The Arizona Department of Education has directed young children to online transgender chat groups run by Planned Parenthood linked groups and others.
On the official website for the Arizona Department of Education, the state government has collected a number of “resources” for “LGBTQ students,” put together by “members and allies of the LGBTQ+ community as part of [their] Equitable and Inclusive Practices Advisory Council. The Council is dedicated to “supporting the LGBTQ community in schools.”
Children in Arizona are directed not only to local and national transgender organisations, but also two online chat groups, Q Chat Space and Gender Spectrum. The first group, Q Chat Space, is a collaboration between Planned Parenthood, CenterLink, and PFLAG.
Q Chat Space markets itself as a “community for LGBTQ+ Teens,” where children aged 13 and up can talk together. However, the chat space exists for people up to 19 years old, meaning that young teenagers will be discussing sexuality and gender issues with adults.
The group chats last for around 90 minutes, and are scheduled on their site.
Q Chat Space / Screenshot
Upcoming discussions include “Gender-Affirming Hairstyles & Clothes”; “Hormones! What do they do, what don’t they do?”; “Embracing Change,” a discussion for people of color; and “Body Liberation.”
The group chats are run by adult “facilitators” from a number of different national groups, including the LGBTQ Center Orange County from California, the Hetrick-Martin Institute from New York, and Smyal, from Washington DC. Some teenagers are giving privileged positions as “Q Chatters” to assist the adult facilitators.
An example video posted on YouTube shows children talking about gender dysphoria. The example comments include children talking about how they want to cover up their entire body, and wear big clothes so that nobody can see them, when asked by a facilitator what makes them feel better when they experience gender dysphoria.
Despite declaring that Q Chat Space is “not a dating site,” the organisation earlier this month held a “Sex and Relationships Q&A.” It is unclear if the discussion group contained people from the entire age range of 13 to 19.
The group also does not categorically warn children not to give out personal information, but only to wait until “you feel really confident that you trust the other person,” which some say leaves the possibility for child grooming to occur between younger and older teenagers.
One of the ground rules for the chat rooms appear to be to “Keep confidentiality – what’s shared here, stays here.”
Q Chat Space / YouTube
An upcoming chat group is set to promote an an app for LGBTQ+ teenagers called imi, allowing children to “explore the many intersections” of their supposed identity, and to explore the full gender spectrum. Both imi and Q Chat Space have buttons to close themselves down, meaning children are encouraged to hide their online activity from their parents.
The second transgender chat group promoted by the Arizona State Department, Gender Spectrum, has three different age group categories, with groups for teens aged 17 to 18, 13 to 16, and most concerningly, for children who are only between 10 and 12.
Gender Spectrum is not just text based either, offering both voice and video chat groups, that are also “facilitated” by trained volunteers, like Q Chat Space.
Q Chat Space / YouTube
While this is clearly offered to children over 13, the language regarding the pre-teen group is more obtuse, and does not explicitly state on the website whether video calls are offered or not.
Gender Spectrum are more focused specifically on transgender children, rather than those considering their sexuality, with the website describing the calls as a way to meet “other trans, non-binary, and gender expansive teens.” All of the adult facilitators also fall into this category.
Children are invited to talk about their “gender, friends, family, favourite TV shows,” and other content. The group for pre-teens is currently so oversubscribed that it is at capacity, and instead asks new sign-ups to put their email onto a wait list.
“When I first joined the calls I was very lost in who I was,” said one group chat participant named as Jude. “I really was able to understand that I’m valid and that my life and my narrative is valid. As funny as it sounds, just me getting on a call for an hour on a Monday night really helped that.”
Another call participant, Elliot, said that the group calls gave them “a space to talk about my gender in a really pressure free zone with people who could really understand what I was going through cause they were the same age as me, and a lot of them had had similar experiences.”
Responding to an earlier article on the subject, Arizona State Senator Wendy Rogers, a strident supporter of 45th President Donald Trump who has called for overturning the 2020 election, said that the resources were evidence that “groomers [are] right here in the AZ government.”
