Everyone gets pie
I’ve been thinking a bunch about why some people feel so threatened by the existence of transgender kids (or trans people in general).
The level of fear and rage is hard for me to understand, so I’ve been listening carefully to transgender activists and thought leaders speaking and writing on this subject, and two threads are standing out to me right now.
First, trans kids have a freedom that is threatening to people who live bound to conformity, convention, and comfort—a freedom from the binary gender boxes that society dictates for us.
If you’re sitting in your nice, neat, comfortable box of conformity because that’s what you’ve been taught to do and what you’ve been rewarded for doing, then seeing someone else have amazing joy from living outside of those boxes might make you question your own relationship with freedom. Feeling bound by conformity might be a result of your own values and choices, which forces you to take a good hard look at yourself from the inside out. Getting out of your comfort zone is hard, and many people don’t want to do it and even see it as a threat. Plus, difference means discomfort for many people, because the unfamiliar calls into question what we thought we knew about ourselves and how the world works.
Second, this perceived threat is about power and control. Society values conformity more than creativity and freedom. If fitting neatly into society’s boxes brings you success, privilege, and power, then someone who disregards those boxes might feel like a threat to that power or status in society. Many people who have power and control maintain a scarcity mindset—that there’s only so much joy and freedom to go around. Seeing someone else gaining power, a seat at the table, or even basic human rights might make you feel that your own rights will somehow be diminished or taken away. This concept really helps make sense of all the political nonsense going on against trans kids and people; the people in power hold on to it tightly. And erasing people who threaten that power is a means to that end.
But rights and freedoms aren’t like a pie with a certain number of slices. It’s not a zero-sum game. There’s more than enough joy to go around. Everyone should have the freedom to be themselves, and transgender kids are no different. Everyone gets pie.
These transgender activists speak much more eloquently on this topic than I do:
Alok Vaid-Menon’s book Beyond the Gender Binary really dives into the cultural belief of a gender binary and why we need to move beyond it.
Ty Duran always has good thoughts and wisdom on this subject – follow them on Instagram or Tiktok.
Chase Strangio of the ACLU often writes about the perceived threat of transgender people, and you can read some of his work here.