Last month, in concert with Pride celebrations, hundreds of transgender activists, advocates, and students took to Capitol Hill to lobby for inclusive policies and equal protections under federal law. Among them was Sam Long, a ninth grade algebra teacher from Denver, Colorado who recently came out as transgender to an entire student body during an assembly at his school.
The term transgender, or trans, unlike other identities that fall under the LGBTQ umbrella, describes a gender identity, not a sexual orientation. Transgender people identify as a gender that does not correspond to the sex they were assigned at birth and because of a lack of public visibility — and even discrimination from within the LGBTQ community — they remain the most marginalized group within an already-marginalized population.
According to reports, Sam Long’s coming out was received better than anticipated. Students were interested in his story, and the administration was glad to provide an opportunity for understanding and awareness within the school. But not many trans teachers’ stories are received this well. Much more common are stories like that of Laura Jane Klug, for example, a trans teacher from Texas who was fired because of her gender identity and took legal action. Stories of teachers being discriminated against, fired, or even killed after coming out at school appear much more frequently in headlines and remain the animating narratives behind efforts like Transgender Lobby Day.
In addition to staunch political regression, what makes advocating for trans people, and specifically trans teachers, particularly difficult is the lack of information we have about them. With virtually every trans person in the US experiencing some form of social or legal discrimination, it is very likely that their experiences as teachers may impact their own wellbeing or that of the students they teach. The identities of trans teachers have a unique bearing on their role: unlike many other professionals, teachers are not only individual employees whose performance may be affected by how they are treated in the workplace. Their wellbeing also affects the students they teach and for trans people, this may present significant barriers — the likes of which we cannot measure without accurate data.
We know this population faces discrimination from the little research that does exist and from individual accounts of their experiences. But there are too few reliable data to accurately tell us how many trans teachers are there, how they’re treated in schools, and how that treatment may affect students.
So why don’t we have this data? In part, because it’s difficult to accurately account for identities that may jeopardize the individual’s safety when made public. To collect this data would require people to self-report their gender, which is difficult to capture in a nuanced way on surveys that have only two options. Additionally, different labels mean different things to different people, and asking this population to define themselves invites many of the problems typically associated with self-reporting.
The National Center for Education Statistics, the primary federal entity for education data, uses only one question in determining gender in teacher demographic data, and because of it, transgender teachers are unaccounted for. To more accurately capture this population, advocates have tried to get around the simple two-answer sex question in different ways. The Center of Excellence for Transgender Health at UC San Francisco suggests two questions instead, where survey respondents are asked to first define their current sex or gender, and then the one they were assigned at birth. Another common methodology, used by the National Center for Transgender Equality, is to recruit volunteer participants from every state to survey, instead of taking a sample of the general population. Both approaches present challenges as well, including outing people whose identities are not yet public. Nevertheless, they are a crucial step in the right direction for a population that’s just beginning to gain public understanding.
To contextualize the experiences we can account for requires a look at the history of LGBT educators, which is short and characterized primarily by marginalization. In 1964, the Civil Rights Act first protected employees from discrimination based on race, religion, and sex. In the years since, some state legislatures extended these protections to cover discrimination based on gender -- but still they only protected cisgender people, or those who identify as the sex they were assigned at birth. Public awareness and acceptance of transgender identities have only recently gained traction. People of gender minorities were not protected in the workplace until 2014, when President Obama signed an executive order protecting federal employees from discrimination on the bases of sexual orientation and gender identity. And, while these protections will remain under the current administration, they do not protect teachers.
Today, the map of transgender rights is a patchwork of different and unequal protections. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia protect employees against discrimination on the bases of sexual orientation and gender identity. Thirteen states and D.C. protect students, but not teachers, against discrimination on the bases of sexual orientation and gender identity. In lieu of federal protections and with varying degrees of social acceptance among geographic regions, it’s clear that transgender teachers’ experiences may vary dramatically from school to school. What’s less clear, again, is exactly how it varies and how these different protections may affect teachers and students.
Without accurate information, it’s difficult to frame trans teachers or their students as a policy priority. If research and data collection methods evolved with our understanding of sex and gender, perhaps Sam Long’s story would be the rule and not the exception.