Take notes. Great piece. I appreciate the research, because it points out the lack of research. But. It goes to law, and I appreciate that, too. What I’m looking at these days is not based in gender issues. It’s based in violence. I was teaching a group of adolescents with HIV. We met three times a day. Because you had to be on top of it. It can all change in the blink of an eye. At first, they talked mainly about trans issues. A few dressed accordingly. It was an announcement that they were here. They talk the talk, and they walk the walk. At night, they did sex work to survive. Some of the gay boys had problems with a lot of it. Face it. They were afraid of becoming them. The Other is the Other and so are you.

This piece does not go to violence. That was not the theme. No one talks about the violence, or if they do, it’s academic. You give social work names to it. You give sociology names to it. If you are grasping at that data, the odds of you belonging to the caste of us untouchables is obvious. You have never suffered a concussion from a fist. Or a baseball bat. I have seen teachers beat them up. To go home to change clothes or be suspended. I have seen cops look the other way when a child is being raped by the men who attacked her in cold blood. The murder rate applies every time they walk out the door. The media thinks it’s colloquial. It’s not. It’s everywhere. My teens in that classroom had to process. Three times a day. Just to discuss what went on an hour ago.

Poor kids do not get the surgery stage. Caste and poverty are what they are. Dehumanizing humiliation. Rich kids from  suburban families who have health insurance can get the surgery. No one is coming home from school with a different gender. That, too, is a self-created (homo sapiens are so kind to each other) vibe constructed to immobilize and freeze you back to 1949. The media only finds them a curious fetish for the non-conforming. They are fodder for the 24 hour news cycle. We hate these children because we hate ourselves.