Thread by @JeffSharlet

I’ve a teen working on their mental health, like so many kids. A brave, splendid child, of whom I couldn’t be prouder. They’re public about mental health, believe it’s important to be. In some of the programs they’ve participated in, as a queer kid they’ve been in majority. 1/

Fascists see overrepresentation of queer kids working on mental health as evidence that they’re sinners or perverse. TERFy types blame only pandemic & screens—which, yes—as if the U.S. hasn’t declared war on queer kids & gaslighted them into thinking the problem is them. 2/

You know what’s perverse? Telling kids grossly attacked every night on the largest network, subtly attacked in the most powerful paper, being criminalized, and teachers & doctors who help them being criminalized in half the union, that’s “all in their head.” 3/

It isn’t all “in their heads,” the queer kids who feel like the world’s out to get them. It’s in our heads, *all* of us adults who have thus far failed to protect our children from the screechers & the Tuckers & the genital inspectors & the vicious legislators. 4/

There are the fascists and the TERFs & the see-no-evilers, yes. & then there are those who submit to the undertow, who sigh & say what is to be done. & there are those of us who’re fighting. Ain’t we grand! We’re not struggling hard enough for our kids. 5/

But here’s what the fascists & the TERFs & the not-my-problem-ers don’t get: queer kids, trans kids, are the first & worst casualties of this war on children. But the war is on childhood itself. It targets trans bodies, but it ultimately hates every body. It hates *bodies.* 6/

The war on trans & other queer kids tells kids who know who they are that they’re the enemy—and kids who don’t yet know who they are, which is many if not most—that they may already be the enemy, too, worthy of the hate of the state & even their families. 7/

LGBTQIA+, & especially trans kids, are on fascism’s firing line. But parents of cishet kids who sigh & say poor queer kids are missing that their kids are being attacked, too. Childhood—the freedom to discover who you are—is under attack. 8/

Parents & kids usually go together. So if you’re speaking of “parents’ rights,” whose rights are you *not* mentioning? Yeah. Kids. “Parents’ rights” replaces kids’ right to figure out who they are w/ parents’ “rights” to tell them who they must be. 9/

Kids don’t always understand when adults are being passive aggressive. But they feel it. That’s the gaslighting. Adults taking advantage of kids’ limited experience to attack them & then tell them it’s for their own good & if they feel bad they’re defective. 10/

This is worst—potentially deadly—for trans kids. But even cishet kids are being gaslighted by “parents’ rights.” The policing of their bodies, always too much, has escalated. They’re being taught to look at other kids with suspicion. They’re being made complicit in hate. 11/

When I speak of a “slow civil war” I think of childhood as one of the main battlefields chosen by fascism. (So it has always been for fascist cults of “purity.”) It’s slow, but there are casualties. Suicide doesn’t happen in a vacuum. 12/

I’m not blaming all youth suicide on fascism! Or, any of it, fully. But there are some kids standing near the edge, with “parents’ rights” groups screaming “jump,” & state legislators & school board members poking them with bayonets. 13/

I see those kids as casualties of a slow civil war. & then there are all the wounded. The survivors, those fighting for their mental health, & even the cishet kids driven to secret fear of their peers’ bodies & souls, of their own bodies & souls. 14/

We can recognize that such policing of bodies has always been w/ us, that queer kids have always paid the highest price, *&* that now fascism—w/ clueless aid of those who can *only* say “it’s complicated”—is trying to bring a long simmering war on kids to a terrible boil. 15/

Which is why I believe we’ve come to one of those moments in history best understood through the old labor anthem from “Bloody Harlan” County: “Which Side Are You On?” W/ the men w/ guns outside the library, the school? Or w/ the kids inside, w/ the stories? 16/16