Virginia’s Loudoun County School Board will vote Tuesday, Feb. 26, on whether to institute transgender identity affirmation in every public school.

This would be a grave mistake. I just met a teenage girl without breasts, and her story tells why.

“Sarah” (not her real name) is a recent graduate of Loudoun County Public Schools. I met her last month at a panel on feminism in a D.C. public library. She is only 19 years old.

Sarah told the audience that she began identifying as transgender in high school. Her new male identity was strongly supported by the LGBTQ community both inside her school and out. She found a doctor who supported her transition from girl to boy. Her family’s insurance company affirmed it too, and provided coverage for the removal of her healthy breasts. 

As is the case with most young people, with growth in age came growth in understanding. Sarah came to realize that she made a terrible mistake. She was not and never would be male.

She now understands that she was trying to deal with suffering from sexual trauma in her younger years.

Queer Theory Doesn’t Belong in School Policy

“Queer theory” ideas, promoted in her Loudoun County community and online, convinced her that becoming trans was the answer. But transitioning to another sex did not produce a happy male, but a traumatized and disfigured female.

Now certain members of the Loudoun County School Board want to insert queer theory into school policy. Not only do they want to create a new legal concept, “gender identity,” which forces open girls showers, bathrooms, and sports teams to biological boys and men, but new Board Member Chris Croll wants to go even further.

Ms. Croll’s language would create new rules of conduct for students and teachers based on the concept of  “gender expression.” Gender expression has been used to mean things like transvestitism — a man who identifies as male but likes to dress in women’s clothes and make-up. What shower will he use?

Gender identity is just as ambiguous a term — and of course the School Board has failed to define any of these terms. What if someone identifies as non-binary or gender fluid? Will staff have to use pronouns like xe/xir/they if a student demands it? Will students have to use those pronouns if a teacher demands it? What happens when a heterosexual male student or staff member identifies as a “trans lesbian”? That’s a man who has no intention of physically “transitioning” but thinks of himself as a woman attracted to women. What pronouns will he demand? Where will cross-dressing males dress?

There are conflicts among these identities and expressions. Cross-dressing men who identify as lesbians have a particularly nasty habit of harassing actual lesbians (you know, female homosexuals) about being “transphobic” for wanting nothing to do with them sexually.

The Lie That Children Can Be Born in the Wrong Body

Sarah has experienced the sex wars first hand. The very community who propelled Sarah to transition to a man has abandoned her now that she wants to accept her female body and live as a lesbian. This comes as no surprise to the many lesbians who have been kicked out of LGBTQ groups for not accepting male people as women.

When the feminist panel concluded, I hugged Sarah, and I cried when I felt her mutilated chest against mine. She really is a lovely young woman, and it broke my heart to see how badly she had been hurt by the lie that children can be born in the wrong body.

Trans activists like to claim that harm — even death — will result if a child’s sex confusion is not affirmed. Better to have a transgender boy than a dead girl.

But isn’t that emotional blackmail? Isn’t it willful blindness not to consider the rest of the story? Sarah’s sex confusion was affirmed at every step, all the way to the surgeon’s table. She has been left traumatized and disfigured because she went where gender ideologues led her, and where an official transgender affirmation policy could lead other students if the Loudoun County school board votes it in on Tuesday.

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

Any student who experiences gender dysphoria must be treated as an individual, with compassion and respect. It goes without saying that anti-bullying policies should be carefully enforced.

But creating a system-wide mandate of transgender affirmation will not help this student, and could lead other students to harm. It would open girls’ showers and bathrooms to biological boys, and would tell students that some of them are born in the wrong body.

Why isn’t the school system teaching students that each and every one of them is wonderfully made? Why aren’t they being encouraged to love themselves, including their very body? Why aren’t girls being taught that there is no “girl box” that they must fit into, and that each and every one of them is a beautiful female child who deserves to be cherished just as she is?

For Those in Loudoun County, Today is the Day to Act

If you live in Loudoun County, please sign this petition to the School Board urging them not to make these policy changes: Petition to Remove Gender Identity Language…

Here are the members of the Loudoun County School Board:

• Chris Croll, [email protected], 571-509-8400
• Eric Hornberger, [email protected], 571-291-5685
• Beth Huck, [email protected], 571-206-8216
• Joy Maloney, [email protected], 571-577-0439
• Tom Marshall, [email protected], 571-528-9610
• Jeff Morse, [email protected], 571-420-2243
• Debbie Rose, [email protected], 571-439-9651
• Brenda Sheridan, [email protected], 571-233-0307
• Jill Turgeon, [email protected], 571-420-3818

Or you can email them all at once: [email protected]

Natassia Grover is a mother of three children in Loudoun County Public Schools.