During a visit to lobby legislators on transgender issues, Senator Carden Summers ® knelt down and told a child he would protect her. When he learned she was trans, he backed away.
On Feb. 6, a group of families met to lobby senators on issues affecting the local transgender community in Georgia. One mother, Lena Kotler, decided to take her two children with her to give the topic a human face. While waiting to meet with Democratic Sen. Kim Jackson, who they had heard was a big supporter of LGBTQ+ rights, another senator passed by — Republican Sen. Carden Summers, the primary sponsor of the state’s bathroom ban bill. Little did he know that one of the children he would be interacting with, Aleix, 8 years old, was a transgender child.
According to Kotler and other families who were present, the senator stopped to say hello. That’s when Kotler spoke to Senator Summers about how she was there with her kids to “talk to legislators about keeping her kids safe.” Although she did not mention that one of her children was trans, they were present with LGBTQ+ signage - something the Senator apparently missed when he knelt down in front of Aleix and said, according to Kotler, “Well you know, we’re working on that and I’m going to protect kids like you.”
Kotler then replied, “Yeah - Alex is trans, and she wants to be safe at school, she wants to go to the bathroom and be safe.”
That is when, according to multiple witnesses, Sen. Summers stood up and fumbled his words, repeating, “I mean, yeah, I’m going to make sure she’s safe by going to the right bathroom,” continuing to use the correct pronouns for Aleix. When asked if he would make her go to a boy’s bathroom, he then allegedly backed away, saying, “You’re attacking me,” turned around, and walked off quickly.
How can an 8 year old know if they are trans? That seems awfully young.
It’s a gender thing, not a sex thing. You don’t have to hit puberty to know.
What about you – did you know you were cis* by the time you were 8? Are you sure?
If you could be that sure, why would a trans person be any different?
(* making a statistically-likely assumption)
Did you not know your gender in 3rd grade? Some trans kids do too, especially now that there’s more awareness.
8 years old is also an extremely low stakes age to be trans, because it’s literally just clothes, name/pronouns, and haircut differences at that age.
My ex’s kid came out as trans to usat 11 or so, and like… Yeah. This is exactly the time to play with your sense of self when it doesn’t fuckin matter. We’ve been doing for generations, but all of a sudden feeling and wanting to present more masculine just gives everybody a fucking aneurysm.
Never mind the people who have nothing better to do than go to war with children grew up with David Bowie and Eurythmics and shit. 🙄
It’s so funny to me this new posturing of denial that kids can know their gender at a young age, when derogatory terms for this exact thing like “tomboy” and “sissy” have been around for generations. We have always known that some kids don’t act like their gender assigned at birth.
The only thing that’s changed is that we now know that this is actually normal and healthy, not some pathological problem that can be “solved” through abuse and shaming.
I understand, but I also thinnk things swing differently bad. If you imply a “tomboy” must be a man, because they like traditionally manly stuff, and a “sissy” should be a girl because they aren’t violent, well, that seems rough too.
Also, people evolve. Fluidity should be the emphasis at that age.
Heck, I’m not particularly on board that you should pick one and align your whole identity with your choice, whether that’s being cisgender as aggressively squishing down unfitting choices, or going trans and feeling compelled to leave all the traits of your physiological gender behind.
I don’t think it can be rigidly defined for everyone, nor should it be. Some people are fluid in that sense, some people aren’t.
Wow, what a concept! People could have a gender identity that doesn’t match traditional conceptions of ‘man’ or ‘women’! We could call it something like…‘non-binary’.
/s
Your concern trolling completely ignores points the LGBTQ+ community have already thought of and explictly accepted. Nothing you have to say points to any meaningful problem whatsoever. You’ve been posting this drivel all over the thread. Go elsewhere.
My youngest knew they weren’t a girl at age seven. They are 15 now and been very happy for the last four years using they/them pronouns and a chosen name.
It was always possible that one day they’d have changed their mind…hell, their cousin is non-binary as well and used he/they pronouns and a male name for six years before reverting back to the name and gender she was assigned at birth (she’s 16 now).
The important thing is to listen to your kids (and anyone who is trans, really) and trust that they know themselves infinitely better than you ever could. Let people tell you who they are, and believe them. They may refine their understanding of who they are at a later time, and you should believe them then, too. When someone decides to change their major, you don’t tell them “C’mon now…you’re a psychology major…you’ve always been a psychology major.” It’s not entirely dissimilar.
Idk I think if someone kept telling me one thing and my experience was different I think I could tell something is up.
I’m a trans woman and I started to express my self femininely when I was just a toddler. I grew up in a rural area where I was always told that I am a boy and that I will grow up into a man who will have a wife and many children. I genuinely had never heard of queer people until I was tween, when my peers started using gay as an insult. If I had been taught about queer people when I was a kid, I definitely would have realized that I am trans then, and I wish I had been because being raised as a boy when you are a girl is extremely traumatic.
People can be born with all sorts of strange and terrible conditions, but somehow there are people who think babies can’t be born with a brain that is a different sex than their body. Either that or they think the body should take precedence over the brain which is insane considering only one of those is sapient.
Just out of curiosity, how does a toddler express either femininely or masculinely?
Toddlers model behavior of the adults in their life. It can be as simple as whether they echo the behavioral quirks of the women more than the men, or vise versa.
Please be careful with this line of thinking, and don’t push children into one direction or the other.
I spent more time in my early years with my mother due to my father traveling for work, so I naturally echoed her behavioral quirks more than his. I also showed a ton of interest in traditionally feminine toys and playsets. I had a baby doll and I’d play pretend parenting. I outright demanded a little play kitchen, back when all of them were clearly decorated/colored/coded “for girls”. I wanted and they got me a barbie doll, and I played a shit ton of dress up. Never was one for rough and tumble play, sports, climbing trees, etc. More in touch with my emotions than my peers and not afraid to show them.
All that said, I’ve never had any issues with my own gender identity as a cis male. One of my earliest “writings” was “I’m going to be a dad” with a very scribbly drawing of a family.
There’s another comment on this post about a mtf telling their parents that they were a butterfly and going to be a girl, at an early enough age that the commenter didn’t remember saying it.
So kids can absolutely know, but we should be careful to never assume. If gender is a social construct, then we should also be working ourselves away from the idea that certain behaviors are masc or fem, not doubling down by saying they have any indication of a person’s gender/potential to be trans.
Masculine and feminine are useful concepts with long roots in every culture on earth. The problem is when people impose a positive or negative connotation to them. It should be considered normal and healthy for someone who identifies on the male side of the spectrum to exhibit feminine traits, and so on.
It’s just a conceptual framework that simplifies understanding. Our problems arise when we oversimplify, and forget that it is just an artificial construct we made up to explain our world.
I knew I was a boy and that I liked girls when I was 8 years old. I just project that same sense of identity I felt onto others and it becomes very easy to understand why others just know who and what they are and who and what they like. The world really needs a touch more empathy.
Some people just know at a young age. It’s a spectrum, so some people don’t experience dysphoria until puberty, some know when they’re very young, some don’t experience dysphoria and instead solely experience gender euphoria (in this context, euphoria from presenting as a gender other than their assigned gender at birth (AGAB)). It’s complicated and not well understood.
8 is old enough to know a lot of things about yourself. Personally I knew I hated the idea of “being a man” at that age, i just wish i had realized sooner that growing into something else was a option. My mental health would certainly be about 1000x better if I had been able to transition then instead of as a overwhelmed, forsaken and misunderstood 19 year old…
Most people know their gender about 2.5 years old. It is pretty impressive when you are parent and see that lightbulb click. One day they have no opinions at all about clothing or toys and the next day they do.
Gender identity is very dependent on external influence, such as society and language, but is usually well established by age five. I wish I had sources for you, but there was a study done on how gender use in native language influences awareness of gender. The more gendered words are present, such as in romance languages, the earlier gender identity is established.
Eight year olds don’t need to know the definition of trans to know if they’re a girl or a boy (gender).
I understand that it is difficult to grasp when you have been indoctrinated to believe one thing that has turned out to not be true. Most people go through life never truly knowing the interior life of another person. But parents know their children.
idk i didn’t find out until i was a grown ass adult who was sexually mature so i don’t understand how a kid could possibly know these things for sure