Same kid, same state, same discrimination, same outcome, different school: “The Maine Human Rights Commission ruled Monday that Orono Middle School unlawfully discriminated against a sixth-grader during the 2008-2009 school year by not letting the male-to-female transgender student use the girls’ bathroom. This is the same student whose parents filed a similar discrimination complaint against Asa Adams Elementary School in Orono when their child was a fifth grader there during the 2007-2008 school year. That case resulted in the same ruling against the school district in June 2009.” [Bangor Daily News]
bathroom etiquette
Will Maine Schools Finally Learn The Right Way To Let Trans Tweens Pee?
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Victim of circumstance
this kid is in 6th grade and has already decided he wants to be a diferent gender.i hope he’s making the right decision. that’s awfull early in life to get stuck with something like that if it turns out it’s not what you wanted.
Yellow Bone
@Victim of circumstance: She* is a she. Clearly you don’t understand anything about transsexualism.
Chris H
@Victim of circumstance: LOL. Same argument as “damn, does this kid know he’s really gay? He’s only in 6th grade.”
YES. YES. YES. The less we oppress sexual and gender minorities, the more kids will realize their true selves earlier. It’s common now-a-days for kids to realize they are gay in elementary and middle school. Hopefully this will continue until there’s never a heterocentrism to have to deal with.
Hopefully trans kids will continue to realize it earlier and earlier, and will be able to live who they’d like to live earlier and earlier.
misanthrope
@Victim of Circtances
Go concern troll somewhere else, we trans people have enough of it without your spectacular displays of ignorance.
Ian
OK, I’m sorry here, I am fully behind my (T) brothers & sisters getting their full rights same as the rest of the (LGB), but this is taking political correctedness too far. It’s one thing in a non-descript public restroom to let a child who believes they are trans to use what they see as the proper bathroom. It’s quite another in a bldg where all the children know each others gender but are YOUNG and do not fully understand such concepts yet, to have what the non-trans girls were to see as a boy in a dress in their bathroom which will naturally make them quite uncomfortable. It’s PC gone too far, sorry but I’m with the hetero-parents on this one.
missanthrope
@ Ian
”
I am fully behind my (T) brothers & sisters getting their full rights same as the rest of the (LGB),”
No, you’re not.
You claim to support to support trans people but you pretend like this trans person’s gender identity is somehow imaginary. And the idea that 13 year-old kids don’t know what sex and gender are as you assert is laughable. Kids usually start identity fromation around a gender schema from the age of two to three.
So you want to trample all over this girl’s rights and subject her to harrasment, maybe even physical harm in a bathroom full of 14 year-old boys (the cruelist age) to keep cisgender people from being made “uncomfortable”. I’d doubt that you’d hold your fellow cisgender gay people to same standard when it comes to making straights “uncomfortable”.
Don’t lie, just come clean and say that you don’t really support trans people and are only accepting of us when we are safe for your consumption and we arrange our lives around you delicate sensibilities.
I’m sick to death of so-called “allies” saying “I’m sorry, but that’s going to far…” when it comes to the rights of trans people. Wake up, if you don’t not support to the right of a trans person to live thier life on an equal basis with everyone else, then you do not support trans rights. Period.
You wouldn’t put up with such nonesense with your straight friends, how do you think this kind of crap feels to us?
Yellow Bone
@Ian:
You’re not behind shit. Typical of the LGs (I’d add the B, but the LGs treat them the same way they treat us: like third class citizens).
“Who believes they are trans”? Well fuck you very much.
Of course, you’re with the hetero-parents, you cissexist false ally.
Ian
@missanthrope: @Yellow Bone: And your response is EXACTLY why you will NOT be getting any full rights or equality in any time in the near future. You call me in terms of variations of bigot, etc. when I really am an ally. Hell, I was one of the first therapists EVER in my home state when I worked in juvenile corrections to get trans M-to-F prisoners access to fellow trans-therapists who could both understand them as well as educate the correctional facilities. Boy, with an enemy like THAT, right?
Back to the subject at hand, you are forgetting the reactions of the children who use the bathrooms and then the subsequent over-protectedness of the parents. It’s NOT simply “we have to educate them” and see them as the “other”, they are the other half of an equation and you have to see their feelings as well, so that both sides can come to a better understanding. If you do not, then the homophobes who scream that “They are trying to shove their lifestyles down our throats” would for once actually be correct. Education is the key, and not putting the cart before the horse.
Yellow Bone
@Ian because I pissed off our poor gay overlords? or because I saw through your bs. How the hell can someone who cannot respect that a t-girl IS A GIRL, understand anything about us.
What YOU are doing is protecting TRANSphobia. You are as much an ally as they are. You do not get brownie points for treating us like freaks because you know goddamn well you would not let them disrespect gays.
We are not your freakshow.
Ian
@Yellow Bone: The reality is that this girl is a TRANS-girl, she will NEVER EVER be a “real” girl, that’s just REALITY. Whatever gender a person chooses to believe themselves to be, I will agree with it and support it. An M-to-F is a TRANS-female, but will NEVER be a bio-female. An F-to-M is a TRANS-male, but will NEVER, despite wishing beyond wish, be a bio-male. And THAT is the reality that transexuals have to live with. You SHOULD be respected for how you are born, but your bodies will NEVER EVER be a 100% reflection of how you know yourselves to be on the inside.
You are asking a teacher at this school to say to these almost pre-teens, “Ok, little Cassandra has a pee-pee but is a girl. We must all pretend just like she does that she has a va-jay-jay, even though she has a pee-pee. And girls, when Cassandra comes into the girls bathroom you must pretend she does not have a pee-pee.” These are KIDS, at an age that conformity is very important. What you are asking of these kids would be difficult under any circumstances.
Sometimes reality is HARD & sometimes it just SUCKS, but if you ignore REALITY of how you will always unfortunately be on an outside box in some respects, it will be harder on everyone in the long run. A transexual DESERVES to have equal rights, but must also accept that their lives will never be fairy tales that they will be treated even as children as the gender that they prefer to be all the time outside of their homes.
Chris H
@Ian: We should be living our lives the way they should be lived. We should be pushing for others to live life the way it should be lived.
We should not be pandering to others and live our lives the way they want us to simply because “REALITY SUCKS.”
Sometimes I agree that the entire LGBT community is being unreasonable in some cases. This is most DEFINITELY NOT one of those cases.
missanthrope
“@Yellow Bone: The reality is that this girl is a TRANS-girl, she will NEVER EVER be a “real” girl, that’s just REALITY. Whatever gender a person chooses to believe themselves to be, I will agree with it and support it. An M-to-F is a TRANS-female, but will NEVER be a bio-female. An F-to-M is a TRANS-male, but will NEVER, despite wishing beyond wish, be a bio-male. And THAT is the reality that transexuals have to live with. You SHOULD be respected for how you are born, but your bodies will NEVER EVER be a 100% reflection of how you know yourselves to be on the inside.”
Don’t you fucking dare tell me “what I have to live with” or talk down to me. You don’t know jack about me or my experienced gender. I’m not, nor are other trans people are going to live their lives to the convienence of your pet gender theory. We know quite well that we’re trans and that makes us different. But our difference is not the problem, it’s the compeletly arbitrary, hurtful and rigid ideas about sex and gender that your are seemingly doing your best to uphold.
You did one good thing for trans people, that doesn’t make you our savior nor does it give you a pass on your transphobic and cis-sexist attitudes that you’ve expressed here. And your refusial to honor people’s experienced and very real gender is what gets you called a bigot. If you want that to stop:
1. then go back and rethink where you went wrong in your assumptions.
2. Stop being a bigot and stop lecturing trans people on why we don’t derserve the treatment that every other human being on the planet gets.
Until that, please stop “helping” trans people. A person with your kinds a attitude is probably more dangerous to us than a conservative christian. Especially since you are in a position of having power over trans people as a therapist. Clueless therapists who thinks that they know what is “best for us” are probably the type of people who have damaged trans people the most through abusing of the mental health system to enforce their personal ideas of gender.
Ian
@missanthrope: On your last point you have no worry, as a therapist I would NEVER place my personal opinions onto a client, no matter what the situation. When I have a transexual client I affirm their desired gender, as it is about their health and growth to feel comfortable in their skin. All I am saying is that it IS “fairytale” thinking for any type of person that is very outside the normative, no matter what type of religion, gender, sexuality, etc. situation entailed, to expect that the majority are going to completely see things from your perspective and cow-tow towards it.
Just as a gay man I would never force a clergy man who does not believe in Marriage Equality for me to perform my marriage ceremony, as I have PLENTY of other venues and spiritual/religious choices to go to, I also think that in certain circumstances it is expecting a little much to think that a school full of pre-teens and their parents are going to accept and be so completely OK w/a child who has opposite-sexual organs to go into a bathroom with their girls. That child can be accomodated and have a bathroom for them until the day when they are adult and choose to become a post-op trans-woman. It’s called give and take, and if your not willing to give even a little in certain circumstances then you are no better than an intolerant right-wing tea partier who expects everyone to cow-tow to them no matter what. Some food for thought.
Peace~
Miguel Perreira
This “story” has nothing to do with gay people and it especially has nothing to do with gay young people in Maine schools. There is no reason for a story like this to be covered on a gay blog as if bathroom usage is somehow a gay issue.
Gay boys and girls have no confusion over which bathroom to use and are not themselves gender-confused. It is an insult to all of them to suggest otherwise and it is a cruel thing to add another stereotype for them to deal with among their peers.
“LGBT” is a concept created by a handful of 1990s white queer studies academics pursuing the latest on-campus fad. It made for a lot of hip academic papers, but in the real world it has proven harmful to both gay people and transgendered people. Queerty should stand with gay youth and not with the egos of queer studies “professors” who want “gay” to be associated with some sort of war on gender.
Chris H
@Ian: @Miguel Perreira: Ugh. I hate gay people sometimes.
Yellow Bone
@Ian: WE’RE intolerant? Take your logic and turn it on gay kids then. If straight kids don’t feel comfortable in the same locker room as gays, then they shouldn’t be in there. Right? Right?
@Miguel Perreira: You and your friend Ian prove that when it comes to anyone else’s rights, gays are the BIGGEST hypocrites.
We’re the only part of the LGBT community that both the homophobes and the gays would come together to hate.
Why the hell does the trans community continue to side with the fight for gay rights, when they can’t even respect us?
Friends of Ian
@Misanthrope:
Thanks for the unintentional comedy! Lecturing others on how to live and dispensing moral advice? Comedy gold! Generally speaking, it is not a good idea to get your moral guidance from someone who beat up his mother and then joked about it on his blog. I won’t link to it, because there is enough violence and sickness on the internet and I don’t want to give you hits, but anyone can find it via google.
Misanthrope grunted at Ian:
“Don’t you fucking dare tell me “what I have to live with” or talk down to me.”
Or what, you’ll beat up Ian the way you beat up your mother and then blogged about it?
“You don’t know jack about me or my experienced gender.”
I do. I have read your blog. Much like its author, it ain’t pretty.
“I’m not, nor are other trans people are going to live their lives to the convienence [sic] of your pet gender theory.”
One third of you choose not to live life at all. The remaining two-thirds don’t appear to be the model of happiness. Given this track record, you might want to reconsider your own pet gender theory. The pet you are currently raising is biting you and crapping on your living room rug.
Miguel Perreira
“Why the hell does the trans community continue to side with the fight for gay rights, when they can’t even respect us?”
If you want respect, you have to give it. You aren’t respecting gay people when you demand that they re-define themselves as something they are not in order to benefit you politically. The overwhelming majority of gay people are not “transgendered” and while it is a small thing for a white, middle class gay man from San Francisco to score PC points by calling himself “LGBT”, that same relabeling can damage the self-esteem and self-understanding of an isolated lesbian in Georgia or a young enlisted man in the armed forces. It also hurts transsexuals by suggesting that they are, in some sense, not really the gender they think they are, but are rather just a sort of gender-bending variant of a gay person.
The label is false and misleading and is an insult to Ls, Gs, Bs, and Ts. And if its continued use is what you demand as part of the “respect” that is due to you, then you’ll never get respect from me.
Ian
@Friends of Ian: While I always welcome new friends I have to take umbridge w/saying and/or implying that all transexuals are unhappy people. I know I’D be unhappy if everyone was looking at me funny almost every day of the week. However, my point is that I also know both professionally as well as acquaintences who are both transexual and quite happy and proud of their lives. Most especially of note is Ms. Rachel Crandall, the founder and executive director of TransGender Michigan. Anyone who meets this trans-woman realizes that she is a true inspiration to just about ANYONE 🙂
Yellow Bone
@Miguel Perreira: the phrase LGBT isn’t part of this. I could care less about the phrase.
What I do care about though, is that transgender children are respected and honored, and that their gender identity be honored. There are straight teenagers, who are homophobic and say they don’t feel comfortable in the same bathroom or in the same locker room as gays, but nobody would ever legitimize that. and nor should they.
We don’t force them to change. What we want, is the same respect, the same level of commitment that we give the LGBs when it comes to the fight to repeal DADT, when it comes to fighting for gay marriage, and fighting homophobia.
We constantly get insulted by the transphobic lesbians, gays, and bisexuals.
But we keep on, we keep fighting for the rights of a group of individuals that wish we would just go away and hide in a corner.
Ian
@Yellow Bone: We constantly get insulted….But we keep on, we keep fighting for the rights of a group of individuals that wish we would just go away and hide in a corner.
I’ve come across this attitude in trans-circles more than once in my years of outreach work. Yeah, there are a LOT of dumb***es out there, but there are actually many more who really ARE your allies if you can just put down the proverbial fists from childhood rejection (as I myself faced as a gay kid), and look to see that they really DO want to help. People don’t always agree 100% on everything, but that doesn’t mean that those same people can’t at times be your friend and ally. The only thing I am really saying is don’t color people in this “your either my friend or my enemy” box, you may lose out in that process.
Yellow Bone
@Ian: I suppose that is true. However, like I said before, your logic could easily be twisted by people that hate the transgendered and gays equally. and that would be very bad, for everyone involved.
There is power in numbers. Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, and the Transgendered do need to be able to stick together.
Not to mention despite what some gays may think, sexuality and gender identity are (somewhat) linked.
Example: let’s say the trans-exclusive ENDA would have passed. It would have left the transgendered out to dry, we could be fired just for being trans. But the gays, they could not be fired for being gay. (Here is where the link is…) As stereotypical as it may be, femme gay men and butch lesbian women would have been left out to dry too because of a loophole. With gender identity not protected, anything not seen as a typical gender role could be grounds for dismissal. And it would be legal, because there’d be nothing to cover that eventuality.
All that aside, nobody would know a student is transgendered unless a teacher tells the students, which they should not (if only for the student’s safety). It isn’t even like anyone in the female bathroom would be able to SEE that someone is transgendered.
If schools want compromise…then have unisex single-person bathrooms put in. I’d support that. It would be safer for everyone and nobody would come out feeling bad.
Yellow Bone
@Yellow Bone: (adding on to my previous post)
I don’t know about this particular school, but all of the schools I have been to, have had unisex single person bathrooms and anyone could use them.
missanthrope
“In your last point you have no worry, as a therapist I would NEVER place my personal opinions onto a client, no matter what the situation.”
I’m sure that you believe that you do.
“When I have a transexual client I affirm their desired gender, as it is about their health and growth to feel comfortable in their skin.”
I hope that is the case, what you’ve posted today is far from convincing.
“All I am saying is that it IS “fairytale” thinking for any type of person that is very outside the normative, no matter what type of religion, gender, sexuality, etc. situation entailed, to expect that the majority are going to completely see things from your perspective and cow-tow towards it.”
Just like it was a “fairytale” thirty years ago that a out gay person could be a school teacher, or bishop, or an elected politician. Because that is what people would have (and did) told you back then. Well now gay people are in all of those roles openly, out and proud. I don’t know how you can demand respect for yourself, and then turn around and tell trans people to sit-down and shut-up when we demand our basic human rights.
Expecting that you can go to a bathroom in safely is not somehow asking society to “cow-tow” to your needs, it’s usually considered a basic human right. Oh, except for when it comes to trans people and ics people panic over what’s in other people’s pants.
“Just as a gay man I would never force a clergy man who does not believe in Marriage Equality for me to perform my marriage ceremony, as I have PLENTY of other venues and spiritual/religious choices to go to,”
Again, your cis privilege blinds you to the fact that while going to a church is a choice, going to the bathroom is not a choice. It’s a biological function that’s required to live.
Okay, story time:
I once went to a college where I had to walk across the campus to find a gender-neutral bathroom because I didn’t feel safe anywhere else. I was too feminine and queer for the guys bathroom and I was worried that I didn’t pass as female enough for the woman’s room. So I had to plan out my whole day based on the one place I could go to the bathroom on campus and whether I’d be near it not.
And I was lucky, most people don’t have the option of a gender neutral bathroom. I know tran people who aren’t “allowed” to go to the gendered bathrooms at thier workplaces of their “accepting” employers. So they have to walk to the place next door or even drive blocks away in order to find a accommodating bathroom. This indignity is perfectly legal and a everyday experience for many trans people.
So yeah, you’re analogy about churches is specious and disingenuous.
“I also think that in certain circumstances it is expecting a little much to think that a school full of pre-teens and their parents are going to accept and be so completely OK w/a child who has opposite-sexual organs to go into a bathroom with their girls.”
This is not about making cisgender people comfortable. It’s about ensuring the safety of trans people. There have been cases of trans people being attacked in bathrooms. I’m not becoming the next Gwen Araujo in order to pander to the prejudices of a few cis people. And I’ll be damned if another trans kids ends up beaten or dead because they weren’t allowed in to a bathroom that’s safe for them.
“That child can be accomodated and have a bathroom for them until the day when they are adult and choose to become a post-op trans-woman.”
Nobody should have to have to go through surgery in order to go to a bathroom that they are safe in. There some are of us do not want surgery either and aren’t going to modify their bodies to make you feel comfortable. Deal with it.
“It’s called give and take, and if your not willing to give even a little in certain circumstances then you are no better than an intolerant right-wing tea partier.”
Now this is where you jumped the shark buddy. You’re seriously going to compare my reasonable demand for the basic dignity and human rights that anyone would ask for to the ridiculous political beliefs of a gang of bigots and religious nuts. Now you’re just embarrassing yourself, your grasping at straws.
Ian
@missanthrope: I only wanted to briefly comment on one part of your previous post. In a previous comment I stated: “In your last point you have no worry, as a therapist I would NEVER place my personal opinions onto a client, no matter what the situation.” You replied; “I’m sure that you believe that you do.”
You can take home the bacon on my previous comment. I’ve put up w/families that I had to do family therapy with call people “fags” etc., but it wasn’t my job to tell them that I felt personally insulted. My job was to get that families children out of foster care, get the parents into both substance abuse and parenting classes, and to get them reunified into one home again. The vast majority of us who wear the hat of a therapist take our oath quite seriously, and if the day ever comes when I am trying to change a client not for the benefit of their mental health per the DSM-IV-TR, but to cow-tow to my own personal beliefs then that is the day for me to immediately QUIT.
As for the rest of your comments from your last post, I feel that I have pretty much addressed my opinions on this page in reply to others. Peace~
Yellow Bone
@missanthrope: Gwen Araujo and the whole bathroom thing are two separate conversations about totally separate issues. So…that hypothetical was not correct, at least in that regard.
missanthrope
“Gwen Araujo and the whole bathroom thing are two separate conversations about totally separate issues. So…that hypothetical was not correct, at least in that regard.”
My analogy to Gwen Araujo was not “exact” but Gwen wasn’t murdered for using a bathroom. But I feel the fact that bathrooms can be dangerous for trans people holds true:
http://www.myfoxhouston.com/dpp/news/local/100624-transgender-student-beaten-in-alleged-hate-crime
http://www.edgeboston.com/index.php?ch=news&id=105085&sc=&sc2=news&sc3=
Yellow Bone
@missanthrope: Let’s be honest here, there’s a higher chance of a school shooting than there is of a person being murdered in an American public school bathroom.
kyals
@Ian:
I’m not attacking you and I do believe you when you say you are an ally, I wanted to just add a few things..
Your earlier posts fail on a few points:
1) you auto assumed they may -look- like a boy in a dress, as far as you know they are a sweet girl who no one would know was trans if it wasn’t for gossip. At younger ages people are more androgynous still and “passing” can be a fair bit simpler.
2) That students really care at all about this. Frankly, I bet its the PARENTS who are up in arms way more then students since that is *usually* historically how it has been in numerous prior cases like this.
The fact is: the school could have worked out a *better* solution then denying usage of the bathroom and expecting them to use the men’s. That was clearly a bad answer and displayed no empathy for the student or their situation.
They could have offered access to a single occupancy bathroom (most schools have at least one) or a teachers bathroom (sometimes there are some and they need keys so students don’t use) or etcs. Some compromise that the school could offer that while maybe not perfect, would allow the student to be safe.
A further note, since you mentioned the horror of a penis in the washroom:
A trans person with a penis is not dangerous in a woman’s bathroom, at any age. Bathroom stalls are private. People are not naked in the bathroom. In life people share room space all the time with mixed genders / opposing genitals without *any* negative consequences and a bathroom is just another room.
I know you didn’t insinuate this direct example, but you did suggest a penis being there is somehow bad… but like despite what the media peaches a lot a penis is not gonna rape just cause its there or do any other horrible things I always see groups preach. People need to stop acting like bathrooms are sacred >.>… or frankly remotely safe at all.. since they are not and are not protected by anything. Tons of bathrooms don’t even have doors you just walk in..
One more thing, just because I am picky and this always bothers me. It’s trans girl, trans woman, etcs. not trans-girl, trans-woman. Just like how someone can be a black woman not a black-woman, or etcs. Being trans is just 1 attribute of the person, a modifier like geeky, canadian, tall, smart, whatever. The effect of the dash is acting like we are an other gender beyond woman which is always an insulting notion to most trans people. Similarly its bad to say ‘transwoman’ tho I know you didn’t
Cheers 🙂
mattsmith
This is not an issue for Gay and Lesbian Americans and has no baring on out lives – the whole term LGBT is a joke – no one says I am going to the LGBT parade or the LGBT bar – gay people have zero in common with B (who only face issues with society when they choose to be L or G ) and zero in common with T. Face it kids once ENDA , DADT passes the whole T business will be over because L&G will move on – Gay men are not confused about our gender –
Victim of circumstance
ok. let me defend myself a bit. i admit, i’ve never known a transexual, and i know little about the subject. i am merely saying that-regardless of how it feels-one’s mind isn’t developed enough at that age to make decisions that will have huge bearing on your entire life. i had a boyfreind my freshman year of highschool. he was a super nice guy that never could talk to ladies. therefore, he considerd the possibillity that he might be gay.we dated for a year or so, and really had alot of fun. after graduation, he went away to college. he bulked up alot and women really started to notice him. he told me last year that he had never been gay. he said he had just been swept up in: a)having someone show interest in him, and b)getting a chance to put his raging hormones to work. we lived in a very conservative town and had very right-wing parents. alot of you how hard it is to tell unsuportive parents who you really are. but, imagine having to go to them later and tell them it was a mistake. i’m just saying that, today’s society is obviously capable of supressing one’s sexuality in a way, and making it harder to be one’s self. with that being said. why do you believe it only happens when a homosexual or transgender individual if forced to hide who THEY are. why isn’t it possible for a strait person to be persuaded by their environment to be someone other than who THEY are?
Tori
@mattsmith: I don’t understand what your talking about.You act like act like the t in the lgb is dragging you down.You really need to get over yourself