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Marie Willa Bobo-Smith is a Mendocino County resident, parent, and advocate for children and gender-diverse communities. A post-operative transgender woman who was once a transgender child herself, she speaks to how public policy affects real children, families, and schools at the local level.
Across the country, lawmakers are introducing bills like H.R. 7661 that claim to “protect children” by restricting what schools can say or teach about gender identity. While these proposals are framed as safeguards, they rest on a false and damaging premise: that being transgender, or experiencing gender dysphoria, is inherently sexual.
It isn’t.
Gender identity is about who a person knows themselves to be. Gender dysphoria is a medically recognized condition involving distress when that identity doesn’t align with one’s assigned sex at birth. Neither involves sexual acts, sexual behavior, or sexual instruction. Labeling them as “sexual” requires projecting adult sexual meaning onto children’s identities — and that projection is the real harm.
We don’t consider it sexual when a child knows they are a boy or a girl. We don’t call it sexual when schools talk about puberty, pronouns, or the social experiences of growing up. Yet when a child is transgender, their existence is suddenly treated as inappropriate. That double standard isn’t about protecting children — it’s about erasing a group of people by redefining their identity as taboo.
Bills like H.R. 7661 don’t ban sexual content. They ban acknowledgment. They tell schools that recognizing transgender students, offering age-appropriate support, or even answering basic questions about gender could put funding at risk. The result isn’t safety — it’s silence. And silence doesn’t protect children; it isolates them.
The effects don’t stay abstract. Cisgender children are increasingly questioned or harassed for not conforming to expectations. Teachers self-censor basic, nonsexual facts. Transgender and questioning students lose access to support proven to reduce anxiety, depression, and suicide risk. None of this makes schools safer. It simply makes them colder.
Here in Mendocino County, our schools are small, personal, and deeply woven into community life. When national culture-war legislation filters down into classrooms like ours, it shows up not as theory but as fear and hesitation around children who are already navigating a complex world. Our community has long valued care over cruelty and understanding over erasure. We should not allow distant lawmakers to redefine who belongs in our classrooms or which children are allowed to be seen.
If lawmakers truly want to protect children, they should start by protecting truth. Identity is not sex. Recognition is not sexualization. And erasing reality under the banner of “protection” doesn’t shield children from harm — it creates it.
Okay, fair enough. But you are not actually addressing the problem. What about school children watching sexually illicit content at erotic drag shows? In an attempt to “normalize” trans, kids are exposed to erotic and inappropriate sexually oriented performances. That’s the problem. That’s the threat. Unfortunately the general backlash to what irresponsible adults are doing creates the animosity that can sometimes be misdirected towards a single disturbed child. Need to address that in a responsible manner. Distorted beliefs about trans lead to self-defeating behaviors like a drag show. Instead of acceptance they create division.
When I was growing up, and for as far back as history as I know it went, if you were born with a penis you were a male/boy. If you had a vagina you are a female/girl. On extremely rare occasions, someone was born with both. Not a common occurrence that I know of and I don’t know why.