Conservative pundit's latest attack on trans youth underscores bigots' shift from homophobia to transphobia

 

Matt Walsh

Wednesday evening I read something in Media Matters which nauseated the hell out of me:

The bestselling “LGBTQ+ Book” on Amazon is Johnny the Walrus -- a hateful picture book by The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh that compares the gender identities of trans youth to a young boy who imagines he is a walrus. Amazon mislabeled the book into its LGBTQ+ Books section and, as a result, is promoting harmful anti-trans views to its consumers interested in LGBTQ stories. 

Walsh is a prominent podcast host at The Daily Wire, a right-wing media outlet and a cesspool of bigotry and hatred which frequently targets the LGBTQ community. Walsh himself has

a long record of espousing extreme anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, including falsely comparing best practice medical care for trans youth to “molestation and rape” and calling doctors who serve trans youth “pedophiles” -- and now he has used Amazon’s mislabeling to claim he is an “LGBT author” and “one of the leading LGBT voices in the country.” 

 Johnny the Walrus is an anti-trans allegory that compares a child imagining that he is a walrus to society affirming and accepting trans youth, including by providing lifesaving, best practice medical care when kids go through puberty. In reality, research shows that transgender youth are best able to succeed when their teachers and families accept and affirm their gender identity, which has been proven to reduce their risk of experiencing depression, homelessness, and suicidal ideation.

Supposedly this book is a top seller. Don't be fooled by that. I bet that just like they do to get their books on best seller lists, conservatives probably bought copies of this mess in bulk. And I also doubt the reviews are genuine. 

But more to the point, as Media Matters pointed out in the excerpt I provided, there is plenty of accurate information out there regarding trans children and it all contradicts Walsh's inferences. But Walsh isn't interested in giving out facts. He is only interested in trolling, passing along lies, and exploiting fears. And not just him. As the excerpt tells, he is getting plenty of help from Fox News and others in the conservative industry in amplifying this mess.

Walsh and his cohorts are yet another bit of proof of how the parameters of anti-LGBTQ bigotry have shifted.  As society is becoming somewhat more at ease with gays, these bloodsuckers are now targeting the trans community with the same tactics they used against gays, particularly the implication that the so-called 'trans ideology' is a danger to children. We saw this earlier this year with a trashy, discredited book from hack journalist and author Abigail Shrier.

It's relatively easy to distract people from facts by appealing to their egos and prejudices. Goodness knows that us gays have had to deal with it in the past:

As have so many other targeted groups:

It never changes. Only the targets who are selected by their vulnerability.