During a visit to lobby legislators on transgender issues, Senator Carden Summers ® knelt down and told a child he would protect her. When he learned she was trans, he backed away.
On Feb. 6, a group of families met to lobby senators on issues affecting the local transgender community in Georgia. One mother, Lena Kotler, decided to take her two children with her to give the topic a human face. While waiting to meet with Democratic Sen. Kim Jackson, who they had heard was a big supporter of LGBTQ+ rights, another senator passed by — Republican Sen. Carden Summers, the primary sponsor of the state’s bathroom ban bill. Little did he know that one of the children he would be interacting with, Aleix, 8 years old, was a transgender child.
According to Kotler and other families who were present, the senator stopped to say hello. That’s when Kotler spoke to Senator Summers about how she was there with her kids to “talk to legislators about keeping her kids safe.” Although she did not mention that one of her children was trans, they were present with LGBTQ+ signage - something the Senator apparently missed when he knelt down in front of Aleix and said, according to Kotler, “Well you know, we’re working on that and I’m going to protect kids like you.”
Kotler then replied, “Yeah - Alex is trans, and she wants to be safe at school, she wants to go to the bathroom and be safe.”
That is when, according to multiple witnesses, Sen. Summers stood up and fumbled his words, repeating, “I mean, yeah, I’m going to make sure she’s safe by going to the right bathroom,” continuing to use the correct pronouns for Aleix. When asked if he would make her go to a boy’s bathroom, he then allegedly backed away, saying, “You’re attacking me,” turned around, and walked off quickly.
For me the problem is that parents can sabotage their questioning period by steering them. Just let them be. For me, this mother taking her kids to something political like this is steering and not letting the kid figure things out themselves.
I mean… Is it though? The kid and others like her regardless of how she might identify in the future is going to be impacted from kindergarten onwards by the laws being voted on. She may have just been there to speak with someone representing her and her parents fight with words of encouragement. It sounds from the article like Republican representive just approached these two just sort of assuming she was a cis kid being brought in as part of the “parental rights” crowd and he initiated the encounter blindly not finding the presense of a cis child in chambers particularly unusual.
I actually tend to see a lot of youngsters given anti trans signs to shake that they are probably too young to understand and probably enforce a lot more restrictions on how free that child feels to be themselves than any politically active trans parent fighting to not have to pick up their lives and retreat like a refugee to a non-hostile state where they have to build their support networks again from scratch.
There are very real stakes in this fight for families.
Stakes are real, but still, don’t use children for politics.
People understand what a kid is without having to expose them to the world as trans at such a young age.
Did they really change this politician’s mind?
“Expose them to the world as trans”? I don’t know if their intention was to make the news but the article doesn’t frame this as a carefully constructed political stunt. They weren’t exactly storming the chambers their parents could have been there to speak on their behalf and just couldn’t leave the kid with a sitter for all we know. They were also waiting in line to speak to a Democratic senator… Probably for a heartfelt thank you. This confrontation seems entirely accidental.
Also… Why would there be any particular change to this kid’s gender journey just because this happened? This idea that we should be cloistered away where hopefully we will revert to a cis identity because we are just being influenced astray somehow is still assuming that being trans is somehow a failure state. You seem to believe some perceived pressure will cause them to somehow double down on their convictions to fight the tide as a targeted minority and is going to damage the child… Bit Gender doesn’t work like that. We don’t pretend to our genders solely due to spite. We don’t do what we do to strictly perform for other people’s benefit. Most of us know exactly what that is like and it is quite frankly fucking exhausting and untenable on any long term. Kids know they can detransition at any point because even if their parents are accepting they all have contact with adults who keep trying to “correct” them and they know that being openly trans isn’t going to be a cakewalk. I know trans kids who are 4 years old that already intimately understand these concepts.
The reaction of the politician definitely did not show any potential for him to change his mind. That he felt attacked by them just saying “My kid is trans and we’re not here to support you” is telling about how people like this react to trans people but we pretty much know they are hypocrites. This one just didn’t have a canned response ready to save face. This isn’t really news, it’s just a more bald faced transphobic reaction than usual.