Insights From a Trans Student

Bringing Transgender Issues Into Your Classroom

By Zo Wofford, Class of 2026

Published Spring 2025

Trans people across the country are feeling a wide range of emotions right now, including anger and despair. We are in the process of reckoning with complex questions about our rights and our futures, particularly those of us at the intersection of other marginalized identities, such as:

• What does this mean for my transition?
• Do I have support from my family?
• What can I do to keep myself safe?
• Can I access healthcare, including abortion care, where I live?
• Should I/Am I able to go stealth? Should I try to pass as my birth gender?
• Do I need to move states? Do I have the money for that?
• What will happen to me if I am incarcerated or at risk of deportation?

My goal with this project is not to tell faculty that they need to address all of these issues, but to provide some frameworks and ideas for how they can talk about trans people and transphobia in the classroom, whether or not they have trans people in their class. There are plenty of resources already out there for creating a more inclusive classroom environment for trans students (for instance, using nametags or pronouns in introductions), which I have linked at the end of this resource. Here, I focus more on the political aspect of trans experiences, considering the relevance of that topic in this particular moment. This resource is specifically meant for classes that engage in social or political topics, such as the humanities, political science, or international studies. Below, I provide some possible actions instructors can take and information they should keep in mind when trans issues come up in their classroom, developed through conversations I have had with other trans students at AU.

Know what transphobia looks like

Most people have at least a vague idea of what transphobia is broadly, but for a more in-depth explanation of some of its various aspects, I would recommend reading or skimming this article.

Within a classroom or other discussion-based setting, transphobia might look like:

• Insisting that gender and sex are the same thing
• Stating that trans people don’t belong in gendered spaces
• Using words like “real” or “biological” women/men to refer to cisgender people, or, in turn, referring to transgender people as “biological” males/females
• Denying the existence of nonbinary genders
• Making unnecessary comments about a trans person’s body, voice, or presentation

Give content warnings for class materials that are transphobic or feature transphobia

Provide sufficient content warnings on the syllabus for content containing transphobia, whether it’s the text itself that is transphobic or the text discusses transphobia at length. Even if engagement with the material is mandatory, giving your trans students time and space to mentally prepare themselves goes a long way. And on that note, if possible, be sure that any triggering content is made available before class time (for example, assigning a video as pre-class work rather than showing it for the first time in class). Your students deserve the ability to reckon with their emotions in a context outside of the classroom, prior to class time. Essentially, try to give your students some sense of control where you can.

These content warnings are particularly important in our current moment. We are all inundated with news from a hostile government administration and transphobic news outlets all the time, and this takes its toll. This doesn’t mean you cannot or should not discuss transphobia in your class. In fact, discussing it is more important than ever. But like with any other discussion of oppression, keep in mind that it will cost more emotional labor from your affected students.

Include trans people and perspectives in conversations about gender and women’s issues

A lot of people are having a lot of thoughts and feelings about what it means to be a woman or have certain anatomy in this moment, but it’s important to remember that this isn’t just cisgender women. Conversations around reproductive justice must include the experiences of trans people. Some trans people can and do get pregnant, and often face additional problems at this particular intersection that cis women don’t (for instance, not having access to affirming healthcare).

Misogyny is certainly not exclusive to cis women, and for trans people, that misogyny also intersects with transphobia in varying ways. Trans women and transfeminine people experience transmisogyny in the cross-section of simultaneously being devalued as women and demonized as invaders of women’s spaces. Trans men and transmasculine people experience misogynistic infantilization, being portrayed as “girls” who have been led astray. Nonbinary people are erased from the narrative entirely for their lack of conformity to cisnormative understanding. Trans people of color also experience various intersections with racism, and Black trans women in particular are at one of the most dangerous intersections of transphobia, misogyny, and anti-Blackness.

If you plan on bringing gender or reproductive issues into your class discussions, try to find articles, whether popular or academic, from trans people on the topic. For instance, many trans people who can get pregnant have discussed their particular anxieties post-Roe. Academic articles have also been written across various intersections, such as the issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly titled “The Issue of Blackness”, which contains articles focused on the intersection of Black and trans identities. Trans Reads contains both fiction and nonfiction, including academia, “by, for, or about people who transverse or transcend western gender norms”, and is constantly being updated.

Learn what you can, and beware of the moral panic

I’d recommend doing basic research on the current political discourses surrounding trans people, even if you don’t think all of it will be relevant to your class context. Having even a brief understanding of the ways that conservative (and often also moderate, and sometimes even liberal) people, politicians, news outlets, and organizations are talking about trans people will do a lot to help you spot and counter-act transphobia in the classroom. I’ve linked some articles and factsheets below, but I’d always suggest doing your own research as well.

We are amid a nationwide moral panic about trans people, particularly trans women. If a student says something that sounds sensationalist, that’s probably because it is. There are many different facets of the current panic, but some key topics to watch out for include:

• Trans women and girls being treated as uniquely predatory, deceptive, or dangerous to cis women/girls. Right now, this is seen most prominently in the “debates” over women’s sports and bathrooms.
• The idea that children and teenagers, particularly “girls” with mental illnesses, are being pushed into transitioning by peers or medical professionals, or are becoming trans as a result of “social contagion”.
• Transition portrayed as completely inappropriate for children, or as a kink/fetish
• Any rhetoric about “gender ideology” or “transgenderism”

If you find that any of your students are making claims about trans people that seem to be coming from this place of moral panic, you should talk to them about where they get their information from and how much they researched the claim they are making. Few, if any, of the claims circulated among reactionary media outlets hold up to scrutiny.

To give an example: one story currently making the rounds is of Stephanie Turner, a 31-year-old cisgender woman who was disqualified from a Maryland women’s fencing tournament for refusing to fence Red Sullivan, a 19-year-old trans woman. Turner then went on Fox News and lied that she solely fenced in women’s tournaments and tried to avoid fencing trans women because of a biological disadvantage. However, fencing is much more co-ed than most American sports, with many fencers participating in both mixed and gendered tournaments, and Turner herself competed in a co-ed tournament only a week before, a fact that has made it into very few news reports on the incident, mostly those from queer outlets. Stories like these can be helpful examples in demonstrating the importance of being intentional about what sources you go to for information, and on the importance of corroborating stories across multiple outlets to see what has been missed.

Conclusion

The suggestions and information included here are by no means comprehensive. Rather, my goal is to provide potential starting points for reflection on how instructors can engage in topics related to transness and give some basic information and perspective that they can then build upon with their own research. Many professors I have met don’t know much about trans issues, or feel like they don’t know enough, and avoid the topic because they would rather not talk about it than get it wrong. While I understand the urge, we are in a moment where it is more important than ever for us to be talking about the political aspects of being transgender. More than anything else, I want to encourage you to think about where discussions of trans experiences would be relevant in your own classes, and to take concrete steps to incorporate that into your course material.