David French Is Terrible On Trans Rights

On Tuesday, Bloomberg Politics confirmed that Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol might have a third-party candidate in mind to challenge GOP nominee Donald Trump in the general election. According to sources, Kristol's pick is a conservative lawyer and staff writer for National Review, David French, whose comments about transgender people are seriously disturbing.

French has yet to confirm whether he would consider running as an independent candidate in the 2016 presidential race. However, Bloomberg's sources have claimed that he might be open to the job. In an article about the BBC documentary series "Young, Trans, and Looking for Love," the Iraq War veteran and Bronze Star winner wrote about Claire, a trans woman featured in the film. French describes Claire as "a teenage boy who ... adopts exaggerated feminine mannerism," and proceeds to misgender her throughout the article, referring to being trans as a case of gender dysphoria.

The documentary profiles Claire as a young trans woman who discusses the difficulties of finding a straight male partner because of her "male parts." However, French erases her own opinion entirely, stating:

As thousands of years of human experience have taught us, if one’s desires are disordered, then achieving them often means heartache. A vagina is the last thing a boy like 'Claire' needs.

French pushes against the "social justice warriors" who foster a culture which he claims "browbeat[s] parents and mental-health professionals into believing that gender dysphoria is fixed and immutable." This profile of Claire, whose identity French questions and erases throughout the duration of his piece, is unfortunately just one in a line of disgusting quotes about trans communities from him.

In another article, he even suggests that trans communities are so privileged that "disagreement is a matter not for discussion but of discrimination." His narrative of a "privileged" community overlooks the staggering rate of violence that the trans community faces. In 2015, a record number of trans people were murdered. By November 2015, there were a reported 21 trans murders across the country, which is a considerable number in relation to the overall percentage of the American transgender population.

There is nothing privileged about being the target of crime and discrimination based on one's identity. There is also nothing privileged about having to consistently justify one's existence to people who want to erase them, the way French has done. If Claire feels that she needs a vagina, then it's no man's place to tell her otherwise.