Sometimes when you are surrounded by like-minded people a lot, it is easy to forget that there are other people who do not have the same viewpoints as you. I was reminded of this when a peer in one of my graduate courses told me the other day she was not a fan of the book we just read for class, GEORGE by Alex Gino (which I wrote about in a separate blog post). After I heard this, I decided to go check out the blog post she wrote about her thoughts on the book, and I found myself very disappointed, angry, and scared for her future students. All of these feelings arose from the clearly transphobic attitude she had toward the author and the book.
In her post, she begins by saying that this book is not suitable for younger children. While I agree due to the higher level and frequency of Tier II words, it is a 790 Lexile and Reading A-Z level Z, which is appropriate for many students ages 9-11, or grades 4-6. My classmate also claims that it should “absolutely not” be available in a “public education facility,” due to content including “body parts, tampons, and porn.” I have to disagree strongly with her stance that this content is inappropriate for grades 4-6, as by this age many children are 1) curious about their bodies, 2) experiencing periods for the first time (or know a classmate who is), and 3) being exposed to these topics via the internet regardless of what books we have in our classrooms. GEORGE does not even explicitly address porn, as my peer has claimed in her post—Melissa’s older brother Scott implies that the “girl” magazines she collects are used for masturbation, before he knows that she is a girl. While I understand many teachers may feel uncomfortable discussing these topics with their students, children this age are naturally beginning to become curious about their bodies as well as their sexuality—all very natural feelings, and if we trust our students to be mature about topics like these, they will be. Would we really rather students learn about these topics via the internet, where there really is age-inappropriate content, than via a book that addresses those topics in a mature and graceful manner?
The second problem I have with my peer’s blog post is the way that she continues to misgender Melissa and call her by her birth name throughout. This is incredibly insensitive and disrespectful to anyone of the trans or queer community, who already have to fight so hard to be called by their proper pronouns. I fear for the child in my peer’s future classroom who identifies as something other than cisgender, as I know that they will not be accepted for who they are in her classroom. I can only hope that that student will have another teacher or adult ally that they can turn to.
In the second paragraph of the post, my classmate states that the book was not “authentic.” I do not really understand this claim, as you cannot really get more authentic than an own voice perspective. She continues on to say, “On page 48, it makes the comment that George must be a girl because he is good at math and hates snakes. Which again, it [sic] inaccurate. Guys are generally better at math and guys can hate snakes.” Obviously boys can be good at math and hate snakes—but that is not the point of the paragraph referenced:
“George opened her lips, but there were no words in her mouth and only one thought in her brain: No! George knew that Mom was trying to help. But George didn’t have a normal problem. She wasn’t scared of snakes. She hadn’t failed a math test. She was a girl, and no one knew it.”
(p. 47-48)
The point of this paragraph was to say that being scared of snakes or failing a math test are normal problems for children. Feeling uncomfortable in the body you were born in and nobody knowing your real identity is far more complicated. In no way was Gino saying that Melissa is a girl because she was scared of snakes and was good at math. My classmate also makes other references to GEORGE being inaccurate or inauthentic, but they are just as misunderstood as this example, so I will not go into detail on those.
The next criticism my peer discussed was the negative portrayal of the school system in the book. She says GEORGE “talks about bullying, poor and not appetizing lunches, female and male restrooms.” I am not really sure what problem she has with the mention of these things in the novel—these are real issues present in public school systems around the United States today, and the absence of these topics would be what would make this book inauthentic. Bullying continues to be an extremely concerning occurrence in schools around the nation—according to the Stop Bullying Now Foundation,
- 60% of middle school students say that they have been bullied,
- 160,000 students stay home from school every day due to bullying,
- 20% of high school students say they have seriously considered suicide within the last 12 months, and
- Bullying was a factor in 2/3 of the 37 school shootings reviewed by the US Secret Service.
Not to mention the increased likelihood that students who identify as transgender or genderqueer are at a higher risk of bullying in schools; according to the National Center for Transgender Equality,
- 75% of transgender youth feel unsafe at school and
- 59% of trans students have been denied access to restrooms consistent with their gender identity.
According to an article by the Daily Beast,
- 81 percent of trans youth are sexually harassed in school and
- By the end of middle school, 22 percent of trans students report being harassed due to their gender identity.
These unsettling statistics also leave out the disheartening fact that after schooling, transgender people are at higher rates of being attacked or murdered as well. In an article by the Human Rights Campaign, they state that “in 2018, advocates tracked at least 26 deaths of at least transgender or gender non-conforming people in the U.S. due to fatal violence, the majority of whom were Black transgender women,” and “2019 has already seen at least 22 transgender or gender non-conforming people fatally shot or killed by other violent means. We say at least because too often these stories go unreported—or misreported.”
Not talking about bullying in schools, particularly as it applies to trans and other LGBTQIA+ students, would be a disgrace. GEORGE does so with eloquence and respect. Below I have included a fact sheet on the U.S. Department of Education’s policy letter on transgender students, which includes some of the rights they are granted at school through Title IX. I highly recommend taking a look:
My classmate’s post continues by saying that, “the most inaccurate portrayal of all was on page 176”:
“The light in the east was still orange from the sunrise. The sun itself had lifted into the sky, and its rays were warm on George’s face each time she emerged from the shade of the oak tree.”
She then states, “This portrays the idea that after George comes out, that he is accepted by all and the world is such a better place. This is not true, he would face so much backlash and hatred, not be sitting there taking the sun in on his face.” While I agree that unfortunately the world is a hate-filled place, particularly toward transgender and queer people, I do not think that it is hopeless, as my classmate suggests. Many LGBTQIA+ people feel a sense of relief once they come out to friends or family, due to the fact that they are then able to express themselves and their full identity for who they are, unabashedly. There are far too many sad stories in the media about LGBTQIA+ people, and the happy ending Melissa has in GEORGE is a wonderful contrast to those dark stories. I think this is the idea that Gino was trying to get at when they wrote this sentence.
I would also like to point out here that in my classmate’s blog, when she quoted the above sentence from the novel, she censored Melissa’s pronoun “she,” which again lends to my point above the level of disrespect that comes out of my peer’s post each and every time she purposely misgenders Melissa.
Next, my classmate says that she “despised” the inclusion of the reference to an interview Melissa had seen on television with a transgender woman named Tina, who told the interviewer that “what she had between her legs was nobody’s business but hers and her boyfriend’s” (p. 46). She also says she “100% disagree[s],” and that if she were to share a dressing room or a bathroom with someone, then she “reserve[s] the right and respect to know that and reserve[s] the right to be uncomfortable with the idea.” While obviously no one is able to tell her what she can and cannot be uncomfortable with, my classmate seems to feel that her discomfort is more important than someone else’s privacy to their own body. Although my peer claims in her post that body parts are inappropriate to discuss, she seems to feel that she has a right to know what body parts everyone in a dressing room or bathroom has between their legs—which is a complete violation of someone’s privacy. No one in a dressing room or bathroom wants to pay attention to someone else’s private parts, so I do not see why my peer feels differently when it comes to someone who is transgender.
My classmate then goes on to say that Melissa felt “entitled” and “more deserving” of the part of Charlotte in the fourth grade play adaptation of Charlotte’s Web. I did not get this sense at all from reading the novel. Everyone at school told Melissa how great of an actress she was, and playing the role of Charlotte was the way that she chose to prove to her mother that she was in fact a girl. It was Melissa’s friend Kelly who willingly gave up the role of Charlotte so that Melissa could play her—no one was hurt by Melissa playing the role instead of Kelly.
My peer also says,
“I think it’s evident that George suffers from the abandonment of his father, and that took an influence on how he turned out. But then again, I see this is a choice. A choice in the fact George could have gone to therapy to get help before it reached the point he was at. I do not think he necessarily felt like he was a girl. But instead did not have a father role model to live by. He thought all of his actions seemed feminine so, yepp [sic] must be a girl. Which is inaccurate. He should have been taught that individuals carry different characteristics but it does not make them more feminine or masculine.”
In this quote my classmate claims that Melissa’s gender dysphoria is caused by the absence of her father in her life, as he and Melissa’s mother had divorced prior to the setting of the novel, rather than the fact that Melissa was born transgender. She continues,
“I feel like kids have enough pressure as is, they do not need to be posed with “am I really a girl or guy?”, that is not a question that they should ponder. I should not have students in my class that feel like they are wrong or underrepresented because they are going by the gender God or their intended for them as opposed to the other student who feel like they can rewrite the rule book.”
As someone who identifies as Christian herself, I am upset by my classmate’s assumption that all her future students should accept the gender God gave them and that they should not question the binary concept of gender expression. Gender is a social construct that was created by people, not God. I feel blessed to have been born into a body that I feel comfortable living in and expressing myself as society deems appropriate for the sex I was born with, but I realize that many people on this planet do not feel the same way as me. It is not up to us as humans to judge other people for what we view as “wrong,” just because we live our lives differently.
Like I expressed toward the beginning of my post, I feel disappointed, angry, and scared for my peer’s future students, because her close-minded attitude toward GEORGE and gender expression will leave her students worse for the wear. I hope that as she moves through life and begins her teaching career, she becomes more open-minded and accepting of all of her students. Maybe someday she will even consider herself an ally.
References
Gino, A. (2015). George. New York, NY: Scholastic Press.
Human Rights Campaign. (2019, January 10). Violence against the transgender community in 2019. Retrieved from https://www.hrc.org/resources/violence-against-the-transgender-community-in-2019
Lang, N. (2017, June 3). New study: Rates of anti-LGBTQ school bullying at 'unprecedented high'. Retrieved from https://www.thedailybeast.com/new-study-rates-of-anti-lgbtq-school-bullying-at-unprecedented-high
The Lexile Framework for Reading. (n.d.). George. Retrieved from https://fab.lexile.com/book/details/9780545920025/
Murphy, B. (2019, November 12). George [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://murphybn.wixsite.com/teach4ever/post/george
National Center for Transgender Equality. (n.d.). Youth & students. Retrieved November 15, 2019, from https://transequality.org/issues/youth-students
National Center for Transgender Equality. (n.d.). Fact sheet on U.S. department of education policy letter on transgender students. Retrieved from https://www.transequality.org/sites/default/files/ED-DCL-Fact-Sheet.pdf
Reading A-Z. (n.d.). Level correlation chart. Retrieved from https://www.readinga-z.com/learninga-z-levels/level-correlation-chart/
Stop Bullying Now Foundation. (n.d.). Welcome to the stop bullying now foundation. Retrieved November 15, 2019, from http://stopbullyingnowfoundation.org/main/
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