TERROR IN TEXAS — Inside the Fascist Assault on Transgender Youth
Make no mistake: the attack on transgender youth and their families in the Lone Star State is one of the most blatant and horrific displays of American Fascism in what many are (wishfully) considering “the post-Trump era”. However, Texas is only one of many Republican-controlled states that has declared open season on this already exceptionally vulnerable demographic over the past two years. And amazingly, Texas may not remain the worst offender on the list for long. Some might even argue that it is days away from being dethroned by the likes of Idaho.
For those who have been following this assault since the original slew of anti-transgender sports bills in early 2021 fired the pistol that began our record-breaking sprint into Hell, none of what is happening right now should come as a surprise. We all knew that this was going to happen. And we all know that it’s only going to keep getting worse from here because — and I really can’t stress this enough — nobody is putting a stop to it. The courts interfere when and where they can, but crafty Fascist pricks like Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton always manage to find a way around the judicial system or just do whatever the hell they want regardless of what anybody says.
Case in point: Texas Attorney General and Fascist Prick Ken Paxton stated just hours after Travis County District Judge Amy Clark Meachum blocked his and Texas Governor and Fascist Prick Greg Abbott’s absolutely abusive expansion of the definition of “child abuse” to cover loving families of transgender youth that he not only managed to get the block “frozen”, but that he intends to take the case all the way up to — you guessed it — the Supreme Court. The same Supreme Court, mind you, that ultimately paved the way for Texas’s abortion ban to remain in effect for the foreseeable future.
Great.
Now, some of you may be wondering just what in the hell I’ve been going on about this whole time. Well, if that’s you, congratulations! You were successfully distracted by all of the talk around Florida Governor and Fascist Prick Ron DeSantis’s awful “Don’t Say Gay” legislation that absolutely dominated the media landscape despite it being one of the most comparatively milquetoast attempts to harm the LGBTQ+ community in recent weeks. Or perhaps you were caught up by the controversy that surrounded Disney — a company which cancelled Dana Terrace’s beloved and groundbreaking LGBTQ-positive action-adventure series, The Owl House, under highly suspicious circumstances several months ago — after the company was found to be making sizeable political donations to the sponsors of that legislation. Probably a bit of both, honestly. Quite possibly the only time you heard about anything going on in Texas before clicking on this blog post was when all of the big-name celebrities talked about it on Twitter…for one day. It was more like a few hours, really. Just a sprinkling of performative activism before moving right along with their day as if the second-most populous state in the country wasn’t actively terrorizing innocent children and their families in their own homes.
That’s a blog post for another day, though.
Anyway, yes, on February 21, Texas Attorney General and Fascist Prick Ken Paxton issued a formal legal opinion stating that the seeking of any gender-affirming mental health care or medical care on behalf of transgender minors by their loving parents was to be considered an act of “child abuse”. Texas Governor and Fascist Prick Greg Abbott pounced almost immediately, directing the Department of Family and Protective Services to begin enforcing this legal opinion as though it had the force of law.
And enforce it they did.
According to the lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Texas on the behalf of “Jane Doe” that ultimately led to the extremely temporary block on the enforcement of the legal opinion statewide (Doe v. Abbott), Doe was suddenly placed on leave from her position at the Department of Family and Protective Services — again, the agency tasked with enforcing this legal opinion — and was then visited by an investigator from her own agency just two days later who demanded that Doe turn over her daughter’s medical records.
The reason for all of this?
The state took issue with the fact that Doe’s daughter, “Mary Doe”, is a 16-year-old transgender girl.
And if you think that the Department of Family and Protective Services agent was way out of line for demanding Mary Doe’s medical records and that that information should be protected by HIPAA, you would be right! Except that Texas Governor and Fascist Prick Greg Abbott doesn’t care about HIPAA (or any other federal law or protection for that matter).
Indeed, in his letter to the Department on February 22, Texas Governor and Fascist Prick Greg Abbott declared that all teachers, doctors, nurses, and counselors were to be compelled by state law to turn over any and all evidence of the treatment of transgender youths’ Gender Dysphoria to the Department as a part of the Department’s child abuse investigations. The general public was also deputized by this order. Again. Honestly, the state might as well just send them copper badges in the mail at this point.
A multitude of stories began to go viral almost overnight, detailing how state agents had been interrogating teachers and showing up to parents’ homes to conduct interviews and demand medical records.
I feel like this is a good time to really drive home the fact that all of this is meant to result in transgender youth being ripped from their families’ arms as the authorities arrest said families for child abuse and throw them in jail.
Now, if you think that all of this — neighbors ratting to state authorities on the transgender kids who live down the street, teachers and doctors being compelled by law to turn over evidence of transgender kids’ existence, authorities knocking on innocent people’s doors to see if they are indeed providing a home to a transgender kid, and then arresting the innocent adults while said innocent transgender kid is dragged kicking and screaming to the back of a government vehicle — sounds familiar, there is a very grim but valid reason for that. This is, without hyperbole, Gestapo-level shit. The only real difference between these atrocities and the atrocities of the Gestapo is that the people being dragged away aren’t being thrown into concentration camps.
Right?
Well, it’s actually pretty fucking hard to say what exactly is supposed to happen to these kids.
During a hearing last week, agents and supervisors from the Department of Family and Protective Services disclosed just how confused and discomforted they were with the orders coming down from on high. These officials reported that, upon receiving the orders, they were immediately commanded to toss aside actual cases of very real child abuse and focus all of their attention on targeting transgender youth and their families. They went on to say that they were specifically commanded not to use an approach known as “alternative response” — a much more benevolent and supportive response to concerns that a child may not be receiving adequate medical care from their family and/or physician — when dealing with these cases. Instead, they were told to use some of the most confrontational methods in their arsenal and to treat these loving parents as though they were criminals who were on the verge of being caught red-handed abusing their children.
However, the most chilling command by far was revealed by Randa Mulanax, a former Department of Family and Protective Services supervisor who resigned over these efforts to quickly rip apart loving families. According to Mulanax, the Department was not only forbidden from closing any of these cases, but was also commanded not to write down any details about these cases on any medium other than the case file itself, an order which has never once been given to the Department under any circumstance. Texts, emails, and the like concerning the cases were to be considered strictly forbidden.
In other words, Texas Governor and Fascist Prick Greg Abbott — a man who is typically very forthcoming about his villainy, albeit in a way that paints what is clearly an evil action as something virtuous — wanted to keep these cases as off-the-record as humanly possible.
What is the point of all of this secrecy? Well, we don’t know. One could assume that the children are meant to end up in the Texas foster system, a system which was recently found to have a major problem with sex trafficking previously trafficked minors and, in 2021, was discovered attempting to cover up the deaths of at least 23 children since 2019. However, who is to say that these children won’t first be subjected to conversion therapy, a highly unethical and truly horrifying practice that is — of course — still legal in Texas? And where does conversion therapy typically take place? Oh, right. Camps.
Other possibilities for the secrecy include making the reuniting of families in the event that this is all overturned as impossible as they can, intentionally placing the children in horrible living conditions where they too can be sold into sex trafficking rings like other children in the foster system very likely still are, or placing them in other facilities where they are likely to suffer and die.
We. Don’t. Know. All we can do is guess. But again, it is very telling that Texas Governor and Fascist Prick Greg Abbott is trying to keep a lid on details like this. Such an action is very out of character for him.
And again, Texas Attorney General and Fascist Prick Ken Paxton is looking to take this all the way to the Supreme Court, which could then enable other states to take the exact same actions against loving families and their children.
Also — because all of this wasn’t enough, apparently — the transgender community in Texas got another slap in the goddamned face from Texas Attorney General and Fascist Prick Ken Paxton on March 9, when, in his announcement of a lawsuit against the Biden Administration for threatening Texas’s federal funding because of…well, you know, he also telegraphed to the world that his next move will be to try to roll back every single workplace protection right that the transgender community has, including the protection which allows transgender people to dress according to their respective gender identities. He also stopped just short of stating that he will try to institute another bathroom ban as well (yay).
The sheer existential terror that these Fascist assholes are putting this already vulnerable demographic through in Texas is incalculable. They are suffering potentially irreparable mental — and, even more depressingly, potentially physical — harm because of these actions and the state continues to double down further and further as the cries of anguish grow louder and louder.
And again, it will only get worse from here.
Already, we are seeing efforts from states like Idaho to match and surpass the cruelty being inflicted in Texas with bills like HB 675, which would make the providing of gender-affirming care to transgender youth by parents and physicians alike a felony punishable by life in prison, an action that will undoubtedly double as a back-door ban on gender transition for adults. This bill would also criminalize the seeking of this treatment by Idaho citizens for their transgender children in another state, an action which would present the greatest threat to the free movement of people between states since the Fugitive Slave Act. Though Republican and Senate President Pro Tempore Chuck Winder believes that the bill will ultimately fail in the Senate after passing through the House on a 55–13 vote, the sheer fact that such an action is being attempted is enough to traumatize many transgender youth and their families.
There is a word for the existential terror and medical harm that states like Texas (and, potentially, Idaho) are intentionally inflicting upon this demographic: genocide.
No, really.
People generally think of “genocide” as the intentional and direct mass killing of a demographic by the state, but that’s not the only type of genocide around. Indeed, the United Nations recognizes that there is no meaningful difference between state authorities executing members of a demographic themselves and the same state authorities making life so unbearable for the members of a demographic that they end up taking themselves out instead.
As a matter of fact, the UN codified this in Article II of the Genocide Convention. The presence of any of the following conditions are considered “genocide” under this Convention:
- Killing members of the group;
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
- Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
I have bolded #2 and #3 because both conditions are very clearly being met today. I’m sure I will revisit this in another post, but it is clear that what is being perpetrated in Texas today can and should be recognized as an act of genocide. Idaho and other states could join in very soon as well.
And the dominos will only continue to fall from there.
