“My Transgender Kindergartener”

(I didn't make this up)

Believe it or not, the title of this piece is an actual quote from a speaker during the General Public Comment segment of the Durham (North Carolina) Public Schools’ Board of Education monthly meeting in April of 2022. And it begs the question: how does a kindergartener even know what transgender is? When I was in kindergarten, I didn’t even know what a pronoun was, let alone words like transaction, transatlantic or even transcript. And I doubt that any of my fellow kindergarteners knew what the word gender meant, let alone transgender. To quote a phrase from when I was in elementary school, we’ve come a long way, baby.

Can a kindergartener even be transgender? I gave this some thought and recalled looking through family photos of a friend of mine who is gay. Looking at pictures of himself as a little kid, he laughingly said, “I was gay when I was five years old!” I asked him how he knew he was gay when he was five, and he said, “Oh, I didn’t know I was gay. But I was.”

So if you can be gay when you’re five, maybe you can be transgender when you’re five. It makes sense. But how does a five-year-old who is transgender know they’re transgender or even know what transgender is unless an adult broaches the subject? And why would anybody talk about that sort of thing with a five-year-old? The answers to these questions may lie in the fact that a mother (and this is only one of many examples) recently announced to the world in a school board meeting that was being livestreamed on YouTube that her 5-year-old was transgender.

My knee-jerk reaction to this was that it is wrong – very wrong – for anyone to broadcast the sexuality of a minor – let alone a five-year-old – in a public forum.

The parent in question not only announced for all to see and hear that her kindergartener was transgender, but she also pressured the school for months until school administrators and the district finally capitulated and made an official announcement to the child’s entire class! But this wasn’t enough. She then found it necessary to parade her accomplishment in front of the school board and the world, not once, but at least twice. So far. Maybe she’s set her sights on getting on a talk show.

Amazingly, this is far from being an isolated incident. To my astonishment, 11 of the 16 public comments at this meeting focused on gender issues. But let’s take a step back. On one hand, it’s great that these things are out in the open. It is far better to have the freedom of talking about important issues than to be silenced. On the other hand, it is clear that many parents have taken this newfound opportunity to gain social points by using their elementary school children to push their personal agendas. And a lot of people (and corporations) are jumping on the bandwagon, literally queueing up to announce that they have embraced transgender issues. And many, if not most, are chest-poundingly aggressive and sanctimonious about the whole thing. The parent referenced above is a perfect example. She got everything she demanded yet continued yammering about it after the fact in front of the lights and cameras of livestreamed school board meetings. I have no doubt she’s very proud of herself.

So why is gender equality such a hot topic these days? And why are school districts and corporations as well as federal, state and local governments so eager to embrace it? Don’t you think the top issue regarding North Carolina education would be the fact that on any given school day, 75% of the public schools have no nurse on duty? Don’t you think that 11 of 16 parents and nurses and teachers should be talking about that at EVERY SCHOOL BOARD MEETING until the problem is solved?! I’ll say it again – there is no nurse on duty in 75% of public schools in North Carolina. Seems to me this should be at the top of the list. Yet nobody talks about it.

Why?

Well, for one thing, it’s a lot cheaper to argue about pronouns than it is to put a nurse in every school. Probably about $100 million a year cheaper. But try arguing that issue. You’ll get shut down pretty quickly if you call for any kind of action on the matter. Thus, it goes virtually unspoken.

So as it stands now, if your kid scrapes a knee or has an asthma attack on the playground in a public school in North Carolina, there’s a pretty slim chance there’ll be a nurse on hand to fix things up. But you can bet everybody will be using the right pronouns when they call you to pick your kid up from school to take her to the emergency room.

Here is the video of the school board meeting: