Cause: Institutions of Power

Discriminatory Policy

Policy > Dress Code Expectations and Other Non-Gender-Affirming Policies

• 18.7% of LGBTQ+ students had unwillingly been required to use the bathroom or locker of their legal sex, including 59.2% of transgender students. ¹
• One tenth of LGBTQ+ students (10.8%) had been prevented from using their preferred name, including 42.2% of transgender students. ²
• More than a quarter (28.2%) of LGBTQ+ students reported that they had been disciplined for public affection that is not similarly disciplined among non-LGBTQ students. ³
• 17.5% of LGBTQ+ students had been prevented from choosing to discuss or write about LGBTQ+ topics in class assignments and projects. ⁴
• 18.1% of LGBTQ+ students were not allowed to attend a school dance with someone of the same gender. ⁵
• 9.2% of LGBTQ students indicated that they had been disciplined by their school simply for identifying as LGBTQ+ or that they were disciplined more harshly for infractions compared to non-LGBTQ+ students. ⁶

Discriminatory policy > Dress codes

I remember feeling like something was not right with my body by the age of ten (at least, ten is the earliest I can remember).

I remember being unwilling to act the way that girls were traditionally expected to act. Like we see with many transgender individuals, I had a tendency to gravitate to activities stereotypical of the opposite sex at a young age. ⁷

I remember being unwilling to dress the way that girls were expected to dress (even despite my school’s strict dress code). The closest thing that I wore to a dress was the sunflower-patterned skort that I remember so distinctly–perhaps because it was so unfitting.

I especially remember the first haircut that I was given any autonomy over–and how the concept picture I showed the barber was that of the little boy whom I identified with more than any little girl (despite the number of photos my parents showed me of little girls with short hair).

Seeing my new haircut was seeing myself for the first time. It was the moment that I abandoned the sunflower skort, along with all feminine clothing, with only one exception: two years later–and totally against my will–my parents forced me into a satin blue dress for my aunt’s wedding. They were still under the impression that I was going through a phase–and that little girls wore dresses to weddings, period.

Unfortunately, gender explicit dress codes like that of my Aunt Kiki’s wedding are commonly woven into the fabric of public school settings.

Such official policies or unofficial practices unfairly target gender-nonconforming youth, thus exposing transgender students to greater instances of discipline when they (often inevitably) refuse to comply with uncomfortable (traditionally male or female) dress–if only for the sake of others’ comfortability.

Research suggests that most transgender students have experienced dress-code-specific discrimination at school, such as being forbidden from wearing clothing or items supporting LGBTQ+ issues (e.g., a t-shirt with a rainbow flag) or being prevented from wearing clothing deemed inappropriate based solely on legal sex.

Discriminatory policy > lack of trans-relevant representation in public school settings and curriculum

I have jumped through what always felt like an insurmountable number of hoops (until I was through each one) to reach the point in my transition that I have.

My first big hurdle was simply figuring out that I was transgender.

I began “pretending” to be a boy beginning at age 10, introducing myself to strangers as Kevin.

For the first four years this went on, my friends and family thought that I was going through a strange phase. My mother often threatened to tell my “victims” the “truth.”

Meanwhile, I lived in online chat rooms with strangers who allowed me to be myself.

It took four years for someone (my first real girlfriend) to identify that I may be transgender.

She and I were together for two of the most influential years of my early transition. She bought me my first compression shirt (better-known in the transgender community as a binder) and helped me find resources on the internet to support my transition.

When I began transitioning, there was not a single experience in my life that helped me identify.

Today, students may have less trouble identifying beause there is so much more trans education available than there was when I was going through school.

However (Unfortunately), such education is not always occurring in the public school setting.

In several states, the mention of LGBTQ+-specific topics (to include something so simple as the word “gay” itself) is wholly forbidden.

But even when the topic of their own identity is not explicitly forbidden from classroom discussion, few transgender students are receiving representation in the classroom or the curriculum.

There is actually not a single openly trans-identifying teacher in my current school–with a staff of nearly 200–and there was not a single trans-identifying teacher in either of the previous high schools I taught at–both with staffs of over 200 people.

In fact, one of critical theorists’ major concerns–that curriculum is both the effect and the source of inequalities and social discrimination ⁸–was my own public school experience for its duration.

I never once read–in any of my high school courses–a piece that had an LGBTQ+ or trans-identifying character. I was never exposed to works of trans writers. Of course, with the exception of the Mythology unit where my high school English teacher talked about the Island of Lesbos coined by the homosexual poet, Sappho.