We live in a vastly diverse world and, in our opinion, that's a beautiful thing. Sadly, not everyone thinks that way. For some, our diversity is a nuisance, to say the least. And what's even more sad is that this kind of thinking leads to discrimination and hate crimes.
Like in the case of this story — a trans man gets threatened with being reported to the police after he agrees to babysit his sister's kids, just because he's trans. What makes matters worse — this threat came from people who, in theory, shouldn't be the ones threatening him.
More info: Reddit
Sadly, for some people the fact that we live in a diverse world is a big nuisance
Image credits: freepik / Freepik (not the actual photo)
A perfect and sad example of this is today's story about a trans man
Image credits: korrawinj / Freepik (not the actual photo)
In it, the man agrees to babysit his sister's kids while she's away, but soon starts getting dragged for that
Image credits: freepik / Freepik (not the actual photo)
To be more specific, his brother and former friend start spreading lies that the man is planning to inappropriately touch the kids and even show them their genitals
Image credits: Famous-Toe-4084
As these claims are the furthest from the truth you can get, the man went online to seek support
The OP is a trans individual who transitioned from a female to a male, and had been out of the closet for 12 years at the time of the online post. The sad thing is that his brother never accepted him and never hid that fact. For instance, he’s been deadnaming the original poster ever since they came out.
Deadnaming a person means calling them by a name they no longer use, such as by their dead name, which is considered an unpleasant or even violent act. Most often, deadnaming is directed at trans, gender nonconforming, and nonbinary people.
Yet, deadnaming isn’t the only way the OP’s brother shows disrespect. He also goes on for long periods of time, like 5 years or so, where he doesn’t contact the family. Sounds like typical black sheep of the family behavior, doesn't it? Read on and you’ll see how worse it’ll get.
There’s also another person in the post author’s life who doesn’t accept their transition either. What hurts about this one is the fact that he used to be a friend and an ally, but later turned his whole worldview upside down, because he “had questions.” Now, he joined forces with the transphobe brother, and the nightmare team decided to basically ruin the OP’s life.
Basically, the original poster was asked to babysit his sister’s kids for 3 weeks while she and her husband went overseas. That’s where said nightmare team found an opening for a straightforward hate crime.
They started posting on Facebook that the testosterone, and the fact that the post’s author is trans, will make him want to act inappropriately around the kids he’s babysitting. The umbrella of said inappropriate behavior included things like touching kids in a way he shouldn’t, showing them his genitals, and “confusing them about what a man should look like.”
Image credits: freepik / Freepik (not the actual photo)
All of the nonsense these people were spilling about the OP on social media fit the “LGBTQ grooming conspiracy theory.” Essentially, this theory states that any person who is somehow associated with the LGBTQ+ community, whether by being a part of or supporter of it, is engaging in child grooming.
Even more often than other queer people, the groomer label in the form of a slur is applied to drag queens and trans individuals.
The former resulted in the culture war when certain folks were angry about “Drag Queen Story Hour” — an event where drag queens or kings read stories to kids in libraries, schools, and bookstores. The aim of these events is to foster a sense of play and gender fluidity in children, but for some far-right folks, it seems that it’s grooming, which is actually far from the truth.
For trans individuals, the “LGBTQ grooming conspiracy theory” manifests in similar ways to today’s story. Again, most times, these accusations come out of the blue, just for the sake of discrimination, and just like it did in the story we’re discussing.
The idea for these baseless claims has existed for decades, predating World War II, and sadly, it doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon despite being unsubstantiated.
So, this results in hateful individuals trying to ruin someone’s life, even if that person is close to them — like a family member or (former) friend.
In the OP’s case, when they complained about it online, netizens rushed to offer support. Some suggested that he should file a police report for something like character defamation. In fact, there were folks who wrote step-by-step what the man could do to fight the situation. You see, while their world can be a hateful place, there are good people out there, too, but sometimes it takes some effort to find them.
There were people who suggested he do things like report his bullies to the police for character defamation
