One New Year’s Eve in the 1990s, I was seated on a train out of Manhattan when a huge man dressed as a woman took the facing seat directly across from me. Although he had caused quite a stir as he moved through the car, he seemed oblivious to the eye rolls from my fellow passengers. With his bare midriff, I remember thinking he must be cold given the freezing temperatures in the city that night.
In those unenlightened days, we called men like him cross-dressers and it was still relatively uncommon to see them out in public.
Fast forward to 2023. Their time has come. Transgenders are victims because their sex at birth and gender identities are at odds with each other. They must not only be respected, but celebrated, for their courage by the 99.3% of us who are at peace with our biological sexes.
Audrey Hale, who apparently identified as a male, walked into The Covenant School, a private Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee, on Monday and gunned down three nine-year-old students and three adults. She is now being portrayed as a martyr by transgender activists, and even some Democratic politicians and members of the media.
Although the Trans Resistance Network acknowledges the deaths of the six individuals in their statement on the school shooting, they quickly claim that Hale “felt he had no other effective way to be seen than to lash out by taking the life of others, and by consequence, himself.”
TRN wrote they “do know that life for transgender people is very difficult, and made more difficult in the preceding months by a virtual avalanche of anti-trans legislation, and public callouts by Right Wing personalities and political figures for nothing less than the genocidal eradication of trans people from society.”
The group noted that “anti-trans hate, lack of acceptance from family members and certain religious institutions, denial of our existence, and calls for de-transition and forced conversion” had likely motivated Hale’s actions.
The statement reminded readers that “Hate has consequences” and warned that they “will not be eradicated or erased.”
Finally, they asked people to use Hale’s preferred pronouns: he and him.
Wow. pic.twitter.com/YEKBqjGkJB
— Jay Collinwood (@collinwood_j) March 28, 2023
The legacy media and trans activists have echoed many of these sentiments in the days since the shooting.
It's so infuriating that the media gets to both misgender Aiden Hale as a "rare female mass killer" *AND* misidentify him as a trans fem whose status as mass killer proves trans women are men because women don't do that
— Nightling Bug 🗝️ (@NightlingBug) March 27, 2023
Below, an anonymous TikToker said, “I wonder if the parents of the victims of the Nashville shooting today would still have their children if these trans bills in Tennessee were never a thing.”
This mentally ill woman defended the actions of the Trans school shooter Aiden Hale, who shot up innocent kids and faculty in Nashville, Tennessee. And she still continues to defend. Help us identify her. Her tiktok has gone private. @elonmusk @DC_Draino @ pic.twitter.com/F0z5NpXk5n
— Doubler338 (@Chocostead) March 28, 2023
At the 7:55 mark in the clip below, House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, a Democrat from Massachusetts, offers her sympathy for transgenders who “cultivat[e] joy and love everywhere they go.”
TUCKER CARLSON: Garland lying when he says motive in Nashville school shooting hasn't been identified https://t.co/jTeMKhXzzT
— Fox News (@FoxNews) March 30, 2023
Sorry, while I can sympathize with the struggles of transgender individuals, their quiet desperation is not an excuse for murder. My childhood, like many others, was far from idyllic, even traumatic at times, but that does not justify taking the lives of innocent victims.
Hale left behind a “manifesto” before carrying out the killings. In a Wednesday evening post, John Hinderaker noted the reluctance of law enforcement officials to publicly release it. Citing commentary from trans movement activists since the killings, and their designation of Saturday, April 1, as the “Trans Day of Vengeance,” he asked a very legitimate question: Did “propaganda produced by the increasingly violent ‘trans’ movement play a part in turning a vulnerable, mentally and emotionally disturbed woman into a mass murderer?”
An update to John’s post reflected news that the manifesto would be published after an FBI analysis of its contents was complete.
In the meantime, the left can continue to blame Republicans for passing legislation to prevent “gender-affirming care” such as puberty blockers and surgical mutilation for minors and to cry out for the confiscation of firearms from law abiding citizens. They can pretend that Audrey Hale was the real victim in Monday’s rampage because life is so difficult for transgenders.
I don’t care how people choose to live their lives. It’s none of my business. If an adult makes the decision to live life as the opposite sex, that’s fine. (But physically altering the bodies of minors who, in many cases, will live to regret their childhood decisions is a bridge too far.)
While transgenderism is an alien idea to me, I would not treat a transgender with disrespect. By the same token, I am a Christian which is likely a foreign concept to some. But I don’t demand that people believe in God, so please don’t ask me to celebrate transgenders.
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