Dallas Independent School District guided children through gender transition, including by referring students to transgender clinics, according to a report published Monday.
DISD’s guidance document walked students and parents through the process of how to transition genders and pinpointed area gender clinics that can facilitate the medical interventions. It also told schools to allow children to use restrooms that do not correspond to their biological sex and provides reading lists targeted at elementary school children.
The 24-page guide, obtained by the Dallas Express from an open records request, recommended multiple resources from activist organizations that advocate gender transition surgeries and drugs for children. The document was last revised in 2021.
While the guidance was previously advertised publicly, the school district said it is now available to adults upon request, according to the Dallas Express.
Under multiple sections of the guidance document regarding mental health and “youth peer support,” DISD recommended a transition clinic formerly housed at Children’s Medical Center Dallas called the Gender Education and Care, Interdisciplinary Support program, or GENCIS.
Though GENCIS was dissolved in 2021 in response to a Texas law banning medical transitions for children, DISD was at the time guiding children and families toward the program, which provided puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to minors and referred them to surgeons who would perform gender transition surgeries. GENCIS did not perform the surgeries itself.
DISD also linked to a resource on chest binding, which is the practice of women and girls who identify as male tightly constricting their breasts in an effort to masculinize their chest. Studies have shown that this practice has the potential to cause harm, such as compressed ribs and collapsed lungs.
Solace LGBT, a mobile app, is cited as a resource by DISD for people to “plot out their transition.” The app’s website advertises the product as “gender transition technology for kids” and boasts that (emphasis in original) “no referral letter [is] needed. No meetings to show up to. This is about helping you be you, faster than ever before.”
One part of the guidance document for “educators, professionals, and clinicians” directed schools to allow students who identify as transgender to use whichever restroom they want while discouraging students from expressing discomfort over sharing their facilities with the opposite sex.
“While this concern may seem understandable, it is often based on the false idea that a transgender boy is not a ‘real’ boy, a transgender girl is not a ‘real’ girl, or that a transgender student wants access to those facilities for an improper purpose,” the guidance document said.
“Any student who feels uncomfortable sharing facilities with a transgender student should be allowed to use another more private facility like the bathroom in the nurse’s office, but a transgender student should never be forced to use alternative facilities to make other students comfortable,” it continued.
DISD also provided reading lists for children, including curated lists from other groups, some of which include books that have come under fire from parents for being sexually explicit, pornographic, and pedophilic, like Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe.
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Many medical associations in the United States promote gender transitions for children with claims that such medical interventions are “lifesaving,” “medically necessary,” and prevent suicide. However, a growing body of research rejects those conclusions, and some studies have shown a high rate of suicide among those who claim transgender identity, regardless of medical interventions.
DISD did not respond to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner.
