"When You Don't Believe Something Is Real, You Can't Actually Advocate for or Support It": Trans* Inclusion in K–12 Schools

• In Event: 66.087 - MTCC Roundtable Session 30
  In Roundtable Session: 66.087-11 - Recentering (Dis)Ability in Queer Studies

Abstract

The existence of transgender and gender expansive students in schools is understood through logics of visibility, invisibility, and denial, which structures how such students are recognized and legitimized. By analyzing such logics and practices, I challenge how we think about inclusion for transgender and gender expansive students in K-12 public schooling. I build on Titchkosky’s notion of a “justifiably excludable type” to analyze how the social organization of gender variance as an absent presence justifies excluding certain people, namely trans* youth, by saying that they somehow are not present in K-12 schools. The denial of the existence of such youth reproduces the exceptionalism and heightened visibility of trans* youth while justifying the refusal of school administrators to implement policy.

Author

• Susan Walker Woolley, Colgate University