Genocidal Developments in Florida
This new law is absolutely terrifying.
On March 4th 2023, the Florida legislature passed one of its most terrifying bills yet, expected to be signed by Governor Ron DeSantis soon. This bill would “let the state take transgender minors away from their families if they are receiving gender-affirming care.” Gender-affirming care, supported by every reputable medical association, includes even harmless and reversible treatments like puberty blockers. And the bill also allows children to be taken away by the state if they are “threatened” with receiving gender-affirming care.
This does not just affect Florida by the way. As this article covering the same issue explains, there are aspects of this law that would allow a Florida-based parent/family member to take children from other states to Florida to prevent them from receiving gender-affirming care.
This is the latest in a broad right-wing attack on trans people based on the baseless claim that trans adults are pedophiles who are grooming kids and trans kids aren’t real and were merely groomed by their parents and teachers for some nefarious purpose which these people conveniently never elaborate on. I have previously written an article covering the beginning of what will seemingly inevitably become a wave of refugees comprising transgender people and their families.
Yet this law goes far beyond the previous and already draconian legislation across red states in this country. They want to actively steal kids from their parents and put them in the custody of the state, presumably prosecuting the parents for child abuse as well. And what exactly do you expect them to do with these kids? Do you think they will do psychological evaluations, determine that their gender dysphoria is genuine, and let them transition anyway and return them to their parents?
Of course not. These people don’t think being transgender is real. That, or they think that no matter how real their feelings are, a person is born with a male soul if they are born male and a female soul if they are born female, and that any attempt to change their gender is an act against God that must be persecuted and punished. This worldview can be seen in their increasingly deranged rhetoric, but the best example in my opinion is Matt Walsh’s unhinged screed against Dylan Mulvaney, who has been the target of a ridiculous hate campaign for… existing, as far as I can tell. If someone could tell me why the right has made Dylan Mulvaney the center of their hate campaign, that’d be great because there doesn’t really seem to be any reason other than the fact that she’s trans.
This is the problem with having a government run by people who are one-step away from being outright theocrats. When your government is answerable not to the people, but to an unseen entity who we simply have to accept is real because we’ve been told he’s real, that means your government has no duty to do what is best for the people and will create a happier society. It’s only duty is to please some being we’ve never seen or spoken with and who’s only values are in a book that is thousands of years old and with wildly varying interpretations. Under those circumstances, any atrocity can be justified.
They are not going to simply try to oversee these kids to make sure they are “properly trans” to determine if they should receive gender-affirming care. They are going to remove the kids from any potential gender-affirming care and try to convert them to being cisgender. This is going to drive these kids to depression and suicide. And that is their goal. Listen to their rhetoric. One GOP lawmaker in Florida literally called trans people “mutants”. Listen to any of Matt Walsh’s unhinged screeds. Listen to the way Chaya Raichik (aka LibsOfTikTok) talks about queer teachers. Here’s a list of many needless and cruel things Ron DeSantis has done against the LGBTQ communitiy. When a single transgender person did a mass shooting in Nashville, the entire right-wing media apparatus tried to draw a connection between being trans and mass shootings, among them a talking point consisting of listing the 4 mass shootings done by a trans person and saying “do you see the connection?” This spurious connection has been of course debunked, and I would highly recommend reading this article by SocDoneLeft for a detailed explanation. But if you choose not to read it, then I hope this graph will help get the point across.
Despite the smokescreen of just “looking to protect the children”, right-wing rhetoric on trans people shows a clear desire to dehumanize all of them including the kids and to isolate them from society. The many anti-trans bills, as I have explained in the article on trans refugees fleeing red states, shows clear genocidal intent.
And it’s impossible for me to find any argument that taking kids from their parents based on their immutable characteristics, especially when suppressing those characteristics is likely to lead to conditions that are unlivable and likely lead to suicide, is not a genocidal act. This new Florida law is cruel, inhumane, and I can’t stress this enough, GENOCIDE.
The cruelty is the point.
