MISINFORMATION IS A DISSERVICE.
I remember an episode of The Bill where DS Max Carter arrested a man who was posing as a teenage girl in a chatroom. The man, when confronted, claimed it was a “mistake”, to which Max Carter replied, “Hitting the wrong key on a computer, that’s a mistake; posing as a teenager and grooming a teenage girl, that’s a crime.”
I have just encountered some of the most sickening transphobic comments and misinformation about transgender people on social media, which caused me to block a psychotherapist who specializes in autism as a result. I remember someone I know in a professional capacity said that they have two daughters, who share stories of their dogs on Instagram, and they told their daughters to remember that those people are not necessarily your friends. I have played some games with some people, and I say that in some cases, people you play these games with aren’t your friends, they’re people you might share a taste in music with and you play against. And, not everyone, in those games, wants to be your friend because they appreciate you, but rather because they may get bonus points for playing against a friend. And yes, one thing I say is, people aren’t always who they say they are.
As a result of child sex offenders, nowadays, in some states in my native Australia, a person who wants to work with children even as a volunteer, has to undergo a criminal check and be given clearance. Some right-wing moralists have sparked outrage at the suggestion that drag queens are permitted to read stories to children, and you can’t go up to the local library and say, “My name’s Joe Bloggs, I want to read stories to children. And I’ll be reading them as Lotta Bull.” They would need to obtain clearance from the relevant department and have their name and stage name verified, so they are NOT grooming kids.
People conflate drag queens with transgender folks without understanding that they are chalk and cheese. Like all other members of society, drag queens may be homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual or asexual and a drag performer in a cabaret club or the like might be a musclebound labourer during the day, and he might be a heterosexual. As was said when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock’s face after the former mocked Jada Pinkett-Smith’s alopecia areata, satire is a send up of power, sending up someone’s disability is bullying. I couldn’t conceal my disgust when the revolting individual whose tax returns were revealed recently mocked a disabled person and then became President of the USA.
Transgender women, on the other hand, are people assigned male at birth and the gender in their mind is incongruent with their genitalia. Transphobic women have argued that transwomen are symbols of the patriarchy who are attempting to subjugate women. Denying transwomen access to women’s spaces is akin to having a Vietnamese person adopted by an Australian couple as an infant and being raised as an Australian but denying them a passport even though they’re an Australian citizen!
I vehemently disagree with a ridiculous doctor who claims that men and women cannot be platonic friends, who says that if you are looking for something missing in your relationship with someone of the opposite sex, you are in threatening your relationship. Unless you are having sex with a member of the opposite sex because your partner is unable to sexually satisfy you, that is nonsense. If, however, you are a heterosexual parent to an LGBTIQA Kid, there are things that you cannot teach your kid, so, they may go to a mentoring person who is LGBTIQA and that is NOT, capitalized, underlined, written in red, NOT the same as grooming!
People will frequently come back with cases that so and so was sexually assaulted by a trans presenting person, to which I say, there may be some who will, but to use that as an argument against transgender people is akin to suggesting that all people who drive Ford Falcons are potential child abductors because a man driving a green Ford Falcon approached a young girl and invited her to get into his car!
If you have an LGBTIQA child, you have a responsibility as a parent to keep them safe from online predators, and that’s the same for a cisgender heterosexual child, but what you should do, however, is ensure that a person they are talking to is who they say they are, and that if they go to an in-person group, that the mentors have clearance to work with minors, and THAT will protect them from groomers.