School is an important place for people for many reasons. Pillars of education are for school to be a sanctuary for its students and staff to feel safe and to facilitate people having the opportunity to talk about their identities. Such identities include the spectrum of genders and sexualities. Creating this environment is imperative for the wellbeing of students because learning things about yourself is an aspect of ones formative years that can be particularly disorienting. It is also a piece of education that often gets over shadowed by academics. What if the discussion of these identities becomes criminalized? How will that criminalization affect students and teachers?
The possibility of educators teaching their students about queer and trans identities becoming criminalized is underway in Florida. From the Los Angeles Times, Anthony Izaguirre and Lindsay Whitehurst interviewed Kara Gross of the American Civil Liberties Union chapter in Florida who says that this bill, if passed, would “effectively silence students from speaking about their LGBTQ family members, friends, neighbors and icons.” This silencing that Gross mentions would directly cause erasure of these important people of students' lives. Gross does not mention the students themselves in her list of people who would be banned from conversation, but I think that this is the most important person. If students don't have an environment to talk about people who hold significance in their lives, then how would they feel comfortable talking about themselves? Imagine a student who has two moms whom the student loves. This student wants to mention them for a class project about family, but with this bill only their peers with heterosexual parents would be fine presenting. Such a case happened in Utah where a student "was told he could not do a family-history project on an uncle who was gay." Having to navigate whether talking about someone is acceptable or not makes school even more emotionally complicated than it already is. These complications would lead to students feeling unsure about themselves and potentially even having self esteem issues.
image https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/florida-gov-ron-desantis-don-t-say-gay-bill-will-n1288662
These self esteem issues are exacerbated when students who are LGBTQ get bullied for who they are. Before this "Don't Say Gay" bill was passed in Florida, a 2019 survey showed that "69% reported being verbally harassed based on sexual orientation." If these homophobic students are not to learn or hear about people different than themselves, how will statistics like these go down?
Not being able to talk about queer and trans people in school is the opposite of what school should be about. Talking about identities helps students learn no matter who they identify their sexuality or gender. How will cisgender and heterosexual students who come from conservative families be able to unlearn the prejudice their families have raised them on? This bill actually favors these conservative parents because "a parent could sue a district for violations." The power that these parents hold could easily sway the opinions of their friends, which could domino effect into even more hateful bills in states other than Florida.
Education is one of the most powerful and important tools young people have, so erasing people's identities and the history of those identities from the curriculum will harm this generation and generations to come. This erasure will facilitate hate to prosper within systems of power.
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-01-31/florida-gop-aims-to-curtail-school-lessons-on-sexual-orientation-and-gender
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