Minnesota's Twisted 'Gender Dysphoria' PolicyBy Jay Tucker
February 7, 2023
Teachers are now to provide professional gender-affirming care for students without a required medical license, without parental approval or consent, without securing informed consent, and without conforming to professional standards of care.
Minnesota proposes to require teachers to “ensure” that student gender-identities are “affirmed.” How would that work? Let’s say 13-year-old Katie approaches a teacher and informs the teacher that she was born in the wrong body, that she is actually a boy, that she is to be called Ben, and that she needs to have her breasts removed in order to become her authentic self. According to Item 4E of “The Proposed Standards of Effective Practice” for teachers in Minnesota, the teacher is required to ensure that Katie’s identity is affirmed. The teacher, however, has no knowledge of Katie’s mental health history, whether she is under the care of licensed gender-care professionals, how Katie may have developed her beliefs as to her identity, the persons or causes instrumental in forming her gender identity, what Katie’s parents know, if anything, and how they feel about her gender identity, and what diagnoses and treatment recommendations Katie may have received from gender-care professionals, including recommendations that a wait and see protocol be adopted or that affirmation be delayed pending further evaluation and investigation. The teacher is thus faced with a mandate from the state to affirm Katie’s gender identity in a one-size-fits-all protocol which clearly violates both the individualized treatment requirements of the 2012 Standards of Care Version 7 (page 7) published by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) and the individualized treatment recommendations of the American Psychiatric Association (APA).
Katie’s teacher would also be compelled to affirm a transition for which there is no medical consensus. The 2012 APA Task Force Report (p.4) concludes that there is no consensus at all regarding treatment of children with gender identity disorder, now called Gender Dysphoria (GD), and identifies three approaches to working with children with GD. The first of these focuses on working with the child and caregivers to lessen GD and to decrease cross-gender behaviors and identification. A second approach makes no direct effort to lessen Gender Dysphoria or gender atypical behaviors. A third approach may entail affirmation of the child’s cross-gender identification by mental health professionals and family members. The APA also confirms that there is insufficient evidence to support guidelines for treatment of GD in adolescents.
Katie’s teacher would also be compelled to wrongfully proceed with affirmation without completion of an assessment, evaluation, and investigation as required by the APA. The report concludes that for “adolescents” the following evaluations should be undertaken:
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Source:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/02/minnesotas_twisted_gender_dysphoria_policy.html
