The Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) — far from urging a cautious approach to atypical gender identities in youth — is suggesting to young people that gender dysphoria is a normal part of growing up.

The Minnesota Student Survey, which MDE administers to ninth- and 11th-graders throughout the state, asks 15-year-olds to specify if they are “transgender,” “genderqueer,” “genderfluid,” “nonbinary,” “pansexual,” “trans male” or “trans female,” or “questioning.”

In July 2017, MDE approved a “transgender tool kit” for distribution to all public schools in Minnesota. The tool kit instructs schools to treat “transgender and gender nonconforming students” as the gender they identify with for bathroom and locker room use, sports team participation, overnight accommodations on school trips, dress codes, pronoun use and school records.

It insinuates that schools that don’t comply could face legal problems. It also implies — chillingly — that if parents of gender-dysphoric young people are judged to be insufficiently supportive, “the student support team should follow their protocol for reporting child neglect or harm.”

https://www.startribune.com/pediatric-gender-clinics-we-may-look-back-and-ask-what-were-we-thinking/511596442/