The Perfect Storm Fueling Radical Gender Wokeness in Massachusetts Public Schools

More parents are speaking out about how their children have been hurt by destructive ideologies in schools.

As the rest of the country pulls back from promoting woke ideology—especially with President Trump’s executive orders that seek to restore sanity to education as well as to American life more broadly—Massachusetts is doubling down, especially in its schools.

Natick is hiding students' social transitioning and "private preferred name" from his/her parents through PowerSchool instructions, gender "support plans" and school staff behavior. Burlington came under fire for giving students an explicit survey despite the fact that their parents had opted them out of it. Maynard High School is hosting a “drag bingo” for students, and Revere is going so far as to hold a drag show for students. Many of these schools have yet to receive the memo that Americans want their children learning reading, writing, and arithmetic, not being exposed to inappropriate sexual content in schools.

The question remains: Why is Massachusetts not catching up to the rest of the country? A few points come to mind:

1. Massachusetts is the most college educated state in America, and is also known for its colleges, universities, academic hospitals, and research centers. It’s hard for people in Massachusetts to consider the possibility that not only might they have been wrong, but that those who are ostensibly less educated might have been right.

2. People have tied their lives to these ideologies and institutions. For instance, someone who has worked in a school’s DEI office for the past five years is going to have at least some part of her identity tied to her career. It’s not easy to tell someone to just “do something else,” especially in a tough white collar job market, and especially when such people have gone into these careers not for money, per se, but because of a belief in the mission.

3. Likewise, people have tied their children’s (or other people’s children’s) lives to these ideologies. For instance, teachers who have taught gender ideology for years on end to several classes of children might feel responsible for the fact that some of their students transitioned, and to admit that those transitions were bad for them—and were potentially aided and abetted by the curriculum—will lead to a natural sense of guilt and horror.

In other words, we have a perfect storm: Massachusetts has long prided itself on having some of the best schools in the nation, staffed by intelligent, highly credentialed people who do the work because they believe in it, including in the ideologies they were trained to teach to other people’s children.

More people are learning the truth about diverse detransitioners and sex-trait modification.

That doesn’t mean these issues are intractable, but they will take time to resolve. There are some causes for hope:

• First, more and more detransitioners are coming out and speaking about the medical and psychological damage they have endured, which threatens not just gender ideology but the entire failed progressive apparatus.

• Second, more and more parents are speaking out about how their children have been hurt by destructive ideologies in schools.

• Finally, a growing mass of young people themselves is turning against these ideologies, which until recently have thrived because of young people’s support. 

Independent Women (iwf.org) fights for women and their loved ones by effectively expanding support for policy solutions that aren’t just well-intended, but actually enhance people’s freedom, opportunities, and well-being.

Neeraja Deshpande is a policy analyst for Independent Women (iwf.org).

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