Mieke Haeck, the 42-year-old mother of a trans girl in Pennsylvania, has been bombarded with hate after asking presidential candidate Joe Biden a question earlier this month about protections for transgender people during his ABC town hall.
“I’m the proud mom of two girls, 8 and 10,” Haeck said during the event. “My youngest daughter is transgender.”
After detailing the Trump administration’s extreme attacks on the rights of transgender people, Haeck asked Biden what he will do to reverse Trump’s anti-trans policies and “ensure that the lives and rights of LGBTQ+ people are protected under U.S. law.” Since taking office in 2017, Trump has banned trans people from enlisting in the military, overturned guidance allowing trans students to be affirmed in their gender, permitted homeless shelters to turn away vulnerable trans people, and made it easier for doctors to refuse to treat trans patients.
Biden, who has vowed to pass the Equality Act during his first 100 days in office, told Haeck that he would “flat out change the law” to protect transgender youth. He vowed to “eliminate” executive orders discriminating against trans people and said “there should be zero discrimination” against members of the community.
After the exchange went viral following the October 15 event, right-wing pundits and anti-trans internet trolls immediately began harassing Haeck the next day, according to a new report in the Washington Post. Fox News host Tucker Carlson, for instance, called Haeck a “crazed ideologue” who doesn’t “care about reality,” before falsely claiming that people who transition later “regret” doing so, an allegation he alleges is backed by researchers.
Carlson’s comments focus on the “desistance” myth, a widely debunked claim that 80 percent of transgender children will “desist” in their gender identity. The reality is far different: In a 2015 survey conducted by the National Center for Trans Equality, just .4 percent of respondents regretted transitioning.
After the Fox News broadcast aired, Haeck said she received death wishes against her family, as well as threats to kidnap her children.
But the attacks didn’t stop there. The following week the Pennsylvania-based conservative group American Principles Project launched a transphobic smear campaign by sending text messages to voters misconstruing Biden’s town hall response. The organization is reportedly sending out one million robotexts claiming that Biden “endorsed sex change operations for children as young as 8.”
The effort is part of an ongoing misinformation campaign attempting to hurt Biden’s election chances by misrepresenting his trans rights platform. In Michigan, APP aired ads warning that Biden’s support for the Equality Act, a nationwide nondiscrimination bill, would force cisgender girls out of sports.
“The truth isn’t what it’s about to these people, at all,” Haeck said. “They’re happy to use a blatant lie for their own political gains and use my child and children as part of their game.”
Despite the onslaught of hate, Haeke has no regrets about allowing her daughter to transition, saying it was “absolutely the right thing to do to support her.” She said that her daughter began expressing her gender identity at the age of three, and Haeck and her husband decided to help her socially transition at six years old after realizing they needed to let her be her true self.
Haeke added that the threats her family has received over the past few weeks have “nothing to do with concerns for kids” like her daughter, who is happy and healthy. “They really are trying to provoke strong emotions in people around this lie for their own political gains,” she said.
According to the Post, Haeck was invited to submit her question by a neighbor whose niece works for ABC. She was one of 21 voters out of 200 whose questions were chosen.
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