Contesting Erasure: How Youth, Caregivers, and Adults Disrupt Trans and LGBTQ+ Student Exclusion in Wisconsin

Benjamin Lebovitz

LGBTQ+ youth navigate public schools amid escalating restrictions on their rights to learn and belong in educational settings in the United States. As these restrictions particularly burden transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) youth, their families, and educational leaders, all face growing uncertainty about how to interpret and resist them. This three-paper dissertation examines how institutional, policy, and legislative erasure operate in education and how protective factors across TGD students' socioecological contexts can counteract these harms. Guided by minority stress theory and critical perspectives on identity and policy, this work examines erasure and protection across multiple Wisconsin contexts. The first study employs critical discourse analysis of Wisconsin legislative testimony on gendered athletic bans (2021–2025) to examine how youth assert belonging and identity through public testimony. The second considers the roles of adult support and LGBTQ+ peer density as protective factors for TGD students using structural equation modeling and inverse probability-weighted regression adjustment to analyze data from Wisconsin's 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey. The third paper draws on focus groups held in partnership with a statewide LGBTQ+ youth education organization to consider how parents and caregivers of TGD youth act as policy agents navigating ambiguous policy environments. Together, these studies document both the mechanisms of erasure and the conditions under which youth, families, and educators contest erasure. By integrating multiple methodological approaches, this work contributes both theoretical and empirical understanding of erasure while offering insights for school leaders, policymakers, and advocacy partners working to build and sustain inclusive schools for LGBTQ+ youth.

About Benjamin Lebovitz

Benjamin Lebovitz is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis and a predoctoral fellow in the Interdisciplinary Training Program in Education Sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Their scholarship examines how educational leadership, organizational practices, and policy environments shape the academic opportunities, belonging, and well-being of LGBTQ+ and other marginalized youth. Prior to doctoral study, Ben taught choir and drama, advised a gender and sexuality alliance, and became a National Board Certified Teacher (Music, Early Adolescence through Young Adulthood) at a public high school in southern Arizona. A 2019 Arizona Teacher of the Year semifinalist and former GLSEN Tucson chapter leader, Ben brings sustained commitment to translational scholarship that is informed by their experience in teaching and in leadership. They actively partner with schools, professional organizations, and community groups through practitioner workshops, leadership institutes, and research–practice partnerships. Ben earned a master's degree in instructional leadership from Northern Arizona University and a bachelor's degree in music education from the University of Arizona.