Transgender Kiss and the Specter of Sexual Predation: Elementary Educators' Talk About a Male-to-Female Transgender Child's Romantic Awakenings

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Abstract

Elementary educational spaces are considered to be islands of “innocence and safety” where “childhood is both nurtured and sheltered” (Allan et al., 2008, p.315). “Innocence” in childhood concerns the absence of sex and sexuality – children are (presumed) innocent of sexual desire, sexual thoughts, and sexual acts. If the “normal” child is positioned as asexual, without the taint of the sexual, then “children who are perceived as sexually aware” are “other,” “unnatural children” with “unnatural knowledge”(Robinson, in Surtees, 2005, p. 25).

Transgender children are seen as such “unnatural” children, creating “disequilibrium” in our conviction of the binary nature of gender and thus discomfort (Poe & Garcia, 2009, p. 205). The constellation of sex-gender-sexuality (Youdell, 2005) is challenged by such children who cannot be both “innocent” and gender transgressive. Innocence “has implicit within it the potential “risk of corruption” (Youdell, 2009, p. 44) by exposure to “sexual” content. Discourses of innocence and risk insist on children needing to be “protected.” The specter of the homosexual exists through potential predation and corruption and perhaps contagion. Transgender children are thus perceived to present a “risk” to the innocence of other children around them.

This paper utilizes a subset of data from a larger study on elementary educator responses to enrollment of a transgender child. The larger study explored difficulties elementary schools in Central New York experienced envisioning supportive environments for transgender children and the strong negative emotional response many educators had to the enrollment of a transgender child. This subset of data explores educator talk concerning one male-to-female transgender child in a suburban elementary school and in that way is a case study. Participants in this sub-set had direct experience working with the transgender child and had participated in professional development on transgender children at the beginning of the school year with the researchers conducting the study. They were interviewed later in the school year on their experiences with the child. Participants included administrators, counselors, and classroom teachers. Carspecken’s (1996) critical qualitative methodology was used in the research design and execution.

Findings indicate that the emergence of romantic inclinations in the transgender child (fourth grade) was treated as unnatural – creating “panic” requiring the staff to monitor the student, when similar behaviors in normatively gendered children were treated as “everyday” and a part of expected development. This child was framed as “hyper-sexual” and her behavior threatening. That the student was “stealth” –– her transgender identity not known to the larger school community–– heightened the need for vigilance and desire to protect “innocent” boys from the threat of homosexual predation and girls from potential context with a body sexed male. Teachers struggled with obligation to confidentiality of the child’s transgender identity and their desire to protect other children by making them aware of the danger in their midst. The greatest concern for these educators was not providing an affirming environment for a transgender child, but reducing the risk of corruption to childhood innocence. These narratives demonstrate deep commitment to the sex-sexuality-gender constellation and investment in preserving heteronormativity.

Author

• Elizabethe Payne, Queering Education Research Institute (QuERI)