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Amongst the clampdown on LGBQT+ and race-related books in the United States, district leaders from Pennsylvania’s Pennridge school district have ordered school officials to remove all books related to gender identity, following a removal of the book “Heather Has Two Mommies'' from all elementary school libraries.
Books related to lived experiences of being transgender will now be gatekept by being placed in a separate area of the school, and through a process that requires parents and guardians to ‘request’ counselors and administration for access.
These policies of erasure extend beyond the library: new guidelines for LGBTQ-related conversations require students to seek their parents permission for self-determining their name and pronouns; they also conflate the identity of being ‘gay’ with the use of term as a slur.
“We do not discuss or use terms related to LGBTQ” the guidelines read.
Parents are contacted if a student is pregnant, and access to mental health resources is again, given only under parent involvement.
This strips children of their autonomy and dismisses their right to state who they are through an ageist lens of inferiority that prioritizes parental authority over safety.