Why a high school student's use of a girls' restroom sparked community debate

Hillsboro High School student, Lila Perry, sparked a debate over transgender rights when she decided to use the girls bathroom at school.

|
Robert Cohen/St. Louis Post-Dispatch/AP
Lila Perry, a senior transgender student at Hillsboro High School in St. Louis, speaks with reporters as Blayke Childs, back, offers his opinion following a student walkout at the school held in both support and opposition to Lila's request to use the girls bathrooms and locker rooms rather than a faculty bathroom.

While Supreme Court rulings have brought attention to LGBT rights as of late, transgender individuals still face challenges, particularly transgender students who have to maneuver public places and bathrooms.

Lila Perry, a student at Hillsboro High School in Missouri, ignited a debate last week when she tried to use the girls bathroom at school. Lila, who came out as transgender during the middle of last school year, used the unisex faculty bathroom previously, but now says she “wants to be treated like other female students,” reported the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Lila's decision spread through the school district, prompting discussion at a recent school board meeting. Many parents argued that Lila was receiving special rights because of her transgender identification, and as a result some students protested by electing to leave campus Monday. Lila was kept in the principal’s office during the protest, as school administrators worried about her safety. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “Students and parents interviewed after the walkout were overwhelmingly in support of keeping Lila, 17, out of the school facilities for girls.”

School officials sided with Lila. "We will promote tolerance and acceptance of all students that attend our district while not tolerating bullying/harassing behaviors of any type in any form," wrote Hillsboro High School Superintendent Aaron D. Cornman in a statement. The statement went on to clarify that the district accepts all students no matter their race, gender, or sexual orientation.

According to the 2012 National Transgender Discrimination Survey, nearly 80 percent of transgender individuals say they have been harassed.

“In school and beyond, social life for those who express a transgender identity or exhibit “gender nonconforming” behavior can be a daily ordeal,” reported Harry Bruinius of The Christian Science Monitor

While Lila didn’t disclose outright harassment, she says that although school administrators allow her to use the girls facilities, she “rarely uses the bathroom now while at school” and that she also “dropped out of her physical education class because there is little supervision.”

Ultimately, the school board’s support of Lila maintains that transgender rights must be upheld, and echoes private and federal moves to provide for transgenders.

Roughly 2/3 of the largest companies in the United States offer specific protections for transgender people, Mr. Bruinius reported. President Obama also took a public stand on the issue in early April when the White House opened its first gender-neutral bathroom.

This is a “symbolic step by the Obama administration to raise awareness of issues within the LGBT community,” the Monitor’s Husna Haq reported following the White House announcement. “It may signal a trend toward more gender-neutral restrooms in facilities across the country.”

Gender-neutral restrooms in schools could quell some of the uncertainties parents raise, but in Lila's case, acceptance, not neutralization is what she wants. "I didn't want to be in something gender-neutral," she said, referring to the faculty bathroom. "I am a girl. I am not going to be pushed away to another bathroom."​

This report contains material from the Associated Press.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Why a high school student's use of a girls' restroom sparked community debate
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2015/0902/Why-a-high-school-student-s-use-of-a-girls-restroom-sparked-community-debate
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe