BREAKING: New Documents Reveal Shocking Surge in Trans-Identified Students in Davis, CA Schools
In Davis schools, trans-identified students rise to over 6 percent.
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It is now a well documented fact that the rates of youth identifying as transgender has been sharply increasing for over a decade. A 2022 report from the Williams Institute, based on CDC survey data, reveals that “the number of young people who identify as transgender has nearly doubled in recent years.” And going back just over a decade reveals that current rates represent between a 20- to 40-fold rise in youth trans identities.
According to the Williams Institute analysis, which relied on government health surveys conducted from 2017 to 2020, an estimated 1.4 percent of children ages 13 to 17, and 1.3 percent of those 18 to 24, identified as transgender. The William’s Institute’s previous report from 2017, using data from 2014 to 2016, estimated the number of trans-identified youth in both of those age ranges was 0.7 percent.
In 2013, California passed Assembly Bill 1266 which made it the first state in the nation to enshrine broad rights for transgender K–12 students in state law, including the right to participate in activities, facilities (i.e., bathrooms and locker rooms), and programs (e.g., sports) that are consistent with their self-proclaimed gender identity.
Wasting little time, California’s Davis Joint Unified School District (DJUSD), updated their nondiscrimination/harrassment policy for “transgender and gender-nonconforming students.” This document was saturated with activist language and terminology, and completely erased protections pertaining to a student’s biological sex in favor of “gender identity,” which is defined circularly and subjectively.
Gender identity of a student means the student’s gender-related identity, appearance, or behavior as determined from the student's internal sense, whether or not that gender-related identity, appearance, or behavior is different from that traditionally associated with the student’s physiology or assigned sex at birth.
The document also required all students to address one another “by a name and the pronouns consistent with the student’s gender identity,” and contained a “right to privacy” that requires a student’s written consent before their “transgender or gender-nonconforming status” is disclosed to anyone, including their parents.
California now has one of the highest rates of trans identifying youth in the US, with 1.93 percent of those between ages 13 and 17 identifying as transgender—almost 38 percent higher than the national average.
One mother in Davis, California became concerned about these rising numbers when she began hearing about “clusters” of trans-identified students within the school district: five students in one 6th-grade elementary classroom, a third of kids in one music program, and multiple young teens in friend groups suddenly identifying as non-binary or trans. Her concern grew when she herself was given a “YouthTruth Family Survey” in October of 2022 asking if she identified as “transgender.” This led her to submit a public record request to the Davis Joint Unified School District (DJUSD) about the survey instrument and results.
What she received was shocking.
The YouthTruth survey that was administered to all DJUSD 5th, 7th, 9th, and 11th grade students from 2016 to 2021, at a cost of $53,750 just for last year’s survey to some 8,500 students, showed that rates of trans identification in Davis schools soared far above the national average.
Questions relating directly to a “transgender” identity were not asked of all grades at all years. For instance, 5th graders were never asked if they identified as “transgender,” and 7th-12th grader DJUSD students were only asked this question for the first time in November, 2021. However, data from 2016 and after contain responses to the question “How do you describe yourself? Boy/Man, Girl/Woman, Non-binary or gender non-conforming, Prefer to self describe/identify (optional).” While this data will not capture those students who identify as the opposite sex, it will capture those who identify as something other than male or female.
Fifth grade DJUSD students (who are generally 10-11 years old) from October 2016 through February of 2021 appear to largely identify as either male or female, or they chose to “skip the question.” It is unclear if skipping the question may have been due to students not identifying with either the “boy” or “girl” option. However, only 2 fifth-grade students in the entire district identified as “nonbinary” in November, 2021.
Data on 7th and 9th graders from October 2016 through February of 2021 paint a slightly different picture. Instead of the “skip this question” option, students who did not select male or female were required to choose between “I prefer not to say” and “I identify in another way.” Students who selected “I identify in another way” ranged between 3 and 6 percent. However, only 1 percent of students identified as “nonbinary” in November, 2021. The results were similar for 10th and 12th graders.
But in November of 2021, 7th–12th grade DJUSD students were directly asked: “Are you transgender?” Results show that 3 percent of 7th–9th graders responded “Yes” and another 5 percent chose “Prefer not to say.” This 3 percent figure alone is more than twice the national average for 13 to 17-year-olds in 2020, and is over 55 percent higher than other California youth of the same age.
For 10th–12th graders, 4 percent responded that they identified as transgender with another 4 percent preferring not to say. This 4 percent figure stands 2.8 times higher than the national average, and is more than double California’s average.
But the numbers only get worse.
Buried within the DJUSD website’s “Climate Data and Surveys” section is a 2020-2021 Main Report of the California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS) for DJUSD secondary schools, which includes data from 1,443 students in grades 7 (n = 552), 9 (n = 553), and 11 (n = 312), as well as students enrolled in “alternative school types” which are denoted “NT” (n = 26). To my knowledge, these data have not been reported elsewhere.
In response to the question “What is your gender?”, 6 percent of 7th graders, 5 percent of 9th graders, 7 percent of 11th graders, and 16 percent of NT students indicated that they were something other than “male” or “female.” For 11th graders, 5 percent claimed a “nonbinary” identity.
To the question “Some people describe themselves as transgender when how they think or feel about their gender is different from the sex they were assigned at birth. Are you transgender?”, 2 percent of those in grades 7, 9, and 11 responded “Yes,” while another 4, 3, and 3 percent of 7, 9, and 11th graders, respectively, indicated that they were “not sure.” Meanwhile, 4 percent of NT students reported being transgender, with another 8 percent selecting “not sure.”
The data presented in these tables may appear strange, as “nonbinary” identities are widely considered by trans rights activists to fall within the transgender umbrella. However, not all those who self-identify as “nonbinary” identify as transgender. Further, Table A3.2 that asks about students’ “gender” obscures data on students who may identify as the opposite sex. Therefore, for 11th grade DJUSD students, the 7 percent who identify as “nonbinary” or “something else” should be viewed as the lowest possible estimate for students with transgender identities, because this figure does not include students who identify as the opposite sex.
Pooled together, this gives us an absolute floor estimate of 6 percent for surveyed DJUSD students who can be considered transgender for the 2020-2021 sample, as this does not even include students with cross-sex identities. This floor estimate is nearly 4.3 times the national average, and 3 times California’s average.
Further, those who identify as something other than male or female report considerably higher rates of social emotional distress, chronic sadness/hopelessness, and suicidal ideation.
Readers might wonder how the DJUSD became a hotbed for trans-identifying youth. Part of this no doubt has to do with the demographics of the district. DJUSD students are majority white, upper class, and over 80 percent have parents with college degrees. Davis is also one of the most Left-leaning cities in California, with Democrat voters outnumbering Republican voters more than 6 to 1 in the 2020 presidential election. Because of this, effective push-back against gender ideology and its quest to replace biological sex with “gender identity” in nearly every facet of education is virtually impossible.
A perpetual mental illness feedback loop is also created between survey results and school policy, as lower social and emotional health and social satisfaction scores reported by trans-identifying students in YouthTruth surveys is used as a justification for doubling-down on “inclusive” gender ideology instruction materials and trainings. This is made explicit in a YouthTruth survey document that states:
When disaggregating by students’ self-reported gender identity, they learned that students who do not identify as a “boy” or “girl” but rather “identified in another way” were reporting less positive experiences with school culture than their peers.
This is followed by a statement from former DJUSD superintendent John Bowes:
Every time we do a gender inclusiveness training, we incorporate this data; the clarity of the data has supported the foundational argument for staff that our newer policies about gender inclusivity are relevant and important.
The YouthTruth survey data showing an increase in reported student depression was also the basis for offering CommuniCare health services on some campuses that provides DJUSD students direct access to transition-related medication such as hormones, letters for medical clearance for transition surgeries, and “assistance and advocacy with legal name and gender” change documents. Students as young as 12 can pursue any or all of the above without parental knowledge or consent, as these services fall under the category of “confidential sexual and reproductive health services.”
CommuniCare Health Centers has also teamed up with the local Elevate Queer Yolo program, which is focusses on “celebrating & elevating queer young adults ages 12-26+ in Yolo County, CA.” Elevate Queer Yolo advertise free gender and name change clinics on their Facebook page.
DJUSD administrators don’t seem to pause for a moment to ponder whether their obsessive focus on gender ideology, which teaches students that they may be “born in the wrong body” if their appearance, preferences, or behaviors don’t align with what is typically associated with their sex, may be worsening students’ mental health issues as they reject their natural bodies at unprecedented rates.
Fortunately, Davis parent protests have been intensifying in recent months in response to their children being indoctrinated into harmful gender ideology.
These new data from DJUSD are shocking. Bill Maher, when speaking about the national surge in children identifying as transgender, pointed to the curious regional disparity of such outbreaks. “If this spike in trans children is all biological, why is it regional?” Maher asked. “Either Ohio is shaming them or California is creating them.” Well, California does appear to be creating them, and the factory is in Davis.
If being transgender were merely a statement about one’s gender nonconformity, none of this would be particularly worrying. But that is far from the case. In reality, when a child becomes convinced they’re transgender, this usually places them on a one-way conveyor belt toward increasingly irreversible forms of body modification and life-long medical dependence.
The children most susceptible to suddenly coming to believe they are transgender in adolescence are girls who often have other underlying comorbidities, such as autism, anxiety, depression, OCD, or trauma. As Abigail Shrier describes in her book Irreversible Damage, it was also common for these “rapid onset” trans-identifying girls to be highly intelligent, quirky, creative, and sympathetic, and easily influenced by peers and social justice rhetoric.
For many children, indoctrination into gender ideology begins in the school. And so, as Allie Snyder, a mother of a DJUSD student, said to parents while addressing the DJUSD board of trustees during a November 17th hearing:
“I urge you to get curious. Find out exactly what your kids are being taught.”
One of the most pernicious aspects of this trend is the way it scoops up kids with a variety of existing mental health problems and provides the explanation that “they’re trans.”
The adults in the room, who should know better, go along with it. They see a bunch of kids with a variety of social and emotional problems and they attribute their problems to “being trans” (so we must transition them) or “being trans in a cold cruel world” (so we need to love-bomb them and accommodate them more, more, more).
The overall poor mental health of these kids provides the “evidence” that more and more must be done to “affirm” them -- basically providing validation that yes, hating their existing bodies is healthy and appropriate, and so let’s undertake drastic cosmetic steps to change how you look! -- but really it reminds me of the fact that muggings and ice cream consumption are higher in the summer.
When we look at these trans-identifying kids and see the overall precarious state of their mental health, and we attribute their unhappiness to “being trans,” we’re basically saying something akin to “Eating ice cream causes muggings.”
What happens when a bunch of already emotionally unwell kids, the kids who were already outsiders for a whole host of reasons, find an “explanation” for their outsider status and a way to get positive attention from adults and other kids at school? (Especially in a place like Davis, where such efforts by well-meaning people are over the top?)
Of course a bunch of kids are going to latch on to this as the explanation of their existing problems, especially if they didn’t fit in to begin with, and especially if they see that all the other quirky outsiders latch onto it too.
Finally, an explanation for them! A solution for them! Now they have a tribe, and at least for this brief moment in time, their tribe has some cachet! Of course they are eager for it.
And everyone else is in this dynamic -- the adults, the non-trans kids -- are expected to give special attention and “be nice.”
What’s driving this phenomenon should be screamingly obvious to every adult in the room. Ice cream does not cause muggings. These kids on the fringes with a variety of problems and poor mental health are not struggling because “they’re trans.”
If most adults can understand the former, why can’t we understand the latter and put a stop to this emotional and physical dead end for kids on the fringes?
"Nonbinary" is the null safety mechanism of gender identity. A teenager embarks on their "gender journey," finds no magical-mystical answer from the genderbread sorting hat, and achieves valid tribal membership through clothes and hair and such like signalling.
You know. The stuff we used to call "personality." Now it's "gender identity."