I've found a good response to those transphobes who like to talk about the young children "mutilated and forced to medically transition". Obviously, they are talking about the myth that young trans kids are allowed to get surgeries and medically transition (young kids are only allowed socially transition) but there are a lot of benefits to pretending they aren't talking about that.
Whenever someone starts with that, I agree with them, I'm like "Oh, I know, it's terrible, isn't it?" Then I willfully misinterpret their statement and launch into a whole thing about intersex kids and how awful gender-normalizing surgeries (when performed on infants) are (many parents of intersex infants are pressured to agree to surgeries that will make the infant fit into one of the binary sexes. As they are infants and thus cannot make any decision, this can be harmful to them). Transphobes do not like this. They are forced to either care about intersex kids (which is a win) or admit that they don't care about children, they just want to hurt trans people.
This is a nice approach because you don't have to start a fight, you discredit any of their further transphobic ramblings and there is a chance you'll convince someone to become an ally to intersex people.
Here are some resources on intersex gender-normalizing surgery:
Behrens, K.G. A principled ethical approach to intersex paediatric surgeries. BMC Med Ethics 21, 108 (2020). from https://doi.org/10.1186/s12910-020-00550-x
Ford, K. (2001). "First, Do No Harm": The Fiction of Legal Parental Consent to Genital-Normalizing Surgery on Intersexed Infants. Yale Law & Policy Review, 19(2), 469-488. Retrieved June 27, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40239572
The Body, The Self. Hms.harvard.edu. (2021). Retrieved 27 June 2021, from https://hms.harvard.edu/magazine/lgbtq-health/body-self (TW, vaguely graphic descriptions of genitalia)
Anyway, I'm studying for exams so I'm stressed out, but I hope y'all are doing well.
YOU ARE READING
Being Nonbinary (Trans and Nonbinary Problems)
HumorAll the problems, mistakes tips, tricks and anecdotes I've collected over my long journey with gender identity. (I don't own any rights to the cover art, and will gladly remove it if the original artist has an issue with it's use)
