The Only Way Out of the Child-Gender Culture War
Sunny Bryant is only 9 years old—but already an old hand at testifying before lawmakers. The youngster from Houston was 4 when she first asked her mother, “Why did you make me a boy? I wanted to be a girl,” as she was being strapped into a car seat. Since then, Sunny and her mother have spoken at the Texas legislature at least five times, entering the political spotlight amid a nationwide surge in attempts to ban child gender transition. This year, 12 states have passed laws to prohibit or sharply restrict the practice.
On March 27 this year, Sunny missed school and waited until late into the night to speak in front of a Texas House of Representatives committee as it considered H.B. 1686, which would ban puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and gender surgery for under-18s in the state. (The bill is currently pending.) “If you pass this bill and we stay in Texas, I’d grow up looking like my dad, and that’s a scary thought,” she told the legislators. “I want to grow up looking like me—nobody else, just Sunny.”
[Read: What’s behind the new wave of transgender ‘bathroom bills’]
How parents and doctors can best support children like Sunny is a fraught question, because of the uncertain medical evidence and the volatile political climate in the United States. A polarized, incendiary debate over child transition is playing out in red and blue states alike: H.B. 1686 is one of more than 450 bills proposed or passed in this characterizes as anti-LGBTQ. On a single day in Florida two weeks ago, the Republican-dominated House debated limits on drag shows, a restricting the provision of trans-inclusive bathrooms, and a ban on youth transition. “I feel like they’re making these kids the ‘other’ and trying to make them out to be bogeymen and bogeywomen,” Fentrice Driskell, the Florida House’s Democratic leader, told me. In a committee hearing last month, for example, Representative Webster Barnaby, a Republican, referred to trans people as “mutants” and “demons.” (He later .) Of the ban on child transition, Driskell added, “This will lead to more transgender youth taking their lives.”
