The Murder Of A Trans Teen Changed My Teaching Forever

We have to talk about gender identity in schools. Here's why.

I started teaching health classes in San Francisco in the fall of 2002. Two months after school started, 17-year-old Gwen Araujo was brutally murdered in the nearby suburb of Newark.

Here’s what happened (trigger warning for description of violence):
In the summer of 2002, Gwen met and befriended a group that included Jaron Nabors, Jason Cazares, Michael Magidson, and Jose Merel. On the night of October 3, during a party at a house rented by Merel, Araujo was subjected to a “forced inspection” of her body, revealing to those present that she was a trans woman.

She was then brutally assaulted - punched, choked, kicked, and hit with a can and a skillet.

Araujo begged for her life, saying “No, please don’t. I have a family.”

The attack dragged on for more than an hour, and concluded when the men twisted a rope around Araujo’s neck and strangled her to death. The next day, all four men took Gwen’s hog-tied body and buried her in the Sierra Nevada foothills, nearly four hours away.

Talking About This Case With Students

After reading about Gwen’s murder, which was big news in the Bay Area, I was convinced it was a topic that deserved class time. It wasn’t hard to make a connection to the course content — In health education classes, we talk about healthy relationships, violence prevention, and how to get along with others. In 2002, some (but not all) health teachers explicitly taught about gender identity.

As a teacher, the questions in my mind were:

• What can we teach in class that might make violence like this less likely to happen?

• What can we do to make sure that the next Gwen gets to fully express themselves and live a long and satisfying life?

The answers I landed on included:

• Helping students understand more about gender identity, including transgender identity.

• Talking explicitly about violence and violence prevention.

• Facilitating activities to help my 9th grade students practice getting to know one another across differences like race, religion, ethnicity, and gender. I believe that with practice, people can get better at flexing their “empathy muscles,” especially when they connect with other people who have different life experiences.

Why I’m Writing About This Now

This is all on my mind because on Tuesday, Donald Trump signed a sweeping executive order attempting to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth nationwide. That followed an earlier executive order focused on gender identity and “gender ideology.” Then today he issued another executive order, this one focused specifically on schools and teachers. (If you need help keeping up with this news, I highly recommend subscribing to Erin In The Morning.)

Understandably, these orders are raising a lot of questions for teachers, who now fear they may get in trouble, or even lose their jobs, if they talk about gender identity in class.

I want to share a little about what it’s like to teach about gender identity with high schoolers, because I think it’s a lot more about meeting curious students where they are than about invoking any kind of “ideology.”

Rae’s Story

A few years after I started teaching, I met Rae, a student at our school who made a public gender transition at the start of 11th grade. Overall, the school staff and students were very accepting and supportive of this change, and Rae ended up being profiled in a wonderful 2009 documentary called “Straightlaced: How Gender's Got Us All Tied Up.”

This movie is not just about transgender youth, but about how all young people have concerns around gender. Here’s how the filmmaker describes it:

“With a fearless look at a highly charged subject, Straightlaced unearths how pressures around gender and sexuality are confining American teens. These stories reflect a diversity of experiences, demonstrating how gender role expectations and homophobia are interwoven, and illustrating the different ways these expectations connect with culture, race, and class. From girls confronting media messages about body image to boys who are sexually active just to prove they aren’t gay, a fascinating array of students opens up with brave, intimate honesty about the toll that deeply held stereotypes and rigid gender policing have on all our lives.”

Here’s the trailer, which includes Rae:

What Do Teachers Say About Gender In Class?

Most of what I teach about gender with high school students is based on the guidelines in vetted resources like the California Health Education Framework and the National Sex Education Standards, and guided by the concerns I actually hear from students. Here’s an example of something I might say in class:

“Every person has a gender identity, gender expression, sex assigned at birth, and sexual orientation. While these areas of a person’s life may influence each other, they are still distinctly different. Keep in mind, that everyone falls somewhere on each of these lines. The only way to know how someone identifies is to ask them. We cannot guess a person’s identity, and often it would be inappropriate or rude to try to guess how someone identifies.”

Tools like the “Gender Unicorn” diagram may be helpful in facilitating this kind of discussion.

I like to encourage students to think critically about gender expectations and stereotypes, and often incorporate a version of the “Act Like A Man/Act Like A Lady” activity. We usually end up with a diagram like this on the board.

What If Students Want to Learn More?

GET (Gender Equity Training): The Project is a free eight-module curriculum for high school and college students. GET encourages students to have unflinching conversations about the most pressing problems they face today. It weaves together leadership development, mental health interventions, media literacy, social-emotional learning, and gender-based violence prevention. Read more about it in this interview with its creator, Ariella Neckritz of The Representation Project.

Why This Is Important

I believe that all students benefit from thinking more critically about gender. People’s lives should not be constrained due to stereotypes or fears. I think it’s especially important to support transgender and nonbinary youth right now because they may feel abandoned or attacked. Here’s some information from GLAAD:

• 85% of transgender and nonbinary youth — and 66% of all LGBTQ youth — say recent debates about laws restricting the rights of transgender people have negatively impacted their mental health.

• 52% of trans and nonbinary youth seriously considered suicide in the past year, and 1 in 5 attempted suicide.

• 36% of LGBTQ youth reported being physically threatened or harmed due to their sexual orientation or gender identity.

• Using a trans youth’s authentic name and pronouns improves mental health and reduces suicidal ideation.

Let’s make sure all of our young people know they are loved and accepted. It really makes a difference.

If you are struggling or needing support around gender issues, please consider reaching out to the staff at Scarleteen or The Trevor Project.