At one of the recent school board meetings, some people from the community stood up and said horrendous things about the LGBTQIA+ and our supposed agenda. In response, many Equity Buckfield members and friends either wrote speeches or were in attendance for the next school board meeting. Much to my dismay, the school board meeting was the same day that I was (finally!) having my sinus surgery, so I could not make it! So I wrote an email to the school board in advance. One of the board members ended up making a statement and referencing my email. She was brought to tears because she herself has LGBTQIA+ kids and found it upsetting.
Here is the email I wrote to them.
To the School Board:
I am a parent in the community. I opted to finish the year homeschooling, but we live right down the road and have the potential to be involved in a lot of things in the school system in the future. For this reason, I like to stay informed and watch as many school board meetings as possible. During the last one I was shocked to suddenly hear strong language used against my community.
While I understand there are people out there who are uneducated on the lgbt+ community, and will say things that are way off base, why should it take that long for the school board to intervene when someone is calling us names and accusing us of such wild things? I think its nice you like to allow people to have their chance to speak, but the words she was using were very harmful and I wish she'd been cut off sooner. She was allowed to use at least 5 harsh words about us before any intervention. She accused us of being pedophiles and still all you said was “Okay. Well, we'll look into it.” That kind of talk needs to be shut down and corrected immediately. I really hope no teens (especially lgbt+ teens) were overhearing the meeting. Her words caused me pain and I'm in my 30's. I frantically snatched at my volume button so my kids wouldn’t hear it.
A big part of the reason we (as a society) have so many problems with all of this is because there's been a lack of education about the lgbt+ community for so long. The public school system (unknowingly, really) failed my generation, and the generations before me, when it came to the topic of gender.
Kids aren't convinced or taught to be transgender, they are born transgender and have to figure that out. It took me 35 years to even know I COULD be anything other than my assigned gender. I spent my entire life trying to cram myself into the straight cis box, society’s image of what normal looks like. But I was never meant to be in that box and all trying did was create pain and trauma that I'll have to carry for the rest of my life. I can't figure out why anyone would want that for these kids. What is so wrong about us? Whatever wild and outrageous things people are hearing are not the reality. I spend my time playing with my kids, drawing, knitting, gardening, going on walks, reading books and hanging out at the library. And most importantly, spending time with my parents, who love me unconditionally. Its not whatever dangerous gay agenda people worry over.
Stopping kids from learning about gender won't stop kids from BEING transgender, some of them always will be. What it will stop is them feeling supported, safe, and loved. And when all the kids aren't learning about gender as a group, it creates a tension in the halls while the cis kids pick out the trans kids and start “othering” them. We will go back to the good ol days, which for some of us, was hiding in the shadows hoping not to be noticed because we were doing a crappy job at being our gender and we didn't want to be laughed at, bullied, attacked, excluded, deemed unlovable.
My 5 year old daughter has been exposed to many open discussions about gender over the last year and so far the outcome of that has been her being even more confident in her identity as a cisgender person. She proudly proclaims that her pronouns are she/her, she loves all the cliché girl things; princesses, unicorns, makeup, high heels. She's fabulous, a real fashionista, full of sass. But you know what one thing she isn't? Judgemental of transgender people. Education on gender benefits cisgender people too.
I did start her out in public school this year and she came home on day one, bothered because boys in her class teased her relentlessly for having short hair, repeatedly accusing her of being a boy, the only excuse for such a short hairstyle. I asked if teachers heard and she shrugged. I asked if she felt comfortable telling a teacher next time and she said “not really. It’s fine” but I could tell it wasn’t fine, especially since she brought it up several times after that. After 3 months of public school and a couple other incidents, she asked to return to homeschool.
People love to say it's the parents job to teach these things, but I'd like to point out that in most cases around here that simply won't happen. And if it does, they're usually teaching them to be biased against us, whether they realize they're doing it or not. They hear how you talk about us.
People also love to say kids need to be more resilient because they're going to face this in the world. Why? Why can't we focus on teaching the world to be more accepting instead of repeatedly telling the victims to get used to their abuse?
As long as it's age-appropriate, I don't see why schools should avoid curriculum that could help these children better navigate the world. The sooner they know, the better. Let them figure out who they are and teach them to support each other. The only reason for avoiding this curriculum would be to make adults less uncomfortable. This is not more important than kids feeling safe.
It's time for everyone to pay close attention to us, educate yourselves about us, LISTEN to US, LOVE us. We are human beings and we deserve all of those things.
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