Schools slammed for treatment of transgender students

Australian schools have come under fire for encouraging gender diverse children to modify their behaviour and appearance in order to protect themselves.

Australian researchers have labelled schools as “homo-cis-normative institutions” for their unwillingness to fully support transgender students.

Such educational settings need to become “trans-affirmative pedagogical spaces” in order to address the harassment, abuse and isolation of gender diverse students.

Cis, short for cisgender, is a term that describes someone whose gender identity is the same as the sex ascribed to them at birth.

At a recent Australian Association for Research in Education symposium, researchers reported gender diverse children were told to modify their behaviour and appearance to protect themselves.

This was unlike “cisgender” children who were usually ­accepted as the norm.

A brief compiling the ­research of academics Tania Ferfolja, Emily Gray, Victoria Rawlings and Jacqueline Ullman said parents “indicated that they received advice that their children should oppress or deny their sexuality or gender identity at school in order to better fit in, demonstrating the strength of the institutional commitment to cis-heteronormativity”.

Cisgenderism “is rife in schooling cultures”, according to researchers. Picture: iStock

Their four research papers include Associate Professor Ullman’s study of 2300 gender and sexually diverse students, which found “empirical evidence that verbal and physical harassment that targeted gender and sexuality diversity in schools is still common”.

Teachers rarely stepped in to help and sometimes suggested that students could avoid the violence if they only “could try to act more normal”, the ­research brief notes.

Research by Associate Professor Ferfolja and Dr Rawlings also “explored the experiences of parents that ­encountered the homo-cis-normative institution of the school”.

“Parents indicated that they received advice that their children should oppress or deny their sexuality or gender identity at school in order to better fit in, demonstrating the strength of the institutional commitment to cis-heteronormativity,” the researchers found.

The research by Dr Gray into the experiences of LGBTIQ+ educators “emphasised the ways that normative assumptions about heterosexuality and (cis)gender dominate all aspects of school life”.

The research comes as a growing number of schools are running workshops on ­inclusion and gender diversity and some single-sex schools encourage the continued ­enrolment of transitioning ­students.