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https://freedium.cfd/https://medium.com/prismnpen/im-trans-society-removed-my-comfort-around-children-30243abfc2ed>
'I used to love looking after children. I found it fun to invent games and run
around (and still do), and that made me a really good babysitter. I was once,
unprompted, paid a $50 tip at a family event (this was before inflation) and
offered a babysitting gig on the spot.
I liked looking after the kids. At one point, being a parent was all I wanted.
It was something I dreamed about, part of my life plan whenever I talked about
the future.
However, that dream slowly got displaced by a deep discomfort with being around
children. While I liked the idea of childrearing, over and over again, I was
presented with the idea that queer people like me were inherent pedophiles.
"They're giving kids porn and telling third graders that they should
masturbate,"
Libs of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik lied in a now infamous
interview with Taylor Lorenz. "They're giving middle school children guides to
gay sex, anal sex, sex toys."
The message I hear — the one I unwittingly internalize — from false statements
like this one is that queers are dangerous around kids and, even more than
that, that we are unfit to be parents. As anti-LGBTQ politician Rick Santorum
remarked in a
Pew Research Center interview in 2008 about same-sex child
rearing:
"What society should be about is encouraging what's best for children.
What's best for children, we know, is a mother and a father who are the
parents of that child, raising that child in a stable, married relationship,
and we should have laws that encourage that, that support that."
This sentiment from anti-LGBTQIA advocates has ruined my comfort around
children, and I wanted to talk about this meme's deep, unsettling roots and how
it affects the queer community's psyche today.'
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
