Midterm elections are upon us, my friends. People in Michigan already have ballots in hand. In fact, mine just came today. I can’t wait to vote for competent leaders who’ve been doing a damn good job running this state and deserve to be reelected: Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, and Attorney General Dana Nessel; as well as Michigan Supreme Court candidates Richard Bernstein and Kyra Harris Bolden. And I will be voting HELL YES for voting rights (Proposal 2) and reproductive rights (Proposal 3).
I can’t wait to vote against the clown car that is the Republican ticket, especially the top. Not only do I disagree with them on basically everything, but they are so wildly unqualified for this job.
Tudor Dixon, the Republican candidate for Michigan governor, apparently believes that Michigan’s biggest problems are LGBTQ+ kids wanting to play sports and women wanting to make their own reproductive health decisions.
What’s wild is that Dixon uses (faux) feminism to argue that trans kids, specifically trans girls, should not be able to play sports on girls teams.
“The glass ceiling has been laid back into place by elitist liberals who are sacrificing our girls at the altar of trans ideology,” she said at a press conference recently. She also claimed that Gov. Whitmer is a “trans-supremacist.” She has called the existence of transgender people a “war on women,” according to MLive.
This is pretty rich coming from a candidate who wants to force women and girls to give birth. She opposes abortion in all cases, no matter what. Rape? Incest? Health or life of the mother? Nope. You’ll have that baby and you’ll like it, Dixon says. No, seriously, she has actually said that a child who has been raped and becomes pregnant would find the whole having a baby thing “healing.”
Sounds like a Gloria Steinem protégé if there ever was one.
The Whitmer campaign responded by saying this was just “the latest example of Tudor Dixon politicizing kids to try to divide communities and pit people against each other.”
“Gov. Whitmer believes sports should unite communities as they come together on a Friday night for a football game or a Saturday afternoon for a swim meet, and politicians shouldn’t be telling schools how to play sports,” Whitmer campaign spokesperson Maeve Coyle said.
Dixon is also a big fan of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, and wants to bring the same kind of thing to Michigan. She wants to make sure schools can’t talk about LGBTQ+ people. Not until after the third grade.
“Parents deserve to know that their tax dollars aren’t being used to indoctrinate their children with radical sex and gender ideas before they’re even old enough to know what sex is,” Dixon said. “This is not anti-LGBTQ.”
The fuck it isn’t.
How is it not anti-LGBTQ to say that even hearing about the existence of LGBTQ+ people is so damaging and awful to children that we must protect them from such a thing? My son has two moms. He sure as hell knew he had two moms before he was in third grade. So did his teachers. We were embraced because you know what? We’re a pretty awesome family, thank you very much. Our existence is not a threat to anything besides ignorance and bigotry.
Raising a kid is really hard. Being a kid is really hard. When who you are is continually attacked on top of that? When you’re lied about and demonized? That makes everything so much harder. Especially on trans kids. Because they’re already so marginalized. It’s unconscionable that anyone, let alone someone trying to become the leader of Michigan, would point at the very few trans kids playing on sports teams and say, “You, kid, are the problem. You are what is plaguing this state. You are immoral. You are defective. You.
And then radical conservatives have the gall to wonder why transgender kids have such high rates of mental health issues and why a disproportionate number of trans kids have contemplated or attempted suicide.
To all the trans kids who want to be on the swim team, or play volleyball, or pole vault, or throw that heavy metal disc thing, or play no sports at all and instead draw anime fan-fic about Harry Styles and Dua Lipa, or experiment with different hair colors, or watch “The Simpsons,” or sleep in on weekends. You know, the things that young people do. YOU are not the problem. You are not defective. This world is better because you are in it. You are strong and you are supported by so many more people than you realize. Thank you for being authentically you.
D’Anne Witkowski is a writer living in Michigan with her wife and son. She has been writing about LGBTQ+ politics for nearly two decades. Follow her on Twitter @MamaDWitkowski.