Southpaws and Mama Bears

Grandpa Joe was born in the opening years of the 20th century. I was only four or five when he died, so I don’t know too many of his stories. However, one in particular has been coming to mind quite often lately. Joe worked as a commercial artist for an advertising agency in Chicago. Like a lot of artists, he was naturally left handed. As recently as eight decades ago, the popular conception of dominant handedness was anything but neutral. The word sinister (meaning "singularly evil") comes directly from the Latin word for left. Left handedness was long thought to be evidence of witchcraft, demonic influences, mental illnesses, and physical disabilities. 

In the early 1900s, many children who favored writing with their left hands—including my grandfather—were forced to learn their letters with their right hands. By “forced,” I mean, his left hand was literally tied down to keep him from using it. As an adult, he continued to write words with his right hand, but he used both to draw.

Physically restraining a child and forcing them to use their non-dominant hand is undeniably appalling. It's heartbreaking to recognize how cruelly innocent children were treated by well-intentioned, but misguided adults. I can only be grateful this practice has been abandoned in our country . . . for the most part.

Two of my three children are transgender. I have watched over the past several years as the same misplaced sense of “help” from adults who wanted only to see left-handed children become right-handed children is being replayed toward children like mine. In the same way that my grandfather’s teachers were unable to change his handedness, lawmakers and religious leaders today cannot change trans kids’ gender identities. 

I read a disturbing statistic this afternoon. More than half of trans youth in the US seriously considered suicide last year. Let me repeat that, just to make sure you've got it.

More than half of trans youth in the US seriously considered suicide last year.

This compares to one third of cisgender kids who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community and about one fifth of all youth. Nearly 20% of trans youth surveyed attempted suicide last year, twice the percentage of suicide attempts among all youth. 

I have heard many, many elected officials and political commentators make statements about the nearly 100 bills across the country designed to limit or eliminate best-practice healthcare for trans youth, suggesting their bills will simply postpone gender-affirming care until trans children become adults, so as not to allow undue influence from parents who might . . . this is generally where the soundbites stop, because advocates for these bills don’t wish to outright say their bills are based on the belief that parents of trans kids are forcing upon them some strange desire to make daughters into sons or sons into daughters or otherwise alter their minds and bodies in ways they would rather not. These statements completely ignore the fact that, under their proposed laws, an unacceptably high number of our kids will never make it to adulthood. 

The fact is every major medical association in the US recognizes that gender-affirming care improves both physical and mental health among trans patients. In a 2021 letter to the National Governors Association, the American Medical Association (AMA) stated:

Empirical evidence has demonstrated that trans and non-binary gender identities are normal variations of human identity and expression. For gender diverse individuals, standards of care and accepted medically necessary services that affirm gender or treat gender dysphoria may include mental health counseling, non-medical social transition, gender-affirming hormone therapy, and/or gender-affirming surgeries. Clinical guidelines established by professional medical organizations for the care of minors promote these supportive interventions based on the current evidence.

When Grandpa Joe was little, caring, but ill-informed adults didn’t believe his left handedness could simply be a natural difference. Today, many adults look at children like mine and similarly believe their gender identities must be something other than normal variations. I only hope it doesn’t take another 80 years for the cruelty of current anti-trans legislation to become as obvious to the general population as tying up left-handed children is. 

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Sources: The Trevor Project 2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health; Suicide spectrum among young people during the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review and meta-analysis; National Alliance of Mental Illness What You Need to Know About Youth Suicide; AMA to states: Stop interfering in health care of transgender children

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