So the thing about all this TERF writing about trans guys (because they're concerned about "women") is this pervasive idea that trans men are NEW. That because the parents didn't grow up with trans classmates or knew any trans men, they didn't exist before now.

One parent in Shrier's book says, 'This trans thing? I feel like it came up five years ago and everyone jumped on the bandwagon. And to tell me that it's always been there, when I grew up in the heart of the fashion industry--it wasn't."

This statement is left unchallenged.

We, as readers, are meant to sympathize with the mom, plagued by their child's obsession with this brand new trend. This is the essence of the moral panic.

But it's entirely ahistorical. Chaz Bono came out in 2010. Brandon Teena had a MOVIE made about his life in 1999.

Selective cultural memory: it didn't exist in my cisgender, heterosexual world, so it never existed at all. The author cites the fact that she had no transgender classmates in the 80s, and uses that as evidence that "trans ideology" is a new thing.

People still exist, Karen.

And that's what I keep seeing over and over again in this book: parents perceive the trans thing as "sudden" and blame the internet, the school system, and, in this chapter, THERAPY, because they don't want to admit that their child is an autonomous human.

This is no more highlighted than in the pearl clutching story of the mother Katherine (the one whose was "censored" on Facebook). The mom is all "well, I took the kid to therapy, I took her to the gender clinic, and then I started research puberty blockers and HRT and OH NO"

Katherine's central horror is that her child might be infertile in the future if they continue down this path of being trans. Cross sex hormones and medically transitioning means your uterus might not function!

It's THIS that's most horrifying to Katherine.

Katherine's story is shared in an almost conspiratorial tone, noting the ways in which she has had to hide her identity, how hard it was for her to find information, and how, unironically considering the overt condemnation of internet communities, she has found a home online.

And it's clear that for Katherine, what mattered to her about having a daughter the most was the possibility that said daughter might produce a child and become a mother. That her child's value was enshrined in the uterus.

This bothered Katherine so much that she actually pushed for a bill in her state legislature that would disallow PARENTS *and* their kid! from consenting to any medical procedure that may effect future fertility.

"You have a tumor on your ovary? GOOD LUCK."

So these anti-trans advocates (which Katherine has become) are so vociferous in their obsession with fertility and uteruses that they are willing to legislate what parents can do with their children if it means the child could maybe not have kids.

Anyway, I'm about halfway through this book and definitely have yelled at it a few times, especially when it tells on itself a lot.