Laura Ingraham says hormone therapy for transgender kids is "child abuse"

The conservative gabber worries that "tomboys" like herself might be "pigeonholed" as transgender

Published August 6, 2014 9:42PM (EDT)

                                     (<a href="http://mediamatters.org/video/2014/02/09/why-have-borders-at-all-laura-ingraham-argues-s/197984">Screen shot, Media Matters</a>)
(Screen shot, Media Matters)

Speaking on her radio show Wednesday, conservative talk show star and potential future politician Laura Ingraham displayed her vast and comprehensive understanding of transgender issues by implying parents whose daughters are "tomboys" may be "pigeonholed" as transgender and made to undergo hormone therapy, a procedure she called a form of "child abuse."

"I was a big tomboy," Ingraham said. "I hated wearing dresses, I liked to wear pants ... I was the quintessential tomboy." Apparently worried that her audience may misinterpret the meaning of these biographical details, Ingraham next sheepishly noted, "I don't happen to be transgender or anything."

"I'm just me," she added. "I'm a heterosexual person." (Ingraham evidently does not know that being transgender and being heterosexual are not mutually exclusive.)

"I'm just saying," Ingraham continued, "that maybe now if I had exhibited the same understanding, maybe I would be kind of pigeonholed as someone who needs some type of hormone therapy or some type of different classes — you know what I mean? ... Not everyone who shows these types of behaviors end up feeling that way."

Later on in the same segment, Ingraham continued to prove herself worth listening to on these issues by describing hormone therapy for youth as "child abuse" and complaining that parents who allow their children to undergo these medical processes do so despite the fact that "we don't really know the truth about what hormones do to the human body as far as altering your ability to stave-off cancer and your proclivity to get cancer and your susceptibility to other diseases."

Transitioning to an attack on ill-defined (but surely not-conservative) parents, Ingraham complained that "these people [who] are all about natural living and organic living ... are all too willing to shoot themselves up — or their children up — with hormone therapy before the child has even gone through puberty. Let the child go through puberty, for goodness' sakes!"

You can listen to Laura Ingraham provide future historians with a great example of transphobia in the early 21st century below, via Media Matters:


By Elias Isquith

Elias Isquith is a former Salon staff writer.

MORE FROM Elias Isquith


Related Topics ------------------------------------------

Bigotry Child Abuse Homophobia Hormone Therapy Laura Ingraham Lgbt Lgbt Rights Media Matters Transphobia Video