OAKLAND, CA – A high school in Oakland, California has brought what’s called a “transition closet [1]” to their campus in order to help children dress as the gender with which they identify without their parents’ knowledge.
The program started that the high school in February and works off of donations made by people to the closet. Kids can take advantage of the items and wear clothes of the opposite gender without having to tell their parents, but also offers girls lessons on how to “bind” their breasts.
In the video below, the program is introduced as having just been approved by the principal of Fremont High School, and the purpose is stated as “providing clothes for transgender, nonbinary, and gender-exploring youth who maybe don’t have the access or safety to get those clothes in their personal life.”
Further, the video proclaims, “They’ll be able to come to school and change into clothes that make them feel more at home and more like themselves.”
At the launch of the program in Oakland in February, Media Entertainment Arts WorldWide [2] (MEAWW) wrote, “The program was first launched at a Fayetteville, Arkansas church and was designed to ‘let trans-identified youth circumvent their parents and socially transition without their knowledge…'”
In addition, MEAWW said, “The closet, now adopted by the Fremont Highschool of Oakland, California, features videos teaching girls how to bind their breasts in order to appear more masculine. The program recently received a grant from the Arkansas LGBTQ+ Advancement Fund to ‘provide gender-affirming clothing and accessories for transgender and non-binary Arkansans.'”
Thomas Martin-Edwards, in the video above, is a Spanish teacher for the Oakland Unified School District and also founded the Queer Teacher Fellowship. According to his explanation, the program’s intent [3] is “for our students to wear the clothes that their parents approve of, come to school, and then swap out into the clothes that fit who they truly are.
“And I use the idea that this is like Superman changing in a phone booth. But that idea actually goes a lot further than that. Because Superman isn’t Clark Kent. Clark Kent is actually the disguise. And when Clark Kent goes into the phone booth, he transforms into Superman, who is really just who he truly is…So this gives our trans students the opportunity to be the superheroes that we know they are.”
The California Family Council is displeased with the idea of this “closet,” and even more so of the school keeping its use from parents. “This is completely inappropriate and deceitful,” the group said in a statement [4]. “In addition to gender ideology madness, this school is teaching children that it is acceptable to defy their parents. They are teaching children that their personal thoughts and feelings should surmount the guidance of their God-given authorities.”