Think of the Children: The State’s Weaponization of Transgender and Nonbinary Youth

Rising awareness of transgender and nonbinary (TNB) identities in the United States since the so-called "Transgender Tipping Point" has led to an increase in institutionalized discrimination in the form of anti-transgender and anti-LGBTQ laws, targeting TNB people's access to gender-affirming medical care, public spaces, and sports. The 2023 legislative session set a historic record, with 574 bills seeking to restrict the rights of TNB people proposed in state legislatures across 49 states, 83 of which passed. In 2024, 484 anti-LGBTQ bills have already been introduced in state legislatures.

Much of this anti-LGBTQ animus centers around queer and transgender children. In this discourse, children are positioned as vulnerable, impressionable, and unable to have legitimate self-knowledge. This rhetoric fails to view queer and transgender children for who they are now, instead engaging them through the lens of their potential future experiences. Because of the pathologization of queerness and transness, these futures are tinged with fear: the dread of a future in their gender assigned at birth, the inescapable medicalization of transition, or the possibility of their future regret should they undergo medical transition. In positioning queer and trans children in this way, anti-LGBTQ rhetoric draws on legacies of viewing children as dependent, innocent, incompetent, and vulnerable that have fueled the creation of the child welfare (or family policing) system. If children are uniquely vulnerable and valuable only for their future potentiality, they then require a particular care and if parents are unable to provide such care, somebody else, historically the state, must step in to provide this.

In this roundtable, we explore how this anti-LGBTQ rhetoric serves to weaponize children. As queer and transgender social work academics and parents of TNB children, we are disturbed by this discursive positioning of children that is often reinforced within social work research, and seek to deconstruct how this rhetoric functions in order to open more spacious subjectivities for TNB youth. The first panelist will detail how queer and transgender children are weaponized within the family policing system as a means for state-sanctioned familial control. They will also discuss the implications for queer and trans youth involved in this system, and the myth of non-discrimination policies serving in protective capacities. Another panelist will discuss the ways family regulation systems have historically interacted with families in the name of "child protection," and how state definitions of harm and safety have changed throughout various socio-political contexts. They will explore how discourses of child protection are currently being used by individuals, religious groups, and state institutions to limit health care access for trans young people. Another panelist will explore how queer and trans children are weaponized against certain adults -- including transgender adults, social workers, and particularly transgender social workers -- shunting them into the position of a threat, the villains who are responsible for harming these children. All panelists will discuss the implications of this for social work practice and research.