Stop sounding the alarm over trans kids

When politicians make policies specifically targeting transgender kids, as they are doing in Alberta, what is their aim? Who wants you to be preoccupied about trans kids, and who benefits when you are? Politics is about principles, rights and formal justice, but it’s also about emotion, power and competition. Though we need to ask “principled” questions about the rights and wrongs of legislation, we also need to be clear about the less high-minded politics of these matters. I think the current state of high anxiety about trans kids is a moral panic, one that is cultivated and encouraged by some political actors for their political benefit; we need to ask who stands to win and who is made vulnerable to harm.

Disproportional fear

A moral panic is a state of widespread fear or anxiety about a perceived social problem or threat that is greatly out of proportion to the real scale of the threat. Moral panics often result in reflexive social (and even legal) action that can have profound unforeseen consequences because it is premised on fear rather than a clear understanding of the nature and scope of the problem.

When I was a kid, Christians in North America were convulsed with panic about basically non-existent satanic cults, which extended to harmless games like Dungeons and Dragons and popular music that was dumb and sexist, but never seriously satanic. People were arrested and prosecuted (and some even imprisoned) because of this panic. It seems silly to us now, but it felt very real and very threatening at the time.

Forced extremes

Crucially, moral panics – though they might have some basis in reality – are usually inflamed and promoted by particular actors, often because they have something to gain in doing so. Moral panic legislation can make a very useful “wedge issue” for political actors: you make yourself look good by “standing up” on an issue people are disproportionately anxious about, while also casting anyone who opposes the legislation as on the side of the threat that you’re opposing. It forces people to take unnuanced stances, driving them towards more extreme positions than they would normally take. Fear does that, and the less that fear is grounded in a real threat, the more effectively it does so.

Trans kids in Canada cannot receive bottom surgeries, full stop. They can get top surgeries only in rare circumstances after a long period of counselling and reflection. Any irreversible forms of gender-affirming care are only accessible after years of professional care and deliberation. It’s not that there is nothing to be concerned about in our system of trans health care, but it’s worth asking yourself who benefits from a moral panic and who stands to be harmed by legal actions based on disproportionate fears.

When Christians are told not to fear, that applies to social fears as well as individual ones. As author Marilynne Robinson puts it: “Fear is not a Christian habit of mind.”