Quiver Me Timbers

Quiver Me Timbers
Rachel Birdsell

Rachel Birdsell

Dear Michelle Duggar,

When the Fayetteville City Council was considering the anti-discrimination bill, you recorded a robo-call message that tried to scare people into thinking that transgender individuals were out to molest children. That is so completely inane, that I feel dumber for typing it. For that very reason, I was going to ignore you and let you go down the path of destiny for all has-beens, but you just keep popping up on the news, so here are my thoughts about you, your phone call message, and all the crazy bits in between.

Transgender people aren’t going through the pain of coming out and then having surgery and going through the ups and downs of hormone therapy so they can sneak into the bathroom and molest children. Really. They’re not. They’re changing their physical gender to match the gender that’s been inside them for their entire lives. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s who they are.

And, you’d have to be a half-brained idiot to not realize that at some point your sons and daughters have already encountered a pedophile in the bathroom. Saying that transgender people have a greater chance of being a pedophile is like saying people with red hair have a greater chance of being a pedophile. Your logic is so flawed and ridiculous that I’m embarrassed for you.

But, the thing is, even if your logic was sound, even if what you said was the wisest words to ever come forth from someone’s mouth, there are a lot of people who wouldn’t listen to what you have to say based on the life choices you’ve made. There are some of us who find it difficult to respect a woman who treats her vagina like a clown car. We’re aware that the reason you’ve gone forth and multiplied to the extreme is because you and your husband are members of the Quiverfull movement, which is another reason for us to think that maybe all your dogs don’t bark. You bringing a bunch of people into an already overpopulated earth is irresponsible, at best.

Do you realize that if each of your children has 19 kids, you’ll have 361 grandchildren? And if each of them has 19, that’ll be 6,859 great-grandchildren. There’s no reason to have enough great-grandchildren to populate your own small town. Plus, there’s the damage you’re going to the older children by making them into parents of their younger siblings instead of letting them have a childhood, along with the damage to the children by not having a real parent around to nurture them.

The thing is, your opinion doesn’t matter to me until you start spreading lies and stirring up a pile of shit about a group of people that you either don’t know anything about or you’re choosing to purposely vilify. I can’t say that there isn’t a single transgender person who is a pedophile, but what I can say is that most transgender people aren’t. They’re lovely people who deserve to be treated with respect. It’s a shame your religious movement doesn’t spend less time on convincing you to replenish the earth single-handedly, and more time teaching you how to treat other people.

Rachel Birdsell is a freelance writer and artist. You can reach her at rabirdsell@gmail.com.

Categories: Commentary