Trans children and the necessity to complicate gender in primary schools

Abstract

Trans children have become more visible in primary schools in recent years. Arising from a qualitative study with twelve parents of trans children (aged 5-13) and six primary school educators in Ireland, this paper explores how trans children experience two very different forms of celebratory rituals that are entangled with life in primary schools: birthday celebrations and religious rituals. These rituals are experienced as moments of affectively intense rupture for trans children, moments that shunt the violence of the disciplinary framework of gender into view. Informed by theorizing on gender norms and affect, this paper makes visible the cruel conundrum of navigating a gender frame that acts violently but at the same provides the very terms through which trans identities can be asserted and apprehended. Ultimately, this paper provides an empirical illustration of the messiness of gender and argues for the necessity to complicate the framework of gender in primary schools.

Primary School Teachers Misrecognizing Trans Identities? Religious, Cultural, and Decolonial Assemblages

“…As trans becomes more visible in schooling and at younger ages (Neary, 2021), teachers’ gender justice framing requires far more attention, as I have shown in this article. The delegitimating ways through which trans identities are condemned, marginalized, and misrecognized within local settings emphasize the strong associations made with religion, heteronormativity, and culture.…”

“…Given the significant paucity in research dealing with primary school teachers’ understandings of trans students (Bartholomaeus et al, 2017; Neary, 2021) and their potential to address “trans-affirmative” (Martino & Cumming-Potvin, 2018) gender justice work, this article has shed light on the saliency of a decolonial trans assemblage to examine the capacities generated when teachers encounter trans, how these capacities are produced, and the consequences for trans visibility and recognition. The utility of a decolonial trans assemblage is its ability to reveal the multiple forms, bodies, and flows through which trans visibility is constrained and challenged.…”

“…This could open up possibilities for questioning cisgenderism— “the discriminatory ideology that delegitimizes people’s own designations of their genders and bodies” (Ansara & Hegarty, 2013, p. 162). Bodies and gender are entangled with ideological and cultural framings about birth-assigned sex (Neary, 2021), which relies on cisnormative male–female binaries and cisgenderism (Ferfolja & Ullman, 2020). Cisgenderism and cisnormative cultures can thus erase, marginalize, and misgender individuals.…”

“We Just Think of Her as One of the Girls”: Applying a Trans Inclusion Staged Model to the Experiences of Trans Children and Youth in UK Primary and Secondary Schools

“…Martino et al (2020) highlighted a tendency for some trans inclusion approaches, especially in primary schools, to focus purely on gender stereotypes, noting how this sidesteps issues of genuine trans inclusion and "eschews the necessity of addressing cisgender privilege and cisnormativity in the education system" (p. 1). Neary (2021) discussed the limits of individualizing and conditional methods of inclusion, where trans children are forced to bend themselves to fit into cisnormative systems. Literature has highlighted the insufficiency of some attempts at trans inclusion (Pullen Sansfaçon et al, 2021).…”

Supporting Transgender Students and Gender-Expansive Education in Schools: Investigating Policy, Pedagogy, and Curricular Implications

“…This special issue brings together a collection of articles and contributors from Australia, Canada, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It contributes to an emerging body of research internationally that focuses on the experiences of transgender and gender diverse students in the education system, the institutional barriers that impede the creation of building trans-inclusive climates and safe spaces in schools for gender diverse students, and educators' responses to demands for recognition by trans students (Blackburn, 2021;Frohard-Dourlent, 2018;Jones et al, 2016;Kennedy, 2018;Luecke, 2011Luecke, , 2018Mangin, 2020;McBride & Neary, 2021;Martino et al, 2022;McGuire & Conover-Williams, 2010;miller, 2019;Neary, 2021;Paechter et al, 2021;Phipps & Blackall, 2021;Sinclair-Palm, 2017;Taylor & Peter, 2011;Travers, 2018;Ullman, 2021Ullman, , 2014. This research is important, especially given the long history that has erased the focus on the "T" in studies purporting to focus on LGBT students in schools (Greytak et al, 2013).…”