During a county school board meeting in Arlington, Virginia, on Oct. 13, Carly Hughes, a teacher in Long Branch Elementary School’s Multi-Intervention Program for Students with Autism (MIPA), spoke against Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s proposed public school policies for transgender-identifying students. Her reason? She believes her autistic students “may experience gender queerness more than other students.”
“I did my master’s study in queer inclusion in public schools,” Hughes told the school board. “My study told me that including trans students in all spaces is best practice. It also told me there are trans kids of every age — one I actually worked with in
