shift is not to make slurs, jokes, or threats, but neither is it to pretend that the 12 year-old behaving as another gender entirely is normal. Parents should push back, but they don’t need to verbally or physically threaten a child to do so. Living as a transgender person, especially as a child, is often harmful, mentally and emotionally, to the child and allowing this is based on very little evidence that doing so helps long-term. In fact, the opposite is true.
The so-called “bathroom” wars and the lawsuits and bills that have sparked it has nothing to do with bathrooms at all. It is based on a child suffering from dysphoria who believes the cure lay in denying biological reality and transitioning to another gender thereby prolonging the problem. Instead of handling the issue privately, children and their parents bring this into school and impose their right to act based on feelings rather than facts on students and teachers who make up the majority of the school. (Later, often with the help of ACLU attorneys, the school is sometimes sued.)
In this case, I’m not saying the student deserved or caused abuse at all – the child did not and the parents should have fueled their outrage in other more productive ways. But transgender children and their families are presenting to a majority the de facto right to shift the paradigm when really the issue is a classic case of political correctness de jure.
These cases will only continue to pop up, until society ultimately gives in or places parameters and healthy boundaries around this issue entirely.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
