Reply to Girl's School and Gender Pronouns

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]PP, but if a student is at a school voluntarily (they don’t have to be at NCS or Stone Ridge or Holton, etc) that caters to one specific gender then they should expect as much. Would you have a problem with STA addressing a room full of their students as “young men”? 
Being at a single gender school is a specific and elective experience. There are more than a large handful of great coeducational schools in DMV, full of people who want to be in a room of fellow students of a variety of genders which a person could apply to and attend. Those students as a group are not referred to girls or boys etc, 
I do think that as individuals people should be recognized as they/ them, etc as they wish no matter which school they are in. People should be always be highly respected as individuals and treated as such. But there is a big jump if language addressing the entire group at a single gender school which is a choice to attend is changed because less than two percent want to change their pronouns. Again, the world does not revolve around one individual, especially when in this instance this is a choice they made to be in a single gender environment in the first place. I think that at a single gender school it is okay to presume people identify as the gender the school was designed to serve. When a family applies to any of these schools it is all about the value of a girls education (this is touted by all of these schools and there is real truth in their statements imo), so by presenting the school this way in admissions the school community is already making a presumption as to who is interested in applying to the school and who will be admitted (those with “girl parts” need only apply) before one even attends. And I see nothing wrong with that at all. Addressing a *group* of classrooms of students as “girls” is simply a continuous expectation of who attends that was set when the school was founded and continues to this day through the way the school is described and promoted. [/quote]

Your post ignores the reality most nonbinary or trans kids experience: resistance from their parents. As many of the posts on this board illustrates, many parents refuse to acknowledge that their kids might explore their gender identity for whatever reason. Having taught at a few girls' schools, I can tell you of instances in which students wanted us to call them by a different name, but the parents would contact us and explicitly say we could not do this. They were adamant their kids were cis-gendered and that they should remain at our school. For parents that are more accepting or tolerant, they usually want to keep their kids at girls' schools because they are generally safer places for nonbinary, trans, or students who explore their genders. There's also the fact that these students usually have attended these schools since they were in elementary, and they have forged meaningful, lifelong relationships with other students. Again, I return to my original point: as far as I know, there has never been a discussion about dropping the "girls" part of a "girls' school." It has to do with getting students and adults in the practice of not presuming the gender of anyone they are addressing, especially when they are speaking to large groups. It's the practice of respectfully acknowledging people's identities as they understand them and not making them feel isolated or alienated because of their differences. This is a skill that will help them later in life. Again, as a teacher, I can tell you that the resistance to this is primarily from the parents, not the students. Just remember what it was like for gay students in high school back in the 1970s/1980s, especially parents, who wanted to ban any gay-related reading material from libraries, while most of us high school kids didn't think having that reading material was an issue. What you're seeing on this board is people screaming and hollering as their children drag them into a new age of understanding of gender identity.[/quote]

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