Abstract
This From the Field account describes an intervention we and our colleagues offered in the Canadian culture war surrounding transgender children and youth, as clinical and research experts on K-12 education policy and supports for transgender youth and their parents. In 2023, following comprehensive review by K-12 school administrators, lawyers and experts in child welfare, we released No For Now (NFN). NFN responded to the impending passage of laws which directly harm transgender youth by essentially forcing them to be outed to potentially unsupportive parents. We suggest that NFN enacts an experimental kind of policy-based resistance to these laws and their discriminatory impacts; effectively, NFN injected into Canadian public discourse a ‘third way’ for schools to act in situations where a transgender student makes their gender identity known at school but have not yet come out to their parents: neither ‘just keep it confidential’ nor non-consensual outing. We begin by describing the context to which NFN responded then articulate the white paper as policy-based resistance to anti-trans backlash in schools. We conclude with implications of this kind of resistance.
Methodological Approach
Qualitative
DOI
https://doi.org/10.60808/dpr7-2y48
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Airton, L., & Turje, M. (2026). “No (my parents can’t know I’m trans)…for now:" Resisting anti-transgender backlash in schools through a policy experiment. Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education, 3(2). https://doi.org/10.60808/dpr7-2y48
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Included in
Educational Administration and Supervision Commons, Gender and Sexuality Commons, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Commons
