The most toxic trait of progressivism is how various interest groups prop up children as their activists of choice.
It’s bad enough with global warming. But there is no issue where that is more destructive and shameful than transgenderism.
NBC News, looking to score political points against Texas, published a piece by Jo Yurcaba about an 11-year-old “prominent trans rights activist” who is leaving the state over its allowing child-abuse investigations into parents who begin transitioning young children.
Putting aside the merits and criticisms of Texas’s policy, propping up the idea that an 11-year-old child suffering from gender confusion is a prominent activist worthy of headlines is an issue that must itself be addressed — a form of media child abuse.
According to Yurcaba, 11-year-old Kai Shappley has “fought anti-trans bills” in Texas since he was 5. Kai has been raised as a girl since at least the age of 4, and this decision has been propped up by Good Morning America, NBC’s TODAY, Teen Vogue, Vogue, the Associated Press, and now NBC News. Shappley is not the only activist child in the family, though. Nine-year-old brother Kaleb (who is not transgender) has been thrown into media interviews as well.
Progressive groups have propped up children to serve as activists for climate change policies. Some gun control groups (and sympathetic media figures) used the tragedy of a mass shooting to push children to the forefront of the gun control debate. But using children as activists for transgenderism, particularly when those children are transgender themselves, is remarkably irresponsible.
Roughly 80% of children who claim to be transgender grow out of it by the time they become adults. The procedures being pushed on these children, ranging from puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to surgical transitions, have permanent effects that cannot simply be reversed if someone changes their mind. Children are pushed down this irreversible path based on decisions that they make when they are as young as 4, as Shappley was. A 13-year-old is not fit to make those kinds of decisions, let alone a preschooler, yet that’s what media outlets are promoting through Shappley.
Children suffering from gender dysphoria deserve sympathy and assistance. They do not deserve to be forced down an irreversible medical path and then paraded in front of the media to encourage other families to abuse their own children in the same way. Children deserve time to be children, not political activists. Using them as pawns for transgenderism is especially harmful.
