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Need Advice or SupportI just outed myself to my children's schools as a TERF
In 2021/22, my children's school district implemented a "gender identity curriculum" in our elementary school. At the time I wrote to his teacher about my concerns, my email was forwarded to the principal, who played a little phone tag with me, but then never returned my call. I gave up and went back in my shell. I live in a very tiny, very blue school district. I was not looking to come out as a GC/TERF, and I was worried about the blowback on my kids, so I let it go.
Last year, the district got a lot of negative attention when some of the lessons went viral on social media. It was a shit show, and anyone who questioned whether these lessons were appropriate, especially since no other schools around us were doing this, were called hatemongers and told to move to conservative communities. But I was one of the people mildly saying maybe we need to revisit this if we're the only district in the area doing this, and maybe some of these ideas are confusing to kids this young, etc. A few people privately reached out to me to say they agreed with me but were too afraid to say so publicly.
2024 was a really rough year for me, and part of my approach to 2025 is to stop silencing myself, stop putting myself last, and stop giving a fuck and let the chips fall where they will. So I have spent weeks researching our curriculum, and the organization, Gender Spectrum, that the District hired to create it, and the people associated with the organization, including Ms. Satanic Panic herself, Diane Ehrensaft.
I put together an 11 page letter, with links to articles and videos, including the video of Ehrensaft saying toddlers who pull out barrettes from their hair are "nonverbally communicating their gender identity". I put together a chart showing how the materials about "gender identity" the district provides to parents are verbatim cut and pasted from Gender Spectrum documents.
And for weeks I have been rereading it, tweaking it, and asking myself if I was really ready to do this. It has been weighing on me like a ton of bricks, like near triggering a panic attack. I spent all morning going over it, and I finally hit send on the email to the Superintendent.
I don't know if it will have any impact other than making me a pariah in the community, but so be it. Enough people know I'm about as far left as you can get, so they're going to have trouble pegging me as a right wing bigot, but I'm sure they'll try.
Wish me luck, and hope I don't need to go into the GC witness protection program.