Gender fluid generation: evolving gender norms at school

To inform students and make school safer and more inclusive, schools are beginning to adapt to the growing number of kids discovering their transgender identities. Laws about bathroom access give institutional support to our evolving gender norms, and school sex educators are adapting their language to include transgender youth in their descriptions of normal sexual and gender orientation. As students identify as transgender at younger and younger ages, they naturally want to educate their classmates and teachers about unlearning certain habits; like the urge to categorize others by a strict gender role, a role defined by clothing and the answer to the question, “Are you a boy or a girl?” “I just really think I’m both. I don’t really care what people call me. Sometimes I say I’m a girl, sometimes I say I’m a boy. Sometimes I say, ‘Does it really matter?’” This story about adapting, growing, and learning about transgender identity in schools aired nationally on NPR and began at Youth Radio.