Dear vaccine education advocate, Please keep your transphobia out of your educational efforts. Please stop saying that by injecting DNA into our children we are turning them transgender. Stop saying this is the reason for so many more trans youth coming out. I get it, you're worried about foreign cells being injected into the bodies of our babies. I am too, for good reasons, but none of those reasons include the fact that my child may be transgender. Now you may be asking how are these points I have been making transphobic when I would 100% accept my child if they were trans? Let's look at why what you're saying is transphobic and harmful to the trans community. We've always existed! Transgender people and non-binary people have existed for far longer than vaccines. In ancient Sumeria we have records of trans and non-binary people being sacred to the goddess Innana. Great parades would take place in her name where the beauty that is being yourself was celebrated. Studies of artifacts found in Hasanlu, an ancient site from thousands of years ago in what is now Northwestern Iran, found that not only males and females were celebrated, but transgender people were too. There were even trans youth found among the remains. This was 3,000 years ago. Far before the vaccines of our time. The artifacts found that at least 20% of the population at that time were trans. This is far above the .6% recently noted in a Gallup poll done in the United States. The general consensus, however, is that there are far more tran and non-binary folx in our population, but there is no way to know with LGBTQIA+ information being kept off of census records. The Burgis of Indonesia have 5 genders. They have men, women, non-binary, trans women and trans men. They believe that by not keeping in harmony with 5 genders the world would be imbalanced. This is embraced, accepted, and necessary for life to continue. This has been a part of their celebrations for many years, again far before vaccines. You're arguments are not only transphobic they are racist: Many indigenous people have celebrated those that are two-spirit for centuries. When colonizers came into the Americas they insisted that indigenous people must be like them. The puritan culture of the time meant there were only binary genders and to be anything else meant you were uncivilized. This harmful rhetoric continued for centuries as indigenous people were forced to abandon their culture and become like the Europeans for fear of death. The continuing expectation in the Americas that there is only a binary in gender and the insistence that there are no other genders dismisses the truth that Indigenous people experience. To push gender expectations on Indigenous individuals is violent at its core and racist. So why are there more trans youth than there once was? Simply put, they are more comfortable coming out. With a shift in support and an ever growing community trans youth have support that just did not exist even 10 years ago. Many adult trans people have spoken about how they have always been trans their entire life, but feared telling anyone due to violence, rejection, and so much more. So please, simply accept us for who we are and don't pin this on vaccines. If you're truly an ally acknowledge we have always been here!
Resources:
Butler, T. (2019, April 2). What percentage of the US population is transgender? Retrieved from https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/04/02/percentage-us-population-transgender-statistics/
David, A. (2018, December 30). Ancient Civilization in Iran Recognized Transgender People 3,000 Years Ago, Study Suggests. Retrieved from
https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/.premium.MAGAZINE-ancient-civilization-in-iran-recognized-transgender-people-study-suggests-1.6790205
Nagle, R. (2018, June 30). The Healing History Of Two-Spirit, A Term That Gives LGBTQ Natives A Voice. Retrieved from
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/two-spirit-identity_n_5b37cfbce4b007aa2f809af1
National Geographic. (2008, October 21). Five genders? Retrieved from https://youtu.be/K9VmLJ3niVo