Chara Maurice, 22, is a transgender, nonbinary, first-year fourth-grade teacher at Innovation Charter School in Pompano Beach. They have been living as a transgender nonbinary person since they were 16.
However, they recently began teaching in a state that is often less than accepting of transgender individuals. So they decided to not even mention their pronouns—they/them—at work.
“Whatever optimism I had about it not being that bad quickly died my first week,” Maurice explained. “I flinched every time I got called ‘Miss.’ I completely missed conversations about myself because I was being called ‘she.’ I sat at my desk blankly after I broke up a fight between students who had viscerally called each other gay, quoting their parents.”
As Florida expands what critics call restrictions on transgender rights and a new federal administration considers similar measures, South Floridians, including an elementary school teacher and a Florida International University professor, recently spoke out about their concerns regarding access to bathrooms, workplace pronouns and gender-affirming healthcare.
Amidst the rising anti-transgender legislation and public discourse that some members of the Republican party fueled during the election, fear of losing fundamental rights has intensified in this community. So educators and many others have spoken out about what they consider discriminatory policies.
By passing bills to force the community to be misgendered in their workplace, forcing them to either use the bathroom correlating to their sex at birth or traverse to a gender-neutral bathroom, and taking away their right to gender-affirming care—including surgeries and even therapy—transgender people in the United States are feeling their hope for equality begin to fade.
Earlier this year, three educators from Florida—including a transgender math teacher, a teacher using the Mx. honorific pronouns, and a nonbinary science teacher—sued over a law requiring pronouns to align with school board rules, citing emotional harm as their reason for the lawsuit. They claimed this law violated their First Amendment rights to freely express themselves.
The recent election catalyzed those on both sides of the issue to speak up. On Nov. 20, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Mike Johnson said that transgender women should not be allowed to use the bathrooms in the U.S. Capitol.
“Women deserve women’s only spaces,” Johnson said in a statement on Wednesday. He said the new rule would be enforceable in the Capitol and in House office building” as quoted in the BBC.
Gwendolyn Marshall, 50, is an openly transgender philosophy professor at Florida International University (FIU). She has been living as a transgender woman for about three years. She has worked at FIU for 10 years, has been tenured for about nine of those years, and has been educating for 25.
Despite publishing books such as The History of Evil. Volume III: The History of Evil in the Early Modern Age (1450-1700) and more, Marshall is still forced to cross campus to get to a genderless stall or use the men’s bathroom.
“Currently in the state of Florida, it is against the law for me to use the women’s room because my gender assigned at birth is male,” Marshall said. ”They want me to use the men’s rooms and I am not going to do that for two reasons. One, it is not particularly safe, and two it’s offensive that I would be required to do so.”
FIU has about 80 gender-neutral bathrooms on campus, which may seem like a lot, but when compared to its 55,000 students and 10,000 employees, some debate if it was even scraping the surface.
“They aren’t providing gender-neutral bathrooms,” she shared. “There is one on all of the MMC campuses that I know of, and it’s a single stall in the student union building—which, you know, is a 10-minute walk for me—and there’s only one stall, so there’s often somebody in there.”
It has added such stress onto these workers that other teachers such as Maurice feared even mentioning that they were a part of the LGBTQ+ community due to the uncertainty of what would happen to their job and, much like Marshall, the fear of losing it.
“It was mortifying trying to find a way to ask without exposing myself,” Maurice recalled. “I didn’t know who I could trust and even if I was outed, what would that mean? How would I be viewed by my team, my admin, and my students? With the laws that condemned me blaring brightly in my mind, I chose to hide in the closet in a way I hadn’t in almost a decade.”
And now, the idea has spread across the country. Twenty-nine bills since 2022 have been passed in an attempt to limit education about transgender people. Some of them target educators directly, such as Florida’s own “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
The bill was passed by the Florida legislature and signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in March 2022. It is intended to “prohibit classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in certain grade levels or in a specified manner,” according to the National Education Association.
“I can never be the one to decide whether children should know about gender and sexuality at any age!” Maurice exclaimed. “Children are precious and should be protected, but it is infuriating that they are also often martyred to demand that queer people be silenced.”
This makes Maurice fear for the sake of their students who may also be struggling with their identity.
“I have the right to protect queer children from bullying and the threat of suicide,” Maurice continued. “And I have the right to advocate for myself and others like me no matter where I am. In this, we can never, and will never, go back. One law can never change that.”
Although their concerns currently fall heavily on the well-being of the children, that is not to say that Maurice as well as Marshall don’t have their own fears to face.
If identity crises and being denied their right to use the bathroom of their choice weren’t enough, some trans educators even have to maintain a second job to get the care they need.
Marshall, a skilled PhD level professor, works part-time as a Starbucks barista just to get gender-affirming care, because if it pertains to gender dysphoria, they will not cover the medical expenses.
This then forced teachers—who are known to have less than lucrative jobs—to pay out of pocket.
“The state of Florida employees, which includes colleges, universities, etc…, those institutions cannot provide medical care or health insurance for any transgender issue, so I have to pay for my medication out of pocket,” Marshall stated. “So now I am a full-time tenured professor, but I also have a half-time job as a barista at Starbucks because that is the only way I can get health insurance… I have to get a job just to get that health insurance, so that’s frustrating.”
In spite of all the negativity that comes with being a transgender educator these days, Maurice still loves their job, even if it means giving up a piece of themselves for the kids.
Maurice lived openly as a transgender person throughout their four years of college, only then being free to express their true self after leaving home where they remained in the closet because of their religious family.
“The worst part is that for me, it’s still about the kids, but I know how scary it can be, and creating an environment for them that makes them feel that fear is devastating,” Maurice said.
As their country continues to find ways to justify their transphobia, Marshall and Maurice are constantly distressed, anxious, scared, and tired, like many of their fellow transgender educators may be, but they may never be silenced.
As more and more teachers begin to share their stories, they will soon become too loud to ignore—and transgender educators are ready to have their voices heard.
“I can’t quit. If I do, someone who wants to stay silent will replace me,” Maurice said with a sad smile. “Besides, if I quit every time life knocks me down, I don’t think you’d know I was trans. Or, well, me.”
