Parents speak out after their teen died by suicide: Idaho's anti-trans extremism took a toll. When asked if anyone wanted to harm her daughter, her mother said “The whole f**king country” did.

I agree with the article’s takeaway, but the sub-headline is making a dishonest extrapolation based on the information given.

When asked if anyone wanted to harm her daughter, her mother said “The whole f**king country” did.

This implies something the mother may not have intended to imply. The real quote is right in the article, and it involves context:

When a detective asked her parents whether anyone might have wanted to harm May, Thorpe responded that “A lot of America” did.

This is where an honest quote would stop! Note the difference to what was quoted in the sub-headline above. The “whole country” bit is in a different sentence, which involves context the author ignores.

“There is a huge amount of animosity, every single day, thrown at trans kids,” an angry and grieving Pollard told the detective. “The whole f**king country. The whole f**king administration, every single f**king day.”

The beginning of the second sentence starts a new context, which is obvious by “there is a huge amount of animosity thrown at trans kids,” which to me implies that she’s talking about all over the country. Which is also accurate and correlates directly with her quote of “a lot of the country.”

But this author or organization took the question, and cherry-picked “The whole f**king country.”

At best it’s an honest misquote, but this kind of clickbait is infuriating no matter who does it.

My daughter killed herself right after the anti-trans bills swept our state too. I still remember her last heartbeats. The silence is deafening, sibs. Careful if you wait till the last second to come out. If you do, please give the change time. It's not an immediate fix. You have to hold on.