Conservative commentator and former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly yelled, “Eff you, Taylor Swift” and accused the pop star of wanting to sterilize children and chop off their body parts after Swift endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president.
On The Megyn Kelly Show, the titular host noted that Swift’s Instagram endorsement said, “I think [Harris] is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos. I was so heartened and impressed by her selection of running mate [Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz], who has been standing up for LGBTQ+ rights, IVF, and a woman’s right to her own body for decades.”
“Oh my God,” Kelly said on her broadcast before repeating right-wing lies about Walz. “So this woman is fine with his plan to take custody of the children from parents who don’t want them to chop off their body parts and put them in Minnesota court’s custody so the body parts can be chopped off and they can be sterilized outside the custody of their parents. That’s what led Taylor Swift to endorse him.”
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Kelly’s lie, which has been previously repeated by former President Donald Trump and his supporters, distorts Walz’s record on transgender kids and gender-affirming care. Right-wingers have dishonestly claimed that Walz signed legislation allowing minors to receive gender-affirming surgeries and that this legislation allows courts to take trans kids from their unsupportive parents (or, as Trump put it, “kidnap kids to change their gender.”)
Walz never signed any such legislation, authorities in his state aren’t authorized to take custody of trans kids, and gender-affirming surgeries are almost never performed on minors.
In reality, Walz issued a “trans refuge state” executive order and signed H.F. 146 in 2023. Both helped establish Minnesota as a safe state for gender-affirming care and protected families and care providers from out-of-state prosecutions against gender-affirming care. Neither the order nor the law allow judicial and state officials to take trans children out of the homes of non-supportive families.
“You can kiss your sales to the Republican audience goodbye, Taylor, hope you enjoyed them while you had them. I’m allowed to criticize Taylor Swift,” Kelly continued, “and I don’t give a s**t who gets upset. This is disgusting. She wants to vote Harris-Walz, she can do it all she wants. But to say the reason she’s doing it is because of Tim Walz‘s stance on LGBTQ — eff you, Taylor Swift and eff, all of the people who want to see these children have body parts chopped off and watch them sterilized under the age of consent, and then we’ll ride off to their multi gazillion dollar mansions, never to think of them again.”
“This pair, Taylor and her boyfriend Travis Kelce are the epitomes of elite snobs,” Kelly added. “They both have gazillions of dollars. She doesn’t care what happens to these kids.”
While Kelly immediately assumed that Swift supports Walz’s policies on trans children, Walz’s LGBTQ+ record includes his longtime support for LGBTQ+ anti-bullying efforts in schools, same-sex marriage, and his opposition to anti-LGBTQ+ book bans, conversion therapy and other discriminatory government policies.
Right-wing concern trolling about gender-affirming care always focuses on shocking and disgust-inducing claims of mutilating children and not the actual details of such medically sanctioned care. All major medical associations consider gender-affirming care for youth to be safe, essential, and effective.
Such care isn’t immediately prescribed to all children; rather, medical practitioners typically will treat children for gender dysphoria if they find a young person’s declaration of trans identity has been “insistent, persistent, and consistent.” That is, a truly trans child must repeatedly and continuously assert their trans identity over many years, not just a brief period.
Even then, practitioners will encourage young children to explore their gender through self-presentation and, if the child wishes, “social transitioning” (using personal pronouns, names, and clothing and hairstyles matching their gender identity). If their trans identity persists, older children can elect to take puberty blockers to stave off the physical changes of adolescent maturation. These medications have been used safely and reversibly on children for decades to delay early puberty and treat rare cancers and other conditions.
Gender-affirming surgeries are almost never conducted on trans minors and certainly not without parental consent. Surgeons reserve such procedures on adults (including cisgender adults who wish to augment their bodies). Trans people who receive these surgeries regret them less often than people who get tattoos or have children.
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