10-year-old girl fears she’ll be ‘murdered’ because she’s trans

A 10-year-old girl has spoken of her fear of being killed because she is trans.

Asked on CNN what concerns she had when talking about her gender identity, Violet DuMont said: “That I’m gonna be murdered. I’m gonna be walking down the street and somebody’s gonna come up and shoot me or something.”

Reporter Lucy Kafanov interviewed three transgender youngsters, in the wake of oral arguments in the landmark Supreme Court case of US v Skrmetti.

“That’s a really scary thing to be worrying about at 10 years old,” she said.

Lucy Callahan-DuMont, Violet’s mother, said that her daughter had asked several questions following Donald Trump’s electoral victory in November, including whether they would have to move or if the government was going to take her away from the family.

“It made me feel dead inside,” Violet added about the rising transphobia in the US. “It’s probably, honestly, the worst thing I’ve ever felt. Politicians say: ‘You’re confused, honey’. No, my self is a fact, not an opinion, and they don’t get to decide that for me. I get to decide that.”

Another trans girl, Dylan Heinzer, said it was going to be “a lot harder” to be a trans child during Trump’s second term in the Oval Office.

Republican attacks on trans people made her and so many others feel like “puppets they can play with”, she added.

Her mother, Hazel, insisted that bodily autonomy and parental rights were paramount, adding: “My kids deserve access to the same life-saving care that other cisgender kids are receiving, without politicians interfering.”

Daniel Trujillo, a trans boy, urged politicians to listen to what trans young people are saying.

“They [should] focus on real things, like climate change, instead of using our identities as a pawn to get votes or just to stay in office,” he said.

Supreme Court hears oral arguments on US v Skrmetti

During the oral arguments in US v Skrmetti, which is likely to set a legal precedent for gender-affirming care bans across the US, activists and lawmakers told the Supreme Court that the proposed legislation was inconsistent because cisgender children are permitted to take drugs that are banned for transgender youngsters.

On Wednesday (5 December), US solicitor general Elizabeth Prelogar told the justices that a healthcare ban in Tennessee only restricted physically reversible puberty blockers “when provided to induce physical effects inconsistent with birth sex”.

She went on to say: “Someone assigned female at birth can’t receive medication to live as a male, but someone assigned male can. If you change the individual sex, it changes the result. That’s a facial sex classification and a law like that can’t stand on bare rationality.”

During the hearings, Chase Strangio becoming the first transgender lawyer to present a case in front of the top US court.

Calling on his own experiences, Strangio claimed that Tennessee was trying to take away “the only treatment that relieved years of suffering” for trans youngsters.

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