Gender Identity
Next Parent Dialogue Session: February - 21st at noon (zoom), 22nd at 8:30 (in person)
You’ve seen it in our email signatures: she/her, he/him, they/them. Why is everyone signaling their pronouns? As we move through our day we regularly make assumptions of someone’s gender, usually based on elements of their gender expression: their clothing, hairstyle, accessories, and many times we are right; but we need to pay more attention to the unintentional harm we cause when this assumption is actually wrong, and that unintentional harm has a name and very real feelings behind it: Gender Dysphoria.
To begin, let’s make sure we’ve all differentiated that your gender can be different than your biological sex. Your biological sex being defined and recorded at your birth as being 1 of 3 things: male, female, or intersex. While your gender identity is developed much as your personality develops.
Guide to Gender Identity and Pronouns
Jesse also does a great job explaining all of this in the first few moment of their Ted Talk.
With the passage of State Bill 49, our school, indeed all of NC schools, and schools across several states who have also adopted such measures, are having to figure out: how do we support the Social and Emotional Learning of our students when we are being censored from talking about something that is at the very core of a person’s identity: their gender.
Read more about the harm caused by ANTI-LGBTQIA+ Legislation in this article from the Anti-Defamation League.
Why Are Gender Pronouns So Controversial?
The Narrow Place we Call Normal
“Today I am going to tell you how we can make the world a safer place for people who are forced to come out of closets. When you step out of a closet, you step onto a table.”
We All Deserve a Full Box of Crayons
Meet Moppa Angela and explore the developmental stages as children naturally explore and identify Gender Identity, and let’s wonder together, what would we see if we all had the full box of crayons?
Angela may give us a great answer to the question, what will we do now that we can’t speak to such matters?
“Our job is to listen. Our job is to ask interesting questions and listen for the answers. Who are you? What do you like? What makes you feel like you? And when kids begin to show themselves to us, we support them without steering.”
“These kids don’t need me to figure them out, they need me to listen, really listen and to figure out how to amplify the voice that’s inside them.”
“We remind them: they are beautiful, and strong, and resilient.”
Upcoming Parent Dialogue Dates:
March - 21st at 1:30 (in person), 25th at noon (zoom)