In case you’ve been living under a rock, yesterday, March 31, was proclaimed to be Transgender Day of Visibility. This apparently started back in 2010, though I don’t recall hearing about it until this year. It is, perhaps, somehow appropriate that they assigned this holiday to fall the day before April Fools Day, but that’s a debate for another time. There was some confusion over the name because a group of trans activists had also declared March 31st to be the “transgender day of vengeance.” (That wound up being canceled at the last minute, apparently when people noticed it and started talking about it on social media.) In case you found yourself wondering how you should properly “celebrate” the day, CNN enlisted the aid of Allison Hope (whose pronoun is “agnostic) to instruct you on what you must do. Mind you, this isn’t what you “should” do. These are your marching orders and Hope repeats the word “must” over and over again.

Take the time to speak up around Transgender Day of Visibility, which falls on March 31 each year, a time when we acknowledge and honor the rich lives and experiences of trans and nonbinary people.

The designation, created by trans advocate Rachel Crandall of Transgender Michigan in 2010, started as a clapback to the limited coverage of trans people in media, and stories that were wholly focused on the violence trans people faced. We must take the vision that Crandall started and help amplify it across our channels, normalizing trans lives and experiences through our cisgender networks.

If you say you are an ally, then you can’t merely be a bystander. You must speak up. There has never been a more critical time to be vocal in support of trans rights and against the attacks on the minds and hearts and bodies of our trans friends and family.

CNN also referenced another recent op-ed by someone named Henry Seaton about the “need” for children to undergo “Trans medical care.” In a tragic bit of irony, that op-ed was published prior to the recent mass shooting, and it focuses on the fact that Seaton is a trans person from Tennessee and is upset about the law banning various trans medical procedures for minors. Of course, you might not even know that Audrey Hale (the shooter) was transgender if you got all of your news from CBS. That’s because they banned the word “transgender” from being used in any reports about the attack. This is “news?”

Returning to the piece written by Allison Hope, phrases such as “attacks on the minds and hearts and bodies of our trans friends” are common. You are also lectured about “draconian anti-trans bills” and the “policing of gender.” The “draconian” bills in question are referred to as being intended to “target the LGBTQ community.”

Where does one even begin when trying to sort out all of the lies and deceptions in articles like this? First of all, it is well established that physical attacks on transgender people that might qualify as “hate crimes” are so rare that you can barely find any reports in the news. In reality, it is far more often the trans people and their allies who are attacking counterprotesters, the police, or simply Christians in general. (Not to mention the mass shooting of Christian children and school officials that we’re apparently not supposed to talk about.) And that attack in Tennessee was far from the only incident where the shooter turned out to be trans.

The Colorado Springs shooter identified as non binary.

The Denver shooter identified as trans.

The Aberdeen shooter identified as trans.

The Nashville shooter identified as trans.

One thing is VERY clear: the modern trans movement is radicalizing activists into terrorists.

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) March 27, 2023

As noted above, the CNN op-ed also referenced legislation intended to “target the LGBTQ community.” Since when? This is yet another effort by deceitful activists to lump the entire gay and lesbian community in with the transgender movement. The vast majority of gay people never pretend to be of a different sex than how they were born. They’re simply attracted to other people of the same gender or perhaps both. And where do you see any legislation in the United States attempting to regulate the behavior of gay people? We haven’t seen that since the gay marriage debate more than a decade ago and that question has been put to rest.

And in nearly all instances, the actual legislation in question isn’t intended to restrict the activities of adults who claim to be transgender. (The bill pending in Oklahoma is the exception, but I opposed that legislation immediately.) These bills are intended to protect children who are not capable of providing informed consent for irreversible, life-altering medical procedures or genital mutilation surgery. What you do as an adult is up to you, assuming you are willing to accept responsibility for the consequences of your decisions.

As far as the whole question of “visibility” goes, I can’t help but laugh. It’s almost impossible to think of any group in the United States today that is more visible than the trans community. They’re on the news constantly. There are marches and parades and endless fawning news coverage across pretty much all of the legacy media outlets. Perhaps it’s just me, but there might be a lot fewer people getting ticked off about all of this if the (adult) trans people would just shut the hell up and get on with their lives like everyone else. Nobody is telling you how to dress or what to call yourself. Just don’t try to force the rest of us to sacrifice our own freedom of speech to protect your feelings and stay away from the children and we’ll all be fine. Rant over.