DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... Transgender Students in School Bathrooms

With the new school year starting, there is this:

Missouri Teenagers Protest a Transgender Student’s Use of the Girls’ Bathroom

A transgender high school student in Missouri is facing backlash from her peers after requesting to use the girls’ bathrooms and locker room.

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.

The district’s superintendent, Aaron D. Cornman, issued a statement saying the district “accepts all students no matter race, nationality/ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation.”

The student protest came on the heels of a school board meeting on Thursday attended by so many parents it had to be moved to a bigger location.

“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.

Ms. Perry previously used a unisex faculty bathroom, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

Mr. Good said he got involved after hearing about a female student who encountered “an intact male” in the girls’ locker room.

“It’s a violation of my daughters’ rights to privacy to not have a policy,” he said.

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.

“I think that there are a lot of folks that don’t understand the difference between sex and gender and only see Lila as her sex at birth,” said Morgan Keenan, the group’s founding director.

It’s not the first case to stir public debate about the matter.

A 13-year-old transgender student at a junior high school in Utah was given permission to use the girls’ bathrooms earlier this year, prompting a parent to remove a student from the school, according to KBOI-TV.



People have lost all common sense over this. How is this even a question? Just use the gender-neutral bathroom until you have your surgery to actually become what you want to be. Quit infringing on the rights of others.

There is also another controversy in Troy, Ohio, about this issue - except a student who identifies as a male wants to use the boys' restroom.

if you have a penis, use the dude's bathroom until you get it cut off.

EEK!

hey look, i'm all about equality.

but yes, sometimes people make a big thing out of nothing. the dude got one year left than he/she graduates. suck it up, then go to college where nobody gives a crap. for the most part.

saw some lady boys walked in the girls bathroom in CSU all the time, nobody gives a damn.

So glad my girls don't go to public school and have to see some dude's weiner just because he feels weird about himself and wants to expose his weiner to all the girls and pretend it doesn't exist. Disgusting.

If she (he) is still a male, why does this newspaper writer keep calling him "her"?

i understand why. i mean, i get it. it's pretty much a chick trapped in a mans body.

but for the sake of getting everything over with, he/she just needs to ride this last year out. IMO of course.

right now he/she is probably at the highest risk of committing suicide. regardless of equality, this is gonna make things a whole lot worse for him/her.

I agree with you, but it's false to refer to him as a she. No matter what HE thinks.

EDIT: when i said I agree with you I mostly meant the "riding out the year" thought.

i got you bro.

yea i dunno man. the transgender stuff i just leave alone. crap is way too confusing.

Absolutely. If you stand up to pee, use the urinals.

I tried to bring this up on another thread. I think it was the Subway dude thread.

I cited a true story where a school district was sued--and lost--because they had a transgendered student use the ADULT bathroom rather than letting him/her use the Girl's bathroom.

I have a daughter. Sorry, but I would not want her seeing someone's junk just so we can all be politically correct.

And what the hell was wrong w/letting him/her use the adult bathroom?

Of course, the usual suspects ignored my intent and instead attacked me like I was actually supporting a pervert.

You go, guys!

yea i agree with you.

as adults, they should-key word- understand the dynamic of the situation, and thus let them use the bathroom for the adults. teacher lounge or whatever.

in the military, hell in the civilian world, we always used this term:

handle it at the lowest level.

The situation could've been solved with minimum to no circus media.

I agree swish teh obivous answer is to let them use the faculty restroom.

I also have no problems saying to the kid. You have a penis so use the boy's restroom. You don't have a penis so use the girl's restroom(unless you suffered a terrible accident).

I don't really care what they feel inside. You are what you are in my eyes. I think messing around with the issue more than that is just confusing to the kids. I think the real problem comes from making these kids feel or to say only boys or only girls can like certain things so if you like those things you must have been born wrong. After a while they start to believe it too.

Just change the signs over the doors to "Willey" and "No Willey"!

You must have missed the post I made that said that is what one school district did. They were sued. They lost. They had to pay money to the transgendered's family and had to change their policy. The transgendered student was then allowed to use the girl's bathroom.

I didn't miss it I just didn't agree with the courts. It's ridiculous to punish a school for trying to accommodate one student in spite of its silliness. I mean it's ok to accommodate the boy with identity issues at the expense of the rest of the girls in the school? It's just stupid. I'd be the first parent to pull my daughter from a school like that.

Then again I have zero trust in public schools to teach my daughters and provide a safe school environment anyways. Thank God for school vouchers that leave me with an affordable choice in the matter. Almost all my spare income goes towards making sure my kids get a better school to go to.

Going to have to go to NON-Gender Specific restrooms or be forced to label "Boys", "Girls" and "???" soon. I recognize the problem of the trans gender people, I just don't think forcing it on others in public restrooms is acceptable. Now if the sign on the door says "NON-Gender Specific", then the choice to use it or not becomes obvious and there should be no surprises.

I remember when I was in the Navy, some friends and I went to a park somewhere in San Diego to hang out. During the day it was full of families, people throwing balls and frisbee, playing hacky sack. etc... Just people having a good time. Then suddenly at dusk it turned into a gay orgy! I walked into the restroom as we were leaving and OMG! Couldn't leave fast enough.

Now today, the much older me understands that was a life style thing back then but I certainly wouldn't want my grand kids exposed to it like I was. I think these trans G kids have the same right to feel safe, secure, loved, wanted and excepted as my grand kids; so when the question becomes whose right trump the others I have to say neither and something has to be reached to accommodate both groups.

This issue reminds me of that ancient Chinese blessing/curse:

"May you live in interesting times."

Good for the school!

I didn't read anything that said this kid went around waving their junk at anybody and I've read numerous times on here that a police officer or somebody who shot a black guy is innocent until proven guilty.

It doesn't take an inch of common sense to realize girls' bathrooms have stalls and the last thing transgenders want anybody to see is their junk.

I'm also sure that not only would this kid's presence in the boys' restroom cause a huge distraction, but it would probably be a threat to the student's life.

Now the extreme right zealots want to decide which restroom god(?) has decided they use.


Another case of radical extremists religions wanting to rule the country.

You of course realize this is all about the Perrys basking in their 15 minutes of fame.

I think your post exemplifies the "one extreme vs the other" problem we have in this country, rather than trying to have a rational conversation.

I fail to see what is extreme about parents worrying about their school-aged daughters (most likely going through their own uncomfortable stages) sharing a bathroom with someone who has a male anatomy. How does religion have any influence on that?

I also understand the delicate situation it puts the transgender person is. It's something that I'll never understand personally, but what I do understand is that there is an apparent compulsion and self-identity in transgendered persons which can lead to an extreme frustration (if suppressed) and ultimately to suicide.

It's a delicate situation IMO, and I'm not sure what the solution is.

So, girls changing clothes for a PE class have their own stalls? I'm sorry, but I don't think many people want their daughters changing in front of someone with a male anatomy without any adult supervision, and I don't blame them. It's ridiculous.

If not being able to use the bathroom you want to use causes you to want to kill yourself, you probably have mental health problems, and public school isn't the place where you should be. We have a mental health problem in this country...but people don't want to admit that they or their loved ones have problems.

In summary: if using a uni-sex bathroom makes you suicidal, go get help and get out of school. If not, suck it up.

Fine, just put up signs saying:

XY Chromosome Bathroom

XX Chromosome Bathroom

This should fix everything.

they gave dude a pink purse

There can't be much worse to a girl in the ladies room hearing
the girl in the stall next to her shout "Woo, That water is
cold today!"

Nothing was wrong with it. He is the one who decided he wanted to fit in with the other girls and wanted to use the girls bathrooms.... the school didn't stop allowing it.

Ultimately we will end up solving this the way we solve everything, throw a ton of money at it building special bathrooms into schools and costing school systems a bunch of money that could be better used on actually educating kids.

Still confusing.

jc

The "solution" will be to remove gender markings from bathrooms entirely. So you'll just have two bathrooms and you can enter whichever one you want.

Can somebody explain the whole transgender thing to me? I don't get it... like any of it.

To draw some comparison, I understand the whole lesbian/gay/bisexual thing. I'm as straight as they come but I have a handful or so of L/G/B friends and they are all good and normal enough people. All will tell you that they never in their lives 'chose' which gender they would be attracted to, which meshes with the available science that shows sexual preference is mostly genetic. So if they want to date each other or get married or whatever, that's cool. Doesn't affect me at all really, but we've already been down that road before.

I just can't wrap my head around the whole sex-change thing. It seems so bizarre to me-- basically butchering the human body and then rearranging it surgically and hormonally. I guess my biggest confusion comes from the saying that goes something like "feeling like a woman trapped in a man's body"-- what does that even mean? What is wrong with a guy just being feminine and what not? Never in history before recent decades has a sex-change operation ever even been an option, and it kind of boggles my mind why they seem to be celebrated and even encouraged.

Don't get me wrong... the whole bathroom thing confuses me too, and a business/establishment/school should not be liable for making a good-faith effort to accommodate people (this includes everybody, not just the occasional transexual.) I'm just trying to go a level higher because I don't really understand any of it. Maybe somebody can help me out?

No, it is about parents who do not what their daughters using the same restroom as, or changing clothes in the presence of, a person who is physically male.

What about their rights ... or don't they matter to you?

Another line that strikes me as extremely odd, mentioned in passing in the original post:
Why is even legal for a 13 year old to get a sex-change operation? If an adult wants to go under the knife that's one thing (even if I still don't understand it- see my post above) but a middle schooler? That seems like irresponsible parenting, at best.

Transgender doesn't mean they already got cut. Also, transitioning is much more effective when it's done at a younger age. We also have no real knowledge of the situation at all so any speculation is pretty irresponsible imo.

true, my bad, I was going to leave it at that but then another thought popped into my head:

If nothing has been cut, why is s/he using the girls' bathroom...

Rather than a men or womens room with stalls, we will start having a row of small toilet rooms. Much like a row of portolets at an event.

Eliminate the men/women and just make small "toilet rooms" with shared sinks.

I see nothing wrong with that solution other than some guys can be very disgustingly filthy in their use of restrooms. Women may be the same way, but I can only speak from what I have seen in men's rooms and from our restrooms here at work.


Interestingly, on a Viking River Cruise we recently took, there was a bathroom on the main floor that was not men/womens, but was a room with 2 stalls/rooms and a shared sink. First time I used it I was washing my hands, when a women came out from the other stall. It startled me at first and made me double check the sign on the door on my way out.

If she dresses like a girl it might be a bit awkward to be in the boys bathroom. I really don't see the problem with bathroom use. Especially the girls' restrooms that are a lot more private than their male counterparts. Who cares if a transgendered woman uses a private stall?

Now, when it comes to changing rooms I understand. Probably should use a faculty bathroom for that purpose only.

Good points. I can go with that. I was indeed thinking more along the lines of a locker room/changing rooms.

Gay and Transgender Groups Celebrate Ohio School District’s ‘Gender Neutral’ Bathrooms

School districts across the country are rushing to make policies for the tiny number of students who claim to be transgender. The latest to make such a policy is the Troy, Ohio, school district which has added a “gender neutral” bathroom policy, causing gay and transgender groups to descend upon the town to celebrate the decision.

On Tuesday, Equality for Ohio and The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network both announced that they planned to hold rallies near the Troy Board of Education to celebrate the new policy.

Troy has decided to add a gender neutral bathroom in every school. The district justifies its move by saying the federal government is forcing its hand under federal Title IX education laws. The district insists that adding the bathrooms is an attempt to avoid future discrimination lawsuits.

The district went further than simply mandating the gender neutral bathrooms by also ruling that transgender kids may also use whatever facilities match the gender with which they claim to identify. So transgender kids will not be limited to separate transgender facilities, meaning that teenaged boys who “identify” as a girl will be able to go into a girl’s locker room during gym class.

While Superintendent Eric Herman of the Troy schools admitted that the decision was basically made by the district’s lawyers, he also insisted that everyone’s rights would be protected.

“We try to make sure all of our kids are safe and protect their rights. It is a big job,” Herman said. “We are trying to work our way through it the best we can. My role in this is to comply with the law as superintendent.”

But many parents worried over boys claiming to be girls using the girls bathroom.

Bryan Kemper of Troy, who has six children in the system, says the new transgender policy is “outrageous,” and went on to say, “My students deserve privacy/No co-ed bathrooms.”

Another parent said he wouldn’t approve of the reverse situation, either.

“If my daughter was going into the guy’s bathroom, I wouldn’t be alright with it. Something could happen to ’em. You never know,” West Milton dad, Sean Call said.

Tonya Morgan, another Troy resident, also criticized the decision.”My oldest son is in kindergarten right now and I do not think it’s a good idea for them to share bathrooms,” she said.

The decision in Troy, Ohio, comes at the same time that a school in Hillsboro, Missouri, is dealing with a transgender boy claiming to identify as a girl and demanding to be allowed to use the girls facilities.


http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/...tral-bathrooms/

This is actually the school district my grandchildren went to until we moved to Tennessee.

“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.

Now christians are even protesting schools should not have unisex bathrooms.

If you want a rational discussion lets compare the incidents of gender problems in bathrooms to the number of incidents of unwanted sexual attention a girl in college receives.

There's zero rationality or credibility in this gender restroom discussion.