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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.
Not everyone can conform to a single, narrow, socially defined concept of gender one way or the other. Some people just don’t, and people like that, regardless of which bathroom they choose to go into, will be harassed for being different. For example, I am male, and I have no intention of changing this whatsoever, so therefore I (reluctantly) use the men’s rooms. But that does not mean that I feel safe in there, nor does it mean that people will just leave me alone. Simply “choosing a side” is not a valid choice for all people. So really, gender neutral bathrooms (the big kinds, not simply special individual bathrooms) are there for more people than just expressly trans people. Of course there would be logistical problems in the beginning, and so on and so forth, but there would be those kinds of problems for any major change, and it should not dissuade us from seeking to fix a problem. Facilities in which we can all feel safe and comfortable in are NOT a ’special right’ or ’selfish demand.’ It’s simply a necessity born out of an increasingly diverse society as people find new and unusual ways of identifying and expressing themselves. If you suggest that trans people simply try to conform better so that they can safely use a gendered bathroom, you might as well suggest that gays who want to get married to suck it up and find someone of the opposite gender to do so.
While I have sympathy for their situation, I’m not sure additional bathrooms is a good idea, and that’s not just due to the financial costs.
If a gender-neutral (Am I even using the right term? Despite being ‘LGBT’ I’m not all that smart on the ‘T’) bathroom is added to high schools and middle schools, what is really going to stop students from just vandalizing it? Or just using it themselves as a joke to humiliate their transgendered peers even more?
Bathroom politics can cause a huge problem for the trans person in transition. The girl in question can’t use the girls room because she hasn’t had her naughty bits changed yet (I assume). When she uses the mens room she is attacked.
She is in a no win situation so a genderless bathroom, even the signal stall one would work great. I bet that every one in the school already knows all about her (gossip mill…) so trying to be more of one or another wont work.
I went to nursing school with a transgendered person and she was made to use the signal stall bathroom due to the politics.
Any of you railing AGAINST gender neutral bathrooms have obviously never had security called on you, been threatened verbally or physically, or had to deal with explaining your desire to empty your bladder to whole groups of people. “Family” restrooms are not enough.
With the idea that their are usually more than one set of gender specific bathrooms in most schools, assigning gender neutral status to one set doesn’t sound like a huge sacrifice to me. It’s about labeling. And those finding it easier to use a restroom that doesn’t specify gender would have a place to go. Most gender assured students would stick to the gender specific bathrooms. I may be out on a limb here, but most transgendered people cannot easily identify with anyone gender assured and would seem safe enough to share a bathroom with for those who are neither extremely feminine or masculine. As a gay person I would have no problem going into a bathroom with either sex. The controversy of a guy in a girl’s bathroom is a none issue and I’m going to be going into a bathroom with other guys either way. Personal bathrooms are well and good if your lucky enough to have one in your school. I often used the one in my middle school. I personally don’t suggest new construction, just some relabeling. I wouldn’t be at all surprised at how many people would find more comfort in a unisex bathroom than a gender specific one. @commentors saying other kids would vandalize these bathrooms are just exaggerating a little bit. Any vandalizing of any bathroom would be treated the same way, discouraged and unacceptable. @commentors saying education versus gender non-specific bathrooms, having these would actually be educational to students in acceptance of society of LGBT students in of itself.