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Loading ...Transgender Vt. teen wants genderless bathrooms
08.28.2009 1:30pm EDT
(Montpelier) A transgender teenager is lending his voice to a movement in Vermont to require the state’s middle and high schools to offer genderless bathrooms.
Kyle Giard-Chase, 16, asked the Vermont Human Rights Commission on Thursday to endorse the effort. He said that before he came out last year as transgendered, he was a three-sport athlete and the co-captain of the field hockey team, a girls’ sport, at South Burlington High School.At an away game, he said he was verbally harassed and threatened by the members of the host school’s football team for using the girls’ restroom.
“The harassment only stopped when I was reduced to tears and told them I was in fact a female,” said Kyle, now a senior.
But Kyle said it wasn’t the harassment that affected him the most.
“It was the fear and apprehension of possibly having to use the bathroom during the school day that caused me the most harm,” he said. “By eighth grade I had almost made a game out of waiting for the end of the day so I could use the bathroom at my own home.”
Gender-neutral bathrooms can be as simple as what are now considered handicapped accessible bathrooms that are in a single room, he said.
The commission expressed some sympathy toward the plight of young people whose struggles with gender identity make them uncomfortable using gender-specific bathrooms, but it didn’t take any action.
Joseph Benning, chairman of the commission’s board, told Kyle he should prepare to deal with resistance from school officials who wouldn’t have the resources to change school bathrooms.
“You’ve begun the process by opening up doors even to us, who never would have envisioned this being a problem at all,” Benning. “Once you start on that path, however, you are going to run into opposition. As you go down the road you need to be prepared for it.”
No opponents of the idea attended the meeting, although Benning said they would be welcomed at future meetings.
Kyle is working with the Burlington-based group Outright Vermont, a social service organization for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth.
“The hope is that this is the first statewide gender-neutral bathroom campaign in the country,” said Outright Executive Director Christopher Neff. “Vermont is a leader. This is another opportunity to again be the first in the nation and say we are going to make sure that all of our students, no matter who they are, are safe and protected.”
A Vermont Department of Education spokesman couldn’t find anyone to answer questions about the issue on Thursday.
Vermont was the first state in the country that allowed same sex couples to form civil unions and earlier this year the Legislature approved same-sex marriage. State law also includes the Gender Identity Nondiscrimination Act of 2007.
In a separate statement given to the board, Kyle said that he did not feel safe in gender-specific bathrooms. Throughout middle school he said he would “hold it” to avoid being harmed by others.
“This procedure of ‘holding it’ caused me to pay less attention in class, neglect my studies, and fear going to school in the morning,” he said.
He said South Burlington High School has a number of unisex bathrooms and his feelings of “fear and apprehension” dissolved.
Neff told the board the process was just beginning and they hoped the board would take a stand on the issue that young people need to feel comfortable when they are in school.
my stance has always been ‘ do you have gender specific bathrooms in your home?’
also always wondered why the toilets in the woman’s room are always spattered, don’t cis-gender women sit to pee? if so how can ya splatter?
@Jessie, “if so how can ya splatter?”
By doing the “hover”.
I’m sorry but PC or not this has to be said: as with special education that is bankrupting our schools, the nation’s property owners should not be burdoened with this type of requirement.
We spend over 100k per pupil for certain types of special education needs and that falls to the property owners in a community to pay for.
In my opinion this request to mandate gender neutral bathrooms is extreme. I understand the challenge these people face, but at some point they simply need to decide which bathroom is right for them and use it. Rembember, there are stalls, so it really shouldn’t matter which they choose.
Now, requiring that schools allow for this choice, educate the children about their classmates that may be different than them and ensuring there are private areas such as stalls is important, but mandating new construction at this time of funding crises (our local school district has lost $2MM in state aid due to the economy) is not appropriate.
Honestly this falls into the special rights category that so many opponents claim we want. We need to fight for the basic rights all citizens have. Nobody has the right to a private public bathroom and we hurt our cause overall by requesting it.
Tough love, sorry, not because of any animus towards the transgendered, but in the interest of our entire community attaining the basic equality we lack.
Would this young man be happy if Vt. didn’t allow those kids to abuse him in that way? If they had been educated about his difference and taught to respect it? He should be and that is what we should afford everyone as basic human dignity.
I don’t see adding ONE rest room which can serve as a facility for all in the school as being a ‘burden’ on local budgets.
Any more than adding a handicapped-accessible restroom AND rampways is a budget burden.
If it lowers the risk of harassment and bullying and provides a measure of personal privacy for a class of people who require it, I have no objections whatsoever.
What can possibly be objectionable to letting people feel secure and protected in the most intimate of personal settings outside the bedroom?
Gender neutral bathrooms are not extreme, just civilized. They are present all over Europe. Only Americans are so Victorian as to not embrace them.
I just have a question? What did this transgender youth do during gym class? I believe that we should all be treated equally and free of bias, but a mandate for genderless bathrooms is ridiculous. We are becoming too politically correct as a nation.
We should be teaching tolerance, not mandating genderless bathrooms in school. This will only alienate and draw attention, even unwanted attention, to transgender youths.
Next, we will have pregnant teens wanting free daycare provided by the school.
Kids are cruel! I endured years of teasing and bullying while in school.
I don’t know what the answer to this situation is, but we need to tread very lightly.
Hey guys, how about you try to go the whole day without using the restroom for fear of being harassed to the point of tears, or worse, physically assaulted. It’d be great if we could simply teach the children to tolerate different gender identities, but we all know that children are ruthless. We need to work with the society we have currently while we work towards a more tolerant one.
Poor person cannot win: s/he goes into the boy’s toilet and gets the living sheet beat out of him, or he goes into the girl’s and empties the place to shrieks of “eeeeek!” If it be argued that it’s too expensive to provide a special loo for the transpeople, point out that accommodations were made for the handicapped. I used to live in Vermont so I am very proud a person at South Burlington would have the balls — oops! — the moxie to make an issue of it.
Highschool bathrooms and locker rooms were some of the scariest places I’ve ever been in. I didn’t consider myself trans when I was in highschool a few years ago, but even so I certainly did not fit the typical male stereotype, and as such whenever I went into the men’s room and anyone else was in there I quickly ducked into an empty stall and locked the door. Unfortunately, even then I was not safe from harassment, because people would kick the door in and continue to bother me (the locks weren’t very good, they rarely ever are in men’s rooms, I don’t know how it is in women’s rooms). So the claim that stalls are safe and private places for gender non-conforming people is completely incorrect. If there was a gender neutral or single person bathroom available to the students in my school, it would have made things a lot easier on me. Sure new construction in a school might be more expensive for the taxpayers, but with the extraordinarily high rate of suicide for lgbt youth due to harassment, how can we not? Isn’t the life of a child worth a little extra money, even in these difficult times?
I love gender neutral bathrooms.I don’t feel masculine looking enough to feel safe in a man’s can,and Im not feminine enough to use the womens,so usually I avoid public bathrooms.
I think it should get realized . knowing that we have our human rights .
I think we can all imagine a number of situations in which someone would feel uncomfortable in a group restroom, transgender or not. While I also think that many transgender people would prefer not to be singled out by being directed to an alternate restroom.
I would assume that most, if not all, schools have at least one single user restroom in the building. I don’t understand what additional cost there would be in allowing students who would prefer a private restroom, for whatever reason, to use it.
If it turns out that large numbers of students make that choice, we can just keep that in mind when building new schools.
Just an idea. I know at least in my schools there was always a single-person bathroom in the nurse’s office. If s/he does not feel safe or comfortable in one of the gender specific restrooms provided, then that may be a safe alternative.
I think it is a little ridiculous to mandate that a school also have a gender neutral bathroom. And I can also invision that this student’s peers know that s/he uses the one specific gender-neutral bathroom, and attempts would be made to vandalize the room, door etc. And I can only imagine a gang of students waiting outside the restroom prepared to harrass the student exiting the gender neutral restroom! (Would a guard or some teacher supervision then need to be posted outside the restroom?!) Has this idea really been thought all the way through?
I had always been negative to gender neutral public washrooms until I visited Scandinavia back in 2006. I discovered that the gender neutral washrooms there were more secure and more private than our gender specific washrooms. When one knows the facts, they will also know that there can be no moral or safety problems concerning gender-neutral washrooms. So, let’s change!
I sympathize with this teen, but we cannot expect to change everything in the world for an individual. I am Gay and
understand being different, but I don’t expect Gay bathrooms! Pick a side and use that bathroom! If you are dressed as a woman than I guess you go into the woman’s bathroom. This world is out of control with demands. If I were shy, should I expect personal bathrooms. Let’s try to stop with the selfishness and go with facilities for the masses. That’s life and we can’t always have our own way.