What can we do to help Young Trans Youth?
By: Kieran McIntire
Liam stands nervously in front of the entrance to the boys bathroom, he looks down worried that he will made fun of. He had come out publicly to his school only a few months ago, but still felt as if he did not belong. Especially going into the boys bathroom, he felt as if he didn’t “cis-pass” and decided to just go into the girls room anyway, even though he didn’t identify as a girl anymore. At the age of 7, Rory already knows that they aren’t the gender they were born with. They decide that they are somewhere in between, but they haven’t told their parents yet. While at school, the teacher tells the group to get into two lines, Rory quickly runs to be with their friends before realizing that the teacher has separated the class into boys and girls. They feel alone, and by themselves when trying to bring it up to the teacher, but ultimately decides to just stay in their gender assigned line. Rory and Liam aren’t real kids, but there are kids just like them all around our nation, feeling uncomfortable and left out in gendered activities and placements. Policy 252 in the School District of Philadelphia tries to prevent just such issues.
27% of transgender youth reported feeling unsafe in school due to their gender expression, reports a CDC survey. While this problem is nationwide, we need to first take care of this problem locally. The School District of Philadelphia took the matter into their own hands by making Policy 252 which ensures the safety and equality of transgender and gender nonconforming students. This policy prevents schools from confining students to specifically gendered activities such as uniform policy.
Previously, I have attended a school in which I was not allowed to wear pants, they had very strict uniform rules which made it so that girls had to wear skirts and boys wore pants. This was the way that most schools with a uniform had made it. The boys wore pants and the girls wore skirts. That was the way that it was, and that's the way that these schools wanted it to be. While there is some disagreement over Carver’s new uniform policy, we follow Policy 252 by not mandating specific uniforms based on assumed gender. I asked Dr. Domers, our principal, about some of our policies, mostly about gendered after-school activities and safe locations for transgender students that might want privacy while dressing for gym or using the bathroom:
Q: “What sports options do gender non-conforming students have?”
Dr. Domers: “Swim team is coed but I would imagine that that doesn't answer your question because I imagine when you get to meets they’d have to split up. Bowling is split, cross country and track are split, I don’t think there’s anything.”
At Carver, most of our sports are split into boys and girls teams, some, don’t even have girls teams, such as football. Thus, leaving gender nonconforming students out of any sports that they might want to participate in.
Q: “Is there any intent or recent talk about having a unisex bathroom or unisex locker room somewhere in our school, that you’ve maybe heard or thought of?”
Dr. Domers: “Nothing that's come up recently, I mean technically every bathroom is unisex, but if there was an initiate, if there was a push to explicitly identify a bathroom in that way it's something that we could certainly consider looking into.”
If our school managed to build or change a existing bathroom into a unisex bathroom for trans and gender nonconforming students. We could make big strides into making our transgender youth feel more comfortable at our school.
If our schools in America began to truly follow this policy. Than people like Liam and Rory could feel more comfortable and accepted in their school environments. We need to make a change now to help young trans youth in our Nation!