Imagine being in the shoes of the 7-year-old daughter of Jeff Younger. She never felt like a boy, though she was assigned male at birth. Her mother let her go by her preferred feminine name and let her wear dresses with her dad saying that she was forced to be a girl. Now she has the government of Texas fighting her mom saying that she is abusing her and so many people using her birth name as a hashtag on Twitter. Well, many kids don't need to imagine. According to the Texas Tribune’s article “His public custody battle helped ignite a movement against transgender health care. Will it carry him to the Texas house?” written by Karen Brooks Harper on February 28, 2022, the Texas courts ruled out child abuse in 2019 but the fight is still going strong. So many people feel like that little girl. Having it be unsafe to feel like themselves and feeling like there is something wrong with them for not having their genitals be their entire identity. So many kids get bullied to the point of severe anxiety and depression and some even suicide. This could be easily avoided if we taught kids that being trans was alright and what it means to be trans so if they are, it is easier to know and express themselves. This will discuss what being trans means along with some additional questions, why everyone should care about making the world a better place for trans people, and what we can do to help these people that are struggling.

First, what does being trans mean? according to the article “Frequently asked questions” from the website trans equality written July 9, 2016, a transgender person is “A person whose gender identity is different from that assigned at birth.” How does someone know they're trans? There are many ways. Some people just knew for as long as they can remember and others spent years struggling with who they are. There is no one way to be trans and every transgender person has different experiences and feelings toward gender. Another question someone may be asking is “isn't that the same thing as sexual orientation?” Nope! Gender identity refers to your knowledge of your gender. Such as knowing if a person is a man, a woman, intersex, ETC… while sexual orientation refers to who someone is attracted to. Being trans is also not the same thing as being intersex. Intersex is defined as having reproductive anatomy or genes that don't fit into female or male. There are also more genders than male or female. Gender and sex are two different things. According to the article “What is the difference between sex and gender” From the Office for National Statistics website written February 21, 2019, Sex is biological. It's anatomy, chromosomes, and hormones. While gender is a social construction based on behaviors and attributes as well as a personal internal perception of oneself and so someone's gender identity very well may not fit with what they were assigned at birth.

 People should care about the plague that is transphobia because according to the article “Study Tracks Gender-Affirming Care for Transgender Teens” from the website newsroom, written on March 11, 2022, there are 1.4 million trans adults in the United States so there are trans people all around. Many of these people suffer from anxiety and/or depression. According to the article “Transgender teens suffer high rates of depression, new study shows.” From the website Advocate written by Donald Padgette on April 13, 2020, ⅔ of transgender, teens suffer from depression. 67.7% of trans males, 29.7% of trans females, and 2.5% of non-binary people who have suffered from transphobia also suffer from anxiety/depression. And according to an article from HRC titled “New study reveals shocking rates of attempted suicide among trans adolescents.”  29.9% of all transgender women and men attempted suicide at some point in their lives. As well as 41.8% of non-binary youth. The article “transphobic bullying” from the website “beyond bullying”  revealed some shocking facts about bullying for transgender teens. 83% have experienced name-calling while 35% have experienced physical attacks. ⅓ of the 956 transgender teens interviewed had missed a lesson because of discrimination or fear of discrimination. Keep in mind that these are not just numbers; each one of those percent has many scared kids. Take, for example, 19-year-old Aludein Marks who is a trans woman of color. She was kicked out by her mother in the rainy weather having to sleep on park benches.

There are so many ways we can help these people. We can start off by getting rid of the anti-LBTQ+ bills like Florida’s “Don’t say gay” bill which according to an article from the website “them.” titled “here’s the ani- trans legislation that moved forward this week” is a bill that would bar educators from discussing anything transgender or homosexual related. This prevents kids or anyone really from learning about the LGBTQ+ community which can be very harmful. There are also Texas’s horrifying attacks on parents of transgender parents which I already discussed. It would be so easy to just allow transgender people to exist in peace and that would make things so much easier for them and our governments. Though that wouldn't stop bullying, a solution I propose is we simply educate people on what their actions are doing. According to the article “Brief video intervention may reduce adolescent transphobia” from the website “helio” written February 28, 2022, social contact and education with/on transgender people have shown significant effects on reducing transphobia. 

If we simply educate people on transgender people and get rid of the bills that make trans people hide in fear, we could make them feel a lot safer. It would reduce transphobia which in turn would reduce the anxiety, depression, and suicide that comes along with it. It is so easy to make these people’s lives so much better and I think we should have done it so long ago. Any steps forward are progress and maybe, we should start by letting the 7-year-old daughter of Jeff Younger just live peacefully.