Bullying in Hillsboro
This is just cruelty: students walk out of class to protest a trans student’s use of the girls’ restroom.
More than 100 students at Hillsboro High School, about an hour south of St Louis, walked out of class on Monday in protest.
“I’m hoping this dies down,” said Lila Perry, the 17-year-old who began identifying as a girl publicly in February. “I don’t want my entire senior year to be like this.”
Ms. Perry, who began feeling “more like a girl than a boy” when she was 13, said school officials gave her permission to use the girls’ facilities as the new school year began.
It’s not just kids feeling squicked out – there’s something more sinister behind it. I bet you can guess what.
“My goal is for the district and parents to have a policy discussion,” said Derrick Good, a lawyer who has two daughters in the district and wants students to use either facilities based on their biological sex or other gender-neutral facilities.
He worked with the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian advocacy group, to draft a “student physical privacy policy” and submit it to the district, which has about 3,500 students.
Uh huh huh – the god squad is behind it. It’s god’s plan for people with dicks to use the BOY cans and that’s the end of the story. It’s in Deuteronomy somewhere – thou shalt not use the toilet facility designated for the sex that is not thine own from birth.
The protesting students assembled outside the school for about two hours. Mr. Cornman said he did not believe any of them were penalized.
Ms. Perry, who dropped out of the physical education class that prompted her use of the girls’ locker room, spent the two hours in her guidance counselor’s office.
“I was concerned about my own safety,” she said.
She said she knows of other, younger transgender students in the district and wants to open a dialogue so they have a better high school experience.
“It feels really awful that people are going to these extremes against me, not just in school but all over the Internet,” Ms. Perry said. “But I’ve also received so much support. It feels really surreal to be in the middle of all of this.”
The Missouri Gay-Straight Alliance Network will host a rally supporting Ms. Perry on Friday.
Everybody should relax. The “activists” who spend their time monitoring heretical bloggers should relax, and the people who persecute trans teenagers (and adults) should relax. We put a rover on Mars, we can figure out this restroom thing. I say put in cubicles and be done with it.
I’m always amazed and happy to see how courageous some kids are in America. Standing up to entrenched power groups for the good of others (since the good their actions does for themselves is severely tempered by the shit they have to wade through. It gives me hope for our country’s future, something sorely tested by the rightwing politics over the second half of my life so far.
Ms Perry is showing far greater maturity than the adult instigating this tantrum against her.
And who wouldn’t be happier with more private restrooms?
It doesn’t make any difference regarding the bullying, but I gather the area of contention is a locker room, not a restroom. Probably more work to turn into cubicles, given the usual layout of school locker rooms.
Also, I thought some of the students were expressing support of the young lady. I was glad for that.
I think it’s both.
I guess the locker room issue does complicate, but I have never understood why locker rooms have to enforce public naked. I’ve never in my life used a locker room like that and I never would. Why can’t gyms and schools just have cubicles or curtains or whatever it takes?
Seriously, yes, Ophelia. This isn’t the Roman empire where the creation of a heated bath was a huge commitment that required the resources of the mega-wealthy (or indeed, an emperor). Private changing rooms/showers are not some futuristic idea that we simply cannot provide due to lack of resources.
As long as we’re civilizing things, can I request better exhaust fans on bathrooms, too?
In heaven, I figure, it’s not even cubicles. It’s one locked door, one set of facilities, one person. And a big, capable exhaust fan, that’s nicely done with what might have been there from before, by the time you walk in…
Hey, I can dream, right?
I do half seriously wonder if we will go more this way, anyway, given time. Notwithstanding the underlying technologies of current facilities are a bit hard on dwindling freshwater supplies (I’m hoping for improved ones… No one has to breathe anyone else’s sulphur/ammonia compounds, and we don’t all die of thirst after fouling our last good spring). Seems to me we have been a bit, anyway. Recently read Céline’s* Voyage Au Bout De La Nuit (been on this ‘I really should read more French kick), and there was this… erm… memorable description of interwar facilities ‘neath the streets of New York. Dunno if folk here might be familiar with it. Anyway, we’ve moved on a bit from the open public latrines, at least, some places.
(*/Yes, surveillance team, I’m a closet Vichy collaborator, and mentioning this charming piece of work without formally and explicitly condemning him, clearly, was your tell.)
The way I read the story, she’d already completely given up on locker rooms, but the protest against her being able to use any restrooms had her feeling threatened.
P.E. classes she can get excused from, but she cannot cease bodily functions for the day to please her classmates.
Alliance Defending Freedom = Freedom to be a Hateful Bigot
I’m sure I’m dating myself but 1984 has come true. Everyone knows that, right?
Fixed it for you, #6.
1) Female washrooms are all cubicled anyway (at least all the ones I’ve ever been in), so there’s minimal risk that a poor innocent cis girl would be traumatized by seeing a trans girls’ penis.
2) The concern about sexual activities in washrooms is blatantly heteronormative (if not actually homophobic)
3) How would the students react to a trans boy? Would they insist that he should use the girls’ washroom?
There have been a number of articles about this situation; this one from local media seems the most helpful from what I’ve read. I stand corrected, it is about both locker rooms and bathrooms. (Funny that bathing isn’t done in the one called a bathroom, but I digress.) While the level of support among the students is distressingly low, support does exist, I am pleased to see, and that is made clear in this article.
The young lady is quite articulate, which will certainly help her case. Brava.
That’s why I say “restroom” – it’s only Yanks who call it a bathroom, and Anglophones elsewhere laugh at it. Mind you, “restroom” isn’t a great word for it either. Canadians say washroom, also not great. UKnians say toilet, also not great (it sounds as if you’re looking for the fixture, not the fixture with a room around it).
Well, no one wants to call it the “Elimination Room”. But I do think any of washroom/bathroom/restroom/toilet/WC are preferable to calling it the “ladies’ room or “men’s room”.
Oh, definitely – I never call it that. I just wish we had a better and more universal word for it.
A secretary in an office where I once worked, a woman of distinctly Scottish extraction, used to like to refer to them as ‘the facilities’. As in: ‘I need to use the facilities…’
She always said it a bit tongue in cheek, I think, the very point being it was a slightly prissy euphemism she was making fun of…
To me, it seems such ambiguity is asking for trouble, though. Depending on where such a phrase were used. As in: ‘The facilities… Right… Level IV containment labs are here; it’s Berniece you want to talk to if you need a bench. The controls for the death ray are just down the hall to the left, and the uranium centrifuge is just across the parking lot in building D… Naturally, we’re all at your disposal. What do you need?’
It’s euphemisms all the way down. Washroom, bathroom, restroom, powder room, lavatory (“place for washing”), toilet (from French for cloth or wrapper; that is, a bag for holding clothes; thus, a dressing room), commode (“convenient”), comfort station (!). The only non euphemism that comes to mind is the shitter.