I feel so many parallels here. Our current educational trans panic is a gay panic too. An old fashioned, "you're turning kids gay" panic with trans people particularly demonized to scare people even more.

Well, you know what? Nobody socialized me to be gay. I grew up in a masculine environment with a father who was very close and attentive to me and taught me all the masculine things about sports, fishing, hunting, you name it. And he did it with love, out of a sense of sharing his passions with his treasured son.

I didn't know any gay people growing up. I'd never even heard of gay people until Anita Bryant started shitting out of her mouth on national television about gay predators corrupting children.

But I was already gay, even if I didn't know the word for it. Just like you were already trans.

This is our ordinary queer experience, and it's one our enemies are desperate to deny.