Are Any Trans Kids Even Using the Bathrooms Fox is Stirring a Moral Panic About?
Some children in Shelby City Ohio are reportedly afraid of a policy that would allow trans children to share the restroom with them.
by Evan Urquhart
A curious article about a pastor involved in protests over a policy which would allow trans girls to use school bathrooms in the Shelby City School District fails to ask key questions that would help the reader understand the situation and its stakes. While Pastor Anthony Cooper’s claims that he knows multiple children who are afraid to use the restroom at school the article about it fails to ask, or answer, one very obvious question: Are there any trans kids using the specific bathrooms where, the pastor claims, children have told him they feel afraid?
It seems like this would be a central question in the story, but it’s of no interest to Fox. The article quotes Cooper as saying he’s “heard from children in the community who are afraid to use the bathroom because of the policy.” But though there are repeated mentions of the policy at issue, there’s no discussion at all of whether there are any trans kids going to school with the children who have approached Cooper, which bathrooms those children are using, or what exactly earth is making these kids afraid. Instead, the news story is filled with paragraphs like this:
Of course, it’s possible for a child to feel afraid of a policy, just like it’s possible for children to feel afraid of the dark, or dinosaurs, or Santa Claus. This reporter was once terrified that a snapping turtle was hiding beneath the covers at the bottom of his bed. Young children are developmentally prone to intense, often irrational fears. Adults who write articles would normally be expected to at least consider the question of what the root cause is for the fear, which in this case hinges on whether there are trans students sharing the restrooms with these particular youth. (An alternative possibility is that adults frightening young children about a policy that doesn’t even apply in the specific children’s class at school.)
It’s impossible to know which of these is the case. Because, for whatever reason, the Fox News article doesn’t want us to know.