Seducing the Children: Sexuality and Gender Identity in Schools

In 2021 and 2022, after a few years in which more school leaders and teachers created more inclusive school environments for queer and trans youth (sometimes encouraged by court cases that queer and trans youth won), legislators reversed those gains by engaging an anti-trans and heterosexist political rhetoric that multiplied the discursive violence that queer and trans youth face in schools. Asserting that gender-affirming care will harm children and that trans youth playing sports that align with their gender identities threatens to eliminate girls sports (Anti-Defamation League, 2021) in several states, these discourses codified into laws make school staff vulnerable to legal action when supporting queer and trans youth. The anti-trans and heterosexist discourses rely on an ahistoric view of queer and trans people in US and other societies, a view that is possible because of the missing and misunderstood record of queer and trans people in historical texts and lessons. In this paper I will conduct a poststructuralist content analysis of the political framing of queer and trans youth as new, Western, and against traditional views of gender and family, and challenge the ahistoricity of these discourses with competing historical texts and images. I will then suggest lessons in the K-12 history curriculum, both in existence in states where this work has already been started, such as California and New Jersey, and in imagination in other states, where this record could be righted.