My Speech…

I just got back from the Civil Rights and Anti-Bullying Leadership Summit where I was a guest speaker. The Summit was sponsored by Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities (CHRO) and the Office of Protection and Advocacy for Persons with Disabilities. As usual, I worried about nothing; my speech received good reviews from those in the audience.

After the Summit was over I went out to dinner with a friend and I didn’t get back until a little after 8, so it was another long day.

Here is a rough draft of my speech (The final version was in outline formation and the draft version was not proofread.).

I want to thank the CHRO for inviting me here today to speak at this summit. I want to speak today about some of the barriers that trans-people face when they come “Out” in school.

It is very obvious to our classmate when we transition there is no hiding the fact that we have changed genders and as a result we are more susceptible to bullying and harassment.

There are also more barriers that we have to face when we transition in school. What name will our teachers call us by? What name will be on our records? How will our records be changed? What bathroom or locker room will we have to use? These are all challenges that we have to face when we transition.

The new gender identity and expression anti-discrimination law will help, but it is only a start and by being here this afternoon you have taken the first steps to taking down the barriers.

To paraphrase the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, it takes a whole village to transition. When we transition everyone around us transitions also. Not only the teachers, administrators and students transition with us, they have to adjust to our new name and call us by the proper pronouns.

But also the janitor, the school bus driver, the cafeteria workers, everyone who comes in contact with us has to transition with us.

But it doesn’t just end there. The parents of the other students and everyone they come in contact with every day in an every widening circle and not everyone will understand or be supportive. Will we be asked to slumber parties? Will we be invited to birthday parties? Will we be invited to play on a baseball team?

Maine has a similar anti-discrimination law and one particular case that was brought before Maine’s Human Rights Commission was about a trans-student who was discriminated against. It all started with good intentions, the let her use the facilities for her gender identity and her classmates did not have a problem with her using them. She was even elected to vice president of her class and excelled academically.

The problems started when a grandparent complained to the school board and to an outside organization that put pressure on the school board. The board caved in and ordered her to use the staff bathroom. That was when the bullying started and the assigned an adult to accompany her to stop the bullying.

Let’s stop for a moment and consider what the school did.

It singled her out and isolated her from the rest of her class, in other words it punished her for being transgender. Can you think of a worst punishment for a child than to be followed around by an adult, followed in to the bathroom, followed between classes and followed to the cafeteria.
As I said earlier, when we transition our family transitioned with use. Her twin brother also started to be bullied by other student who called him “fag” and he started getting into fights.

What could the school district have done differently?

Well for one thing they could have obeyed the law. As I said, Maine has a similar law that protects gender identity and expression and they also could have had a policy in place for students who transition.

Before the trouble started at school, there were playdates and sleepovers with other students her age. She was accepted as “just one of the girls.” However, once the school changed their policy the sleepovers and playing with her girls friends stopped. She became more and more isolated from her classmates both at school and after school.

As a result of the school’s actions, the student and her family filed a complaint with Maine’s Human Rights commission and a law suit. The complaint was settled in their favor and the court case is still pending.

But their story doesn’t end there. The family has moved to another town and she is now going stealth in order to avoid bullying and harassment. In other words she is keeping the fact that she is transgender a secret. A trans-person should not have to go stealth if they don’t want, they shouldn’t have to hide in the shadows and live a life of a lie.

At the new school she was allowed to use the girls bathroom, she made new friends, went to school dances. But she now constantly lived feared being exposed and the harassment and bullying would start all over again. But eventually they decided to come out again, but this time they had a supportive a school system with counselors, coaches, teachers and community leaders who cared for her.

You do not have to look far to find other cases like hers here in Connecticut.

A few years back before the passage of the gender inclusive anti-discrimination and bullying legislation, a trans-women transitioned in high school and was bullied by a student. The school didn’t know what to do so they transferred her to another school, thereby removing the support system of classmates and teachers that she had developed.

However, they did nothing to the bully, he went on bullying other students and the school transferred him to another school.

Can you guess which school?

You guested it, the same school where she was transferred and he picked up the bullying where he left off which forced her to drop out of school and be homed schooled. She eventually returned to her original high school and graduated with her class.

What can be done to avoid cases like these? An excellent starting point to learn about the Connecticut gender inclusive anti-discrimination law is the CHRO has an excellent document on their home page, “Guidelines for Schools on Gender Identity and Expression” that can be used as a guide when writing a school policy for gender variant students.

What should a policy on students who transition cover?

Well the obvious topics are… bathrooms & locker rooms. But also how school record changes are to be handle, name change, the proper use of pronouns, physical education classes & intramural sports, a policy on how the media inquiries are to be dealt with and by whom. The policy may also contain requirements for diversity training for the teachers and the staff.

There should a policy for how a transgender person is to be addressed in class and on official records; the two may not be the same. A trans-student may be living in their true gender and still have not legally changed their name, so the policy should have some way to cover that situation. It should also address the change of gender markers on the student’s school records.

I attended graduate school at UConn before I legally transitioned and at the beginning of the semester I talked to my professors before class. I asked them to call me Diana and if I could hand in my homework using my name. For the semester I was Diana, in class they called me by my new name and I took all the exams using Diana, even though it was not my legal name and the end of the semester they turned in my grades under my legal name.

When I did transition, UConn changed my name on their records and the whole procedure went smoothly without any glitches.

There should be a policy for the use of bathrooms, locker rooms and other sex-segregated facilities. The policy may be building specific. One of the high schools might be newer and have individual stalls for showers, so it might have a different policy than a school that didn’t have individual stalls. However, in no case should the policy be contrary to the law.

An important part of the policy should be how other parents are notified of a student’s transition. What can and cannot be made public. Who the spokesperson is for the school system, will it be the principal or someone on the board of education or possible someone from the city legal department, but it should be stated in the policy. Also who will talk to the media if they make an inquiry?

The policy should also include what sports team will the trans-student play on? What are the NCAA guidelines are for transgender students? Do they conform to the state law?

For colleges and universities they should have a residence halls policy, they may set aside a gender neutral rooms or floors.

These are all questions that should be addressed in the school policy, they are all questions that will arise when, not if, a student transitions. You want to avoid at all cost to repeat the mistakes that the Maine school system made. It is much better to have a policy in place and reviewed than it is to develop a policy as you are handling the crisis.

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Resources that I used for reference for the speech.
 'Going Stealth': A Complicated and Dynamic Family Decision
Led by the child who simply knew
Doe v. Clenchy
Transgender policy approved
Groundbreaking Report Urges High School and College Athletics to Establish Standard, National Policies for Transgender Student Athletes
EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR TRANSGENDER STUDENT ATHLETES
Statement of the Stockholm consensus on sex reassignment in sports