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LJ Slovin provides a critique of educational policies aimed at supporting trans and gender-nonconforming youth in schools.

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Institution: University of Toronto

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LJ Slovin provides a critique of educational policies aimed at supporting trans and gender-nonconforming youth in schools.

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 1, 2024

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This video video discusses the author's experiences and insights gained from studying the lives of queer and trans youth in educational settings. It emphasizes the pervasive use of the term "at risk" by adults to describe young people, which they do not employ to define themselves. The author critiques how this term dominates narratives about queer and trans youth, especially in the context of policy-making and funding for youth services.

The study focuses on a public debate surrounding trans-inclusive policies in Canadian schools, which, while intended to protect trans youth, may inadvertently reinforce narrow understandings of gender identity. The author reflects on their year spent in a high school, engaging with non-binary and trans students to understand how these policies affect their identities and existence within the school environment.

The research reveals that trans youth often conduct substantial emotional and social labor to navigate the rigid gender norms present in schools. This video video includes striving for recognition and acceptance, which can constrict their self-expression and identity. The author identifies three forms of labor performed by these youth: understanding and forgiving misrecognitions from others, negotiating their own gender presentations, and building supportive spaces of resistance and creativity.

Ultimately, the author argues for a shift away from a "pedagogy of vulnerability" focused solely on protection towards a "pedagogy of desire," which actively celebrates and invites trans identities within educational contexts. This video video approach aims to cultivate environments where being trans is recognized as a valuable and desired aspect of identity rather than one fraught with risk. The goal is to inspire a reimagining of what it means to be trans and to create more inclusive and supportive educational spaces that honor the complexity and vibrancy of gender nonconformity.

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The book emerges partially from my time as a youth worker.

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There's this ease

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and frequency with which the term at risk

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gets used with young people.

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And it's not a term that youth use for themselves.

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It's a term that adults use

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to articulate young people's lives.

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Often when they're trying to get funding.

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When we're trying to get funding for youth-based services

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and programs, it's also very pervasive in scholarship

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on queer and trans youth.

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So historically it's been useful

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and a team at times, even strategic as a framing.

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In, in Canada, many safe school policies emerged out

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of evidence that queer

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and trans youth were specifically struggling in schools.

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Risk has become, say so prevalent in

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how we think about queer and trans youth that it,

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it kind of takes over.

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So in this book, I was specifically interested in thinking

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sort of past or against these ideas

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of risk in the school district.

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Uh, where I was located,

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there was this very public debate over the most recent

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update of the Trans-inclusive policy a few years

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before I began my study.

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And these types of trans-inclusive policies were created

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to combat, what we think of as these increased risks

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for trans youth in schools,

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which is a, a very great intention.

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It's a great intention. But I was interested in

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how they can end up participating in informing ideas

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about transness.

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So what are the implications of this sort

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of persistent focus on protecting trans youth

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and how trans youth end up understanding

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and expressing their relationships to gender.

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But there's this, there's this other part of it

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that really motivated me, which is that

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as a trans non-binary person, as a gender queer person,

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I was interested in how these policies

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rely on the assumption that trans youth are this specific

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and knowable population who are ultimately made safe

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through just being included in the regular

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operation of the school.

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Many trans-inclusive policies focus on permitting students

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to use like the washroom

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or bathroom that matches their gender identity

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or to dress how they prefer.

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But these, these already presume a particular form

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of transness, one that is legible, one that is recognizable,

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one that fits within like a readily

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available idea of gender.

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And so I was interested in how trans youth interacted

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with this approach to trans inclusion.

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I spent a year in a high school,

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in a city in Western Canada,

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and I was moving through the days alongside six

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drums and non-binary youth.

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So when I, I arrived at the school in September

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and I attended as many classes as possible from,

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grades nine through 12.

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And I sort of showed up.

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I was introducing myself, telling students, who I was

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and that I was doing a study about gender.

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And I, I wanted to normalize my presence in classrooms,

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while keeping the, the study focus a little bit vague

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because I wanted to make possible students participating

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who are not out, so to speak.

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Um, so my, my assumption was

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that trans students would take cues from like me

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and my body, and know what I meant by studying gender.

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And that was true.

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And so trans gender fluid, non-binary students, they,

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they approached me and they asked more about the study.

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And I guess ultimately, I, I thought of the study as sort

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of like six interconnected ethnographies.

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Every time a young person joined the study,

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we would sit down and we'd have a conversation about

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how they wanted to engage,

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what they wanted out of the project.

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And so these were ongoing conversations

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and we would create our own sort of iteration

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that unfolded over the year together with some youth.

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I went to as many of their classes as possible.

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We sat next to each other. We ate lunch together.

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I went to all their extracurricular activities.

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We hung out in school. We hung out in the hallways.

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We skipped class together.

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You know, we spent a lot of time together.

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Um, other students, the project unfolded differently.

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I went to a few other classes or I wouldn't sit next to them

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'cause they were worried about that sort of visibility.

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So I just, I followed the lead, I followed the desires

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of the young people in the study.

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You would say there are many frames from which

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to describe the experiences of trans

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and gender non-conforming youth in the education system.

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We're always telling a story, right? Not the whole story.

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And as I mentioned

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before, in writing this book,

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I was deeply invested in shifting the narratives

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that dominate scholarship in this field.

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So in trying to tell a different story about trans youth,

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one that's not mire risk,

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but that honors the brilliant, creative,

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beautiful ways that they exist.

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So in, in my year at the school, I noticed

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that trans youth were required to perform

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significant labor in response to these normative ideas

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that structure gender legibility in the school.

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So logics of whiteness, of southern colonialism, of ableism

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adults limited and constrained understandings

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of the possibilities of like who could be trans, of

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what it meant to be trans, of

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what it like looks like to be trans.

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This all like created a context in which trans youth had

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to work hard to exist in their genders, in ways

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that felt good and honest and real for them.

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So I ended up focusing on, on this aspect, on the labor,

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and I, discussed three forms of labor.

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The first is these acts of understanding

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and forgiveness that youth engage in that are meant to sort

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of ease their interactions with adults on

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and others at the school who misread them,

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who misgender them.

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The second was labor that was aimed at either

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becoming more recognizable according to these like limited

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narrow understandings of trans identity

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or, to trusting their own sense

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of their genders in refusal of these societal expectations.

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And I, their labor wasn't just about survival,

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it was also about flourishing.

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Um, so the, the third form

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that I focus on is, is world building.

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Uh, so over my year at the school,

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I witnessed trans youth just like build these really

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beautiful places of escape and spaces of resistance

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and their, their physical worlds,

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places like the theater tech booth,

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but they're also these fantastical spaces, like Dungeons

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and Dragons campaigns, fan fiction.

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Uh, so for instance, I, I consider

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how Ray was a grade 10 Filipino trans guy in the study

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invited fem flamboyance into his relationship

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with his gender well within the space

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of the theater tech booth.

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But while moving through the rest of the school,

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Ray worked really hard to be legible as a guy dropped.

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They then pronouns over the course of the study,

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dressed in like what he understood

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as conventionally masculine clothes,

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very careful about his presentation, very aware

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of the racialized structures of masculine legibility

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that already position Asian men as

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as more feminine than white men.

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But then in the tech booth, he has this escape, this space

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of resistance and refusal.

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Um, and he could engage with his gender more expansively

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because he is like away from others limited ideas

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of transness and this policing that comes along with it.

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So I framed use acts of survival

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and world building as critical forms of labor

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that they performed throughout the year to navigate

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and intervene in a school that didn't understand them

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or really have, have space for the caci of their genders.

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I will say that the goal in doing this study

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and writing the book wasn't as much to focus on

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specific policy solutions as it was to listen

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to young people, to, to witness

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what their lives look like in these educational contexts,

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to take seriously how they articulate their

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relationships with their genders.

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I'm, I'm not a policy focused person.

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Um, I don't necessarily believe

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that more policy is the best response.

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So in the book, rather than develop different

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or additional policies, I, I argue

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for cultivating a pedagogy of desire.

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I say that enacting a pedagogy

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of desire is importantly distinct from trans-inclusive

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policies because it's not focused on accepting trans youth

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only after we recognize their presence.

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So acceptance and inclusion are these reactionary positions

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that respond to crises, the crisis

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of a trans student making themselves visible in the school.

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And as a result, also making visible the ways

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that schools rely on and reproduce binary gender.

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These policies endeavor to accommodate a trans student.

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Um, so they admit that, you know,

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an individual student might be having a hard time doesn't

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fit in within the school.

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Um, but they, they frame this as an individual problem,

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that can be solved by, you know, just finding a way

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to bring the student back into, you know, what is considered

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otherwise a functioning working system.

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So the assumption is that schools like are generally working

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fine and you know that all students wanna belong in them,

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or they're unable to recognize the multiple,

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the harmful, deeply rooted violence structures

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that are fundamental to the institution of schooling.

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So pedagogy of desire, on the other hand,

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is an active stance.

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Um, instead of trying

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to make an individual student fit within a school

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that really never anticipated their existence, this

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communicates instead that, you know, we want trans youth

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to exist rather than tolerating, accepting,

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even we could say celebrating trans young people.

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Um, the shift entails making it clear that being

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and growing up trans is wanted,

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that it's desired, that it's joyful.

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And so it means making clear

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that trans youth are vital members of our schools

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and also our societies, even

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if we can't tell that they're present.

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So it doesn't rely on us being able

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to have trans as like a legible, knowable, recognizable,

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visible identity within the school.

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And so I, I argue that desiring youth

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to be trans necessitates untethering,

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gender nonconformity from risk,

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and that it needs to happen in the way we think about gender

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and that it needs to happen across all levels of schooling.

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So like from the policies we create,

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but also to the way we teach and talk about trans topics.

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Because if adults still believe gender nonconformity is

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mired in risk, they'll convey this.

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They'll convey precarity when they incorporate trans topics

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and how they talk about it.

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You know, when, when educators teach about trans lives

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by centering pain

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and struggle, they're concurrently communicating

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that being trans is pain and struggle.

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So if students are only learning about transness

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through struggle, it's,

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they'll have a hard time imagining transness

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outside of this.

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My book is about school,

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and there's certainly learning

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that is specifically oriented toward teachers and educators.

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Um, it it's also about trans youth more broadly.

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In many ways, right now, we're,

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we're witnessing this heightened conversation

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regarding the bodies and experiences

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and lives of queer and trans youth.

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There's this proliferation

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of fear mongering about their existence leading

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to district-wide book bans, the blocking

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of gender affirming healthcare legislation

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that criminalizes discussions of gender

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and sexuality in schools.

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This combination often happens alongside like denouncing

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of anti-racist teaching and learning.

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These denunciations, they're,

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they're mired in this widespread understanding

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of adolescents as it's like risky period of life.

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And so, legislators, parents,

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activists on all sides position children

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and youth as vulnerable and in need of protection.

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On the conservative side, they're framing youth

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as at risk from learning about like controversial topics

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like gender and sexuality and race and schools.

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Um, but for decades, even those of us

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who care about trans youth have been constrained

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by these ideas of risk as well.

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In response to legislation targeting trans youth,

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more progressive advocates also drawn this language

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of vulnerability and protection.

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'cause they warned the possibilities of harm

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and damage that will come

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to these young people if these censorship, and,

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and bans pass.

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It's not surprising that the

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conservative backlash crisis risk.

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Um, but I, I'm also concerned about the advocates

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for trans youth and

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how they remain mired in these risk narratives.

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I wanna believe another conversation is possible

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and that we can live in a world that has robust supports

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for trans young people, because we want youth to be

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and grow up trans because being trans is a

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desirable way to exist.

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So I, I hope that this book can participate in shifting

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this narrative and shifting this conversation in making

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possible a move away from approaches in schools that

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emerge from just concern, overuse, presumed vulnerability,

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so that instead of just seeking to protect trans youth,

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educators can consider what it would mean for schools

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to invite queerness, invite transness into the space.

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And I think this requires expanding who we are able

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to believe is trans, you know,

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refusing this constrained notions of trans identity

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that currently dominate.

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So I, I want this book to inspire readers to reimagine

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what it means to be trans and then work to create schools,

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but also worlds, that have space for capacious genders.

Quick Answers

Challenging the Narrative of 'At Risk' Youth

00:00:00 - The book emerges partially from my time as a youth worker. There's this ease and frequency with which the term at risk gets used with young people. And it's not a term that youth use for themselves. It's a term that adults use to articulate young people's lives. Often when they're trying to get funding. When we're trying to get funding for youth-based services and programs, it's also very pervasive in scholarship on queer and trans youth. So historically it's been useful and a team at times, even strategic as a framing.
00:00:36 - of evidence that queer and trans youth were specifically struggling in schools. Risk has become, say so prevalent in how we think about queer and trans youth that it, it kind of takes over. So in this book, I was specifically interested in thinking sort of past or against these ideas of risk in the school district. where I was located, there was this very public debate over the most recent
00:01:06 - before I began my study. And these types of trans-inclusive policies were created to combat, what we think of as these increased risks for trans youth in schools, which is a, a very great intention. It's a great intention. But I was interested in how they can end up participating in informing ideas about transness. So what are the implications of this sort of persistent focus on protecting trans youth and how trans youth end up understanding
00:01:39 - But there's this, there's this other part of it that really motivated me, which is that as a trans non-binary person, as a gender queer person, I was interested in how these policies rely on the assumption that trans youth are this specific and knowable population who are ultimately made safe through just being included in the regular operation of the school. Many trans-inclusive policies focus on permitting students
00:02:07 - or bathroom that matches their gender identity or to dress how they prefer. But these, these already presume a particular form of transness, one that is legible, one that is recognizable, one that fits within like a readily available idea of gender. And so I was interested in how trans youth interacted with this approach to trans inclusion. I spent a year in a high school, in a city in Western Canada, and I was moving through the days alongside six drums and non-binary youth.
00:02:39 - and I attended as many classes as possible from, grades nine through 12. And I sort of showed up. I was introducing myself, telling students, who I was and that I was doing a study about gender. And I, I wanted to normalize my presence in classrooms, while keeping the, the study focus a little bit vague because I wanted to make possible students participating who are not out, so to speak. so my, my assumption was that trans students would take cues from like me

Exploring Trans Youth Narratives in Education

00:03:11 - And that was true. And so trans gender fluid, non-binary students, they, they approached me and they asked more about the study. And I guess ultimately, I, I thought of the study as sort of like six interconnected ethnographies. Every time a young person joined the study, we would sit down and we'd have a conversation about how they wanted to engage, what they wanted out of the project. And so these were ongoing conversations and we would create our own sort of iteration
00:03:42 - I went to as many of their classes as possible. We sat next to each other. We ate lunch together. I went to all their extracurricular activities. We hung out in school. We hung out in the hallways. We skipped class together. You know, we spent a lot of time together. other students, the project unfolded differently. I went to a few other classes or I wouldn't sit next to them 'cause they were worried about that sort of visibility. So I just, I followed the lead, I followed the desires of the young people in the study. You would say there are many frames from which
00:04:12 - and gender non-conforming youth in the education system. We're always telling a story, right? Not the whole story. And as I mentioned before, in writing this book, I was deeply invested in shifting the narratives that dominate scholarship in this field. So in trying to tell a different story about trans youth, one that's not mire risk, but that honors the brilliant, creative, beautiful ways that they exist. So in, in my year at the school, I noticed that trans youth were required to perform significant labor in response to these normative ideas
00:04:46 - So logics of whiteness, of southern colonialism, of ableism adults limited and constrained understandings of the possibilities of like who could be trans, of what it meant to be trans, of what it like looks like to be trans. This all like created a context in which trans youth had to work hard to exist in their genders, in ways that felt good and honest and real for them. So I ended up focusing on, on this aspect, on the labor, and I, discussed three forms of labor.
00:05:18 - and forgiveness that youth engage in that are meant to sort of ease their interactions with adults on and others at the school who misread them, who misgender them. The second was labor that was aimed at either becoming more recognizable according to these like limited narrow understandings of trans identity or, to trusting their own sense of their genders in refusal of these societal expectations. And I, their labor wasn't just about survival,
00:05:53 - so the, the third form that I focus on is, is world building. so over my year at the school, I witnessed trans youth just like build these really beautiful places of escape and spaces of resistance and their, their physical worlds, places like the theater tech booth, but they're also these fantastical spaces, like Dungeons and Dragons campaigns, fan fiction. so for instance, I, I consider how Ray was a grade 10 Filipino trans guy in the study

Navigating Gender Identity in School Spaces

00:06:25 - with his gender well within the space of the theater tech booth. But while moving through the rest of the school, Ray worked really hard to be legible as a guy dropped. They then pronouns over the course of the study, dressed in like what he understood as conventionally masculine clothes, very careful about his presentation, very aware of the racialized structures of masculine legibility that already position Asian men as as more feminine than white men.
00:06:55 - of resistance and refusal. and he could engage with his gender more expansively because he is like away from others limited ideas of transness and this policing that comes along with it. So I framed use acts of survival and world building as critical forms of labor that they performed throughout the year to navigate and intervene in a school that didn't understand them or really have, have space for the caci of their genders. I will say that the goal in doing this study
00:07:26 - specific policy solutions as it was to listen to young people, to, to witness what their lives look like in these educational contexts, to take seriously how they articulate their relationships with their genders. I'm, I'm not a policy focused person. I don't necessarily believe that more policy is the best response. So in the book, rather than develop different or additional policies, I, I argue for cultivating a pedagogy of desire.
00:07:57 - of desire is importantly distinct from trans-inclusive policies because it's not focused on accepting trans youth only after we recognize their presence. So acceptance and inclusion are these reactionary positions that respond to crises, the crisis of a trans student making themselves visible in the school. And as a result, also making visible the ways that schools rely on and reproduce binary gender. These policies endeavor to accommodate a trans student. so they admit that, you know,
00:08:30 - fit in within the school. but they, they frame this as an individual problem, that can be solved by, you know, just finding a way to bring the student back into, you know, what is considered otherwise a functioning working system. So the assumption is that schools like are generally working fine and you know that all students wanna belong in them, or they're unable to recognize the multiple, the harmful, deeply rooted violence structures that are fundamental to the institution of schooling.
00:09:01 - is an active stance. instead of trying to make an individual student fit within a school that really never anticipated their existence, this communicates instead that, you know, we want trans youth to exist rather than tolerating, accepting, even we could say celebrating trans young people. the shift entails making it clear that being and growing up trans is wanted, that it's desired, that it's joyful. And so it means making clear

Trans Youth: Beyond Risk and Recognition

00:09:32 - and also our societies, even if we can't tell that they're present. So it doesn't rely on us being able to have trans as like a legible, knowable, recognizable, visible identity within the school. And so I, I argue that desiring youth to be trans necessitates untethering, gender nonconformity from risk, and that it needs to happen in the way we think about gender
00:10:03 - So like from the policies we create, but also to the way we teach and talk about trans topics. Because if adults still believe gender nonconformity is mired in risk, they'll convey this. They'll convey precarity when they incorporate trans topics and how they talk about it. You know, when, when educators teach about trans lives by centering pain and struggle, they're concurrently communicating that being trans is pain and struggle.
00:10:34 - through struggle, it's, they'll have a hard time imagining transness outside of this. My book is about school, and there's certainly learning that is specifically oriented toward teachers and educators. it it's also about trans youth more broadly. In many ways, right now, we're, we're witnessing this heightened conversation regarding the bodies and experiences and lives of queer and trans youth. There's this proliferation
00:11:04 - to district-wide book bans, the blocking of gender affirming healthcare legislation that criminalizes discussions of gender and sexuality in schools. This combination often happens alongside like denouncing of anti-racist teaching and learning. These denunciations, they're, they're mired in this widespread understanding of adolescents as it's like risky period of life. And so, legislators, parents, activists on all sides position children
00:11:35 - On the conservative side, they're framing youth as at risk from learning about like controversial topics like gender and sexuality and race and schools. but for decades, even those of us who care about trans youth have been constrained by these ideas of risk as well. In response to legislation targeting trans youth, more progressive advocates also drawn this language of vulnerability and protection. 'cause they warned the possibilities of harm and damage that will come
00:12:05 - and bans pass. It's not surprising that the conservative backlash crisis risk. but I, I'm also concerned about the advocates for trans youth and how they remain mired in these risk narratives. I wanna believe another conversation is possible and that we can live in a world that has robust supports for trans young people, because we want youth to be and grow up trans because being trans is a desirable way to exist. So I, I hope that this book can participate in shifting

Reimagining Trans Inclusion in Education

00:12:38 - possible a move away from approaches in schools that emerge from just concern, overuse, presumed vulnerability, so that instead of just seeking to protect trans youth, educators can consider what it would mean for schools to invite queerness, invite transness into the space. And I think this requires expanding who we are able to believe is trans, you know,
00:13:16 - that currently dominate. So I, I want this book to inspire readers to reimagine what it means to be trans and then work to create schools, but also worlds, that have space for capacious genders.

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