In a letter to Principal Alex Fingers of Grapevine High School that has been obtained by The Dallas Express, a mother claimed that her child was encouraged and influenced to transition genders by a teacher and a counselor in the Grapevine-Colleyville school district.
Sharla Tinsen wrote that her child’s “identity shift” began at Cross Timbers Middle School and continued into the child’s ninth and 10th-grade years at Grapevine High School.
Tinsen claimed that specific staff at GCISD encouraged “an impressionable teen and other kids in his classes to explore their sexual preferences/identity and their gender fluidity.”
She specifically named Emily Ramser, who teaches advanced English courses for the district, as having encouraged and influenced the transition. In her letter, Tinsen alleges that Ramser “infected” her child “by telling him his mom would not accept him and that it was best for him to run away from home (which he did in Jan 2021).”
Tinsen also claimed that Ramser “maintained a personal library on gender identity in her classroom and had promoted the book ‘The Prince and the Dressmaker’ to be passed around her class for all of the students to read” in an effort to normalize transgender topics.
At the time, Ramser was the faculty sponsor for the district’s Gay Straight Alliance Club, which Tinsen claimed the teacher used “to mold our teens not only to accept the LGBTQ+ agenda but to indoctrinate and confuse their own gender identities — the essence of gender dysphoria.”
According to her Linkedin, the teacher has published at least four works, including her most recent, entitled Uhaul: A Collection of Lesbian Love Poems. Ramser maintains a professional website in which she describes herself as a “queer activist-poet-scholar-educator.”
Tinsen also laid blame for her child’s transition on a GCISD counselor, whom she claimed “spent time … giving [her child] ‘gender-affirming care,'” which Tinsen said amounts to “advocating for sex changes for kids.”
The counselor, however, may just be following established district practices. In a September 2019 video on the official GCISD YouTube channel, an outside counseling firm gave a training presentation to GCISD staff on topics including transgender youth, gender identity, and gender-neutral language.
In the video, the presenter advocated for GCISD staff to recommend that children seek out the controversial GENECIS Clinic, which is now the center of an ongoing legal battle, to assist with transitioning.
“I hope and pray you will never have to feel the pain I have gone through,” Tinsen wrote to Fingers in her letter, “trying to talk to your child but […] he has been poisoned by those you trusted.”
“I am writing to let you know the harmful consequences of allowing these teachings, teachers, and other (sic) like them, to remain in the district. … I shudder to think how many other minds have been poisoned by this warped ideology,” Tinsen reproached.
In her letter, she went on to lament that her child is now a member of the “group with the highest suicide rate in our culture” and “may soon choose to stunt his own growth with hormones, or worse, to have surgery he can never be reversed.”
She closed her letter imploring Principal Fingers to take action, calling on him to help “by weeding out teachers with social agendas to sexual our kids at any age.”
“You must fix this,” Tinsen demanded.
In a phone interview with The Dallas Express, Tinsen said she had recently spoken with Fingers after the delivery of her letter. In their conversation, Fingers said that Ramser would no longer be the faculty sponsor of the Gay-Straight Alliance Club and that the teacher had been instructed to remove her personal library from her classroom.
Tinsen also said that her hope for the future is that the “chaos, confusion, and anarchy” of “gender fluidity ideology” is addressed at GCISD. She added that she is hopeful for the actions of the new GCISD school board, which she believes is starting to address such topics.
The Dallas Express reached out to Principal Fingers and other GCISD faculty for comment and received the following response:
“GCISD does not comment on individual student or employee matters. The district takes all parent concerns seriously and works with all involved to take any necessary steps to best serve our students and families.”
