This week over 150 high school students walked out of class in Missouri because of their high school’s policy to allow a transgender boy use the the girls’ bathrooms and locker room. Let me restate this… they didn’t walk out in support as some would assume high school students would do these days to support “diversity.” No most walked out in protest of the policy.
From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
In the middle of last school year, Lila Perry came out as transgender. Before that, she had been living as a gay male.
But that’s not who she really was. No longer was she going to pretend, Lila said.
So this year, she told teachers and administrators at Hillsboro High School, where she is a senior, that she would no longer be content to use a unisex faculty bathroom. She wanted to be treated like other female students, including access to bathrooms and locker rooms for girls.
Her decision spread quickly through the small Jefferson County school district and, on Monday morning, students at Hillsboro High School walked out in protest. During the walkout, Lila was locked in the principal’s office. She said she and administrators worried about her safety.
The student walkout came on the heels of a School Board meeting Thursday that drew a large crowd — parents concerned that Lila is getting special rights at the expense of other students. Most of the students at Monday’s protest were opposed to accommodations for her. A smaller group gathered in support.
“The girls have rights, and they shouldn’t have to share a bathroom with a boy,” said Tammy Sorden, who has a son at Hillsboro High. It is fine to be different, she said, but it is not right to give Lila special treatment “while the girls just have to suck it up.”
Students and parents interviewed after the walkout were overwhelmingly in support of keeping Lila, 17, out of the school facilities for girls.
Perry told KMOV TV that these concerns are just bigotry, “There’s a lot of ignorance, they are claiming that they’re uncomfortable. I don’t believe for a second that they are. I think this is pure and simple bigotry.”
First, Perry needs counseling not just accommodation. Perry identified himself (sorry I can’t bring myself to use herself here because it simply concedes to that point of view by doing so. I do call people by their chosen name however) as a gay male when he was 13-years-old.
Wait a minute. Having worked with a lot of youth over the years I have to wonder who encouraged Perry to identify himself as gay? It seems there was some irresponsible adult intervention, or perhaps lack of intervention, where Perry decided he needed to wrap his identity around an assumed sexual orientation.
Kids are simply becoming too sex-obsessed earlier and earlier in age and that can’t reasonably be considered healthy.
Perry decided last year that he was a female. He is confused. He needs counseling instead he just got accommodation. One is can’t change their gender just based on feelings. Matt Walsh points out that transgendered persons are simply unhappy which is expressed in the high suicide rate that they experience.
Studies show that about 40 percent of “transgenders” attempt suicide. Disingenuous progressives will claim this staggering number is due to bullying, but the facts belie that myth. Nobody has ever demonstrated that the suicide rate fluctuates dramatically according to how progressive and “tolerant” an area happens to be. In fact, even in hyper-liberal Sweden, and even looking at “transgenders” who’ve completed “gender reassignment” surgery, the suicide rate is still enormously high.
Whether “transgenders” are in Alabama or Oregon or Missouri or California or all the way out in Sweden or anywhere else, whether they’ve “transitioned” or they haven’t, whether they’re bullied or they’re not, the suicide rate remains astronomical. To anyone looking for real answers, it’s apparent that “transgendered” people are not happy, and they are not happy because they struggle to fundamentally accept their own identity. They need help in that effort, but it seems many of them, including Perry, are not offered it.
What Perry and others who struggle with their sexual orientation and gender identity is that ultimately our identity is to be found in Christ. Nothing else will ultimately satisfy.
Secondly, because of his confusion I agree that some level of accommodation should be made. It appears that the school was doing just that. They were letting him use the unisex faculty restroom. I think that is reasonable. Look, I don’t want to make kids struggling with this to use to keep using the same locker rooms and restrooms as they did before. That is uncomfortable for them and it is uncomfortable for, in this case, guys. Frankly I’m not a fan of shared locker rooms period. Way too much bullying happens in them regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity. Just consider junior high school boys and girls who are entering puberty compared with those who are late bloomers. It’s awkward, it’s embarrassing, and it doesn’t protect kids who want to maintain some modicum of modesty.
I digress.
Third, kids have a right to privacy. This is not intolerance. This is a reasonable request. It is Perry who is being intolerant. He has received reasonable accommodation, but apparently the school is siding with him. Perry is simply being selfish and has a sense of entitlement that the school and evidently his family are catering to. Forget the girls who would be embarrassed to share a bathroom and worse – a locker room with a gender-confused boy. Fortunately he dropped his gym class so he won’t need the locker room, but still wants the bathroom. The school has already set the precedent that they will in the future allow gender-confused boys to use the girls locker room and gender-confused girls to use the boys locker rooms.
The reasonable thing to do is offer gender-confused boys and girls a private place to change so no one has to have their privacy violated. It is not “unfair” to expect Perry or another gender-confused boy to not use a girls bathroom or locker room. It’s simply common sense something that seems to be lacking in our culture.
Fourth, this policy puts girls at risk. It is abusive. I can’t improve upon what Matt Walsh says here so I’ll just quote him.
You can’t sift the legitimately gender confused from the conveniently gender confused. It’s impossible, and we all know it. So when we open the floodgates, we are choosing to gamble with the safety of kids. We are saying it’s worth putting girls in jeopardy for the sake of a tiny, infinitesimal minority of mentally ill boys. We are saying, “yes, girls, there is nothing stopping any boy from coming in here and harassing or abusing you,but we are willing to take that risk.”
Awful.
Girls (and boys) have a basic right to privacy and should be able to reasonably expect that they won’t have to change in front of any one of the opposite sex (and I would also say anyone if they are not comfortable with that).