A woman who testified against a Louisiana bill that would ban sex change surgeries for minors in the state said she saw that her biological daughter's "odd" food choices indicated a transgender identity.
The remarks from the mother came in testimony before the Louisiana House Health and Welfare Committee amid discussions on House Bill 463, which would prohibit "certain procedures to alter the sex of a minor child."
"We couldn't figure out what the problem was. We took him to specialists and neurologists, and he had brain scans trying to figure out why he couldn't sleep," the mother told lawmakers of her child, who now identifies as a transgender boy. "As he grew, he got to sleeping. But his food choices were odd. They were always like green vegetables, raw green vegetables, which, if you know kids, most kids don't like to eat those things."
"Once we figured out that he was transgender, when he came to us and told us that he was transgender, we went back and realized that the pattern of everything he had experienced as a child — including eating green vegetables, because that boosts testosterone — were just methods of his body trying to become who he was meant to be," she added. "His brain does not match his physiology."
Another mother who offered testimony against the controversial measure making its way through the state legislature insisted that she knew her biological daughter was a boy due to her attraction to "boy toys" at 18 months old. She now plans to begin so-called "gender-affirming care" for her 10-year-old child.
"I was Christmas shopping for them, they were 18 months old, and I bought one of those toy tool benches and I was making a joke, ‘Well, when one of them comes to me and says they’re a man when they're 18, I can't say I didn't see it coming.' Just cause they kinda did draw to boy toys, but I was just making a joke," the mother said.
"I'm so glad I said it out loud, because I have that in my mind now that at 18 months old, something, something somewhere was telling me what he knew all along," she added.
The mother said her biological daughter, prior to transitioning, repeatedly told her that she was a boy.
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"It was very different, and we drug our feet on it because what? It's normal to not understand that, obviously. So we saw therapists, and we saw doctors, and ultimately we came to know what he's known all along, which is that he's really a boy. He really is."
"I will be starting gender-affirming care for him," she said of her biological daughter. "He's been seeing doctors for years, and it's a very long process. They are very thorough.… So now that he's almost 11, and starting puberty, we are discussing puberty blockers. And what that would do, it would prevent him from growing the body of a woman because I promise you he isn't a woman, he shouldn't be in a woman's body, and honestly, I don't think he could survive if we forced him into it. I really don't."
The mother said she will "go to the ends of the earth" to ensure her transgender child receives medical attention.
"Please, don't make us travel for doctor's appointments, don't make us consider leaving the state," the mother told lawmakers.
The bill up for debate in Louisiana was authored by Republican state Rep. Michael Firment, who represents the state's 22nd House District.
Also known as the "Save Adolescents from Experimentation Act," the measure would ban all gender transition medical care for anyone under 18.
