The Oregon Department of Education has dropped a new 48-page document providing guidance to schools about how to support “gender expansive” students in schools.

As you would expect, what one would think of it depends upon one’s priors regarding the gender wars. To me, it looks like an incoherent mess, but that is largely because I think the whole “you are who you say you are” ideology is an incoherent mess. For those who sincerely believe that every twinge of anxiety expressed by a student during their formative years should be catered to by adults, the document is a beautiful expression of the state’s love and care for the downtrodden.

Many things struck me as fascinating about what the Department is recommending. Embracing the bizarre notion that children can change their name at will, for instance, strikes me as odd. Given that some children these days change their self-identity regularly, it strikes me as impractical to expect teachers to keep up.

Also, given what I know of children, once they understand that they can jerk teachers around willy-nilly, some of them will. Does anybody believe that some bully of a child won’t change his name and pronouns at a whim, just to annoy the teacher? Of course it will happen, and the teacher will have no recourse if these recommendations were followed.

I’ve been in elementary school. Kids do that. Just as some kids will expand beyond gender-bending into more and more bizarre variations, identifying as ghosts, aliens, cats, and as different ages. You can already find each of these identity variations expressed online, and they are coming to a school near you. How will teachers and bureaucrats determine what is “real” or not? Arbitrarily, I imagine, as the whole project is arbitrary.

This person uses ghost/ghostself pronouns because gender feels like a ghost pic.twitter.com/mUdqMVbKXl

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) October 13, 2022

“Dysphoria” is by definition an internal experience. It is literally a state of mind, and as such is not visible to anybody. It is self-reported. That doesn’t mean it’s not real, of course. We all know that mental illnesses are real, even if we cannot see them on an X-ray or detect them in the blood. But given that it is undetectable outside self-reporting, we are relying on children to report to teachers about their internal state of mind and then expecting teachers to diagnose and treat mental conditions.

YOU WILL USE MY PRONOUNS OR ELSSSSE pic.twitter.com/AduRZlfRHw

— Woke Archive (@WokeArchive) January 25, 2023

This is, needless to say, outside their area of competence. Even if they have a booklet from the Oregon Department of Education.

We are told by the “gender-affirming care” proponents that failing to deal appropriately with gender-confused students is a life-or-death matter. And in some cases it may be; we know that people who have body dysmorphia such as anorexia can literally die from the condition. And research is clear that people who identify as transgender have higher than average suicide rates.

Thus it seems to me that the very worst thing we could do is empower school teachers to attempt to treat the “disease.” If we are talking about life-threatening conditions perhaps empowering laymen to treat the disease is unwise.

That’s not the position of the State of Oregon, which perhaps will ask teachers to take up psychiatry in other areas.

Instead, Oregon is encouraging schools to provide tools for the social transition of children–with or without parental consent–such as providing makeup, alternate clothes, chest binders, and “packers” (fake genital bulges) to students. The intent, I am certain, is to help students, but given their own assertion that gender dysphoria is a life-threatening condition, one would think that only a trained professional could diagnose a condition and assign proper treatment.

This is what I mean by the recommendations being an incoherent mess. The schools must do everything to support students’ self-identified life-threatening conditions, but simultaneously assign treatments based upon no diagnosis and no guidance from responsible adults.

In what universe would this be considered responsible behavior? Do we have research to indicate what all this does to students who are not gender confused? If so, I haven’t seen it. Is it possible that providing gender-affirming care for one set of students undermines the mental health of others? We have no idea, nor does anybody seem to care.

There is growing agreement–not universal, but growing–that the huge growth in gender dysphoria is a social phenomenon, as with so many other forms of mental distress. Even the President of WPATH, the most vocal advocate for medical “gender-affirming care” admits that there is a social contagion afoot. If so, Oregon’s policies are spreading the dysphoria, not treating it. Actually creating mental distress for students.

The president of WPATH has admitted that social contagion is a factor in the dramatic increase in children and adolescents identifying as transgender. https://t.co/kVQf8IC5T7

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) January 25, 2023

As is so often the case, the “solutions” to a problem the Left pursues are damaging. They are making things worse.

I have no clue what the best treatment for genuine gender dysphoria is, and I am fairly certain that the experts don’t either. The incidence of suicide in transgender people is relatively high, but that is the case in both those who get medical treatment and those who don’t.

Anybody committing suicide is a tragedy. Obviously, this requires urgent study and the development of real treatments. And none of this should be done by laymen who are having difficulty teaching students to read and write. Thank God this isn’t Canada, where suicide is apparently a good thing.

According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress Oregon has a huge gap between the educational achievement of less well-off, usually minority students, and the average student. This is something the Oregon Department of Education is supposed to address, and presumably within its competence.

It is failing at that task. Instead, they are diagnosing and treating psychiatric problems, something for which they have zero training.

They need to stop. Why on earth would anybody expect these people to be any better at treating mental illness than do their actual job?