JP's Opinion: Gays Gays Go Away, Ohio's Unsafe for You Today
im trying to be clever but this kind of just sounds homophobic
Ohio has a problem.
Just one? you may ask. Full of snide and swagger.
Alright, more than one problem. But we gained another one. Our longstanding history of unhinged Republicans filling our state legislature with regressive, vitriolic legislation continues today. Gov. Mike DeWhiney signed three extremely regressive anti-trans and anti-gay bills—HB 68, SB 104, and HB 8. HB 68 bans gender-affirming care for trans kids and trans girls from playing in women’s leagues. Importantly, it does not ban trans men from playing in men’s leagues. SB 104 bans people in public schools from using whatever bathroom you want, and HB 8 is a “don’t say gay”-style bill that gives parents control over their kids’ access to queer content and requires schools to out queer kids to their parents.
This is going to be a bit of a talk, so strap in or get ready to skim.
Let’s talk about HB 68 + SB 104—the anti-trans bills—first.
1. Trans Affirming Care for Kids
“But JP!!! Kids are kids!! Last week my kid identified as a dinosaur! The week before he said he was a doggy because he likes dogs! We shouldn’t allow kids to do something so massive when they are so unsure about their lives!!”
Alright, maybe I’m being a bit dramatic, but the sentiment for many people is the same. Kids are kids. They are curious, they want to do new things, and they’re stupid. But here’s the thing. Gender affirming care isn’t the same thing as surgery. Gender affirming care could be something as small as wearing whatever clothes you want, wearing earings, your shaving habits, or using a different name or pronouns that feel right for you. If someone walked up to you and said their name is John, you’d have to be a psychopath to say “mmm, nah I think your name is Dan. So I’m going to call you Dan.”
If a kid wants to try out wearing pants, a dress, a t-shirt, whatever—who the fuck are we to say no? It isn’t any of our business telling other people what to wear, and sure as god’s got sandals if someone is that interested in what a child wants to wear, they’ve got other issues.
“But JP, JP, what about puberty blockers???”
What about ‘em? A. they’re entirely reversible. Your body doesn’t stop producing hormones, and all the blockers do is stop ‘em for a bit. Then the person decides whether they feel right or not and either continue with it, or don’t. Oh, and BTW almost no one who wants puberty blockers ever decides it isn’t for them. B. hormones are used on the regular to help people who suffer from polycystic ovary syndrome, prostate cancer, and hair loss. Not to mention illegal use of steroids and testosterone to boost muscle mass, of which several studies show anywhere from 3.3-5% of adolescent boys use steroids illegally and without medical supervision for this reason (which is a larger percent than how many trans kids exist, who only make up around 3%).
My point being, tons of people use tons of hormones for tons of reasons. Extremely safe, entirely reversible, and supervised puberty blockers are not an issue.
2. Toilet Talk
Now, most people have the appropriate level of shame, and don’t dare to care about who shits where. And that’s pretty much the entire thing.
Yes, I understand some may fear a cis boy saying he is trans to walk into the “girls” bathroom. However, I have bad news for you. We have not yet reached a point where voice-activated bathroom doors are being installed in our school bathrooms. If someone wants to walk into a bathroom, they just can.
Furthermore, if someone is going to harass or assault someone else, they already do. Preventing trans people from using a bathroom isn’t the pin holding our country together, preventing sexual assault and harassment. In fact, when bathroom bills (like Ohio’s) are passed, it usually leads to More sexual violence.
Last, people don’t seem to understand the mechanics of how bathroom bans will work. This is going to get explicit and uncomfortable. Student A enters the bathroom. Student B does not believe Student A belongs in the bathroom. Student B reports Student A. Student A is sent to the office to have their ID checked, or, have a middle-aged administrator pull their pants down and look at their genitals. That is sickening and wrong. Students will target each other, use it as a tool of humiliation and bullying—and what about the sick freak checking what’s in kids’ pants??
Even if they only check birth certificates, where the hell are we? Some fucking police state?
Why the hell are we asking for papers to take a shit? Why are we so petrified of people coming to shit and piss?
3. Sports Talk
We live in America. Isn’t there anything sacred? Our Beer. Our Football. Our Jalapeno poppers.
I get it, we want sports to be fair. But the last thing you should be concerned about is a trans athlete. Do you ever notice people only care about trans people in women’s sports? Even though trans men are the ones who get to actually take testosterone, and trans women are the ones taking estrogen, it doesn’t matter because everyone KNOWS women could never compete with men. It’s a sexist idea. Plain and simple. You know that guy who watches Caitlyn Clark play basketball, and after burping up some NattyLite froth says he could beat her? That’s who we’re dealing with.
A. Men, much like women, come in all shapes and sizes. About 1 in 10 women have above average levels of testosterone, and men regularly have high estrogen levels, especially as they age. You don’t know that the random trans athlete will be more physically predisposed to outperform another random cis athlete. It absolutely has to do with how much each person trains, lifts, practices, and wants the victory. No one comes to a game without training, and pretending it’s all about gender just means you don’t get the work athletes put in. And you can tell it’s about the practice and not the gender from the results nationwide. Lia Thomas, a trans swimmer, finished consistently behind cis women, swam 15 seconds slower than her previous times when she identified as a man, and broke 0 NCAA records. In women’s volleyball, San José State had a trans player this past year and tied for second with three other teams, losing the number 1 slot to a team of cis girls.
B. Much like the bathroom bill, the function of this is going to be disgusting. Some random man will be rooting around in children’s pants if there is some accusation that a given child doesn’t “belong” in a league. Imagine all the parents who are wayyyyy too invested in their child winning a given game, and tell me you honestly believe they won’t use this as another avenue to try and be disgusting freaks. I can tell that this will happen because this weird trans-panic already happens in the world around us. The Olympic Champion of women’s boxing, Imane Khelif, was accused of being trans because she “hit so hard” and has a square jaw. Trans panic like this doesn’t just hurt trans kids. It hurts all kids who will be targeted for falling outside “normal” perceptions of gender.
C. Take a guess for how many Ohio high school athletes are being affected by trans-athletes. Given the amount of attention, and strong language used by Republican lawmakers, you’d assume it’s a pressing issue for millions of Ohioans!
It’s 17 trans girls.
That’s a small high school classroom of students being specifically targeted by a bunch of middle-aged men in Columbus. I’m sure that’s all above board.
Long story short: we’re not talking about Olympians, we’re talking about very very few young people, who’ve never shown the dominance Republicans claim will exist. It’s dumbassery.
But don’t just take it from me, I asked Sydni Porter, a local 3L at CSU College of Law who wrote an entire Law Review article about a related bill, a few questions.
Q1—Tell me about “Don’t Say Gay” bills. What are they? What do they do?
Syd: Don’t Say Gay bills are state statutes, often called the “Parent’s Bill of Rights” because proponents claim the goal is to reinvigorate a parent’s role in their child’s life at school. However, legislators intentionally draft these bills as facially neutral — meaning, when you read it, there’s nothing blatantly discriminatory in the text itself. It requires schools either ban or limit discussions on LGBT topics, like “sexuality content” and “gender ideology” without defining what either of those terms mean, or what is age appropriate for different age groups. It also requires teachers to “out” kids who ask to go by another name or pronoun at school to their parents, without any regard for whether the child’s home is safe.
Q2—Okay, so what happens when a bill like this passes? Regardless of the intent by lawmakers, what’s the effect on kids in school?
Syd: What ends up happening in these states that have enacted laws like this is that LGBT students and teachers become scared to speak out about their lives, experiences, and queerness as a whole while in school in fear of violating the law, because it is so ambiguous. This ends up creating a de facto silence on topics that could even innocently or harmlessly be adjacent to violating the law, in fear that a parent or other advocate would sue the school or teacher for violating the law. So, for example, there’s a baseline ban on any discussion for kids under the third grade. So what happens when first graders are asked to create and present a family tree, and they happen to have two moms? Has this first grade teacher accidentally taught sexuality content or gender ideology if another student hadn’t known about gay people before this? Is this student instead singled out and not allowed to present her family tree because she has two moms? The bill is too ambiguous for us to know, but we do know that if the student had straight parents, there wouldn’t be a problem. For gender non-conforming kids, school goes from being a safe place where they can test a new name or pronoun, or to seek gender affirmation in that way for the first time, to a place that’s just as dangerous as home, in some instances. An earlier draft of House Bill 8 included provisions where a student’s home life would be considered in deciding to inform the parents of this change, but that has since been removed. It’s clear that the focus is not on the child’s wellbeing when a forced outing could put the student’s home life at risk.
Q3—Learning about the world, and about yourself, is hard. It’s challenging. Can we trust teachers to handle these topics?
Syd: Teachers already do handle these topics, and they bring in parents when they feel it is appropriate and necessary. While parents certainly have the right to teach their kids what they want about LGBT topics, they’re becoming increasingly common for all ages. There are queer parents and non-binary characters in children’s shows, like the Loud House or Paw Patrol. The school is meant to be a place where students of all ages learn and are confronted with new people and ideas — it’s the same reason why we study different cultures from a young age. Being exposed to new and different ideas is a good thing, and allowing queer kids to have a safe space for their existence to be less controversial, or at the very least okay, is crucial to making sure queer student’s mental health is put at the forefront. If we have a school system that allows one type of family or identification to be okay, by banning discussions of another, we’ve inherently reinforced an idea that it isn’t okay.
Both gender ideology and sexuality content is reinforced in innocent ways every day within schools. Every time a teacher asks for a “big, strong boy” to help move chairs in the class, a gender ideology or role is reinforced, despite the statement being innocent enough.
Q4—From a legal standpoint, does this run into issues? What about the First Amendment?
Syd: Absolutely — legal challenges could be raised by either the First or Fourteenth Amendments. By having these undefined terms upholding the meat of the law, it creates this “chilling effect” where speech is silenced under implied limitations through the law. While teachers’ rights can and are limited, especially in grades K-12, students do not lose their rights to free speech when they enter school, so long as it is not vulgar or obscene. Political speech that does not substantially or materially disrupt school is protected under the First Amendment. Just because LGBT topics or identities can suggest something adjacent to sexual topics does not make it vulgar or obscene. If a family tree depicting straight parents is appropriate, there’s no reason why it should be different for queer parents. With the forced outing, students who may have otherwise come out on their own terms at school but weren’t yet comfortable at home, may instead fear the repercussions of doing so under HB 8. In Florida, we’ve seen school libraries removing children’s books depicting gay penguins as inappropriate under the same kind of law. There’s definite implications here, despite the neutral language on the surface
Syd’s note is being published in the upcoming release of the Journal of Law and Health. You can read the whole thing here.
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