"My daughter did not choose to be a girl. She's been a girl from Day 1. God made her that way."
The father of a transgender girl pleads with Missouri lawmakers to let trans girls play sports alongside cis gender girls.
The father of a transgender girl pleads with Missouri lawmakers to let trans girls play sports alongside cis gender girls.
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00:00As a parent, the one thing we cannot do, the one thing, is silence our child's spirit.
00:07And so on that day, my wife and I stopped silencing our child's spirit.
00:13The moment we allowed my daughter to be who she is, to grow her hair,
00:18to wear the clothes she wanted to wear, she was a different child.
00:22And I mean it was immediate. It was a total transformation.
00:30I didn't get it either. For years, I didn't get it.
00:39For years, I would not let my daughter wear girl clothes.
00:44I did not let her play with girl toys.
00:46I forced my daughter to wear boy clothes and get short haircuts, play on boy sports teams.
00:53Why did I do this? To protect my child.
00:56I did not want my daughter or her siblings to get teased.
01:00And truth be told, I did it to protect myself as well.
01:03I wanted to avoid those inevitable questions as to why my child did not look and act like a boy.
01:10My child was miserable. I cannot overstate that.
01:13She was absolutely miserable, especially at school.
01:16No confidence, no friends, no laughter.
01:19I honestly say this. I had a child who did not smile.
01:24We did that for years. We did that against the advice of teachers, therapists, and other experts.
01:30I remember the day everything changed for me.
01:34I'd gotten home from work, and my daughter and her brother were in the front lawn.
01:40And my daughter had sneaked on one of her older sister's play dresses.
01:46And they wanted to go across the street and play with the neighbor's kids.
01:49It was time for dinner. I said, come in.
01:51She asked, can she go across the street? I said, no.
01:55She asked me if she went inside and put on boy clothes, could she then go across the street and play?
02:04And it's then that it hit me that my daughter was equating being good with being someone else.
02:10I was teaching her to deny who she is.
02:13I now have a confident, a smiling, a happy daughter.
02:17She plays on a girls' volleyball team. She has friendships. She's a kid.
02:26My daughter did not choose to be a girl. She's been a girl from day one.
02:30God made her that way.
02:33And the God I believe in does not make mistakes.
02:37And those kids who I feared would tease her, they embraced her.
02:41This is a non-issue for them.
02:44Because here's the thing. For kids, rarely is it a problem.
02:49In so many ways, and I agree with the former speaker, in so many ways, this legislation is a solution in search of a problem.
02:57Supporters like to present the situation out there like there are these hulking men, representative, the man behind me,
03:06out there playing on girls' teams, trampling girls on the fields.
03:10Folks, that's not the real world. That's not happening.
03:14In the real world, transgender kids are taking hormone blockers, reducing the testosterone in their body,
03:22giving them no advantage over their female peers.
03:26That's what's actually happening.
03:30I came here today as a parent to share my story.
03:33I need you to understand that this language, if it becomes law, will have real effects on real people.
03:41It will affect my daughter. It will mean she cannot play on the girls' volleyball team or dance squad or tennis team.
03:48It will mean she will not have the opportunity that all of us had to be part of a team,
03:53to be part of something bigger, greater than ourselves.
03:57I ask you, please don't take that away from my daughter or the countless others like her who are out there.
04:03Let them have their childhoods. Let them be who they are.