"This bill is just barbaric and cruel."
This trans activist is fighting against a Texas bill that would criminalize parents providing gender-affirming care for their trans children.
The GenderCool Project
This trans activist is fighting against a Texas bill that would criminalize parents providing gender-affirming care for their trans children.
The GenderCool Project
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00:00This bill, if it became law, would make Texas uninhabitable for trans youth and their loving, supportive families.
00:07This bill, SB 1646 by Perry, is just barbaric and cruel.
00:20It would give the state power to take trans children away from their parents by defining support for transition-related care as child abuse.
00:29By the time I came out, I had already begun female puberty, and the ways in which my body was changing were excruciating and caused severe anguish.
00:45Even with familial support, the pain of having to go through the wrong puberty was excruciating.
00:50If I had been able to start hormone blockers before hitting puberty, this would have spared me so much pain.
00:56When I started testosterone, I felt like my life could finally begin, and it gave me a sense of hope that I'd never felt before.
01:03This hope was amplified when I had top surgery.
01:06His safety and medical procedures early on were my biggest worries.
01:12When he was 13, he was pleading with us to start hormone therapy.
01:16He was intensely distressed by his physical changes.
01:21My wife and I researched the pros and cons and consulted with his pediatrician, his therapist, his psychiatrist, and after months, we agreed this was the best option for him.
01:34That was the most difficult decision I've ever made.
01:39Since the time I could walk, talk, and think for myself, I knew that I was in some way different from my peers and those around me.
01:51I gravitated towards and insisted on wearing boys' clothes, and the same went with my insistence on being associated with boys' toys and characters and role-playing games.
02:02As I grew older, I eventually had a word to somewhat make sense of how I felt, how I'd been feeling, and that was tomboy.
02:11But I quickly came to realize and understand that I wasn't a girl that liked boys' things or a girl that acted and looked like a boy, but that in reality, I was a boy.
02:23But I still didn't have the language quite at that time to verbalize that feeling.
02:31At a band camp the summer before my 7th grade year, I actually met a camper who was also transgender, and he showed me a video of a trans man documenting his transition on YouTube.
02:45And it was as those two moments collided that I finally knew who I was and that it wasn't impossible for me to live my truth.
03:03Being seen as who I truly am is a freeing and empowering feeling that all trans people deserve.
03:12I can't imagine what it would've been like had I not had that support.
03:18At the bare minimum, trans youth need support. They need support from their families, their friends, schools, communities, and more.
03:44They need to be celebrated for and affirmed as who they are and know themselves to be in every aspect of their lives.
03:51On top of that, they need access to gender-affirming medical care, like hormone blockers for young trans youth, hormones, and gender-affirming surgeries if those are things that they feel is necessary for them.
04:14For me, it's important to speak out on issues that impact the trans community because a large portion of the country and an even larger portion of the world doesn't personally know somebody who is trans.
04:38The media still plays a major role in shaping the national and interpersonal discourse about trans people, for better or for worse.
04:47Because of that, I think it's important to speak out so that the narratives of trans people are being told by trans people themselves.
04:55Gender Cool's mission is to showcase who transgender and non-binary youth are, not what we are.
05:11And through that, replacing the misconceptions and misinformed opinions that people have about trans and non-binary youth with the experience of actually getting to meet us and seeing that we are so much more than our transness.
05:27Trans youth are youth before they are trans. They are just like any other kids with hopes, passions, aspirations, friends, hobbies, and so, so much more.
05:41They just want to play sports with their friends, and they just want access to the life-saving care that they need.
05:48They just want to exist.