Peter Greene, now retired after 39 years as a teacher in Pennsylvania, is a prolific writer. He has his own blog Curmudgacation, and he writes a column for Forbes. I am one of his most fervent admirers. He is a font of wisdom and common sense. In this post, he examines the cruelty of certain Arkansas elected officials who hate trans people. Greene notes the contradiction by those who claim they support “parental rights,” but not the rights of parents who support their children’s wish to be a different gender.

He writes:

The Arkansas state legislature is deeply worried about trans persons. Rep. Mary Bentley (R- 73rd Dist) has been trying to make trans kids go away for years as with her 2021 bill to protect teachers who used students dead names or misgender them (that’s the same year she pushed a bill to require the teaching of creationism in schools).

In 2023, Bentley successfully sponsored a bill that authorizes malpractice lawsuits against doctors who provide gender-affirming care for transgender youth. Now Bentley has proposed HB 1668, “The Vulnerable Youth Protection Act” which takes things a step or two further.

The bill authorizes lawsuits, and the language around the actual suing and collecting money part is long and complex– complex enough to suspect that Bentley, whose work experience is running tableware manufacturer Bentley Plastics, might have had some help “writing” the bill. The part where it lists the forbidden activities is short, but raises the eyebrows.

The bill holds anyone who “knowingly causes or contributes to the social transitioning of a minor or the castration, sterilization, or mutilation of a minor” liable to the minor or their parents. The surgical part is no shocker– I’m not sure you could find many doctors who would perform that surgery without parental consent, and certainly not in Arkansas (see 2023 law). But social transitioning? How does the bill define that?

“Social transitioning” means any act by which a minor adopts or espouses a gender identity that differs from the minor’s biological sex as determined by the sex organs, chromosomes, and endogenous profiles of the minor, including without limitation changes in clothing, pronouns, hairstyle, and name.

So a girl who wears “boy” jeans? A boy who wears his hair long? Is there an article of clothing that is so “male” that it’s notably unusual to see a girl wearing it? I suppose that matters less because trans panic is more heavily weighted against male-to-female transition. But boy would I love to see a school’s rules on what hair styles qualify as male or female….

The person filing the suit against a teacher who used the wrong pronoun or congratulated the student on their haircut could be liable for $10 million or more, and they’ve got 20 years to file a suit.

I’m never going to pretend that these issues are simple or easy, that it’s not tricky for a school to look out for the interests and rights of both parents and students when those parents and students are in conflict. But I would suggest remembering two things– trans persons are human beings and they are not disappearing. They have always existed, they will always exist, and, to repeat, they are actual human persons.

I was in school with trans persons in the early seventies. I have had trans students in my classroom. They are human beings, deserving of the same decency and humanity as any other human. I know there are folks among us who insist on arguing from the premise that some people aren’t really people and decency and humanity are not for everyone (and empathy is a weakness). I don’t get why some people on the right, particularly many who call themselves Christians, are so desperately frightened/angry about trans persons, but I do know that no human problems are solved by treating some human beings as less-than-human. And when your fear leads to policing children’s haircuts to fit your meager, narrow, brittle, fragile view of how humans should be, you are a menace to everyone around you. You have lost the plot. Arkansas, be better.