National Review Conflates Keeping a Child’s Confidence With Abuse

In the National Review, the difference between allowing children safe people to confide in and intentional grooming by predators is being eroded in furtherance of the moral panic over trans youth.

by Evan Urquhart

What if I told you that every time an adult shares a secret with a child, for any reason whatsoever, it is a sign they intend to abuse that child sexually. Seems like it would be bad news for birthday planning, but this is the premise of anti-trans activists, including the people on the National Review editorial board today.

screenshot from the National Review

Read that first sentence again to really let it sink in. The editors of the National Review (a sort of high-falutin’ version of the Daily Caller) think any adult who keeps any secret of any child other than their own MUST. BE. STOPPED. No more taking the grandkids shopping for a secret Mothers’ Day present, grandma, the National Review says you are now a safeguarding concern. If little Anya whispers in her babysitter’s ear, “My little brother is poopy, don’t tell mama I told you!” Why, that babysitter simply must tell mama at the earliest possible moment, lest this lead to some sort of unspeakable harm.

Of course, the National Review isn’t really talking about Mother’s Day or the adorable confessions of sibling-hating tots. They’re talking about a child confiding in a trusted teacher that they think they might be trans before they’re ready to tell their parents. This sort of situation that is so far-removed from child-grooming that it is an affront to basic decency for the National Review to insinuate that it is somehow commonsense to equate the two, but here we are.

The National Review is employing this hyperbolic smear in defense of a school policy in Chino Valley, CA which requires schools in the district to notify parents within three days if a child “requests to be treated as the opposite sex.” The attorney general of CA, Rob Bonta, is attempting to stop this meddling in the supportive relationships LGBTQ+ youth form with trusted adults outside the home, and implying that such supportive relationships are dangerous and wrong.

Having apparently just looked up the definition of irony, the editors defend this by referencing the higher mental health strain experienced by vulnerable transgender youth, alongside false claims that such youth are at risk of an “irreversible medical pathway.”

screenshot from the National Review

The fact check on this is important: There is no such irreversible medical pathway. Treatment for gender dysphoria is individualized, and transgender people have fought for that to be the case. According to a representative sample by the Washington Post, most adults who identify as transgender have taken zero medical transition steps. Many people who take hormone therapy (which is not sterilizing and is largely reversible with time and/or hair removal) do not get chest surgery. Chest surgery itself is largely reversible, as implants can be added or removed. Many people who get chest surgery do not get surgeries that have implications for fertility. Transgender people have long advocated against requirements for sterilizing surgeries as a prerequisite for gender recognition, an odious remnant of a system that once sought to make transitioning as difficult, expensive, and irreversible as possible.

In other words, a young person asking a teacher to use a different pronoun at school is not the first step towards an irreversible and sterilizing medical transition, however much anti-trans activists seek to portray it as such.

Conservatives at the National Review and similar outlets have to portray it this way, though, because their only interest is in allowing families maximal leverage to suppress their gender diverse kiddos. Unfortunately, the research on what happens to kids in such families is fairly clear: Studies suggest that trans children who are supported by their families are much less likely to have serious mental health concerns, even approaching levels of depression found in cisgender youth. On the other side, children who are not supported in their transgender identities are believed by researchers to be much more likely to have serious mental health concerns.

When the research is so clear the only pathway for conservatives is to lie and smear those who take an interest in the well-being of transgender youth. The National Review is only the latest outlet to imply that any effort to find youth alternative spaces to find support outside the home is tantamount to grooming. The editors are forced to employ this kind of sickening overstatement and demonization of opponents because the facts speak for themselves.