Reject Prejudice and Protect Trans Kids

The South Dakota State Legislature is preparing to consider a law that would prohibit teachers from responding to the concerns of transgender students, including bullying and harassment. The National Center for Transgender Equality submitted the following written testimony to the legislature.

Visit our Action Center to learn what you can do to protect the transgender youth of South Dakota.

The National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) writes to express our strong opposition to HB 1108. As one of the nation’s leading organizations working to improve the lives of transgender people across the country for over 15 years, we have seen the immense and harmful impact of policies that target and stigmatize transgender young people. We and hundreds of thousands of families across the country have also seen the life-changing benefits when transgender students are affirmed and respected in accordance with the consensus of the medical and childcare communities.

HB 1108 is a threat to the well-being of students — transgender or not — to teachers, and to South Dakota as a whole. We urge you in the strongest terms to vote “No” on HB 1108. Supportive schools are critical for improving transgender students’ wellbeing and protecting them from the discrimination they often face. Transgender youth — young people who know themselves to be a gender that is different from the one they were thought to be at birth — live in every part of the United States.

It is estimated that nearly two million transgender people live in the United States, including over 2,500 living in South Dakota. It is the overwhelming consensus of leading child health and education experts that affirming and supporting transgender students, proactively addressing the bullying and harassment they face, and treating them according to their gender identity — their deeply held knowledge of who they are — are critical to protecting their health and well-being.

For example, this approach has been endorsed and promoted by the National Association of Secondary School Principals, the National Association of Elementary School Principals, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Association of School Psychologists, the American School Counselor Association, the National PTA, the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Academy of Family Physicians.

Accordingly, educators across the country, including in South Dakota, have developed commonsense, age-appropriate ways to address the needs of transgender students and make it more possible for all students, regardless of gender identity, to learn in a safe, welcoming environment and enjoy equal educational opportunities. Teachers, school administrators, and child health experts have all found that while policies that stigmatize transgender students are profoundly harmful to transgender students’ success and well-being, transgender students who are supported and affirmed at school are more likely to thrive.

For decades, transgender-inclusive curricula and other policies supporting transgender students have been successfully implemented in schools throughout the United States. Nearly half of the states in the country, along with numerous local governments, have their own policies, many of which are featured in Examples of Policies and Emerging Practices for Supporting Transgender Students, a national compilation of policies that the U.S. Department of Education continues to maintain.

Despite this progress, however, transgender students continue to face harassment, mistreatment, and discriminatory school policies at disturbing rates, demonstrating the clear need for teachers to have the flexibility to provide the support to these students that they deem necessary and appropriate.

According to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, a study of nearly 28,000 transgender adults in the United States, more than three quarters (77%) of respondents who were out as transgender in K–12 or believed that classmates, teachers, or school staff thought they were transgender reported mistreatment and discrimination at school.

For example, more than half (54%) were verbally harassed because of being transgender, nearly a quarter (24%) were physically assaulted, and nearly one in seven (13%) were sexually assaulted at school because people thought they were transgender. For many of these respondents, the mistreatment they faced was so severe that they had to leave school: 17% left a K–12 school because of the severity of the mistreatment they faced.

The impact of these harmful experiences follows people throughout their lives: respondents who faced mistreatment at school were more likely to have experienced homelessness in their lifetimes, to be living in poverty as adults, and to have attempted suicide.

The rates of mistreatment were especially severe for people of color, including transgender Native American respondents. Native Americans are the largest nonwhite ethnic group in South Dakota, representing nearly one in ten South Dakotans.

Among Native American respondents who were perceived as transgender in K-12: 

A full 92% faced some form of mistreatment in K-12 because of being transgender.

Approximately seven in ten (69%) were verbally harassed because of being transgender

Nearly half (49%) were physically attacked because of being transgender  more than one in five (22%) were sexually assaulted because of being transgender

Nearly four out of ten (39%) left a school because the mistreatment was so bad.

Similarly, a national study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth found that transgender youth faced high rates of discrimination and bullying at school and often struggled to identify teachers or other school staff who could provide them with support.

The same study also showed the power of positive representation in the classroom: youth who attended schools with curricula, policies, and practices that affirmed transgender youth were less likely to face bullying, had better health outcomes and performed better academically.

These findings should be a call to action for South Dakota legislators to ensure that all students are protected and affirmed at school — not to exacerbate the discrimination transgender students face by targeting them and the teachers who assist them by supporting bills like HB 1108. This bill prevents teachers from doing their jobs and supporting transgender students. HB 1108 broadly prohibits teachers from “instruction in gender dysphoria” — a phrase to sweeping and vague that it could be applied to any discussion that touches on transgender people, their rights, or the barriers they face.

This bill could prevent teachers from simply acknowledging the existence of transgender people, including transgender students in their own classrooms. Teachers have the great responsibility of helping children grow and thrive. Students count on them to provide support when they need it, step in and address bullying and harassment, and ensure that all students can learn in a safe and supportive environment.

Let us be clear: no one can teach a child to be transgender.

For transgender students — who too frequently face victimization and mistreatment — this role is especially important. As written, HB 1108 would effectively tie the hands of teachers, preventing them from supporting their transgender students and from serving as a model of acceptance and fairness to other students.

Let us be clear: no one can teach a child to be transgender. As medical professionals have long recognized, being transgender is an innate characteristic, and gender dysphoria is not a condition that can either emerge or be alleviated by the mere power of suggestion. As the American Academy of Pediatrics has noted, “variations in gender identity and expression are normal aspects of human diversity.”

Simply recognizing and expressing support for transgender students does not make non-transgender students transgender. A bill prohibiting teachers from speaking about transgender people or providing their transgender students with support will do nothing to help any student. All it would do is hurt and stigmatize transgender students by denying them critical support they need at school, creating more confusion and shame, and sending them the message that their government believes that who they are is so beyond the pale that it should not even be spoken of.

As teachers, school administrators, and mental health professionals have all emphasized, this bill is a solution in search of a problem. The notion that any student can be “taught” to be transgender — a justification raised by this bill’s proponents — is preposterous and flatly contradicts the scientific and medical consensus on this issue.

Furthermore, it encourages students, teachers, and every South Dakotan to view transgender people as ill, unfit, or obscene. Parents across South Dakota and across the country must be able to trust their child will be treated with the same dignity and respect as every other student.

HB 1108, if passed, would send a clear message to the parents of transgender children that they deserve no such trust or equal treatment from South Dakota schools. Teachers in South Dakota go above and beyond each day to create environments where all students can learn and succeed and feel supported.

This bill does nothing more than create unnecessary roadblocks and threats for educators who want to support all their students and help them learn, including transgender students who may be in their classrooms. We therefore strongly encourage you to reject HB 1108.