The Kids Are Going to Be Fine

A lot of energy right now goes into legislating against queer and trans kids, always in the language of protection. Protecting children is a good instinct aimed, in this case, at exactly the wrong target. The thing harming these kids is not their identity. It is the adults building a world that treats their identity as a problem to be solved.

I know what the other side of that looks like, because I lived the version where you were supposed to not exist, and I came out the far end anyway. The kids today have something I did not: each other, online, in the open, in numbers. They have language for themselves at thirteen that took me decades to find.

They are going to be fine. Not because the obstacles are small — they are not — but because they are not alone, and being alone was always the dangerous part. Our job is to be the adults who make it easier, not the ones they have to survive.