When Laws Solve Problems That Do Not Exist: Transgender Rights in the Nation's Schools

University of North Carolina Press. 116 South Boundary Street, P.O. Box 2288, Chapel Hill, NC 27515-2288. Tel: 800-848-6224; Tel: 919-966-7449; Fax: 919-962-2704; e-mail: [email protected]; Web site: http://uncpress.unc.edu/

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3

Student Rights; Educational Environment; Homosexuality; Sexual Orientation; Sexual Identity; Social Bias; School Safety; Educational Legislation; Federal Legislation; Gender Discrimination; Sex Fairness; High School Students

10.1353/hsj.2017.0000

0018-1498

Time and again research has shown that schools in which students feel safe and included promote academic achievement and overall student health (see, for example, Greytak, Kosciw, Villenas, & Giga, 2016; Michael, Merlo, Basch, Wentzel, & Wechsler, 2015). Parent networks, community organizations, and school boards nationwide continuously espouse one common goal: to create the safe environments students deserve and to promote the academic, physical, and mental well-being of all members of educational communities. Although this is certainly an admirable goal, it is far from a reality. Michael and colleagues (2015) have shown, in a review of the pertinent literature, that school policies and directives must better align with this goal in order to establish and maintain safe school environments. For members of communities that are outside the mainstream culture and outside the now defunct gender dichotomy, these efforts are particularly important. North Carolina's House Bill 2 (HB2, also known as the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act) was passed in March of 2016 and immediately made national headlines. Simply put, HB2 made discrimination against the LGBT community legal in North Carolina, and is a setback to the movement for LGBT rights. This article argues that while, at face value, restricting bathroom rights of transgender students may not appear to diminish the safety of these students, requiring transgender students to use the bathroom contrary to their identity disrupts their feelings of inclusion and safety. In an insidious manner, these policies have reified a rhetoric that denying members of the LGBT community basic human rights is acceptable. The article calls researchers and scholars of education to actively work to reverse the rhetoric that has labeled LGBT students as a lower caste, and do all in their power to establish and maintain safe and inclusive school environments.

ERIC

14

2017

EJ1131941