I think that as trans girls and allies of trans girls it is crucial that we keep in mind our goals, and our sisters.
Access to HRT, increasingly, to any kind of gender affirming care is being age gated. More and more, society prevents transgender children from having control over their lives.
I assume I don’t have to convince you of how horrible this is. How many girls have felt the pain of unbearable wait, of being deemed too young to have control over your own body, your own puberty? How many girls have cried over the fear of being “too late”?
It’s evident, to me, and I hope to you too, reader, that we must fight this movement, that would put our younger siblings in cages.
I believe that the ideology that creates this has to be fought not on the single issue of HRT. We know how easy it is to move things around, in a way that keeps structures of power enabled.
I think that if we are to fight, we must fight for the whole liberation of children. The society we live in treats them not as people, deserving of rights, of agency, but instead as property. This is the root of the evil that seeks to keep children trapped, helpless.
This evil is why the concept of parent’s rights exists, why there is this belief that parents have rights over their children. Of course, society says, parents own their children.
We must not accept that. It is why children cannot choose for themselves. from the silly and small things, to the crucial, life saving ones. Children are deemed too young to know, at every turn, to make their own decisions. Forbidden to transition, of course, but also to choose their clothes, the information they can learn, or their interests. A parent controls everything about a child, and the issue of what a child can do or not is too often framed as what their parent will allow.
We must devote ourselves to destroying this system, that seeks to define children as lesser.
But this means, too, dear reader, that you must dismantle it within yourself, too. You must understand children as people first. Not as something Less. You must destroy the impulse that would have you talk down to a child, and assume they cannot understand whatever it is they ask about. You must not accept that anything a child does be chosen for them. You should not hand wave things away, act with the belief that there are certain things a child must not know until they get older. Neither should you push children away from you, keep them isolated.
You must, reader, internalize this. A child is a person, no less nor more than you. A small and young person, of course, but if anything, this must be cause to give them greater care.
Treat children as they ought to, and fight for youth liberation. For us, for them, for our sisters.
