In a webinar, Dr Ampersand Pasley of the University of Auckland described how the pathologisation and politicisation of trans children have positioned gender affirmation as something that only trans children need, fostering unnecessary anxieties and disregarding the various ways in which most people engage in gender affirmation.
Here are some of the key insights shared in the webinar:
Gender affirmation refers to anything that supports people to find elation or contentment in their sense and expression of gender. This elated state is known as gender euphoria. Conversely, gender dysphoria refers to the feelings of discomfort or distress elicited when one’s gender is not affirmed. While gender affirmation is often thought about in terms of supporting trans children to present in the ways they would like or referring to them by the name or pronouns that resonate with them, the same is also true for supporting cis children to present as they would like, whether that conforms to gender role stereotypes or not.
Typically, the best way to know what gender affirmation means to someone is to ask them. Discussions around gender affirmation tend to focus on gender transition (and medical transition, in particular) because trans people have been pathologised in Western society. However, gender affirmation is not limited to these things and, as the Counting Ourselves study demonstrates, by no means all trans and non-binary people want or seek out these options. Trans gender affirmation can include, among other things, respecting someone’s name and pronouns, social transition, and changing wardrobes, though there is much variation in what this entails. In Aotearoa, approximately one in every 100 young people identifies as trans or non-binary, and almost three-quarters of them developed this sense of themselves before the age of 14. Regardless of age, individuals are authorities on their own body and sense of self, and their autonomy must be respected.
A huge variation of bodies exists within and across genders and sexes, and ideological positions that insist on a sex and gender binary put many people at risk and denigrate bodies that exist outside these standards, when we could be celebrating the beauty and wonder of our differences.
To be able to educate and support all their students equitably, teachers need to understand the breadth of what gender affirmation can mean for trans students, so that cisnormative assumptions – the social organising principle that assumes and privileges bodies that align with the gender they were assigned at birth – do not limit affirmation. Parents, students, and educators can learn more about medical aspects of care via the Professional Association for Transgender Health Aotearoa.
When gender affirmation is for everyone, everyone benefits because all expressions are seen as worthy of affirmation, regardless of who is expressing them. Restricting gender affirmation to trans people takes a language away from cis children that might otherwise allow them to explore what sorts of gender expression make them euphoric, whether it lies within stereotypical gender expression or not. Cis children deserve to celebrate how gender expression enlivens them, rather than treating their gender as taken for granted, ordinary, and simply reinforced for meeting social standards. There are all sorts of bodies and preferences, and we hopefully share the objective that no child should grow up with a sense that their body is worth less.
Reframing gender affirmation as something that all children deserve requires acknowledging that everyone is engaging in gender-affirming behaviours all the time, such as wearing a suit, a dress, or a onesie to the supermarket, putting on earrings or makeup, shaving or not shaving, using perfume, and the myriad other things we do to feel like ourselves. Those opposing the recognition of gender diversity are not only failing to protect trans children, but they are also endangering children in general by communicating that their approval is dependent on fulfilling a set of narrow, outdated roles. Younger people are much less concerned with living up to these standards, but the message they are receiving is that they will be unsupported or even punished for exploring different gender expressions. By contrast, Westlake Boys High School recently incorporated a lavalava into their school uniform so that the Pacific community could express their identity in how they dress for school. Changes like this reveal how simple it can be to ensure that all children can explore and express their gender, and be affirmed for whatever feels right to them. Everyone benefits when we can express and be celebrated for who we are, whatever that looks like.
The risks of exploring different forms of gender expression are not equal among all students. The gender binary is more engrained in some communities than others, and gender-based violence is also not equally distributed. For example, while violence prevention in Pacific communities recommends investing in established community structures and relations, such as churches and schools, these are often sites of violence for Rainbow Pacific + people, so different strategies need to be developed to cater for different needs. Elizabeth Kerekere discusses how, in the face of colonial prejudices, Māori matua often employed strategic silences to protect takatāpui tamariki, so anxieties around takatāpui often need to be understood as part of a protective legacy in the face of colonial violence, rather than reducing responses to outright transphobia. Similarly, the Adhikaar Group and others have discussed how East and Southeast Asian young people often encounter intergenerational misunderstandings between those brought up in New Zealand’s Westernised rainbow discourses and their elders, who might not understand the same ontological categories of gender, sex, and sexuality. Rather than transphobia, this presents an intercultural communication breakdown, which requires a different response. Similarly, some students might bring practices to the classroom that, while normative in their cultures, might be misread through a Western lens. For example, the Pacific use of the lavalava, while often a binary gendered practice in Pacific cultures, might be read as feminine through a Western gaze because it looks like a skirt through that perspective, highlighting the entanglement of gendered and racial dynamics. Notably, while educators must appreciate the influence of different backgrounds, it is equally problematic to stereotype or essentialise students’ gender based on their backgrounds. To reiterate, the best way to know what gender affirmation means for students is to ask them.
Teachers are already expected to support all children to explore how they want to be in the world by fostering good rapport and relationships with them (see Our Codes, Our Standards, Te Whāriki, New Zealand Curriculum), ensuring that they feel they can communicate their needs and that you can respond in a way that ensures they feel supported, even if you don’t initially have the tools or understandings to meet them where they are. The Relationships and Sexuality Education Guidelines and rainbow organisations like InsideOUT encourage schools to create policies and practices that afford greater capacity for expression to avert the institutionalisation of the denial and denigration of those expressions that don’t meet normative standards. Teachers should appreciate that efforts to constrain the diversity of gender expression (that has always and will always exist) are damaging to all students because they pathologise or devalue those who do not embody dominant expressions of masculinity and femininity. Those who embody these expressions have reduced autonomy because they learn that deviation from the norm will be punished.
The greatest thing that you can do to affirm young people’s gender is to unpack, understand, and celebrate your own. While you cannot know what gender affirmation means for everyone, you are in the best position to understand and model what that means for you. This provides an excellent opportunity to foster awareness around the sorts of ideas that have influenced your preferences and where you have inherited those meanings, while also allowing yourself to enjoy and celebrate your sense and expression of gender in whatever way it manifests. Illustrating your willingness to understand yourself and share the complexity of what informs how you express yourself reassures students that you will make the same affordances for them.
Definition of terms as used in the webinar
Gender is understood as constructed and is not an inherent category. The word gender was invented in 1945 to refer to ‘psychological sex’ (Money, 1945), yet sex is also not binary and only became a social organising principle with Modern colonisation (Pasley, 2020). McKittrick (2021) calls this tying of constructed categories to sex characteristics a ‘biologizing narrative’ (see also heterosexual matrix; Butler, 1990).
Cis(gender) refers to those who (exclusively) align with the gender they were assigned at birth.
Cisnormativity refers to the social organising principle that assumes and privileges bodies that align with the gender they were assigned at birth.
I use trans as shorthand for anyone who does not (exclusively) identify with the gender they were assigned at birth. However, not everyone uses this term, including those who see themselves as non-binary but not trans, or use non-Western concepts to describe themselves, such as irawhiti takatāpui (Māori), Pacific Rainbow + (MVPFAFF+) communities, bakla (Filipinx), hijra (the Indian sub-continent), two-spirit (North America), muxes (Mexico), and the many other ways of understanding what Western society might read as gender.
In Aotearoa, takatāpui refers to Māori gender, sex, and sexual diversity, understanding that an individual’s Māori whakapapa (genealogy) is integral to who they are. If you are interested in exploring these ways of knowing and being further the work of Elizabeth Kerekere, Benjamin Doyle, Logan Hamley, and Morgan Tupaea, among others, is recommended.
I use the term Western to refer to the systems of thinking that emerged from Modern colonisation (circa. 13th century), which include the imposition of European understandings of sexual difference and gender roles (Lugones, 2007), racialisation (Quijano, 2000), and other entangled hierarchies (Wynter, 2003). The global effects of Modernity mean that these ideologies are not geographically limited.
