By Amy Moran, Ph. D. with Maika Schulman
Good news! Delaware elected our country’s first (known) transgender person to Congress, 34-year-old Rep. Sarah McBride (D). McBride’s platform supports expanding access to health care, advocating for workers’ rights, strengthening unions and bringing down costs. However, at orientation this past November, she was greeted with vitriolic hostility by fellow representatives Nancy Mace and Marjorie Taylor Greene who immediately, repeatedly and nonsensically demanded she not be permitted to use the women’s bathroom.
At Rainbow Connection, we applaud McBride and her people-first agenda, but we also think that members of Congress could learn from New Jersey public schools’ policies and practices, including those at right.
New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (NJLAD)
NJLAD has protected people in spaces of public accommodation since 1947. It was revised in 1991 to include sexual orientation protections, and again in 2006, to include gender identity and expression, including the right to access any sex-segregated facilities, such as restrooms or locker rooms. No adverse effects have been reported for cisgender students or teachers in these last 18 years.
Harassment, intimidation, and bullying (HIB) prevention
If they tried their antics in our schools, the harassment, intimidation and bullying from Mace and Taylor Greene would be investigated and found to be harmful to McBride and to their collective ability to work on behalf of the American people.
Social-emotional learning
SEL Competencies, such as self-management, social awareness and relationship skills, would allow all members of Congress to focus on the social and economic needs of the people they represent, as they were elected to do.
While we watch the charade by Mace and Taylor Greene play out on the national stage against McBride—shamefully emboldening other cisgender people to espouse antagonistic attitudes and outward hostility toward transgender people—it’s important that we examine the unsubstantiated anti-trans myths these elected officials are perpetuating:
- The overwhelming majority of sex offenders are cisgender men (93%+), not transgender women.
- According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one risk factor for committing sexual assault is hyper-masculinity, something decidedly uncharacteristic of trans women.
- A review of sexual assault complaints in places of public accommodation by a nonpartisan police research organization found no evidence of cisgender men dressing up as women or transgender and entering women’s bathrooms to commit sexual assaults there.
But how about in schools?
- Where students were prevented from using bathrooms that matched their gender identity (unlike in New Jersey), transgender girls were 149% more likely to be sexually assaulted by cisgender boys in the boys’ bathroom that they were forced to use.
- 36% of transgender or gender-nonbinary students, ages 13-17, with restricted bathroom or locker room access, reported being sexually assaulted in the last 12 months.
What we know is that sexual assaults in bathrooms are happening to trans women and trans girls, not by trans women and trans girls.
So what’s with the artificial outrage by McBride’s Republican colleagues? As McBride attests, “Every bit of time and energy that is used to divert the attention of the federal government to go after trans people is time and energy not focused on addressing the cost of living for our constituents, and we have to be clear that there is a real cost for the American worker every time they focus on this.”
As we return our focus to teaching all our wonderful students—regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity/expression—perhaps Republican members of Congress should take a page out of New Jersey educators’ playbook and focus on helping all Americans—including their colleagues.
Please share your own insights and LGBTQIA+ inclusive practices in schools at RainbowConnectionNJEA@gmail.com, and happy new year!
Amy Moran, Ph.D. is an out queer educator, leader and activist working to make education affirming and inclusive for all of their students and colleagues. Moran has taught middle school for 30 years and was a high school GSA adviser for 16 years.
Maika Shulman is a math teacher at Dwight Morrow High School in Englewood.