Inside One Activist’s Courageous Battle Against Gender Ideology in the Classroom

This column is the first in a two-part AMAC Newsline series on parental rights activist January Littlejohn.

As the corporate media and progressive activists escalate their campaign to inject transgender ideology into K-12 classrooms, a Florida-based mother, mental health counselor, and parental rights advocate named January Littlejohn is using her harrowing personal story to educate parents, lawmakers, and school officials about the dangers of this left-wing movement.

Littlejohn’s 13-year-old daughter was “socially transitioned” in middle school in 2020 without the knowledge or consent of her or her husband—in other words, the school started treating her daughter as a boy but did not tell her parents. The following year, the Littlejohns filed a federal lawsuit against their school district for violating their parental rights, and January has since emerged as a national leader on the issue. Given her first-hand experience with the leftist cult of gender ideology, perhaps no American can speak to the perils of the movement more authoritatively.

During a moving speech at a recent AMAC event, Littlejohn summarized her experiences in a way that has encouraged other parents to stand up to the lies of transgenderism.

“In the spring of 2020, our 13-year-old daughter came to us and told us that she no longer felt like a girl,” Littlejohn recalled during the speech. “In May of 2020, after she told my husband and me that she was experiencing distress, we sought help from a licensed counselor.”

“As school started, I reached out to a teacher and let her know that our daughter was struggling with confusion. I thought it was directly related to her friend group. My husband and I were not affirming this identity at home—we were dealing with it as a family,” she said. “That teacher turned out to be the LGBTQ+ advocate on campus. I had no idea such a thing existed on every campus in Leon County, including elementary schools. A couple of weeks went by, and my daughter got into the car and said, ‘Mom, I had a meeting today, and they asked me which restroom I wanted to use.’ I was shocked.”

After weeks of communication setbacks and stonewalling by school officials, Littlejohn and her husband were finally granted a meeting with the school’s principal, where they saw in detail the radical “transgender support plan” the school had completed with their daughter.

As Littlejohn noticed, her daughter’s “support plan” included a questionnaire containing shocking questions like “Which locker room and restroom do you prefer to use?” “Which sex do you prefer to room with on overnight field trips?” and “How should we refer to you when speaking to your parents?”

“This is effectively designed to deceive parents that these social transitions have even taken place,” Littlejohn said. “After we had this meeting, I was in shock that they couldn’t give my child Tylenol or even put her picture in the yearbook without my signature, but they somehow completed this gender support plan without my knowledge.”

“When I did a deep dive, I learned that what happened to our family was not an isolated case. This was being done all over our country,” she said in her remarks. “Oftentimes, we have no way of knowing how many of these support plans have been done behind the backs of parents because school counselors and teachers are being trained not to put these support plans into the child’s cumulative file.”

Upon further research, Littlejohn discovered that children as young as eight years old are often given puberty blockers—the same drug used to chemically castrate sex offenders—halting not only puberty but also crucial brain and bone development. And perhaps even more terrifying is that girls as young as 12 regularly receive double mastectomies and other body-altering surgeries.

Though Littlejohn is thankful that her daughter was not subjected to these so-called “treatments”—and is no longer experiencing gender confusion—she and her husband are still in the middle of their court case, which they fear could take years.

“Many parents believe that if this issue doesn’t impact their family directly, it won’t harm them, but that is simply not true. The harms are real,” Littlejohn said. “This ideology turns children against their bodies and creates a level of chaos we have never seen before. It’s a war on our families and on our parent-child relationship because what the school actually did is they celebrated my daughter’s self-hatred. They affirmed a false identity and deepened her distress. Instead of helping her, they reinforced the idea that something was inherently wrong with her and that the only solution was medical intervention.”

Noting that many young children who fall prey to the lies of gender ideology “have a deep self-loathing,” Littlejohn condemned the “affirmation” of a child’s false identity as the “biggest medical scandal against children we have ever seen.”

“It is a human right for a child to grow into adulthood with their body whole and intact. Children deserve to grow up with their brains fully developed before making irreversible, lifelong decisions about their bodies,” Littlejohn said.

She concluded her speech by encouraging Americans to reach out to their neighbors, church pastors, and other community members regarding the issue, and more importantly, to “simply tell the truth”—even in the wake of fierce opposition from the media and cultural forces. As part of her activism, Littlejohn also helped to create a “Transgender Response Guide” for parents and church leaders, which can be accessed here.

“Speak up, because silence is complicity. It’s crucial to inoculate your children and grandchildren with the truth from a young age—whether from a place of faith or not. We are born male and female, and no matter what you do to your physical body, that cannot change. Children need to be told this truth at an age-appropriate level because it’s not a matter of if they will be exposed to this ideology—it’s when.”

“Kindness and compassion have been hijacked in this debate,” Littlejohn said. “Children are told that it’s kind to affirm someone in their identity and that it feels good to be affirmed. But it is not kind to lie to a child. It is not kind to tell a child they were born wrong. We must be forceful—out of love and compassion—in showing people the truth.”

As Littlejohn says, every day, a powerful array of institutions continues to prop up the sinister lies of gender ideology, pressuring young people and their families all across the nation to buy into the mistruths of the gender “transition” movement and take serious—often irreversible—steps that take a devastating toll on their physical, emotional, and spiritual health.

But as perilous as the situation is, Littlejohn’s activism continues to serve as an eye-opener and inspiration for American parents, teachers, lawmakers, and other leaders who have not yet internalized the horrific consequences of gender ideology.

Littlejohn’s full AMAC speech can be viewed here, and additional parental resources can be accessed here.

Aaron Flanigan is the pen name of a writer in Washington, D.C.