Transgender Teens Navigate High School
Transgender Teens Navigate High School
High school is already difficult terrain. Those who transition genders as teens face even greater challenges.
Evan Kulczynski usually stays quiet when another student calls him by the wrong pronouns.
“I don’t like correcting them and potentially leading to something, like someone saying, ‘No, you sound like a girl, so you are a girl. I’m going to call you she/her,” said Kulczynski, a senior at the Institute of Technology at Syracuse Central, a local high school program also known as ITC.
Kulczynski, 17, first realized he was nonbinary four years ago and said that luckily, his school has been accepting – including changing his former name in the school’s system this past academic year. Students under 18 need parental permission to change their names on school documents.
After receiving his parents’ permission, Kulczynski feels more comfortable looking at his grades and school ID, which are no longer painful reminders of the disconnect he felt with his female identity.
ITC social worker Melissa Mendez, who works with about 580 students, helps notify teachers about changes in students’ preferred names and pronouns. “If you’re one of the only students who is using a one-person bathroom, not changing for gym, or teachers are constantly getting your pronouns wrong, it can be very isolating to be trans or nonbinary,” Mendez said.
Last summer, the U.S. Department of Education confirmed that Title IX protects students from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Title IX guidelines apply to organizational employees like teachers, staff, and administrators, along with students. The protections, though, haven’t stopped states, most notably Texas, from pursuing policies targeting nonbinary and trans students. They also don’t protect transgender students from gender role conflict on a daily basis inside and outside of school.
Gender role conflict is defined as the devaluation, restriction, or violation of oneself or another person when trying to adhere to rigid gender role expectations, according to Dr. Daniel Miller, a mental health counselor at Dr. Spiegelhoff & Associates in Camillus, a suburb of Syracuse. Devaluation can be internal — restricting oneself because of societal standards — or external when someone demeans someone else who embraces their gender expression.