A rainbow is seen in a forest near Fairbanks in an undated photo. (Getty Images Plus)
During last week’s West Valley High School’s 10th annual Borough Candidate Forum in Fairbanks, a 10th grader asked, “Being knowledgeable of gender identities allows students to respect other human beings. Do you support educating students on different sexual orientations and gender identities within the education system?”
It is unrealistic to expect students to respect LGBT people without first educating them with reputable sources. Many Alaskan politicians have spread misinformation about LGBT people, from our local school boards to Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who said gender affirming surgery was a “pseudoscience” on his Facebook page, and Alaskan media outlets such as Alaska Watchman repeated Gov. Dunleavy’s pseudoscience claim while using derogatory terms such as, “cross-sex hormones,” “mutilating surgeries,” and even said it’s “dangerous” for teenagers to transition, despite every major medical association and world leading health authority supporting gender affirming care for transgender youth. It’s our responsibility to provide legitimate and trustworthy lessons to counteract their falsehoods.
When students are not educated on LGBT issues, that lack of understanding can be weaponized for fear and hate, which makes students more likely to experience bullying, bigotry, depression, suicide and real life physical harm. Already being a state with some of the highest rates of domestic violence, sexual assault and mental health disorders, this means queer Alaskan children are even more at risk for a wide variety of negative impacts.
Without age-appropriate education on sexual orientation and gender identity, students will fall prey to lies about LGBT people in our community. This not only distracts from the goal of educating students, but can lead to students not being able to learn at all, as you can not educate the dead and murdered.
The state of Alaska under Gov. Dunleavy has been attacking LGBT rights, such as when the Alaska State Commission For Human Rights rolled back protections for most categories of discrimination, allowing anti-trans activist Chloe Cole to speak to the state Legislature, and targeting transgender girls through the Alaska School Activities Association prohibiting them from participating in high school sports.
This reinforces the harmful notion that LGBT people do not deserve protection or equality. Despite there being limited data on sexual orientation statewide, Identity Alaska produced the Municipality of Anchorage LGBT Discrimination Survey from 2012, hosted on the State of Alaska Legislature’s website, and was the first statewide study to include gender identity.
The study found over 3/4 of the 268 respondents faced verbal harassment and name calling, 42.5% were threatened with physical violence, 44% were harassed by their employer or other employees, and 41% had been bullied or harassed in Anchorage schools and educational institutions. Transgender respondents reported higher rates of being followed or chased and experiencing actual physical violence than cisgender people.
It is not enough to just tell students to respect their queer community members. They must be educated on sexual orientation and gender identity to ensure they have correct information and can discern misinformation from fact. This will reduce rates of bullying and harassment, allow educators to focus on teaching and helping students, especially LGBT students, along with those who have queer family, friends and teachers.
The longer we wait, the more students, families and our community will suffer from hate, violence and death.
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