‘My mother would never say something like that’: Georgia mom gives a trans rights speech that everyone needs to hear

The issue of transgender rights is about to get much more contentious, as the U.S. braces itself for another four years of heartless Donald Trump policies.

Trans people have been targets of the far-right for awhile now, as soulless slime balls like Marjorie Taylor Greene use their lives as political fodder. That rhetoric is only ramping up now that a felon is headed to the White House, and its instilling genuine fear in the hearts of American citizens, who don’t know what their lives will look like in just a few months.

Dozens of concerning and downright horrifying laws have already been proposed, and with Trump’s Cabinet incoming and Congress on his side, we could see quite a few of them actually come to fruition. That’s a terrifying thought, and the motivation behind the stirring speech recently delivered by a concerned Georgia mom.

In a clip that’s since gone solidly viral, a concerned mom took to the stand to provide her perspective on the damaging topic of trans women in sports. She shared a heartfelt story of when her daughter first began to declare her gender, when she became depressed over feeling like a girl but being treated as a boy, and over her — and her family’s — reaction to the bills that treat her like a threat to other young girls.

“The title of this bill implies that cisgender girls need to be protected from my child,” the mother says, referencing Georgia’s proposed Protecting Women’s Sports bill. “My very un-athletic, no hand eye coordination theater kid.” Despite her lack of athleticism, the woman’s daughter does want to join her school’s intramural team “because that’s where her friends are.”

This absolute hero of a loving mother then goes on to discuss the precedent Georgia’s bill is grounded on. Other states like Utah and South Dakota have bans on transgender women in sports, but all of them were born of bigotry, not necessity. They did not come about due to sky-high numbers of transgender women in sports nor were they inspired by a clear competitive difference between cisgender girls and transgender girls.

As she accurately notes in her address, transgender people make up a mere 0.5% of the U.S. population. Trans women — or girls, in this case — make up an even smaller percentage of the population, and yet they are the fodder for dozens of targeted bills. It simply doesn’t make sense. Even fewer of them are athletes, and the teeniest of tiniest percentages of that already minuscule number are interested in playing sports competitively. Why are they taking up so much of our national attention, and — most importantly — why are they being so unfairly targeted?

The language surrounding these bills and the discussion of transgender rights is immensely harmful, as the woman notes, and it inevitably makes young trans lives harder. It makes them less safe, as they become targets of bullies, of bigots, and of various insidious figures throughout the world.

The most impactful part of this heartfelt mother’s speech comes at the end, when she shares the deeply personal impact of bills like Georgia’s on actual, living, young people. She notes that it is bills exactly like this one that prompted a deep mental health plunge for her daughter, specifically because she can’t help but internalize the language used to excuse these policies, and the hate they promote.

There’s a little girl currently growing up believing that “there are people out there who would be happier if I didn’t exist.” More than one, it seems safe to say, and the people they are referencing are the same ones who’d toss a woman in jail for getting an abortion. They say all life matters, they say every soul has a purpose, and yet they treat these souls as lesser-than — as expendable. They prove themselves to be hypocrites the moment the issue of trans rights arises, because, to them, lives only matter when they can be politicized for a purpose. And in this case, that purpose is to spread fear, hate, and division, and its trans kids who pay the price.