Too afraid of being bullied

Transgender Trend shares a heartbreaking and enraging letter to Rishi Sunak from five teenage girls asking for single-sex toilets in schools.

Five teenage girls from schools across England have got together to write to the Prime Minister asking for the re-establishment of single-sex toilets in schools, for the privacy, dignity and safety of girls, and to state this unequivocally in the forthcoming trans schools guidance. The girls have used pseudonyms to protect their identities, which we also think sends a strong message about the situation for girls now in schools, that they are too afraid of being ostracised or bullied for holding gender-critical views [to make this reasonable request openly].

Dear Rishi Sunak

Single-sex facilities are an essential safeguarding feature, however we – five girls in secondary school – are concerned that this matter may be overlooked in the upcoming schools transgender guidance in place of a recommendation for a mixture of single-sex and mixed-sex toilets. If this is the case, it will severely lessen the safeguards set in place to protect girls and will place many at risk. We urge the Prime Minister, as the father of two young daughters, to ensure our rights are upheld in the upcoming schools transgender guidance. 

Secondary school can be an incredibly turbulent time for girls – our bodies are changing, the social relationships between boys are girls are different, and we may not feel entirely uncomfortable with everything happening to and around us. This can be an extremely distressing time, and single-sex spaces such as toilets can be a place for us to deal with stress in a private environment – but when you introduce the opposite sex into the equation, any dignity we retain is immediately obliterated.  

But girls don’t need dignity, right? Girls don’t need anything? Girls are the ruling class? Girls are the oppressors of trans people? Girls are cis-white Karens?

Periods, for instance, are something that solely girls experience at school. When dealing with menstruation, girls must have private spaces where we can sort this out with dignity, away from potential shaming from boys and the humiliation of having everyone know you’re on your period. However, boys continue to mock girls for menstruating…

If there were no menstruation, there would be no boys to be mocking girls for doing it. How about a little empathy or even gratitude, instead of mockery and disgust?

At one of our schools, there have been multiple complaints from students – for instance, at a student council meeting, the pupils grouped together to ask for change; the boys explaining they found the feminine hygiene products “disgusting”, and the girls stating they felt afraid and upset being forced to use the same toilets as the boys, which have gaps at the top and bottom. However, the school refused to change anything, and to this day, half the toilets in that specific school remain mixed-sex.

Too bad, JuniorKarens. Sucks to be you.

In another school, one of us started an online petition asking for single-sex spaces, however the petition, once reaching 12,800 signatures, was deleted by Change.org. 

Trans people>girls.

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