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Today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance. A day set aside to recognize and honor the lives lost to transphobia. Transphobia happens in many ways and impacts many folks in addition to transgender people. Recently a 1st grade girl was bullied for having a Star Wars water bottle, and a kindergarten boy was mocked for choosing to dress as Daphne from Scooby-Doo for Halloween. The impacts of forcing children to live in narrowly defined boxes of pink and blue have negative long-term consequences. This post will discuss some recent examples as well as some interesting educational interventions to help challenge limiting gender stereotypes.
Punished for gender non-conformity
Youth whose gender identity or expression varies from the norms of masculinity for boys and femininity for girls are often subject to bullying, harassment, exclusion and violence in schools and society at large. The media have covered several recent suicides due to anti-gay bullying, but as noted in an earlier post, this is often related to gendered bias, not just homophobia. Some examples of this gendered bias include the two stories mentioned earlier with the girl who likes Star Wars and the boy who dressed as Daphne from Scooby-Doo. There was also a recent case of a girl who was beat up for having a "boy's" name: Randi. Ironically, this incident happened after a Christian Fellowship meeting. Additionally, a male football player was sanctioned by his coach for wearing pink cleats in observance of Breast Cancer Awareness month. When allowed to return to play, he kicked for 3 extra points -- the last of which tied the game and allow his team to win in overtime.
If these relatively small social transgressions evoked such strong reactions, imagine what happens when a young child persistently pursues activities and chooses clothing usually associated with another gender. This behaviour usually results in extreme violence. The body count for Transphobic motivated murders is too high - for a full list of the individuals being remembered today, visit "remembering our dead". The stats for the frequency and severity of forms of gendered harassment (sexual harassment, homophobic harassment and Transphobic harassment) in schools are also unacceptably high as reported by GLSEN, Egale (Canada), Stonewall (UK)], The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights just to name a few.
Educational Solutions
Fortunately, there are some very smart and committed educators and activists out there creating educational resources and youth support groups to help address this problem. I was recently invited to deliever a keynote speech at a conference in Belgium on LGBT issues in education and the gendered nature of this bias was a central theme at this event. While I was there, I learned about two organizations: Gender In de Blender (Belgium) and Gendered Intelligence (UK) that have done some really important work in this area. Another UK-based resource is the No Outsiders Project. This multi-year research project resulted in some very important data on the impacts of gender bias and homophobia in schools and they have compiled some useful teaching resources here. Finally, one of my favourite resources is a film by Groundspark called: Straitlaced: How Gender's got us All Tied up:
a fantastic documentary that highlights youth voices about how gender roles have limited and impacted their lives.
So, today, in honor of the TDOR, I invite you to read more about these research findings and explore these educational resources on transphobia and gendered bias to educate yourselves as parents, educators, and concerned adults who want to take a stand against all forms of bias and violence.
