San Francisco requires gender identity lessons for elementary school students

The San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) has shared an LGBTQ Family and Gender Diversity teaching guide instructing elementary school teachers on how to explore the topic of gender with children as young as kindergarten, reports Fox News.

The guide, titled LGBTQ+ Family and Gender Diversity: Teaching Guide for Elementary Grades, informs teachers that parental notification is not required for lessons on gender diversity or when reading books with LGBTQ characters or plots. 

Teachers are also told that they must refer to “students by the gender pronoun and name that fits their gender identity” and well as providing “access to gender-neutral restrooms, dress code policies, and classroom practices” for children who identify as transgender. The guide recommends avoiding the use of gendered terms such as boys and girls in the classroom, instead suggesting the use of “y’all, folks, learners, or students.”

Even the term “preferred pronouns” is considered problematic, and teachers are advised not to use it because “pronouns are a powerful way to recognize self-determination and are not a ‘preference’.”

The document contains resources including books such as Who Are You? The Kids’ Guide to Gender Identity, recommended for grades 2 to 5. This is a book that teaches children still young enough to believe in Santa that adults simply guess the sex of a baby and introduces them to terms such as cisgender, genderqueer, non-binary and neutrois.

In Grade 5, there is even a lesson on “Trans People of Color.”

Another recommended resource for children as young as kindergarten is the YouTube channel QueerKidsStuff which produces fun videos to teach children about pronouns and gender identities. Also, a variation on the standard Gender Unicorn and Genderbread Person is suggested in the form of the Gender Snowperson, a nonsensical visual that contains the phrase “pronoun assigned at birth.” 

The document advises teachers to weave information about LGBTQ issues and gender diversity into their teaching throughout the school year because as elementary staff, there is a “legal and moral imperative” to interrupt the cycle of violence faced by the LGBTQ community.

“It is incoherent and kind of bonkers for the school district to claim that ‘teaching queer and trans identity affirming lessons’ to elementary schoolers does not qualify as teaching about human sexuality or human development and therefore, does not require parental notification or permission,” Erika Sanzi, director of outreach for Parents Defending Education told Fox News. “They are splitting hairs on this so they can promote their queer activist agenda to a captive audience free from parental interference. It’s wrong on so many levels.”

Recently it was revealed that teachers in the SFUSD were receiving training from the gender clinic at the Benioff Children’s Hospital. In the training sessions, school staff are taught that students must be affirmed in their self-declared transgender identity, which “may or may not involve medical steps.” The chief psychologist at the Child and Adolescent Gender Center at the Benioff Children’s Hospital is Dr. Diane Erhensaft, a leading “expert” in the field of gender-affirming care for children who once famously said that pre-verbal toddlers pulling barrettes out of their hair was a “gender message” and a way to communicate being transgender. Erhensaft was also involved in spreading the Satanic Panic in the 80s and 90s, another devastating social contagion that ruined the lives of many families.