Galia Plotkin - Amrami

Given the marked rise in transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) children and adolescents, schools need to be equipped to support gender transition. This article explores how mothers of TGD children in Israel experience school responses to their children’s gender expression or transition in the absence of formal policy. Assuming local social constraints and values shape parents’ interactions with schools, we analyse three types of schools in the Jewish-sector–state, state-religious and independent. We identify two key dimensions that shape children’s experience of coming-out as TGD in schools: spatial and temporal. These dimensions reveal less visible aspects of this process, which go beyond formal educational policy. We argue that the coming-out process is affected by the centrality of the gender dichotomy in the organization of school space and practices, and is often marked by a lack of synchrony between school response and mothers’ perspectives on the temporality of their children’s gender transition.