I was recommended a podcast from
This American Life about modern day controversies among middle and high schoolers. I should have looked deeper into before it listening because it wound up horrifying me.
The first half is about school shootings. Blah blah blah gun control or whatever.
But the second half was about trans kids which immediately caught my ear. It focuses on a FtM kid named "Finn" from Alabama. At the time of the podcast's initial release (October 2022) she was (would be currently) a 10th grader (15-16-years-old). There is so much lunacy here that I have to share it. The Finn segment starts at 32:38 if you're curious (link and local archive below).
I'm going to summarize the highlights as best I can.
33:14: Host talks about how Alabama passed two laws that "focus on the lives of trans kids," whatever that means. Heckin evil Republicans from across the country have proposed "69 new bills to restrict gender affirming treatment, 14 new bathroom bills, 50 school restrictions, so-called Don't Say Gay bills, and 130 sports bans." The horror of it all.
33:57: The reporter of the case introduces us to Finn, making "him" seem like a totally normal kid. Except the first two hobbies they talk about will send alarm bells off in any Kiwi's head: watching "funny YouTube videos" and deciding which color to dye her hair, "green or purple or blue." We find out that both mom and dad are in the picture, and there are two other sisters. The family is also hoarding at least eight different animals (3 cats, a dog, a bunny, two lizards, a duck). Plus a bunch of chickens that Finn supposedly cares for alone.
35:33: The reporter tells us that town where they live, Grove Hill, is "a conservative Christian community." Finn came out as trans in the spring of 2021 when she was in eighth grade (she was 14 at the time). The reporter specifically notes that she came out after the school was distance learning due to COVID.
37:10: Finn states that her teachers were accepting of her transition and didn't really question it. Finn says that whenever someone doesn't use he/him pronouns to refer to her, she feels physically ill and like she has to throw up.
39:35: As a compromise, the high school principal lets Finn uses the teachers' lounge bathroom instead of having to use the girls or boys restroom. Finn is fine with this.
40:07: On the first day of school, Finn encounters "pushback." Her based geometry calls out her deadname during rollcall. Finn meekly corrects, to which the teacher says, "I'm not going to do that." Finn does nothing. Her other teachers also refuse to use the he/him pronouns. One teacher even pulls her aside and compromises, saying she will use the name Finn but will not call on her so she does not have to use the he/him pronouns (based. Also I think this a reasonable compromise for a mentally ill girl). The reporter also states that the school principal and staff would not respond when the podcast asked them for a comment.
42:11: As time went on, Finn says, "It was gradually more obvious that people thought I was a girl." No shit. Finn also wanted to start hormones around this time because she "insecure about how high her voice could go." She gets emotional when talking about this. Finn talked to her mom about starting testosterone and hormone blockers to which the mom told her she would research it "to make sure it was safe." Whether or not Finn started hormones is never addressed again in the podcast.
43:40: Finn hits a breaking point when her based geometry teacher misgenders her in front of the class. While taking a test, Finn writes on her paper,
"please stop dead naming me or misgendering me or I will kill myself." The reporter follows this up by saying,
"Finn says he wasn't really going to commit suicide if the teacher didn't use the right pronouns. He just couldn't think of another way to communicate his distress." The reporter then cites some statistic that "one in two trans youth
seriously consider suicide." Not commit suicide, seriously consider. After this, the teacher talked to Finn's mom and started crying about the note. The teacher felt horrible about it and apologized for misgendering her "son."
The rest of the podcast goes on about the bathroom bill Alabama passed and how it distressed Finn. The school still lets her use the lounge bathroom but said that if anyone else troons out she will have to start using the girls' room.
There was also this little bit that put a pit in my stomach:
The very last line of the segment says that with all the laws that are being passed, they don't protect "him:" "They've made the job of being Finn more difficult."
TLDR: Trans case study of a high school FtM in Alabama who literally used suicide as a cudgel to get people to use her pronouns. Cries over the bathroom bills.
I know this is a still a kid so I am going to try not to sperg too hard. But anyone who threatens suicide, especially over something as petty as pronouns, to get what they want is
fucking evil. Fifteen to sixteen-year-olds are retarded. I get that. But you should have enough of a moral compass as a fifteen-year-old to know that threatening suicide is incredibly serious and should not be used as a bargaining chip. I'm sure this girl's parents did a number on her and hope that she comes to realize she's made a mistake by trooning out. But holy shit that suicide bit made me MATI. I hope that geometry teacher heard this podcast and, at the very least, quietly turns transphobic/TERF because of it. Imagine a student threatening suicide over something you did and finding out it was just a ploy to get their way. I would be livid.
Okay. Top hat time.
Link to original podcast page
Local archive: