Tuesday Talk*: Should Schools Teach Gender?

It’s controversial on the right. It’s controversial on the left. And to both, it’s too obvious to dispute.

A recent video made by Massachusetts-area transgender teacher Ray Skyer during an “identity share” Zoom session with kindergartners rather starkly highlights this viewpoint. Skyer, who teaches at a public charter school, explains that when he was a child, his parents and other people wrongly thought he was a girl:

So when babies are born, the doctor looks at them and they make a guess about whether the baby is a boy or girl, based on what they look like. And most of the time that guess is 100 percent correct—there are no issues whatsoever. But sometimes the doctor is wrong; the doctor makes an incorrect guess. When a doctor makes a correct guess, that’s when a person is called cisgender. When a doctor’s guess is wrong that’s when they are transgender.

Should kindergartners be taught that doctors are making a guess about whether a baby is a boy or girl? After explaining why the efforts to legislate the problem away fail, Cathy Young goes on to explain why that doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem.

What’s so controversial? While some of the objections have focused on elementary-school materials that include overly explicit descriptions of sexual anatomy, proposed lesson plans dealing with gender identity issues have been a particular lightning rod. Thus, a cartoon video on “Puberty and Transgender Youth” suggested by one local school board as potential viewing material for fifth graders casually discusses the use of puberty blockers and shows a character experiencing anxiety because of by bodily changes (and apparently using a chest binder to hide developing breasts) and getting an injection of puberty blockers.

It’s not that schools haven’t stuck their nose into ideology in the past, which is why kids pledge allegiance to the flag, but is there a distinction to be made about teaching tolerance and teaching elementary school students about the merits of puberty blockers? Are parents rightfully concerned that this isn’t why they send their children to school?

Let’s stipulate that these are difficult subjects to teach, that these are contentious subjects for communities to debate, and that education can play a part in improving the mental health outcomes for transgender individuals. But even a liberal who believes that tolerance requires teaching first and second graders about transgender identities is likely to find these texts rather baffling. The lesson plans do not say that some people, including kids, feel their inner sense of their gender does not match their biological sex or their genitals; rather, the claim is that for some unspecified reason some boys happen to have parts that “some people” associate with girls, and vice versa. This text reflects what has become activist orthodoxy in recent years: that transgender women or girls do not transition from male to female but were always women or girls who happened to be misgendered (and, conversely, trans men and boys were always men/boys). Hence the widespread adoption of the phrase “assigned male/female at birth,” among other terminological shifts.

The problem seems to be that failure to incorporate ideological truisms such as “assigned male/female at birth” or substituting “menstruators” or “birthing persons” for women is deemed erasure of trans and nonbinary people by definition. There is no neutral, non-ideological, way to go that won’t offend or outrage one side or the other.

Is there any middle ground to be had here, that won’t denigrate gender atypical people while not introducing young students to controversial ideologically driven notions? Can schools teach tolerance without teaching students that doctors are just guessing about their gender?

Unfortunately, our toxic political scene is the worst possible arena to address these complicated issues. Right now, the right is screaming “groomer” at anyone who believes sexuality and gender identity should be even mentioned in a school setting, while the left is screaming “murderer of trans kids” at anyone who thinks we should be careful about letting a 16-year-old get a mastectomy to fit a male or nonbinary gender identity.

While many find ourselves in the purgatory between these “toxic” positions, is there an argument to be made where everyone can live and let live? Or is this a zero sum game, where one side wins and the other gets crushed, which is how both extremes have crafted their positions?

*Tuesday Talk rules apply.