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from Gay Activism in the Schools
GLSEN Promotes Cross-Dressing
For Elementary School Children
May 27, 2004 - The Los Angeles branch of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight
Education Network (GLSEN) has posted a school lesson plan on its site that
includes a lesson on cross dressing and non-gender conforming clothing.
The cross dressing lesson is titled "What's With The Dress, Jack?" and features
a story about the Assiniboin Indian tribe that encouraged its children to wear
"the clothes that suit them best and play the games they most enjoy, without the
limits of stereotypical gender roles."
The lesson is designed for kindergarten through sixth-grade children. It
proposes a series of questions that encourage children not to accept society's
standards for appropriate gender roles or gender-appropriate clothing.
In "What's With the Dress, Jack?" young children are challenged to defend their
culture's standards, with probing questions for discussion such as: "What makes
us think of certain clothing, activities and things as being only for girls or
only for boys?" and "Were men able to wear dresses in the past, and not today?"
Children are asked to learn the following vocabulary words: spirit, two-spirit
[the Native American term for an effeminate homosexual man], gender, and
stereotype.
Updated: 8 February 2008
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