Virginia Teacher Reveals The Left's Next Public School Quest: Convincing Autistic Kids They're Trans

[Leroy N. Soetoro]

https://thefederalist.com/2022/10/21/virginia-teacher-reveals-the-lefts-
next-public-school-quest-convincing-autistic-kids-theyre-trans/

During a county school board meeting in Arlington, Virginia, on Oct. 13,
Carly Hughes, a teacher in Long Branch Elementary School’s Multi-
Intervention Program for Students with Autism (MIPA), spoke against
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s proposed public school policies for
transgender-identifying students. Her reason? She believes her autistic
students “may experience gender queerness more than other students.”

“I did my master’s study in queer inclusion in public schools,” Hughes
told the school board. “My study told me that including trans students in
all spaces is best practice. It also told me there are trans kids of every
age — one I actually worked with in my student teaching. He was in the
third grade.”

Youngkin’s model policies specify that taxpayer-funded public schools
cannot facilitate a child’s so-called “transition” without written consent
from a parent. Additionally, the guidance prescribes that bathroom and
locker room access and sports participation should be based strictly on a
student’s sex. These policies are a reversal of previous guidance from
former Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, which asked schools to hide a
student’s “gender identity” from his or her parents.

Hughes herself identifies as a “queer” special education teacher. “I found
that autistic students, the population I work with, may experience gender
queerness more than other students,” she said. “These students … have
helped me learn so much about myself as well.”


Arlington Public Schools responded to Youngkin’s model policies with a
pledge to “support the rights of our transgender, non-binary, and gender
fluid students.”

Hughes isn’t the only public school teacher who thinks it’s best to
confuse autistic students by glorifying the transgender craze. Back in
2018, a whistleblowing teacher in the U.K. alleged that autistic students
at her school were being persuaded they were trans. At one point, 17
students were in the “transition” process, according to a Daily Mail
report.

The teacher said few of the 17 “trans” students were actually suffering
from gender dysphoria. Rather they were “tricked” into believing they were
the wrong sex as a way of coping with problems associated with their
autism. Even older students at her school who had transitioned “groomed”
younger autistic students to do the same.

The report followed another exclusive by the Daily Mail that year, which
revealed that a third of the children referred to the U.K.’s National
Health Service showed “moderate to severe autistic traits.” As such, 150
autistic teenagers were given puberty-blocker drugs.

The same phenomenon appears to be happening in America. Syed, a “straight-
A” autistic student in Seattle, was checked into a hospital after dealing
with severe mental health issues. Hospital staff told Syed’s parents that
their son’s distress was due to the fact that he was really a girl, and
said he should begin the medical transition process as soon as possible
(in the state of Washington, minors can receive mental health and wrongly
named “gender-affirming care” without parental consent by age 13). There
are countless stories to this effect.

Children with autism do seem disproportionately represented among children
who claim they are transgender, with multiple studies connecting Autism
Spectrum Disorder (ASD) to gender dysphoria. According to psychologist
Kenneth Zucker, a child who believes he is transgender may be wrongly
convincing himself due to his fixation — a common tendency associated with
autism — on sex.

“It is possible that kids who have a tendency to get obsessed or fixated
on something may latch on to gender,” Zucker told The Daily Wire. “Just
because kids are saying something doesn’t necessarily mean you accept it,
or that it’s true, or that it could be in the best interests of the
child.”

Many children with autism experience feelings of social isolation, as well
as a desire to feel special. Rollo Tomassi, an expert in intersexual
dynamics, says the so-called transgender community fills this longing
because “nothing is really required for belonging other than an active
imagination and enough people to feel good about themselves for praising
and reinforcing it in them.”

In that way, the Arlington school teacher is preying on this desire by her
autistic students to feel special and included. Instead of helping her
students transcend their disabilities, she’s encouraging them to embrace
life-altering “gender-affirmation” that merely causes more confusion and,
when acted on with medical interventions, infertility. It’s textbook child
abuse.


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