An ode to teaching or: “For this, Sir, you are a monster”

I wish you all a happy and healthy 2025! I am very proud of myself for getting this blog out before the semester starts (which is, for us, tomorrow). This one is an ode to teaching. I just read my student evaluations from last semester, which were good, but as they often are, not GREAT (meaning: students had some things to praise, but also some complaints). Perhaps you are among the teachers who get “excellent” for all categories. I am not, and I can’t understand why I still give more weight to the one student who did not like the class (or me) rather than the ones who were happy, or more, with it. Coincidentally, two former students got in touch, and we had coffee on Friday – I am grateful that they found it important enough to meet me, and even seek advice.   

So, teaching is a mixed bag and comes with challenges. It is also what makes me most happy about my work. Let me share one teaching moment with you that made me hopeful. Yes, in times like these, we need such moments like bright stars in the dark. I do feel despair – about rising fascism, the indifference toward global climate disaster, rich white boys making everything that pleases them the law of the land – but the only antidote is creating collective spaces for thinking, talking, and respecting each other. At its best, teaching can do that.   

Last year, I taught a class on Gender Equality and Human Rights in Global Perspective. While the class was going on, a non-binary teenager died in Oklahoma. The case was in the headlines for a while because the death occurred one day after the 16-year-old Nex Benedict had been in a fight with three female teenagers in their high school bathroom and got injured on the head. At the beginning of the 2023-24 school year, a bathroom law had gone into effect in Oklahoma requiring students to use the bathroom that matched their sex listed on their birth certificates. The fight had started because the girls had made fun of the way Nex dressed. This was not an isolated incident: Nex was regularly being bullied at school, according to their mother. The next day, Nex collapsed and died. While an autopsy clarified later that the death was not directly related to the fight and that Nex had died of suicide, there was a huge public outcry because of the obvious relevance of transphobia as a factor in Nex’s death. You can check out more about the case here and here.

In a New York Times article, I read that the Oklahoma school superintendent, Ryan Walters, considered this death a tragedy but that it did not change his views on how questions of gender should be handled in schools. Specifically, he said: “There’s not multiple genders. There’s two. That’s how God created us.” I was angry about this statement. Felt powerless, in a way; and then decided that I can do something about it, namely share it with my students in a pedagogical way: I made them write a letter to Mr. Walters and then forwarded the letters to him. While we did not get an answer, I think something was achieved. See here, first, my letter, then a selection of student letters, and finally, a note why this process made me feel good (warning: the blog got a bit long, but I hope the multiple voices makes it an entertaining read for you).

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Superintendent Walters,

I am a professor of International Relations and Gender Studies at Florida International University. This past semester, I taught a class on Gender Equality and Human Rights in Global Perspective. I used a public statement of yours in the final exam for this class.

Allow me to give some context: In this class, we examine gender relations in many different societies; as a basis to do this, we first establish the meaning of sex and gender, both in biological and sociological terms. Judging from your publicly available comments, I assume you do not believe in sociological definitions of gender that conceptualize it as a social construction. However, perhaps you are interested to learn that from a biological point of view, a male-female binary is also considered simplistic because sex is the confluence of several biological factors, not just one, and because biological development in general is complex and does not happen in binaries, but on a spectrum (for example, in her article “Sex Redefined”, Claire Ainsworth points out that “Biologists may have been building a more nuanced view of sex, but society has yet to catch up”).

While the class was in session, I read in the New York Times about the death of Nex Benedict, and your related comment that there are no multiple genders. This statement seemed unduly cruel, as you are effectively denying one of your students their own understanding of their body and identity even in death. However, I thought the statement also offered a learning opportunity, which is why I turned it into an exam question for my students.

Please find attached both the exam question and several student letters addressed to you (I am sending only letters from students who gave consent to use their writing). You will see that students have mixed reactions; some are honestly trying to teach you, others are angry at what they identify as ignorant and discriminatory behavior, or they call out your misperceived religious perspective. All of them ask for empathy, and they demand respect from you for all people, including those that are not exactly as you would like them to be.  

I would be tremendously satisfied to receive an answer from you. However, please refrain from a generic response letter that does not engage with the spirit and substance of this writing.

Exam question: Read the excerpt below and write a short letter to Mr. Walters, addressing his direct quote (“There’s not multiple …”) considering what you have learned in this class. New York Times, February 24, 2024: After Nonbinary Student’s Death, School Chief Defends Restrictive Gender Policies. The Oklahoma school superintendent, Ryan Walters, said “radical leftists” had created a narrative about the death of 16-year-old Nex Benedict that “hasn’t been true.” (…) Mr. Walters told the New York Times that the death was a tragedy, but that it did not change his views on how questions of gender should be handled in schools. “There’s not multiple genders. There’s two. That’s how God created us,” Mr. Walters said, saying he did not believe that nonbinary or transgender people exist. He said that Oklahoma schools would not allow students to use preferred names or pronouns that differ from their birth sex.

Student responses

Dear Mr. Walters,

I understand that you think there are two genders. However, this is not the case. Gender is a man-made social institution that you and I, along with the rest of the world, partake in. This institution is centuries old. Gender is also a spectrum; you choose how you perform your gender based on who you are. This does not give you the grounds to invalidate someone else’s. As a superintendent, you should be uplifting students, rather than invalidating them even in death. Religion states you are supposed to be kind to everyone, and to not judge. It is unfair to dismiss an identity because you don’t understand it. Sex and gender do not correlate; sometimes, you align with a different gender than your assigned sex at birth, and that’s okay.

I implore you to look into understanding gender as a concept more, and I hope this letter helped somewhat with your understanding. Thank you for listening with an open mind.

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Dear Mr. Walters,

I am a 20-year-old queer college student, who is ashamed and disgusted by your senseless and immoral response to one of your student’s deaths. An innocent 16-year-old non-binary member of your community, Nex Benedict, is dead and instead of grieving, consolidating, and improving your school’s environment, you chose to be selfish and immature and address their gender as the main issue? Instead of analyzing and revisiting your school policy of restricted gender expression, which may have contributed to Benedict’s death, you said “there’s not multiple genders. There’s two. That’s how God created us.” By excluding topics related to gender under a religious guise, you have set your students back and encouraged discrimination and injustice. If you opened a single biology book, you’d find that there is not only black and white, female or male, but also a gray area, where clearly your ignorance lies. By defending your hardliner stance against open-free gender expression, you are pushing your “conservative agenda” on school children, and for that, Sir, you are a monster. I am sure you came into this with “good intentions”, but the road to hell is paved with those.

With no due respect,

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Mr. Ryan Walters,

If God created us, as you say he did, he did not create us with hate in our hearts. Hatred is learned, it is taught, and it is perpetuated. It is perpetuated by policies such as the ones forcing nonbinary and transgender students, whom god also created, into dangerous situations and a rhetoric of intolerance.

Nex Benedict was killed because your policies and views taught those students that nonbinary people are unnatural, that they are affronts to God. Gender is an aspect of you that is personal, that is informed upon you by your own feelings as well as societal expectations. Gender roles inform us that women are caring, soft, compassionate, and so individuals who identify with being a woman are more likely to pursue these behaviors. Gender roles also inform us that men should be reasonable, protective, decisive. Does it seem reasonable, protective, or decisive to willingly perpetuate policies that have gotten a student killed simply because you do not wish to think beyond your worldview?   

God help you,

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Dear Mr. Walters,

I would like to start off by saying that the loss of Nex Benedict is tragic, and it is scandalous to use the death of an innocent child as a political gateway to promote your harmful ideals. Death, especially that of a child, is not a political playground. 

Religion should not blindly lead politics, as not everyone believes in it, and those who do express and practice it subjectively. However, if you insist on stating the word of God; he did not create genders but sexes, which are two distinct elements. Gender is a social construct, free for self-determination. But one thing God DID in fact say is “Love thy neighbor”.

Mr. Walters, I encourage you to show respect, love, and appreciation to those around you no matter who they are, and no matter what your opinion is; this is what God truly intended for.

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Dear Mr. Walters,

I believe you are conflating sex and gender. While it is true that reproductively speaking there are only two sexes (in the name of persuasiveness and simplicity I will not mention intersex in this letter), gender refers to the roles, attitudes, and expectations of a person in society. I believe you would agree that there exists a spectrum of expression even within a two-gender binary. For example, a skinny computer nerd is perceived and treated much differently than a muscular jock. In the same vein, a girl who participates in beauty pageants is perceived much differently than a broad and athletic swimmer. Non-binary and transgender individuals are an extension of this already accepted spectrum. Even if you ignore the biological evidence of their existence, as an educator the safety of students must come first.   

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Dear Mr. Walters,

I find your recent statement regarding the tragic death of one of your students to be disheartening and offensive. Gender is a spectrum and on that every human should be allowed to freely explore. Not only have your comments disrespected the deceased student, but they have also put in danger other students at your school who don’t fall into the gender binary you believe in. Transgender and non-binary people are not some “new” concept. These people have existed in many cultures across the world since the beginning of time. I suggest you do some research. Until then, be very careful with the things you say and educate yourself on the things you know nothing about.

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Superintendent Walters,

I hope this letter finds you well and that you understand that I come with respect, but also with an important message. I was deeply disturbed after reading your statement about the heartbreaking death of the nonbinary teenager. How would you feel if that was your own child? I do not ask that you understand the student’s emotions, but I do ask that you respect their memory. Although you may think that there are “no multiple genders”, I believe that we should not come to the world with a simplistic label over our heads. Imagine how you would feel if people were to start addressing you as a woman when you identify as a man. That is what nonbinary people go through every day.

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Why did these letters make me happy? First, because of the collectivity in my students’ voices. All of a sudden, there was more than individual anger, rather a feeling of shared reassurance. I was proud, of course, that some students used concepts they had learned about in class (e.g., naming gender an “institution”). But it was not the academic accuracy that stood out, but rather their honesty, passion, anger, and always: their respect. Respect offered to someone they profoundly disagree with. I believe that this is the attitude we need to cultivate. I THANK my students for writing these letters and letting me use them. Finally: as an opinionated, righteous (“rechthaberisch” we call it in German) academic, I learned a bit better from these young minds how to build bridges. The process is ongoing.   

PS: What’s with the sprouting ginger? I will plant it after uploading the blog; what a symbol of a new beginning! Again, I wish you a good 2025.