On the 14th of April, the Missouri Attorney General decided to limit access to gender-afirming care for residents of this state. He cited consumer protection laws, which is big talk when it concerns a state that allows the purchase of both mountain dew and provel cheese. This is largely because Missouri seems to be competing for bronze in whatever event Texas and Florida are attempting to achieve the gold medal in, regardless of any actual desire by its residents.

While we’ve already covered this state and the grade-A traitor it sent to congress, it bears repeating that something is rather rotten here and perhaps it’s time something be done about it.

I am not transgender, but I am married to someone who is and many of my friends are, so I care about these things. However, if you don’t care, fine: you should still be pissed that this is what your elected officials are doing.

I lied, it’s not light. The amount of child abuse that goes on in Missouri’s unregulated, faith based boarding schools is terrifying and should put your Rust Cohle antennae up.

First, let’s clear the air: the big legislative push to limit the acceptance of transgender student athletes also advocates for children as young as 12 to be married, so let’s leave out discussion of grooming and the like – the high ground has already been abandoned. In fact, child marriage is so prevalent in this country that perhaps the people interested in protecting the children should focus on that instead of the issues that they’ve been baited into looking at. There’s also the issue of a light child slavery case, with a side of sexual abuse, that was sabotaged by a county prosecutor a while back.

Meanwhile, I haven’t been able to find one credible example of a transgender sex criminal. Plenty of credible examples of clerical sex abuse, but that doesn’t come up. Because the issue isn’t that this is a legitimate concern: the issue is that a small cadre of hateful people decided to target transgender people and are using whatever instrument comes to hand to harm them.

Consider:

Earlier this year, the Great Salt Lake was nearly depleted, and millions of people in Utah were exposed to toxic levels of arsenic. Unexpected snow fall put this danger on hold. Instead of addressing how overdrawn the lake was, the government of Utah decided to ban gender affirming care. Perhaps I’m a bit too much of a pinko to get it, but it seems to me that elected officials should not strive to specifically make the lives of people – including children and marginalized people – actively worse. This is, of course, all they seem to do in America, but it seems very telling to me that they’re opting to do this instead of dealing with the cloud of arsenic dust that will kill most of their constituency.

Understand this: regardless of your opinion on transgender people, many of your elected officials are deciding to make life worse for everyone and substantially worse for about 5% of the population. Your state government would rather you breathe arsenic than a trans person have a middling-to-okay day.

That’s not normal! That’s not how life should work!

Perhaps I’m too close to the issue, as I mentioned my transgender partner and friends, but – counterpoint – that’s a stupid argument. You know, like every other argument made against the “gender ideology” or whatever – which is just “gay lifestyle” with a smartphone. Perhaps there’s nothing sinister going on here, and these people are just trying to make it to the grocery store before it closes.

Aren’t you tired?

Look, I’m going to assume that most of you out there are perfectly fine people that don’t really think about transgender issues – maybe you’ve got a coworker or one of your kid’s friends transitioned and they want you to use a different pronoun, maybe you find that easy, maybe you find that hard (though, as an aside, the oldest use of the singular “they” is from 1375, which makes it about 150 years older than the letter j, so don’t hide behind fidelity to the English language on that one.) Maybe you don’t know a single one and the whole thing seems like a problem for other people to worry about. Maybe, simply, you don’t care, because it’s not your business. That, honestly, is a perfectly sensible thing to feel about issues like this – do whatever you need to do to simplify your day.

It’s fairly obvious that I’m a crazy lefty, and I understand that people may not really get many of my points, but what I’m throwing out here is quite simple: it is becoming clear that, as more time goes on, more and more people are being immiserated solely for the purpose of harming transgender people. Maybe that’s because right-wing culture warriors hate trans people so much that they don’t care who gets caught in the crossfire, maybe they hate everyone and thought they’d start with trans people.

Who cares why, though? Wouldn’t it be better if time, energy, and effort were not wasted on making the lives of people trying to get through the day worse? I think, perhaps, it would be better if that not happen. However, I might also point out that this sort of thing tends to have a knock-on-effect. There’s no easy way to differentiate a transgender person from a cisgender person, and attempts to discriminate just tend to harm uninvolved people. Whether it’s bathrooms, the Olympics, or everything in-between.

Aren’t you tired? Doesn’t this just make you feel exhausted?

Consider, instead: we could not do this. We could focus our legislative efforts elsewhere and do things that have actual, material benefits for people. This isn’t going to happen, though, because doing that would require that they actually do something.

All of this began to unfold alongside the accusations against Matt Gaetz, which he was ultimately not charged for — but it seems weird to me that this Jack-Torrance-from-Wish.com was being accused of child sex trafficking during the panic about child sex trafficking, and yet was politically…fine? Doesn’t it seem strange that that didn’t go anywhere? Almost like it was a cudgel, not a genuine concern?

Instead of allowing municipalities in this state to purchase broadband internet for their residents, they’ve decided to make life worse for one person in twenty. Instead of regulating herbal supplements, they have decided that their paranoia about transgender children justifies genital inspection (which sounds an awful lot like not protecting children, to me. I’m not a father, but I happen to think that – if I were – I wouldn’t be cool with the state government wanting to know what my child’s genitals look like. That seems weird and invasive.) Instead of preventing one and a quarter million people from breathing in airborn arsenic, they decided to raise a stink about girls’ and women’s sports – a topic that they were so disinterested in that a law had to be passed at the federal level to ensure that it receive equal funding (which, I want to stress, is a good thing – but also that it is probable that current interest in this topic by Republican legislators is, perhaps, feigned or in bad faith.)

Look: I have problems with electoralism, and this sort of thing is exactly why, but – if you vote republican and you’ve somehow ended up here – can I suggest that you perhaps get rid of these clowns and pick someone else to represent your interests?

After all, aren’t you tired of this kind of bullshit?

Aren’t you Tired?