A 14-year-old trans girl has slammed a Missouri senator for asking about her genitals.
Avery Jackson - a young activist who has already spent years fighting anti-trans "bathroom bills" - and her mother Debi Jackson called out state senator Elaine Gannon for her invasive and inappropriate questioning.
In a clip of the moment posted by Human Rights Campaign to Twitter, the Republican senator can be seen defending the proposed Missouri Senate Bill 781 or 'Save Women’s Sports Act,' which would ban all students assigned male at birth from participating in girls' sports, per The Independent.
The discussion clearly turns from sports to mixed-gender bathrooms, as Gannon says: "You’re in the ladies’ room and then you realize someone else it in there that doesn’t have a female’s… has a male body instead of a female’s body."
"I mean, it just causes some issues there," Gannon adds.
Avery - who is appearing to oppose the bill - hits back at the senator's assumption, saying: "No it doesn’t. You should let people go to the bathroom."
Gannon doubles down, suggesting that people in bathrooms probably don't know that Avery is trans. "Well, they probably don't realize because you have such long hair," she said.
The lawmaker's questioning then takes an inappropriate turn when she asks the 14-year-old whether they were planning on having gender reassignment surgery.
"Are you gonna go through the procedure?" Gannon says.
The video skips forwards to Avery criticizing the senator's argument, saying: "You think we’re going around forcing our genitalia in people’s face. We’re trying to go to the bathroom. And what you want to do is not let people do that?"
Avery adds that in a bathroom, no one is looking at your genitalia. Gannon keeps a straight face and responds: "I was seriously just curious."
At this point, Debi takes the reigns, stepping in to defend her child.
"You’re asking a 14-year-old on public record about genitals and if people could see that," she says, before going on to argue that what Gannon was really doing was trying to divert attention from the matter at hand.
"I know this is off-topic and you didn't mean anything by it but that's the point. Kids aren’t going around exposing themselves to kids wanting to play sports with their friends. That’s what this bill is. And getting wrapped up in genitals in bathrooms gets us so far away from that and it dehumanizes our children. My child is so much more than genitals," Debi argues.
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