Why ‘trans issues’ aren’t the ‘distraction’ Gavin Newsom claims they are 

According to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, “trans issues” are “one of the greatest distractions” in American politics. “It’s classic,” he said in remarks late last month, following the second GOP debate at the Reagan Library. “One percent of the population — these kids just want to live.” 

Indeed, according to one estimate, among youth ages 13 to 17 in the U.S., about 1.4 percent (or about 300,000 youth) identify as transgender. In California, it’s closer to 2 percent. 

While these figures don’t account for youth under 13 who identify as transgender, Newsom is right in pointing out that, relative to the number of adolescents who identify as transgender, the issue receives a lot of attention. His suggestion that this attention is undeserved, however, is wrong. 

Both the percentage and number of adults who identify as transgender in the U.S. has remained steady over time. But the number of youth who identify as transgender has recently doubled. From coast to coast, parents are concerned about the newfound phenomenon, and the concerted forces promoting it. 

Behind this rapid trend is gender ideology, a theory that purports people can have “gender identities” that do not accord with their biological sex. 

For children sucked into the cult, they’re fed to the beast: mental health professionals who affirm the delusion that something is wrong with their healthy bodies. Medical professionals who write prescriptions for puberty blockers and hormones that are so strong, they can cause the clitoris to grow “almost as large as a penis.” Surgeons who require nothing more than the endorsement of a single therapist to cut off the breasts of a healthy teenage girl. 

Indeed, the medical consequences for children who identify as transgender are horrific enough to warrant a brief “distraction” in a presidential debate. However, it’s the ripple effects of gender ideology that have driven this issue to the top of mind for many voters. 

Parents today can’t help but encounter gender ideology. It’s pushed in school, in popular culture, and has become embedded in our laws. 

Schools use universally beloved icons such as gingerbread men, renamed to “Genderbreads,  and mythical creatures like unicorns to teach children they can have a different “gender identity” from their biological sex. Classrooms operate using “preferred pronouns” and a child’s name of choice. If a child suddenly requests to go by a different identity and use facilities of the opposite sex, many school districts and states now say parents don’t have the right to be informed, let alone consent. In Newsom’s California, parents who don’t follow a child’s new names and pronouns are threatened with the prospect of losing custody of their child. 

Young girls are told to make space for boys in what were previously single-sex spaces such as locker rooms or sports team rosters. This is done without any regard to their own hard-earned athletic opportunities or mental well-being. Even questioning whether that’s right or fair can now cost women their jobs. 

The ideology is so dogmatic, journalists and public health experts methodically replace the term “women” with demeaning language such as “pregnant people” and “people who menstruate,” while college administrators deem perfectly normal conversations about the female menstrual cycle too third rail, not due to old-school period shaming but because the topic nowadays is considered “anti-trans.” 

Indeed, it might be true that only 1 percent of youth identify as transgender, but nearly 100 percent of Americans are being asked to conform to the ideology behind it. Rather than viewing this issue as the “distraction” Newsom purports it to be, for many who are worried about the culture in which we must raise our kids, it’s a national emergency to address.  

Kelsey Bolar is the director of storytelling and a senior policy analyst at Independent Women’s Forum.