Level-setting 2: How queer & trans tweens & teens experience life in the 2020s US

What has been such a boon to our community, has also been a boon to our opponents. Christian evangelicals, Christian fundamentalists, and Christian nationalists* other fundamentalist religious groups, and conservatives of all stripes can organize online just as effectively as queer and trans teens. The smart phones that have transformed our lives have also transformed theirs.

* Christians in no way have a lock on the market for working against LGBTQA+/SGL people. But i'm focusing on them in R2T2 since there are so many more of them than other religious people in the US. Consequently, as a group, they hold political and cultural power that conservatives of other faiths (or those who are agnostic or atheist) do not.

Conservatives have taken full advantage of the internet.

People on the right have been out-organizing and out-fundraising us for decades. They started running people for school boards and other hyper-local offices in the '70s and have parlayed that into seats in Congress, on the Supreme Court, and in governorships throughout the country. They have also raised more money than we have, partly because the more wealthy someone is, the more likely they are to be conservative and, therefore, to support conservative causes. Those of us on the left are far, far behind.

Then the internet came along and, just like us, Christian conservatives were able to meet like-minded people throughout the US and the world. And their presence online means that a queer or trans young person looking for support is likely to run into not only affirming sites but also ones that spew hatred and misinformation.

LGBTQA+/SGL communities have found increasing acceptance as the decades have progressed. As a result queer- and trans-antagonistic people have smaller and smaller numbers in the US.

• America is changing how it views accepting gay and lesbian people, new poll reveals
• ICYMI: Series of Recent National Polls Show Americans Growing Increasingly Opposed to Anti-LGBTQ+ Bills Being Shamelessly Pushed In States Across the Country

Christian evangelicals, Christian fundamentalists, and Christian nationalists are not going gently into that good night; they are fighting tooth and nail against the changes we are bringing.

As a result, queer and trans young people also face the same harassment and violence that those who were out in the aughts and earlier decades faced. Many are shunned by peers; lose friends; face daily microaggressions, threats, and harassment; and are physically and sexually assaulted. School is not a safe space for so many.

• The 2021 National School Climate Survey
• LGBT Teens: Shunned, Alone, And On The Streets
• New CDC Data Shows LGBTQ Youth are More Likely to be Bullied Than Straight Cisgender Youth
• On being queer and mourning the loss of straight male friendships
• Overlooked and Invisible: Everyday Experiences of Microaggressions for LGBTQ Adolescents (academic journal article)
• Scared of School: Even in States With Protective Laws, LGBTQ Students Are Reporting Attacks from Other Kids — and Teachers
• Silencing the Rainbow: Prevalence of LGBTQ+ Students Who Do Not Report Sexual Violence (academic journal article)

Indeed, our increased visibility puts young queer and trans folx at greater risk.* Forty years ago, a slightly gender non-conforming tween may have escaped some notice. Today, children learn from their parents who are Christian evangelicals, Christian fundamentalists, or Christian nationalists — and their friends, religious leaders, TV, movies, music… — the behaviors they should watch for and police in their peers.

• The 2021 National School Climate Survey
• Attack on LGBTQ+ rights: The politics and psychology of a backlash
• Holding Corporations Accountable: The Assault on LGBTQ+ Youth
• North Carolina LGBTQ community struggles with more threats, violence as visibility grows
• Opposition to gender equality around the world is connected, well funded and spreading. Here’s what you need to know about the anti-gender movement
• Pride 2022: Action and Visibility Lead to Change

* Note, however, Prof. Eric Stanley's caveat in "Why is anti-trans violence on the rise in America?": "I would want to caution against that perspective [that violence is a result of visibility] because it can place the blame of anti-trans violence on trans people.”

And while bullying in school for us Boomers and Gen Xers ended when the dismissal bell rang, tweens and teens today get no respite at home (PDF): their harassers and bullies follow them via social media, targeting them directly and convincing other tweens and teens that queer and trans young people should be shunned. This dynamic is known as cyberbullying (PDF). Sometimes, it is severe enough that it can end in death, often by suicide.

Compounding the problem is the fact that so much socializing happens online that many teens feel they cannot put their smart devices down for even a couple hours, much less for a few days. (Adults sometimes feel similarly.) We Gen Xers and some Millennials, especially those of us who were socialized as girls, certainly spent hours with our friends on the phone when we were youth — much to our parents' and siblings' great annoyance. But when we hung up, we didn't generally interact until the next day — and we generally didn't feel deprived by that. Today, there's no dismissal bell or hanging up the phone that gives bullied queer and trans young people a break.

So cyberbullying, like bullying, is real, traumatic, and often inescapable. It is not just "kids will be kids."

Along with severe abuse and neglect at home, as well as a lack of supportive adults, this means that many queer and trans young people face trauma and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). They may bring this with them into your classroom, examination room, foster home, youth group, any other place you may interact with them.

The actual violence or threat thereof that queer and trans tweens and teens face on a daily basis understandably forces many to compromise their identities or how they present themselves to the world. So this violence is a fundamental denial of their right to exist authentically — or to exist, period.

It's true that many LGBTQA+/SGL adults face a similar denial. However, adults often have the ability to move around in the world and to choose the spaces we inhabit that tweens completely lack and that teens almost always lack, too.

Adults can choose where they work (within some limits, like our job skills). But parents don't generally ask their children where they want to go to school or live. And minus those who are homeschooled, going to school is a legal obligation for tweens, as well as for most teens.

If school is young people's "job," we are often sending them into an abusive workplace on a daily basis. And that can be compounded if those same young people are also surrounded by hate and violence in their homes, neighborhoods, religious communities, doctors' offices, sports teams, and other spaces that are important to them -- or that are inescapable.

The last several years have seen an explosion of bills  targeting LGBTQA+/SGL communities. While few of these bills end up signed into law, don't underestimate the cultural, political, and individual emotional toll that this trend takes. The table below shows anti-trans bills introduced and passed over the last several years:

Data source: 2025 Anti-Trans Bills

And many of these proposed laws have specifically and intentionally targeted our children, tweens, and teens: making the provision of gender-affirming care a crime; banning books about or discussions of us, our families, and BIPOC communities in schools; canceling student plays due to LGBTQA+/SGL content; restricting the use of TGNC young people's names and/or their pronouns, and a host of other decisions that put our tweens and teens on the defensive and make them vulnerable to attack by others in their communities.

• 2023 Anti-LGBTQ Laws in the Classroom
• Book Bans – A Guide for Community Response and Action
• High school musicals are being banned and censored due to extreme anti-LGBTQ+ laws
• How age-old homophobic language is being used to miseducate voters
• LGBTQ+ Americans Under Attack: A Report and Reflection on the 2023 State Legislative Session (PDF)
• LGBTQ+ Titles Targeted for Censorship: Stand Against Book Banning
• LGBTQ Curricular Laws
• Map: Attacks on Gender Affirming Care by State
• Pronouns for Trans, Nonbinary Students: The States With Laws That Restrict Them in Schools
• Under Fire: New Report Outlines a War Against LGBTQ People in the U.S.

These same Christian evangelicals, Christian fundamentalists, and Christian nationalists take even greater joy, it seems, in specifically targeting our TGNC young people: passing laws to ban doctors from not just performing surgery on TGNC young people (which, let's be clearly, rarely actually happens) but from providing them hormones, puberty blockers, or even therapy. They are also moving to ban trans children and youth from playing on sports teams that correspond to their gender identity.

• Bans on Best Practice Medical Care For Transgender Youth
• Bans on Transgender Youth Participation in Sports
• Laws banning gender-affirming treatments can block trans youth from receiving other care
• LGBTQ Policy Spotlight: Efforts To Ban Health Care For Transgender Youth
• Map: Where gender-affirming care is being targeted in the US
• Prohibiting Gender-Affirming Medical Care for Youth
• Texas wants to wean trans youth off meds in a ‘safe and medically appropriate’ way. Doctors say that’s impossible

I want to be absolutely clear: young people have died and will continue to die, often by their own hands, as a direct result of these laws. You cannot tell someone who is 12 or 13 to just wait until they're 18 to be able to access the life-affirming and life-saving care that they need. Adults don't want to wait five or six years for something that's so crucial; how can we expect tweens or teens to wait that long? Because of that delay, we also ask them to wait through puberty, a process that can exponentially increase the psychological distress of TGNC young people (PDF).

Every single one of these deaths is an immeasurably enormous tragedy — and one that is completely preventable. Christian evangelicals, Christian fundamentalists, and Christian nationalists have blood on their hands, whether they want to hear it or not.

If you want to advocate against these laws with legislators, you'll find ideas for doing so in this section of Reflecting Rainbow Tweens & Teens.

Tweens and teens are also living in an environment where they hear adults use demeaning and cruel language to talk about them and their friends. How are these young people supposed to grow up with a positive sense of themselves if they're surrounded by negative rhetoric about them and their community? Is it any surprise that even queer and trans young people in supportive families can be left wondering if there's something wrong with them, if they'd be better off dead?

The mental health crisis impacting TGNC young people is especially severe.

• How Will Anti-Trans Laws Impact Transgender and Gender-Diverse Youth Mental Health?
• 'Young people are being harmed': the effect of anti-trans legislation
• 'The young people feel it': A look at the mental health impact of antitrans legislation

So, yes, queer and trans tweens and teens have huge advantages growing up that those of us who are older didn't: online communities, in-person friend groups, supportive adults, and all kinds of role models.

However, they are also living in a world that is out to get them, from the local school board all the way up to the Supreme Court.

The very online technology that allows queer and trans young people to connect with each other also allows them to find out how much hatred is still out there for them. And they're kids and teenagers: how are they supposed to know what's hyperbole, which bills are too extreme to pass, who would never actually follow up their violent rhetoric with action, or who is widely derided as a person no one should listen to? And does any of that actually matter?

Yes, sticks and stones can break our bones. But names can and do hurt, sometimes in fatal ways.

We adults are powerful. Adults shape tweens' and teens' lives. Adults control the narrative and the rhetoric. And powerful adults, like those who hold public office, can have an outsized role in their communities and can command a platform that regular ol' people can't.

It takes a queer or trans young person with a very strong sense of self to ignore the hatred and not to let it impact how they feel about themselves and their friends.

But, really, should our tweens and teens have to have a strong sense of self merely to have a positive experience before they reach adulthood? No. No, they should not.

That is the context in which the rest of Reflecting Rainbow Tweens & Teens happens. It is the context that the queer and/or trans young person you know lives day-in and day-out. They need your support. Desperately. Now.

You also need to know that queer and trans tweens and teens are not out there passively sitting around, waiting to be victims of the adults and peers who are trying to ruin their lives. In whatever ways are possible for each of them, they are living authentically, fighting back, creating community, and changing the world around them.

You can choose to be an adult who supports, encourages, and affirms them. Or you can choose to be an adult who adds to the stressors and pain in their lives, either by passively letting things happen or by actively colluding with queer- and trans-antagonistic forces.

The young person you know is out there in the world, trying to live as genuinely and authentically as possible.

How are you going to help them?

If you're not sure or are looking for other ideas, this website is for you.

You can read the "How R2T2 is organized" page to get a guide to navigating this site. Or you can dive directly in to any of the sections in the main navigation menu above.

Please, come join us. That queer or trans young person in your life needs you.