Heather Brunskell-Evans described ‘trans children’ as “necessary victims” of transgender ideology, shoring up the identity claims of adults and easing the path to social acceptance and policy change by taking the focus off of sexual motivations for transition.
But there’s more to it than that: believing in ‘trans kids’ and advocating for early education about gender identity and ever-earlier medical interventions serve subtler and deeper purposes, too.
When someone transitions as an adult, they have a strong interest in framing that decision as part of a coherent life story. That means going back and reinterpreting the past through the lens of their trans identity, so that a reimagined childhood suddenly bristles with unheeded signs.
And if children today can be born ‘trans,’ then you can take solace in the idea that you were born that way, too. The idea that trans identity is innate offers a way out of the self-doubt and questioning that’s ubiquitous in trans spaces. If you were born this way, then you did the only thing you could do when you transitioned, whatever the costs.
And let’s talk about those costs. If transition hasn’t given you what you wanted and needed from it—if your sense of dis-ease migrates around your body as you pursue one intervention after another, if you’ve missed out on other opportunities in life or alienated friends and family—the question inevitably arises: were you wrong to place your faith in transition? Why hasn’t transition delivered? It’s tempting to say: yes, transition was the right answer but it hasn’t worked out as I hoped because I didn’t have the information I needed to recognize my identity in time, because I couldn’t access interventions at a young-enough age, because there were too many hurdles to clear.
“Trans kids” give adults a second chance to live out the promise of transition. Even if transition didn’t deliver for you, you can avoid questioning everything you’ve based your life on by believing in and fighting for “trans kids.” “Trans kids” let adults say: Just because transition didn’t work out the way I wanted and needed it to doesn’t mean that I was wrong to put my faith in transition. Rather, I was wronged by social forces that withheld information and medical interventions from me. If only I’d learned about gender identity as a Kindergartner, I would have known what I was…
Again, it begs the question "are we comfortable saddling children with the responsibility for decisions that will impact them the rest of their lives?" And I would remind parents that "it's not you who has to live in that body, it's your kid" and "no amount of affirmation is going to keep them from the inevitable doubt and self-examination we all experience in life" and when that happens "will they have the tools to deal with it?" And "what will you say to them if they ask you 'why did you allow this to happen?"
It’s not uncommon for paedophiles to try & justify what they do or want to do to children as being what they “would have loved to have happened” to them at the same age. (It’s clearly a ret-con & a self-justification).
It seems to be similar for trans-identified men.
Though much of the adulation & some of the pressure for transing kids obviously comes from women.