Don’t need to ‘straighten out’ Francis

Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt spoke on public radio about the recent court ruling granting an injunction to keep the federal guidance to schools on transgender students – the controversial “bathroom law” – from going into effect. He described how the 1972 Title VII and Title IX provisions referring to “sex” were, in his opinion, wrongly applied to gender, which he described as an “internal sense of identity that feasibly could change, day-to-day, week-to-week.”

Sadly, this attorney general and large portions of the American population simply do not understand gender identity and transgender students.

No transgender student merely decides to be male one day and female the next. The feeling of being masculine or feminine is developed in the brain of a developing baby in the last few months of pregnancy and generally becomes recognized by the child between ages 4 and 6.

Though most children develop a gender identity that matches their sexual anatomy, a small number do not. And the experience of living in a world where society calls you a boy when you feel you are a girl, or vice versa, is very traumatic.

Besides confusing gender with sexuality, there is also little recognition of the wide variation in masculinity/femininity among the “normal” range of students. And it is biological.

I taught in high schools for 10 years before becoming a professor. At one school, the principal handed out lists of students we would advise in our homerooms.

The coach sitting next to me said: “Oh, good. I got Francis. I can straighten him out.”

Francis was a boy with effeminate mannerisms. He was quiet, gentle and kind. He did not play ball with the boys. And I knew exactly what the coach meant by “straighten him out.”

My homeroom list contained the names of two boys who were the coach’s favorites. They were slap-on-the-back, super-masculine “jocks.”

“Boy, I wish I had them in my homeroom,” the coach lamented.

I pounced: “Wanna trade?”

The coach hesitated. “You’ll straighten out Francis?”

“Sure,” I replied.

So we switched these homeroom students. And all three students lived happily the rest of the year.

Did I lie? My view of “straightening out” Francis was to give him the freedom to be himself. I saved him from the constant harassment he would have endured under a coach trying every day to pressure him to “man up.”

Natural variation due to hormones has always been with us. With most Americans having just watched the Olympics, now is a good time to recognize and celebrate, not ignore, our natural variation in masculinity and femininity.

Most of today’s youngsters understand. They have no problem accepting this natural variation. They accept their classmates where chromosomes, anatomy, hormones and brain development do not all match.

Now if only the older folks – including attorneys general – could show the same understanding and compassion.

This story was originally published August 30, 2016 at 5:01 AM with the headline "Don’t need to ‘straighten out’ Francis."