Forsyth County Georgia Board of Education - Jere Krischel - 06/20/2023

**NOTE: Had to overdub the first sentence of the speech, since the mic wasn't working at the time.

Last month, a wonderful woman who sincerely disagrees with me shared a history book, and a thoughtful letter regarding the efficacy of transgender treatments for children.

The book, "Blood at the Root", recounted the treatment black republicans had at the hands of white democrats in the early 1900s. The author noted the lack of legal remedies given the statutes of limitations, but also wanted to ignore those legal protections, and championed the idea of using federal force to redistribute resources from innocent citizens who had nothing to do with the horrors of the past.

Sadly, while the author did a fine job in reporting on the brutal historical record of Forsyth County in the early 1900s, he learned the wrong lesson. Black republicans in Forsyth County were driven out in 1912, because white democrats found them collectively guilty for the death of Mae Crow.

The author and his supporters want to hold white people collectively guilty today, for the past crimes of long dead white democrats, by the same evil, racist rationale. Even worse, their racism is used as a cloak of virtue, insisting that the problems of people of color can only be solved by white saviors.

The author states bluntly, "Accept that white supremacy was invented by, and for the benefit of, white people, and so the difficult work of dismantling it falls to us."

As a proud American of color, I reject this racism. White supremacy has never had any impact on my life, and it never will. I do not depend on white people for my worth, and I won't live in fear of invisible micro-aggressions that can only be detected with an electron microscope. "White saviors" need to leave us alone and stop pretending that our skin color is what defines us, nearly 60 years after Dr. King's proclamation of our character.

In thanks for the gift of the book, I brought a book to share as well, "Irreversible Damage" by Abigail Shrier. In her letter, my kind new friend talked fondly about a female-to-male transgender friend of hers who at the age of 24, was very happy with their lifelong commitment to medical intervention.

Of course adults should be able to choose for themselves, whatever hormonal or surgical treatments they're willing to pay for - installing horns, or removing fingers, or adding additional breasts might be odd, but adults have every right to creatively mutilate themselves.

That said, my two daughters are under constant social pressure to see transition as a cure for the natural trauma of puberty - the social contagion of trans identity, particularly for girls, is truly a public health crisis. And the well-intentioned notion of "affirming" only makes this crisis worse. In Europe, standards of care are now recognizing that gender dysphoria is a mental illness, not a physical one. Ironically, this mental illness, where the first thing prescribed are puberty blockers, is actually cured by puberty in most cases.

I humbly ask the Board to make sure that our school system refers children who suffer from gender dysphoria, to proper mental health treatment, and that we avoid the firmly discredited "affirming care" model that endangers our young girls and boys.

And so on that note, thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to have lunch with anyone who disagrees with me.