It’s all solved. All in peace. More than 50,000 have not died in Ukraine in the last 100 days. There is no threat of nuclear conflict. World hunger will be eliminated. Covid is extinct. The oceans are dropping and so are the temperatures.
But you have to campaign and win elections. The solution, in 2022, points to the population that has enjoyed disproportionate perks at the top of the social pyramid, a group that is shielded from social intolerance. I’m talking, of course, about the trans community. Of the people who discovered, at 7, 15, 25 or 50 years old, that they do not fit the gender indicated on their birth certificate.
The alliance around attacks on the tiny minority that is four times more at risk of being murdered in hate crimes surprises with cynicism even in the US, a country under increasing control of the far right.
Studies show that 1.2 million Americans identify as non-binary. This equates to 0.3% of the population, the same percentage of those who profess “God is the mind” as members of the Metaphysical Family religion.
On Saturday (28), Donald Trump used part of a campaign rally for a Republican candidate in Wyoming to address a non-existent crisis among the trans population. Like an inebriated and decadent comedian in a pub stand-up, the former president suggested he was going to invite LeBron James to join a women’s basketball team and returned to the topic of censorship at the mention of homosexuality or gender identity in schools, which has just become law in Florida.
Polls show that Americans are stressed by rising oil prices, inflation and soaring housing costs. The solution presented by the Republican Party is to prohibit children and teenagers from choosing which bathroom they will use at school.
For several years now, the American Academy of Pediatrics has been warning of the frightening rate of suicide attempts or suicidal thoughts among gender-fluid adolescents.
But Trump has competition in the comedy arena. Three heterosexual multimillionaires have discovered the lucrative vein of throwing stones at the Christian Taliban’s new favorite target. Ironically, two are atheists — Ricky Gervais and Bill Maher — and the third is Muslim Dave Chappelle.
Under the guise of attacking the oppression of the “woke” culture, Maher put on a show of disinformation about childhood gender identity on his latest show. Gervais, whose stand-up routine becomes more crudely cruel as his imagination dwindles, seems to struggle to stay culturally relevant. And Chappelle, the most innovative performer of the three, no longer hides that his fixation on the trans population is fueled by resentment — he seems to suggest that transgender people are cutting the line of black people in the fight for social justice. If criticized, the three take refuge in clichés about the duty of comedy to face.
In 2016, I visited a Brooklyn public school covering preparations for the start of classes. An 11-year-old student was going to come back as a boy. The school had been guided by a Belgian psychologist who had pioneered the treatment of families with gender-fluid children. The therapist Jean Malpas, who has 20 years of experience, repeated in our conversations: “To accept is to protect”.
Last week, we were reminded that the conservative notion of protecting youth is to ensure that a teenager can buy assault weapons to exercise their freedom to commit a massacre.
