Gender is complex, and lots of people feel really strongly about it one way or the other, but if you set all that aside for a moment what's happening here is a bill to outlaw understanding, teaching, and development. I don't care what you believe, that can NOT be a good thing. https://twitter.com/RealMarkLatham/status/1294031307127676928

I'm embarrassed to admit there was a time where I held some really dumb opinions about trans people. It was a long time ago, but it still happened, and a lot of the basis of my opinions were - as it still is for a great many people - that "this is weird and I don't understand it"

So what happened was I came to understand it, and it became less weird, and I naturally stopped worrying about how unusual it was to my own lived experience, and just took things back to "people are people, and trans people are people"

Trans folks are the primary target of shitty bills like this, but know who are the secondary targets? People like who I was, and who a great many people still are. If you understand, learn, feel and listen, shitty opinions just kinda shrivel and die. Latham is NOT here for it..

If people talk to minority groups, understand and grow, some people who are so inclined develop learning frameworks so others can learn, understand and accept. That's a threat to shitheads like Latham, the idea that people can change how they feel based on new information.

Kids are particular threat to people like Latham. Likely to change based on new info. They haven't been conditioned to hold on to disproven ideas out of embarrassment. You can correct a kid and they just accept. They start from a position of acceptance because bigotry is learned

What Latham wants, is people with shitty opinions to be unchallenged, and unimpeded from bequeathing them to their children. This is actually quite hard, because bigotry might be growing in some ways and places, but overall, it's losing.

I was in my teens before I cocked an eyebrow at what I'd been taught, then I was angry that I'd been taught it. I'm not going to shut up while Latham legislates it. Trans people are people. Trans women are women, trans men are men. Trans rights. Fuck Latham.