A University of West Virginia (UWV) transgender training for students and staff portrays adults as oppressors and abusers of children.
The public university’s LGBTQ Center hosts bimonthly “Safe Zone Trainings” for “higher education professionals and students” on topics such as sexuality and gender for transgender and nonbinary individuals, according to the center’s website. The training materials, exclusively obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation, include a chart labeling children as a “marginalized” group that is oppressed and subject to “tactics of abuse” by adults from the ages of 18 to 65. (RELATED: Major Publisher, Education Association Sue Red State To Keep Sexually Explicit Books On School Shelves)
The Gender 101: Transgender Safe Space Training includes a chart, titled the “Intersectionality of Privilege, Oppression, and Tactics of Abuse,” as an exercise for participants to “deeply engage with privilege.”
“Privilege is a term that, to many, has become very loaded,” the training reads. “Today, we want to explore different privileges as they relate to the LGBTQ+ community and the intersectionalities within the community.”
The chart labels children and youth as “marginalized groups,” a category that also includes people of color, people with disabilities and non-Christians, who can be abused and oppressed by adults.
Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, founder of Do No Harm, told the DCNF that the chart is intended to “reduce the role” of parental authority over children.
“This concept does aim to reduce the role of parents and other family members in children’s lives and elevates the role of an administrative bureaucracy that determines what is best for children,” Goldfarb said. “It is this concept that underlies the recently enacted law in California that allows children to undergo gender transition without parents’ consent and even denies parents the right to be informed of their children’s actions.”
California passed a bill in September 2022 that allows children from other states to come to the state to get transgender surgeries if it is illegal in their home state. Newsom and the bill’s proponents argued that the legislation would protect parents from having their kids taken away in red states with bans on the practice, but opponents claimed that it would be used to keep children away from parents who object to transgender ideology.
The chart titled “Intersectionality of Privilege, Oppression, and Tactics of Abuse” for the University of West Virginia’s “Gender 101: Transgender Safe Zone Training.” Dec. 4, 2023. (Daily Caller News Foundation/Megan Brock)
The chart also labels several other groups as “privileged” and oppressors; for instance, men, boys and “cisgender people” are accused of abusing marginalized groups through “intimidation and threats,” while those with wealth are considered perpetrators of “economic abuse” toward the working class.
“This training is a perfect example of the tyranny of the minority and has no place in classrooms. All students should be able to attend school and feel safe,” Caroline Moore, vice president of Parents Defending Education, told the DCNF. “If a student feels ‘unsafe’ in school, those instances should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Public schools will not produce intelligent or well-adjusted adults if they continue segregating students into these arbitrary categories.”
Another chart, titled “Privileges for Sale,” gives participants a theoretical $400 to purchase whatever privileges they can afford, with each one being worth $100. Some of the 32 options include “being able to feel safe while interacting with police,” “using public restrooms without fear of threat or punishment,” “being employed as a preschool or elementary school teacher without people assuming you will ‘corrupt the children’” and “not questioning normalcy both sexually and culturally.”
The chart titled “Privileges for Sale” for the University of West Virginia’s “Gender 101: Transgender Safe Zone Training.” Dec. 4, 2023. (Daily Caller News Foundation/Megan Brock)
Having more than one positive role model, being able to foster or adopt children and file joint tax returns are also considered privileges, according to the chart.
A video titled “Privilege is Power” included in the training explains how one can turn their privilege into a “beacon of light” instead of a “void of shame.” The video suggests viewers confront friends who use “oppressive language or behavior.”
Later on in the training, participants are encouraged to “recognize ways that being cisgender” allows one access to spaces in “washrooms, healthcare and transcripts with ease.” It also lists resources for “allies” to be aware of to help support transgender and non-binary individuals, with one linking to the university’s Gender and Sexual Development Clinic, which provides care for children from the ages of 10 to 26, according to the website.
Another training tells participants to evaluate their “internal thoughts” about seeing a “queer couple in public” and determine if they hold “any personal bias about the queer community.” The training also lists offensive terms to the LGBTQ community such as “homosexual,” “sexual preference” and “special rights.”
“Why these ‘privileges’ are claimed to be denied individuals on the basis of race or sexual orientation when in fact almost all are rights already guaranteed in American life can only be seen as fomenting divisiveness,” Goldfarb told the DCNF. “The need for advocates for progressivism to seek to create the sense that every aspect of human interaction revolves around identifying who is oppressed and who was the oppressor is a prescription for the dismantling of American society.”
UWV and UWV’s LGBTQ Center did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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