When a group of Minnesota softball players recently appeared in the news, they used phrases like “unfair advantage” and “protecting women’s sports” to describe why they didn’t want to play against a transgender pitcher. The language was polished, packaged, and eerily familiar. These weren’t spontaneous words from teenagers. They were echoes of adult rhetoric, repeated soundbites lifted straight from lawsuits, conservative media outlets, and political talking points.
What we are witnessing is not children forming their own beliefs about transgender people. It is adults shaping the narrative, planting fear, and teaching kids to repeat it. In effect, they are poisoning the well before these children even meet or play alongside a transgender person.
This article explores how this manipulation works, why it harms both transgender people and children, and what can be done to break the cycle.
The Minnesota Softball Case: When Children Speak With Adult Voices
In September 2025, Fox News reported on a lawsuit involving a transgender softball player in Minnesota. The court dismissed the case, but what stood out was not the ruling. It was the words of the young players quoted afterward.
Their complaints mirrored the exact phrases used by politicians and media personalities. They spoke of “unfairness,” “biological males,” and “protecting women’s sports.” These are not phrases that typically emerge from middle school or high school athletes talking about the game they love. They are political slogans that children have absorbed through repetition.
The story was not about softball. It was about how deeply adult influence has shaped these kids’ perception of fairness. Parents, coaches, and conservative media figures coached them into believing that one transgender teammate or opponent represents a threat to the sport itself.
California Volleyball Protests: A Broader Pattern
The same script appeared in California when protesters gathered at a women’s volleyball game featuring a transgender athlete. Once again, young people were positioned at the center, repeating language that was clearly not their own.
The consistency of the phrasing shows how coordinated the messaging is. Words like “safety,” “integrity,” and “protecting opportunities” are repeated across states and sports. The repetition reveals a campaign at work, not individual kids voicing their independent concerns. Adults set the terms, and children are asked to deliver the lines.
Poisoning the Well
The phrase “poisoning the well” describes the act of discrediting a person or idea before it can even be considered. In this case, adults poison children’s understanding of transgender people long before they meet one.
Parents plant the idea that transgender athletes are cheaters. Media outlets reinforce those narratives with headlines that frame trans inclusion as an attack on women’s sports. Advocacy groups pursue lawsuits that lend a sense of legitimacy to those fears. By the time a child steps onto a field or scrolls through TikTok, their thoughts about transgender people have already been poisoned.
The result is a worldview where trans teammates are not seen as peers or equals. They are cast as problems, obstacles, or dangers before the game even begins.
The “Transhausen by Proxy” Myth
A particularly cruel turn in anti-trans rhetoric is the invention of “transhausen by proxy.” Borrowing from the medical concept of Munchausen by proxy, conservative groups argue that parents of transgender children are forcing kids into identities for their own gain.
This framing flips reality upside down. Trans children describe their identities in their own words, often in the face of extraordinary social resistance. The idea that they are manipulated into being trans ignores the consistent stories of children who knew their identity long before any adult validation.
Meanwhile, the real proxy is happening on the other side. Conservative parents and influencers pressure their children to adopt anti-trans beliefs and repeat them in public. They put their kids in front of cameras to speak against transgender athletes, ensuring the message carries emotional weight. This is manipulation by proxy, but it is rarely called out for what it is.
Children as Political Weapons
When adults use children as mouthpieces, several dangers emerge at once. Transgender people are dehumanized because kids are taught to describe them in terms of threat and harm. Children themselves lose the chance to develop independent thinking, because they are drilled in propaganda instead of empathy. And legal systems are distorted because these child voices, coached though they are, give lawsuits a sense of authenticity.
The public sees children pleading for fairness and safety, but behind them are networks of adults who engineered every word.
Historical Parallels
There is nothing new about adults teaching children to fear those who are different. White children in the segregation-era South were told to fear Black classmates. During the Cold War, children were trained to see communists as lurking enemies. In the 1980s, classrooms often painted LGBTQ+ people as inherently dangerous in the context of HIV and AIDS.
The pattern is consistent. Adults use children to perpetuate prejudice, ensuring that fear feels natural rather than manufactured. Today, transgender people are the newest group to be targeted in this way.
The Emotional Toll on Trans Youth
The deepest harm of this manipulation falls on transgender children themselves. Imagine being a young trans girl on a softball team, listening as peers describe her as a “biological male” who does not belong. Even if those peers do not fully understand the weight of their words, the harm is real.
Trans children are not only excluded from sports. They are told that their very existence is a controversy. Their classmates may not realize the cruelty of repeating adult talking points, but for the trans child, each word lands as rejection and erasure.
The consequences for mental health are severe. Trans youth already face higher rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation. When they are singled out in public forums, those risks increase. All of it is wrapped in the language of “fairness” and “protection,” but the outcome is exclusion and pain.
Adults Driving the Agenda
Look closely at who drives these controversies, and the pattern becomes clear. Lawsuits and protests are rarely organized by children. They are led by parents’ rights groups, legal nonprofits with national funding, and politicians eager to score points with their base.
Children may appear in front of the camera, but it is adults who wrote the script.
The Role of Conservative Media
Conservative outlets play an enormous role in amplifying this rhetoric. Fox News, OAN, YouTubers, and TikTok personalities repeat anti-trans talking points constantly. These phrases become easy for young people to pick up and repeat, even when they do not fully understand them.
By the time a teenager says “trans athletes are ruining women’s sports,” it feels like their own thought. In truth, it is a script they absorbed from adults with powerful platforms.
The Double Standard
There is a painful irony here. Anti-trans voices accuse affirming parents of manipulating kids into identifying as transgender. At the same time, they coach their own children to speak against trans people in public forums.
If children are impressionable, that standard should apply universally. Yet conservative parents are rarely questioned when their children parrot political slogans. The accusation of manipulation is aimed only at supportive parents of trans children, while the obvious coaching of anti-trans children is ignored.
The Broader Social Cost
This cycle does more than harm individual trans kids. It reshapes society in lasting ways. Hostility becomes normal. Empathy becomes rare. Communities fracture because children are taught to see peers not as teammates or classmates but as threats.
The poisoning of the well does not stop at one generation. The bitterness carries forward as children grow into adults who vote, legislate, and teach their own children the same prejudices.
Breaking the Cycle
There are ways to counter this cycle, though they require effort from many directions. Transgender adults and allies can share their stories openly, because personal narratives humanize in ways statistics cannot. They can engage with children in schools, libraries, and community programs, offering perspectives beyond the ones handed down at home. Every word of affirmation to a trans child helps balance the scales.
Parents raising children can model empathy by teaching that difference is not danger. They can expose their children to diversity through books, films, and friendships. They can also correct misinformation when they hear it, guiding their kids to think critically rather than simply repeat slogans.
For those consuming media, there is value in calling out manipulation when children appear as spokespeople in political fights. It is important to support independent journalism that centers trans voices rather than sensationalized narratives.
A Community Response
The good news is that poisoned wells can be restored. Hate is taught, but so is love. Prejudice is inherited, but so is empathy. Every time someone affirms a trans child, challenges a misleading headline, or calls out staged authenticity, the poison loses some of its power.
The fight for transgender rights is also a fight for the next generation’s ability to think and feel freely. Kids deserve to have their voices belong to them, not to the political agendas of adults.
The Bottom Line
When children parrot anti-trans rhetoric, it is tempting to take their words at face value. But these phrases did not originate in schoolyards or locker rooms. They came from adults who wanted their children to carry the message forward.
This is not the sound of children speaking their truth. It is the sound of adults poisoning the well.
The next generation deserves better. They deserve to grow up in a world where transgender people are not cast as villains before they even have the chance to be known. Our responsibility is to unpoison the well, to teach empathy instead of fear, and to ensure that children grow into adults whose voices are their own.
