Teen Vogue’s Red Tide series explores what it’s like for young Floridians living under Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’s conservative policies. No other 2024 presidential candidate has championed the right’s crusade against young people, especially the marginalized, quite like he has. We travel to Tampa, Tallahassee, and Sarasota — plus western Massachusetts — and speak to more than 20 Floridians who are fighting to make the state equitable and safe for everyone.
August is a 17-year-old high school senior who should be laser-focused on his future. But instead of dreaming about next steps, most of August’s attention is drawn inward, trying to manage an identity they say is “split at the root.” August is trans nonbinary, but because he's not out to his parents, and because of a new rule in Florida schools, he must go by his deadname at school — unless his parents were to authorize otherwise. Internally, they move through the world as a person named August, who uses he/they pronouns and likes reading books and playing video games. But at school, teachers and classmates call him by the wrong name and pronouns, constantly pulling him backward.
August is one of many trans Florida youth who have been forced to either come out to their parents or go by the wrong name and pronouns at school. The Florida Board of Education adopted a rule in July that mandates parents must explicitly consent for their children to be called anything other than the name on their school record. This policy applies to nicknames too, even if a student has always gone by one.
According to the law, for example, all Nicks will revert to Nicholas, Katies will be Katherine — unless a parent signs a form consenting to the use of a different name. While the policy covers any type of deviation from an official name, LGBTQ+ students, supportive parents, and local advocates say it is pointed to trans students — and hurts them the most. Says August, “It disproportionately affects trans youth and it is meant to target trans youth."
The rule, which took effect at the start of the school year, requires all school boards in the state to have “provisions for parents to specify the use of any deviation from their child’s legal name in school,” directing them to develop a form to authorize such changes. The rule was adopted as a result of HB 1069, signed by DeSantis in May, and was included alongside other anti-LGBTQ+ measures, such as limiting which bathrooms students can use.
“Schools should be safe and welcoming places for all kids,” Human Rights Campaign legislative counsel Courtnay Avant said in a July statement. “But unfortunately, acting at the behest of the administration of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the Florida State Board of Education is once again attacking the LGBTQ+ community by proposing a slate of hateful rules designed to isolate and demonize LGBTQ+ students.”
Just a few months before the Board of Education changes, DeSantis signed a law that expanded the 2022 "Don’t Say Gay” law and, as part of the slate of legislation signed in May, barred teachers and other school staff from calling students by pronouns that don’t correspond with their birth sex. These laws are part of the many assaults on LGBTQ+ students’ identities: There is the ban on gender-affirming care for minors; certain books, including some that highlight LGBTQ+ topics, are banned; and now, students cannot express their pronouns and preferred names without parental permission. The weight of these bans and laws is growing heavy on the youth of Florida, regardless of whether or not they are directly impacted by actual policy.
For Atlas, a 15-year-old sophomore at a private school, that weight includes a race against the mail carrier. They were able to change their name by logging into the online parental system at their private school, which is, technically, not subject to the Board of Education rule. The barriers to going by a different name at school are lower for them, but not gone. Atlas isn’t out to their parents, and as a result of changing their name in the system, all their school mail is addressed to their chosen name. “I just have to catch [the mail] before it gets to my parents,” Atlas says. “I snuck it through.” It’s not that their parents don’t know about their trans identity, but they are having a hard time accepting it.
This complicated arrangement — wherein Atlas's name is correct at school because they were able to change it in the system but the school could accidentally out them to their parents by mail all because they can’t easily go by a different name and pronouns at school — leaves them exhausted. Says Atlas, “I feel on edge most of the time because… there are moments where you know it is totally, completely possible that your whole world comes crumbling down if someone finds out.”
As some students figure out how to navigate schools that feel hostile to their identities, teachers often become unwilling enforcement officers in Florida’s fight against gender expression and identity. Sarah Lerner, a high school teacher in Parkland, feels forced to use a student's birth name unless they are able to get the requisite form signed. “It breaks my heart to do that because I know how uncomfortable it makes the students," she says, "but I don’t have a choice.”
Lerner continues, “It sucks. There’s this thickness in the air when it comes to stuff like this. I was going over the forms that first day of school and the kids just laughed. They’re like, ‘This is stupid.’ I said, ‘Yes, it is, but it’s the law and we have to follow it, whether we like it or not.’”
Now the choice for teachers is between respecting their students or facing consequences that are yet unknown, as no one has been publicly subjected to them. Kylo, 16, has seen this firsthand: Though their parents didn’t sign the form authorizing them to go by a different name at school, they’ve been able to suss out which teachers are open to the change. “Some of my teachers have been calling me by my preferred name just out of empathy and courtesy,” they say. “But legally, they technically shouldn’t be doing that.” Kylo is thankful for those empathetic teachers, but all too aware that, without that parental signature, educators are putting themselves at risk for being disciplined.
Some parents are willing to sign the form, like Jen Cousins, who has four young children, spanning second through 10th grades. As a parent, she’s well aware that her affirming household isn’t necessarily the norm. “I truly feel bad for these kids,” Cousins says of students who don’t have affirming families. She completed the form for one of her children, who wanted to go by a nickname, and said the child can be called whatever they want to be called. “Because the Board of Education isn’t the parent of my child,” she says. “I am.”
Students who face familial rejection and are forced to go by the wrong name or pronouns at school may face serious mental health consequences. Anita Carson, the statewide field and advocacy manager for Equality Florida, an LGBTQ+ organization, says the effects for trans people of not being affirmed can be deadly. “We see a rise in things like depression and suicidality,” Carson says. “And the more blatant and horrific the society treats them with hateful rhetoric and with hateful laws and hateful rules, the more their mental health outcomes are furthered in a negative way from their peers.”
Earlier this year, the Trevor Project published a survey that found that LGBTQ+ students at schools where they feel their identity is supported are less likely to attempt suicide than their peers who don’t feel supported at school. Among the factors that increased feeling supported — and therefore decreased suicide attempts — are having pronouns respected, access to a gender-neutral restroom, having an on-campus Gay Straight Alliance, and LGBTQ+ representation in history lesson plans and sex education. Most of these things are not available in Florida schools.
When August is at school, there is the fear of being found out, but when he’s somewhere safe, he says, hearing his name is “joy-inducing.” For Atlas, there is a “certain relief” in hearing the name they’ve chosen. And when Kylo hears their name, "it makes me feel a bit euphoric knowing that I’m being perceived the way I intend.”
Equality Florida and other allied Florida organizations are pushing back against the Board of Education’s name rule. Carson says their goal as advocates is to “show up in every space where they are making rules about us” to push against the unfairness.
August has decided to practice his own form of advocacy: Initially, he planned to wait out his final year of high school in the closet, keeping his identity from his parents at the expense of being able to be out at school or among peers. Instead, August, propelled by a sense of duty, has asked their parents to sign the form allowing them to go by a different name at school.
Even though he is graduating at the end of the school year, there are other trans students in Florida who need him to stand up for them by standing up for himself. “It’s almost like a sense of responsibility,” August says. “Hopefully, some underclassmen struggling with [the name policy] can see queer people being happy and being out and being comfortable with themselves and think, Maybe I can do that too.” But they’re still waiting to see if their parents will sign the form, and as they wait, they wade through the murky in-between.
Stay up-to-date with the politics team. Sign up for the Teen Vogue Take
