The Governor of Texas is trying to create a universe that doesn't exist

And he's destroying lives in the process

I’ll have to admit to a lot of naivete at different periods in my life, about sexuality. I was largely oblivious to all sex till around 5th grade. In 6th grade, I heard about homosexuality for the first time, although I didn’t hear it called that. My 6th grade peers started talking about someone who was ‘a blowboy’.

Such was life in smalltown America in the late 50s and early 60s. Usually by high school, we’d hear that some gal ‘had a reputation’ which, years later, I realized probably meant she had sex with one person, who bragged about ‘getting some’.

There was no sex ed for guys back then. And I’m pretty sure the sex ed for girls was 99% about menstruation.

Things changed rapidly in high school but again, lacking an urban environment, we weren’t witness to all the varieties of peoples and cultures that existed. Except a lot of things were right there in front of our noses.

I recall a woman mechanic who dressed very manly. A few years later, the term ‘transvestite’ was commonly used to describe cross dressers. Or ‘draq queen’, though I thought that was reserved for cross dressing entertainers in a burlesque show.

Over time, coming to grips with my own sexuality, I wondered why some ‘guy’ things appealed to me and why some ‘guy things’ didn’t that seemed to be pretty universal.
Cars for example. I recall a ‘37 Buick Roadster my Dad had that I wanted to fully restore. After that, I didn’t give a rat’s ass about any car since beyond ‘is it dependable?’ I’d be terrible as a witness in any crime involving cars as there’s only a handful of (older) cars that I could identify by make and model.

A lot of guys like to blow things up. Again, my interest in that faded out before I reached adulthood. I was never enamored with martial arts, beer, extreme competition, athletic shoes and more. I liked music, romance, poetry and was more at home in a book than at face to face interaction.

Over time, though I presumed there were two sexes, I determined there were variants of each and figured testosterone and estrogen levels could cause a manly woman or an effeminate man. But I became more aware of LGB people, I remained oblivious to transgender people until 8 or 10 years ago. Christine Jorgenson and Renee Richards were the only transgender people I was aware of in my first 50+ years.

While my ignorance after middle age was due in part because I’d become quite reclusive after a series of traumatic events and didn’t go out much or watch much TV, I’d bet there’s still lots of people with a very limited understanding of transgender people, particularly in small town and rural areas. Some may be transphobic, particularly if they’re members of some sex-obsessive religion, but many are likely just disinterested and ignorant, and think ‘how odd.’

Just like every variant of sex between a hetero couple can seem ‘odd’, it mainly means ‘that’s different’.

It was maybe a decade ago that - in an online discussion - someone said I was coming from a cisgender perspective. I had no idea what that meant and thought it funny that I was being identified by a new label that someone invented. And I’m not at all an authority on this topic, having to use search engines when new vocabulary strikes.

However, life experience has convinced me repeatedly that people are people are people. Thus, all their rights should be the same. It logically leads to simple conclusions like ‘women have every right to call the shots about any and all of her bodily functions and parts’, just as transgender people do.

So for starters, you might be surprised to discover that transgender history goes back a ways before Christine Jorgenson. A long, long ways. Or maybe you’re way less ignorant than I have been.

And you probably heard what Texas Governor Abbott has done recently, regarding investigations of families with transgender kids. So take a look about what it means in practice.

”While the attorney general’s office has gone to great lengths to defend the governor’s directive in court, the agency responsible for carrying out the investigations has been roiled by resistance and resignations as employees struggle with ethical questions they’ve never faced before.

More than half a dozen child abuse investigators told The Texas Tribune that they either have resigned or are actively job hunting as a result of the directive.”

and…

”Several employees say they were told to mark all the cases under Abbott’s directive as sensitive, a rare designation usually reserved for cases in which DFPS employees are personally involved.

They were also instructed not to communicate about these cases in writing, a directive that struck the employees as unusual, unethical and risky.

“We document … as relentlessly as we do because it’s a way to make sure there’s individual responsibility for actions that are taken that can be tracked back to who made the decision,” said one Travis County child protective investigations supervisor. “I could be held responsible for a decision made in my case that I didn’t make, but I have no way to defend myself.” “

Really, read the whole Texas Tribune article, as there’s a lot more to consider.

I do understand that opinions can vary about this choice, including the age of the child transitioning. But I also recall that - as an adolescent - I mainly wanted to be myself and to fit in to the social lives of my peers. These professionals in a very difficult profession are now making it clear that Governor Abbott’s order is gonna cause kids to die. How odd is it if some think we should just accept that?

And since it’s not an easy decision for anyone to make, why is it a governor’s business at all?

”I hereby decide you should have a penis in perpetuity and if you don’t like it, well just go kill yourself.”

Abbott is way out of line and I would hope the courts will tell him that. But these days, who knows?

It is simply not the business of the government at all and there is no public interest served by this law. I think we should be loud and indignant about this government overreach until the order is rescinded.