Jaelle Terrell

Once again I find Real Time with Bill Maher falling short on the issue of transgender identity. Often in the past, Bill and his guests have made incorrect statements about the transgender person’s needs and rights.  But let’s focus on yesterday.

The twenty-first season of Real Time with Bill Maher debuted on January 20, 2023, and his guests included Andrew Sullivan. Mr. Sullivan said, “Why do you have to – why does a four-year-old come in, instead of teaching him the colors you’re telling them, “Pick your pronouns! Where on Earth did that come from? And who told us that was going to be imposed on children?” The teacher has not suspended education.  Colors are still being taught. And yes, numbers too. And people don’t pick their pronouns. Instead, each of us learns who we are and professes this to the world.  We don’t pick.  We explain.

Now to Mr. Sullivan’s point, a four-year-old will have no ability, no concept of gender identity. At this stage of their life, it may be as simple as playing with Barbies or trucks.  And further, the supposition that any educator would impose such demands on a four-year-old is outrageous. 

Mr. Sullivan went on to say, “They’re telling them that people can choose to be a boy or a girl or neither or both nor something else entirely.  That is a lie.  You can’t.” 

First, no one has ever chosen to be transgender. And secondly, Mr. Sullivan just pretty succinctly summed up the gender miasma.  And then he said it was a lie. Just to punctuate this, on the same program Representative Nancy Grace said, “I told my (teenage) children, ”Don’t come home with pronouns, come home with A’s and B’s.”  And then later, “How do they know they want to be a eunuch? Or a boy. Or a girl. Or a tree. Whatever the heck the hundred-plus genders that are out there now?”

The fundamental problem is this. Mr. Sullivan went on to say he supports human rights, and that necessarily includes transgender rights. But he, Rep. Grace, and Bill went on to rail against “medication, sterilization, drugs before they even hit puberty.” 

This is not the place to go through proper transgender affirmation procedures.  Suffice it to say a proper course of action does NOT include sterilization or gender affirmation surgery before puberty. Ever.

There is no need to dwell on Rep. Grace’s comments, except to say if one of their children is born transgender, they seem to be in for a troubled road.  Mr. Sullivan starts with the false premise that people choose.  We don’t. He ends with the proclamation “That is a lie.”  But in the middle of his statement, by changing people can choose to people are born it reads:

People are born a boy or a girl or neither or both or something else entirely.  Yes.  That is the truth.

~Jaelle Terrell