I’m Trans & Society Removed My Comfort Around Children

Unpacking the origin behind my queer fear of kids

Photo by Ben Wicks on Unsplash

I used to love looking after children. I found it fun to invent games and run around (and still do), and that made me a really good babysitter. I was once, unprompted, paid a $50 tip at a family event (this was before inflation) and offered a babysitting gig on the spot.

I liked looking after the kids. At one point, being a parent was all I wanted. It was something I dreamed about, part of my life plan whenever I talked about the future.

However, that dream slowly got displaced by a deep discomfort with being around children. While I liked the idea of childrearing, over and over again, I was presented with the idea that queer people like me were inherent pedophiles. "They're giving kids porn and telling third graders that they should masturbate," Libs of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik lied in a now infamous interview with Taylor Lorenz. "They're giving middle school children guides to gay sex, anal sex, sex toys."

The message I hear — the one I unwittingly internalize — from false statements like this one is that queers are dangerous around kids and, even more than that, that we are unfit to be parents. As anti-LGBTQ politician Rick Santorum remarked in a Pew Research Center interview in 2008…