Hours after yet another tragic school shooting in Wisconsin, the head of Wisconsin Moms for Liberty, along with other conservatives, used the opportunity to spread rumors that the shooter in the incident was a trans person. No information on the shooter had been released by police.
You can read more about Scarlett Johnson here.
Madison’s police chief, Shon Barnes, has asked people to stop speculating and spreading rumors about the shooter’s gender identity.
Experts say this type of conservative scapegoat messaging has become common, especially toward trans people, and in the wake of mass shootings.
In dozens of social media posts that began appearing shortly after the horrible event, conservatives online promoted the idea that the shooter was trans – politicizing the heartbreak while reinforcing their anti-trans messaging.
Just hours after the shooting and with no motive released by police, elected Republican Representative Barbara Dittrich of Oconomowoc also made this claim in a tweet she has now deleted:
And again, with no information released by the police, the messaging was picked up by national conservative mouthpieces like Tomi Lahren:
Kenosha has experienced both recent school shooting fears as well as misinformation about a vote on KUSD policy that involves trans students which was spread online by members of Kenosha Moms for Liberty and a Kenosha elected Republican.
KUSD schools have experienced two separate and alarming incidents involving guns recently. You can read more about those incidents here and here.
Misinformation about a vote taken by the KUSD school board on December 10th, were shared in the comment section of a Kenosha social media post by Amber Kraning, which was then shared hundreds of times and received hundreds of comments, many of them anti-trans, before being removed by Facebook. The post comments encouraged people to join Moms for Liberty to “fight” trans inclusive policies and to “protect” students from their trans peers. Kraning misrepresented the vote, claiming it was a vote to allow trans children to use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond to their gender-identity. In fact, that vote was merely a tweak the language of an existing KUSD policy that was recommended by the Wisconsin Association of School Boards. The non-discrimination policy was not new and trans-inclusive policy had been in practice in the district for years without incident. You can read more here.
KUSD, like other school districts, participates in interscholastic athletics governed by the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association (WIAA). To remain a part of these programs—which allow KUSD student-athletes to compete, attend tournaments, and earn scholarships—KUSD is required to abide by WIAA rules, including those aligned with Title IX non-discrimination. The vote was to bring KUSD policy language in line with WIAA rules and Title IX requirements.
Comments on Kraning’s post included anti-trans rhetoric, indicating there was danger in including trans students and that other students required protection from them, despite the fact there is no evidence that allowing transgender people to access facilities aligned with their gender identify poses a safety risk to others, and excluding them can be significantly harmful to their well-being.
Rocco LaMacchia Sr., a local Republican on the Kenosha city council, also shared misinformation about the vote on his social media. You can read more about that here.
Kenosha Moms for Liberty and MassResistance-two extremist groups located in Kenosha that spread LGBT misinformation
Kenosha Moms for Liberty has been identified as an anti-government extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Kenosha Moms for Liberty has partnered in the past with Wisconsin MassResistance. Wisconsin MassResistance has been identified as both an anti-goverment extremist group and an anti-LGBT hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The two groups have partnered on anti-LGBT book bans in Kenosha County.
MassResistance regularly engages in anti-LGBT messaging in their social media posts, including equating LGBT people with demons. Some examples are below; the last two are tweets from Karen Mahoney, one of the Kenosha leaders of MassResistance, including a tweet linking trans people with mass shootings.
So what’s behind all the conservative misinformation about trans children?
Conservatives regularly promote misinformation about trans people.
Misinformation about trans children and gender-affirming care are a frequent target of conservative misinformation. You can read more about that here.
The reality, however, is that transgender shooters are exceedingly rare.
“Whereas there are hundreds of mass shooters, you can count the number of transgender and nonbinary assailants on one hand and still have unused fingers,” said James Alan Fox, a professor of criminology, law and public policy at Northeastern University
Of the 197 shooting incidents in the Violence Prevention Project database of mass shootings since 1966, 192 of the shooters were male, four were female, and one was transgender. White men made up the majority of perpetrators, according to the database.
So WHY do Moms for Liberty members and other conservatives keep trying to scapegoat trans children and adults?
Transgender people make up a small portion of the population. According to recent studies, only about 1.6% of the US population identifies as transgender or nonbinary, meaning their gender differs from the sex they were assigned at birth.
For that reason, many people don’t know a trans person, or may not realize they do. Transgender fear comes from both a lack of experience with and knowledge about transgender people which has then been exacerbated by the spread of misinformation, including misinformation relating to healthcare, policies and shootings.
Some conservatives have weaponized those fears and/or lack of information to try to win political power. Creating a common enemy of trans children and adults has been a conservative way to motivate voters. In the last school board election, Kenosha Moms for Liberty and MassResistance tried to motivate people to vote for their candidates by attacking books with LGBT content. School board candidates are currently gathering signatures for next April’s school board election.
Anti-trans sentiment has resulted in 617 anti-trans bills proposals – bills that would restrict the rights and freedoms of trans individuals – in the United States between January and June of this year. And according to researchers with the Trevor Project, anti-transgender state laws directly caused up to a 72 percent increase in suicide attempts among transgender and nonbinary youth this year.
There are many sources of accurate information about transgender people including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, the National Center for Transgender Equality, the Trevor Project, GLAAD, Planned Parenthood and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).
Transgender children are amongst the most vulnerable children in our school population. Compared to their peers, they face higher rates of verbal and physical harassment as well as physical and sexual assault. They deal with higher risks of depression, self-harm and suicide
The emotional and psychological trauma of rejection, whether by family, friends, society, or lawmakers, can leave scars that never heal. When we fail to accept people for who they are, we pass painful judgements on them and create so much unnecessary emotional and psychological pain.
But acceptance has been shown to greatly reduce those behaviors.
Kenosha County Democrats 
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