While common sense has gone through the window around the United States, Texas lone star conservatism has been the bulwark against the LGBT movement. When a North Texas school teacher wore a pink dress to school, we learned one thing: teachers have an ethical duty to uphold normative gender roles to preserve a healthy and secure emotional attachment between student and teacher. While many struggle to define basic facts, Texas remains one of the few states willing to call a spade a spade.
When Highschool chemistry teacher Rachmad Tjacjyadi decided to wear a pink dress to Hebron High School in Carrollton, Texas, his actions were late condemned on social media, and, if it was attention was what he wanted, it came in a manner he may not have desired. Tjacjyadi soon resigned after claiming he had received “hateful comments.”
But it’s not hateful to criticise a male school teacher crossdressing in school, and Texas should not put up with any of it. Addressing the Young Conservatives Texas convention in Dallas, Texas, Governor, Bill Abbott stated, “This person, a man, dressing as a woman in a public high school in the state of Texas, he’s trying to normalise the concept that this type of behaviour is okay.”
The Texas Observer obtained a recording of Governor Abbott saying, “This type of behaviour is not okay, and this is the type of behaviour that we want to make sure we end in the state of Texas.”
Governor Abbott was right. But conservatives don’t explore the rationale behind traditionally conservative ideals like gender based norms. Instead, we just assume that such norms are accepted and need not be explained. So why exactly was a male teacher wearing a pink dress so wrong? The answer is simple. Because children form emotional attachments to teachers whom parents entrust, children perceive their teachers as role models. By ‘cross dressing’, the teacher is imparting a paradigm of how a man ought to dress.
While the left promotes its puritanical aims- they claim not only ought they have the freedom of expression to ‘express’ themselves as they wish, but that expression has no dire consequences for wider society. Nevertheless, an extensive body of research based on John Bowlby’s research on ‘attachment theory’ long ago established that ‘affective relationships’ between teachers and children ‘shape children’s development inside and outside of school’. Thus, there’s a problem with this theory.
Students of the school told KXAS TV that the teacher “ never brought his sexuality or any of his political ideas into his teaching” and was “always teaching chemistry.”
I beg to differ. A male teacher choosing to wear a pink dress is an example of bringing sexuality and politics into the classroom. If every other day of the school year, the teacher was wearing male-gender attire, and if the majority of adults in their community conform to gender normative clothing, then are they really supposed to believe that the teacher was not trying to provoke a reaction?
While the teacher did not break any law, he did break the unwritten law of nurturing secure and healthy attachments with his students. Not everything that is legal is moral.
The notion that teachers ought to role model themselves according to an ethical imperative is nothing new in education psychology. We have known for the longest time that, in light of children’s tendency to imitate adults, adults must set a responsible example. The idea of ‘ role models’ was first popularised by sociologist Robert Merton, the term ‘role models’ captures how individuals in a social context will naturally want to replicate the behaviours they see, manners of speaking, and ways of interacting. Learning itself is the product of ‘observation and imitation’ and this is exactly what the research lays out when it comes to students idolising elders around them. In a National Literacy Trust research study, 93.4% of young people aged 7 to 18 said they had at least one role model. In the same study, 36% of respondents named their role models as their school teachers. If we began to accept transgender teachers cross dressing, what kind of developmental impact and confusion would this have on young adolescents?
Surely teachers do have a social responsibility to children, legal duties aside? After parents, teachers are the second role models that children gravitate towards and attach to.
Yet the animus against Abott as a Republican is self-evident. An observer journalist wrote after the incident, “He wants to ban trans and gender nonconforming people from being public school teachers.” While the LGBT movement can claim victimhood, for once, it’s not about the rights of the LGBT movement; it’s about the children.
It is utterly preposterous to think that there is active discrimination against people who identify as LGBT and the LGBT movement. According to one study by the UCLA Williams Institute, there are 1.6 million people in the U.S. aged 13 and older who identify as ‘transgender’. In 2019, the U.S. Census Bureau found there were 543,000 same-sex married households and 469,000 same sex unmarried households. 191,000 children live with same-sex parents.
Why should the majority bow to the minority?
A Gitnux market data report found there were over 58 million nuclear family households, so if heterosexual households are the majority why should Texas, a traditionally conservative and Christian state, allow transgender teachers to confuse children by crossdressing? For once, the rights of minors trump the rights of a ‘cross dressing’ teacher.
When parents grant their trust to educational institutions, it is appropriate to expect that normative values will be conveyed and reflected. As uncomfortable as it is for some to admit, part of those values are gender normative ones. Parents do expect male teachers to dress like male teachers and female teachers to dress like female teachers.
Texas is known for one thing: unapologetic lone star conservatism, ‘God guns, and country’ . Davy Crocket famously summed up Texas, ‘You can go to hell, and I will go to Texas. There is no place in the lone star state for the indoctrination of schoolchildren.
