Parents’ Rights Come to the Atlantic

Conor Friedersdorf’s shallow approach to the question of how schools should respond to transgender youth leaves out a lot.

by Evan Urquhart

An article by Conor Friedersdorf in the Atlantic today presents a shallow version of parents’ rights arguments around gender identity in schools. Friedersdorf, who may be new to this issue, fails to cite any previous articles on the parents’ rights movement, its funding, or its goals. Instead, he appears to be following his gut. He presents a 2019 case study of a preschool that he believes illuminates why schools are affirming the gender of trans youth. No evidence is ever offered that the case study he’s chosen has been influential, or that it is representative of thinking on this issue among educators.

Instead, this article is about how Friedersdorf feels. Although he claims to personally support gender nonconforming youth, he agrees with conservatives that the issue of how schools approach gender identity is a matter of schools stepping in to overrule parents on important matters. This choice of framing is clearly laid out by Friedersdorf here:

Friedersdorf doesn’t explain how or why he adopted the conservative framing of the issue. So it’s worth asking: Is this actually an appropriate lens for viewing the matter at hand?

As there’s currently a moral panic around transgender youth, a good starting place we’ve found has been to look first at how schools treat similar situations having nothing to do with gender identity. This allows us to see if there are any patterns that would also apply to the question of how to treat trans youth.

What would a dilemma involving preferred names look like without gender identity? As it turns out, such situations crop up all the time in US schools. Here’s a fictionalized case study:

A 5th grader who is new to both the school and the country at first struggled to make friends. His name, unremarkable in his native language, sounds very similar to a word for genitals in English. As the year progressed, teachers are pleased to report the child is happier and no longer remains isolated from his peers. He’s asked his teacher to call him Vinny, a nickname which was already being used by some of his friends. The child’s parents become furious when they find out. They ask the school to return to the original name, that his teacher refuse to grade any work in unless her writes his original name on it, and to correct the other children if they catch them using the preferred nickname.

Without the involvement of gender identity, it’s clear that the school should politely and respectfully refuse the parents’ unreasonable requests. They are demanding extreme measures from the school to prevent a child from using a nickname he feels comfortable with. While it’s very understandable that the family would feel pride in the name they gave their child and would prefer him to continue using it, it’s not the school’s job to police what a child is being called by his peers, and it would needlessly harm him academically if they refuse to accept his work unless he uses the name his parents prefer. For practicality’s sake the school also benefits from having teachers address him with the same name he is writing on his papers and using to introduce himself, a name which is already in use by his peers.

Let’s try another example, again without gender identity, surrounding clothes:

A 9th grade girl is doing well in her schoolwork and has many friends. She dresses much like other girls her age, wearing makeup, jeans, and fitted tops. One day the girl’s father arrives at the principal’s office and demands the school put a stop to his daughter’s disobedience. It turns out that, while she leaves the house dressed modestly in a flower-print dress that covers her neck to ankles, she has been changing into clothing that do not reflect the family’s strict Christian values. The father asks that the school monitor the girls' restrooms every morning to ensure his daughter can’t change her clothing on school grounds and, if she’s ever caught wearing makeup and jeans again, that the school force her to wash it off and change into one of the long flower print dresses he’ll leave in the office for this purpose. He says that if they do not do all this they are ignoring his rights as a parent to raise his child according to Christian values.

Without gender identity, it’s again clear that this parent is making unreasonable demands. The parent can certainly punish his daughter for having broken the family’s rules, but it’s not the school’s job to catch her changing clothes, or to enforce a different dress code from the one that covers all students. To agree to do otherwise could lead to chaos, with parents giving schools long lists of home rules, and teachers having to remember which students aren’t allowed to have sweets, which students have to cover their hair, and which students get a nap at 1pm.

There’s a pattern here, from which a broader principle can be discerned. Children at school follow the rules of the school, and parents, not schools, are responsible for anything on top of that. Schools don’t normally inform parents when a child prefers a nickname over their given name, or when a child makes choices about clothing, hair, or makeup that parent disagree with. School policies on gender identity are a natural extension of the principle that the rules at school are different from the rules at home, and that they’re built on ideas about what’s best for the children and the school environment, not on honoring multiple conflicting parental demands.

A family of nudists doesn’t get to insist their child be allowed to be naked at a public school. A family of free spirits doesn’t get to insist their child can never be graded on their work. A family of conservative Christians doesn’t get to instruct cafeteria workers to force their child to say grace before eating lunch. So, why should parents get to pick and choose what the school policies around gender identity and expression are? It only makes sense when you’re in the sway of a moral panic telling you this issue is different. But it’s not different. If Vinny can use a nickname as school then Michelle should be allowed to as well. If Chastity can sneakily change into jeans then Michelle should be allowed to sneakily change into a dress. If there’s anything different about transgender children the onus should be on conservatives to explain why that would be in the best interest of the children or the schools, rather than on the schools to justify treating situations with trans youth similarly to how they treat children in analogous situations.

Friedersdorf misses all this because he’s chosen to adopt the conservative framing on this issue without interrogating whether that framing is actually appropriate or not. He then cherry picks a random case study about a preschool, using it to mischaracterize the other side of the issue in service to his gut feeling that conservatives must have a point on parents rights. This is typical of writers in mainstream outlets who seek to put a moderate face on extreme conservative demands. Inevitably, this leads to shallow analyses that fail to offer relevant context in their zeal to strengthen conservative positions, such as the position that schools should enforce a different set of parental rules for each child. The possibility that such demands are untenable, and that conservatives know this and are making them in the hopes of dismantling public education, is left completely out of frame.