2025 has been a hard year to be Queer in this necrotic empire but it has been a downright horrific year to be a Queer kid and tragically, in many ways, it has never been harder to be transgender under 18. While past generations like mine spent decades languishing in the shadows of cramped closets with no place else to hide, the latest generation of gender outlaws has quite heroically liberated themselves through the power of chat rooms and message boards only to find themselves playing the unwitting role of the latest scapegoats for the professional hatemongers of the Christian Right. These same merchants of misery invested in MAGA back when it was still a sideshow stunt. Now that stunt has both the momentum of a populist uprising and the corporate sponsorship of the zillionaire tech bro class and smashing "transgenderism" in the cradle seems to be their favorite side hustle.
The laws just keep coming and they just keep getting worse. Since 2020, every new year has broken records with the sheer volume of anti-trans legislation, with the number of bills restricting transgender rights more than tripling between 2022 and 2023 alone. 2025 is no exception. The year isn't even halfway through and a record breaking 923 bills have already been pushed forward with 88 at the federal level. Most of these bills are likely to die on the vine but 54 have already passed, adding to the rapidly growing matrix of police state provisions harassing Queer youth wherever they dare to exist.
As much as 40% of trans youth between the ages of 13-17, or roughly 100,000 patients, now live in states restricting gender affirming care, including 6 states where providers face felony charges just for treating trans kids with the same puberty blockers still handed out to cis girls suffering from their own version of precocious puberty. This is being done in spite or perhaps even because of the fact that this treatment has been proven repeatedly to reduce suicidality among trans youth exponentially.
Trump has joined in on this anti-scientific campaign of medical apartheid with an executive order broadly declaring any form of medical care for minors suffering from gender dysphoria to be abuse and prohibiting federal funding to any institution providing this care, leading at least seven clinics to shutter their youth services in states where they are still fully legal. Trans kids across the country have been confronted with the horror of being abruptly taken off a drug that gave them their life back.
Many families with suicidal children have been forced to travel hours or even days out of state and pay tens of thousands of dollars a month out of pocket if they're lucky enough not to live in one of the 8 states that have passed purposely vague "aiding and abetting" provisions to their anti-trans legislation, restricting even out of state care. There is simply no point to such petty fascism beyond garden variety cruelty and six-ninths of the Supreme Court seems to be cool with it, couching state interference in family healthcare decisions as conservatism in this brave new world.
But the doctor's office isn't the only space being turned into a warzone targeting young Queer bodies. In many ways ground zero has been the public school system which is increasingly beginning to resemble an East German police state in which a faceless network of adult bureaucrats is given the right to carefully inspect every cavity of the student body to insure proper gender conformity. 28 states prohibit transgender youth from participating in school sports. 19 restrict bathroom access in K through 12 schools. Another 19 censor open discussions on Queer topics and 8 mandate that school officials out their students to their parents.
Various LGBTQ rights and civil rights organizations are mounting legal battles against what should be clear to anyone with eyes are grotesque violations against fundamental human rights like privacy, free speech and bodily autonomy. A growing number of states, cities, counties and other localities are similarly trying to combat this wave of legislative harassment by declaring their schools and doctors' offices to be sanctuaries for Queer youth. I welcome all of this, but I still can't help but to recognize that these liberal reformers are missing the point. The only reason that any of these laws are affective is because individuals cease to have rights in this country beneath the age of 18.
In no place is this sad fact more horrifically obvious than it is in the American compulsory school system which was designed for the express purpose of policing young people and assimilating them into obedient citizens. The bans on trans girls engaging in girls' sports or using girls' bathrooms in particular highlights this fact. These laws are totally unenforceable unless adult administrators carefully police the bodies of young girls by surveilling even their most personal activities and carefully inspecting their bodies with invasive screening exercises that would amount to abuse even if they aren't inevitably exploited by opportunistic sexual predators. These obscene violations are only possible because adults are already afforded full access to their students every move and bodily function with children carefully groomed from a young age not to object.
A similarly oppressive atmosphere has been cultivated in the American doctor's office. While many states rightfully observe the age when young people are capable of making choices regarding their mental health to fall somewhere between the ages of 12 and 14, nearly every state refuses to extend this same right to privacy and personal agency in regard to medical procedures for anyone beneath the age of 18. This essentially creates an environment where the human body of certain citizens is left almost entirely up to the mercy of other citizens based largely on a totally arbitrary number on a government document.
I shouldn't have to tell you that the number one source of child abuse in this country and worldwide are the legal guardians of said children. So, why then do I have to tell anyone that allowing such people or any people unrestricted access to the medical decisions of young citizens essentially amounts to affording science the opportunity to facilitate this abuse?
Children are individuals with a constantly evolving capacity to assert their own bodily autonomy. Any system that fails to recognize their agency as individuals, including the Supreme Court, is abusive under any circumstances and should be leveled, not replaced by an equally abusive system with more woke intentions. This is especially true in the case of marginalized communities such as mine who already exist at the mercy of a state apparatus designed to oppress us. Queer children will never be safe in cis hetero institutions unless all children are granted the same rights as any other sovereign individual.
This means ending the glorified indentured servitude of the compulsory school system. This means replacing that heavily centralized twelve-year police state with some form of radical school choice that includes public schools based on mutual aid and the Sudbury method of curriculum free and directly democratic education. This means granting all children the basic human right of being able to choose their own education, their own informed medical decisions, and even their own parental guardians. This means all adults, even the "woke" ones, releasing the grip on their egos and assuming their proper roles as guides and caretakers, not gods and masters. And this means that any civil rights movement should be considered a farce unless they commit themselves to universal youth rights because human rights begin at birth.
Youth rights must become Black rights. Youth rights must become women's rights. And today more than ever, youth rights must become Queer rights, for without youth rights Queer people may cease to exist outside of the prison of those cramped closets of yesteryear. We've fought too goddamn hard to go back now and I say it's high time we taught our kids how to throw a brick like a Queer.
Peace, Love, & Empathy- Nicky/CH
Soundtrack: Song that Inspired this Post
* All the Young Dudes by Mott the Hoople
* Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana
* School's Out by Alice Cooper
* Youth Against Fascism by Sonic Youth
* Changes by David Bowie
* Sheila Take a Bow by the Smiths
* Hang On to Your Ego by Frank Black
* Awful by Hole
* Children of the Revolution by T. Rex
* Teen Age Riot by Sonic Youth
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