Palatine HS is being stupid!
This if ridiculous. This isn't someone just starting to transition.
The student who filed the complaint has been living as a girl for a number of years, Knight said. She plays sports and would like to be in the same locker room as her friends and classmates. Relegating her to a separate room down a long hallway from the gym only serves to stigmatize her, he said.
An interesting idea...
In Barrington Community Unit School District 220, officials work with several transgender students and their families to ensure they feel included, spokesman Jeff Arnett said.
Only one middle school student has needed to use a locker room, Arnett said. That student is allowed full access to the locker room, with a slight variation.
"We provide an aide to the student in the locker room to be there and observe from a distance in case there are any questions or any issues," Arnett said.
Aren't the PE teachers usually in the locker room anyway? I know the creepy ones at my high school were always in there.
Comments
This won't be the last case
it's a real old chestnut and will be roasted a few more times yet.
Angharad
Sigh...
It's interesting that the story makes no mention of other students or their parents (who often feature on either side of the debate when schools are contemplating changing their policy towards trans students), concentrating instead purely on the dispute between the District and the Feds.
I don't know anything about the layout of typical high school changing rooms, but could it be possible to bring a portable medical screen into the changing rooms for cases such as this, so the trans student enters and leaves with the rest of their class, but can be sheilded from the gaze of others who might take exception to their different anatomical arrangement? If so, it could provide a better compromise than changing in a completely separate area of the school (or the even more ludicrous suggestion of changing in the facilities associated with their anatomy).
Meanwhile, unsurprisingly, that news article has attracted a lot of transphobic comments - I don't know if they're the usual readership of the Tribune or whether they've been directed to the story by transphobic blogs.
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
Unfortunately whether it is
Unfortunately whether it is the Tribune or an article on Yahoo, anything trans related tends to bring out the transphobic, the willfully ignorant, and those who simply hate anything different from what society says is "normal". With the way society works and evolves, it could be centuries before we see this kind of bigotry as just part of a small part of society. And the old hiding behind the internet anonymity doesn't help either.
My high school (Southwest
My high school (Southwest Chicago suburbs, PHS is NW) had a somewhat bizarre organization due to the way it grew, but likely she could easily be assigned a locker away from others. The problem would be showering. I don't know if they have stalls or an open area.
Two important things, she is suing the school, not another student suing to prevent her use.
Second, I would bet none of those bigots could pick her out of 50 random girls from the school.
Lockers and showers
The schools where I grew up had a religious minority who would not change or shower in a room with other people. So all the schools that I went to had a few small rooms with private lockers and showers to accommodate the religious restrictions. This was probably expensive but it wasn't considered unreasonable. I wonder if they are now making those areas available for trans-students who would want them. Or if that would be a solution at all.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Well, while Oregon is pretty
Well, while Oregon is pretty good about GLBT rights, I *do* know that if you are pre-op the law is quite specific about you *not* being able to use the locker room of the gender you identify with.
There have even been a couple of lawsuits about it. They involved health clubs and the like, not schools, so I don't know how things would work out for a student.
At least bathrooms and store dressing rooms are ok.
Brooke brooke at shadowgard dot com
http://brooke.shadowgard.com/
Girls will be boys, and boys will be girls
It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world
"Lola", the Kinks