Clutch your pearls, everyone! We can’t allow transgender kids to use bathrooms that don’t match the gender on their birth certificates! That would lead to chaos and rape and grooming and, who knows, someone might catch transgenderism from the toilet seat or something!
Except, wait a minute. Do you personally know anyone who has been attacked by a transgender person in a bathroom, or anywhere else for that matter? Are you always aware of what sexual organs are being employed in the stall next to you? (And if so, why, you creepy voyeur?) And how does that impact you? Have you ever known anyone to have changed their entire lives based on something that was said to them in a bathroom? No? Me neither.
Toilet stall occupancy? Is that all you’ve got? Really?
Should bathroom politics take more of our energy than making kids feel safe in school in general? Why isn’t more done about bullying? Why do we live in a country where kids have to do active shooter drills (something that does NOT make kids feel safe, by the way) rather than outlawing semi-automatic weapons in the first place?
Shouldn’t we be more concerned about the fact that 1 of every 30 teens experiences homelessness? And do we really believe that one solution for that would be getting rid of what is probably their one decent meal of the day, in the form of free lunches? Brilliant, that. And perhaps, maybe, we shouldn’t drive the good teachers away by preventing them from teaching the truth and depriving them of a living wage.
Even those legislators who push these bathroom agendas must know that they’re stupid, deep down. But you know what? Their stupidity and their desire to translate fear into votes and distract people from the real issues gets people killed and destroys lives.
I’m ranting about this because I just read an article entitled, Oklahoma Republicans Passed a Bathroom Bill. Now a Trans Kid Is Dead.
Nex Benedict was a 16-year-old straight A student who loved their cat and also loved reading and drawing. And yet there was a target on their back. No kid deserves to die for who they are. Maybe the kids in the fight weren’t intending to kill Nex, but the fact remains. (By the way, it may have been an accident, but those kids had voluntarily made Nex’s life a living hell via their bullying for the past year, and in my opinion that speaks volumes about their characters.)
Nex was a kid full of potential, and now that potential is snuffed out, simply because these kids were taught to hate. Maybe they will live the rest of their lives in denial, because Nex walked away from the fight under their own steam, and didn’t die until the next day. Or maybe they’ll grow up to realize their culpability. Then they’ll get to live their whole lives knowing that someone is dead because of what they did. So there are even more lives lost, in a sense. One way or another, their lives just took a sharp turn. All because they were taught to hate.
Oklahoma’s laws that target LGBTQ+ individuals make people believe that it’s okay to hate them and be violent toward them. Because of this, bullying in Oklahoma schools is on the rise. This is not okay.
It doesn’t help that hate groups like Libs of TikTok are allowed to fan the flames of hatred. Their heavily edited videos and false narratives caused a teacher in Nex’s school to resign, simply for having told kids that they should love themselves despite outside pressure. Libs of TikTok took that and ran with it, to the point where the teacher was receiving death threats.
The leader of that disgusting hate group is Chaya Raichik, and guess what. She now works for the Oklahoma government, supervising school libraries and their content. Because that’s the kind of person Oklahoma needs to dictate what children get to read, right? She gets a cushy job, promoting hate and censoring love and truth, and Nex gets to be dead.
Just when I thought I couldn’t be more ashamed of the path this country is on.
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