Dear Editors and Reporters of Chalkbeat

What school boards need most is ideological diversity. This reporting is only making the situation worse.

X/Zingley2

By way of introduction, I’m a 32-year resident of New York City, and mother of two daughters in a public school in CEC D2. One of them emerged as extremely masculine at age two, and has continued to look and behave in male-typical ways her whole life. I’ve spent the last 13 years trying to get schools to understand gender nonconforming children, and make space for them as they are. That hasn’t been easy because of the gender-related beliefs of many of the policymakers and leaders in my city, and curricula that embed a particular worldview, presenting beliefs as facts.

I’m also a journalist, who has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, and many other publications. I’ve written four books—two fiction, two non-fiction, including one about the science, psychology and history of gender nonconforming girls, called Tomboy. The latter was inspired by raising a daughter like mine in an era when people assumed that she was or should be a boy. I’m now at work on a book about how we came to fight over trans kids and gender identity, and especially how we came to be teaching about gender issues in schools.

After years of research, and of interviewing hundreds of people from the far-left ACLU attorney Chase Strangio to far-right people at the Heritage Foundation—and so many people in between—I have concluded that our side—liberals, progressives, the Left, journalists—has gotten most of the story wrong. We’ve misplaced our professional skepticism, or directed it at the wrong sources. In particular, the framing of the issue as left versus right belies the reality that many gay and lesbian people, feminists, liberals, and even adult transsexuals object to teaching that sex is not real, that some children are born in the wrong body, or that everyone has a gender identity. It has nothing to do with politics; rather, the battle is between those who hew toward a scientific understanding of sex and those with a belief system rooted in the notion of gender identity.

Your reporting on my school district reveals a lack of understanding of the issue, and I’d like to try to help you report more accurately and include more diverse voices. I am often one of the only liberal feminists in the community willing to speak up—I’ve already been attacked and impugned, which is why others fear to speak up, but why I myself am free to.

Here are some corrections of and context for your article “Backlash over culture wars brings new energy to NYC’s parent council elections.”

First, you assume it’s automatically bad if someone speaks at a Moms for Liberty event. We live in a deeply polarized era, in which we portray bipartisanship as treason. We say we want diversity, but decry as morally polluted anyone with politically diverse views. I’ve spoken at right-wing events, despite being 100% liberal—in fact, being a liberal means that I make room for people with dissenting views, because I believe in free speech.

You mention the resolution to revisit guidelines allowing biological males to compete in girls’ sports, which passed overwhelmingly. A black man, a Jewish woman, a gay man—those were among the people supporting it. It’s very important that you explain to readers that the vast majority of the country supports such ideas, and that a racially and politically diverse group, including gay people, supported the resolution. If you read the text of the resolution, it merely says to revisit the policy and consult multiple stakeholders—as all policy should. That should be the most uncontroversial policy ever passed. Why not explain to people that policy is based on cost-benefit analyses, and that means we must catalog the costs? Why frame the issue as left/right when it is not?

For months, activists have descended upon our school board meetings, violating free speech by chanting and dancing and disrupting when people whose views they disagree with attempt to speak. They’ve prevented basic school board work from getting done. I spoke with my friends and colleagues, a transsexual male (as he calls himself) and a gay man, at a committee meeting—I hope you’ll listen to it. What you report as noise and disruptions wasn’t created by Maud Maron, but by the activist response to her reasonable resolution. That response is organized by a trans woman who was fired from a private school, because of a student claiming sexual harassment. She has no kids in the district, but has organized the opposition. Why wouldn’t you include that detail? Further, the wife of Superintendent Allen Cheng, Sabrina Chang, is employed by a youth gender clinic, which directly profits off teaching children that something is wrong with their bodies if they are gender-nonconforming. That, too, seems worth investigating.

You mention that gender-affirming care is “backed by the American Academy of Pediatrics.” The AAP is an advocacy group that lobbies for the interests of its clinician members. But in countries like Sweden, Finland, and England, which have taxpayer-funded healthcare systems—and are thus accountable to citizens to not fund treatments without evidence of safety and efficacy—gender-affirming care is no longer universally backed. The AAP for years refused to conduct systematic evidence reviews—the reviews that prompted several European countries to dramatically alter their approach to treating gender dysphoric youth. Every systematic review, which evaluates not just the conclusions of studies but their quality and reliability, has come to the same conclusion: there is no evidence that these treatments, from social transition to surgery, are life-saving, effective, or safe.

It’s very important to explain this to your readers. You’re picking and choosing what to say without context, without helping people navigate. This is not journalism; it’s advocacy and activism. I am begging you to do a better job, to put your own biases aside and talk to the many liberals, feminists, LGB folks and non-ideological trans people who want their kids educated in an atmosphere of open inquiry, not repressive and radical politics positioned as some kind of universal truth.

I am available to talk anytime, and in the meantime, will work on a First Person piece about what it’s like to be the parent of kids in NYC public schools, and a subject matter expert, being silenced, censored, and marginalized while my kids are taught opinions as facts, and facts as opinions.

In hopes for better coverage,

Lisa Selin Davis

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To contact reporters and editors at Chalkbeat:

Michael Melson-Rooney, reporter NYC schools: melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org
Alex Zimmerman, reporter: azimmerman@chalkbeat.org
Sarah Darville, editor in chief: sdarville@chalkbeat.org
Amy Zimmer, Bureau Chief for Chalkbeat New York: azimmer@chalkbeat.org
corrections@chalkbeat.org
ny.tips@chalkbeat.org