Kids

Many of you know that I am interning at a LGBTQI Youth and Family Service Agency and which has been taking me to high schools (More on this in “My Story” on Thursday.) around the state. When I talk to older trans-women I hear a lot of them say something like, “The kids now a days have it so much easier! They pass* so easy at a young age.” True they could have never transitioned in school back twenty or thirty years ago, but the kids now have it just as or even harder transitioning in school. Now they face relentless harassment and bullying from their fellow students, unless they get support from the school administration.

The National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Reports (NGLTF) issued a press release back in October that said,

Among those who had been bullied, harassed or assaulted while they were in school, half reported having attempted suicide. Most notably, suicide attempt rates rise dramatically when teachers were the reported perpetrators: 59 percent for those harassed or bullied by teachers, 76 percent among those who were physically assaulted by teachers and 69 percent among those who were sexually assaulted by teachers.

Of those who reported that they had to “leave school because the harassment was so bad,” 68 percent said they attempted suicide. Fully 61 percent of respondents who expressed a transgender identity or gender non-conformity while in school reported significant abuses in educational settings. From elementary through graduate school, the survey showed high levels of harassment and bullying (59 percent), physical assault (23 percent), sexual assault (8 percent), and expulsion from school (5 percent), all on the basis of gender identity or expression.

Last night on NBC Dateline show they discussed bullying and as I said many times before, it is not enough to talk to bullies or their victims but you also have to get the teachers, the administrators, the bystanders and the community involved.

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In the full length video, the other students step in to defend the victim against the bullies and the show points out that their parents had talks with their children about bullying.

I found an article where a trans-girl and her mother stood up to police indifference …

Howard family pushes for transgender acceptance
Will Gullucci and his mother want police, schools to be more sensitive
By Janene Holzberg,
The Baltimore Sun
March 5, 2011

When a photo of a guy dressed in women's clothing suddenly flashed on the screen near the end of an intense slide show on teenage drunken driving, Will Gullucci felt humiliated.

Gullucci, a Marriotts Ridge High School senior who had "come out" as a transgender person just two years ago and is leading her life as a girl, listened as her fellow seniors laughed loudly. After all the serious shots of drunken teens and car accidents, the larger-than-life photo seemed gratuitous to Gullucci.

"I said, 'Someone better get that photo off the screen, like now,'" Gullucci recalled. She thought the image was inserted for comic relief.

She approached the county police officer who'd given the presentation to tell him what she thought of it, Gullucci said, but soon realized she "may as well have been talking to a brick wall."

Her outrage lead her to educate the police department about trans-people.

Hyde's initial call to county police set in motion a series of conversations that eventually led to the department's decision to incorporate transgender issues into training for the entire police force.

And since she has become an active volunteer with the Columbia-Howard County chapter of the national support group for Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, Hyde has also been working with the county school system to make sure staff members are prepared to protect transgender students from bullying.

One person can make a difference.

I started by writing about the struggles that trans-students have in school. At one of the GSAs that I have visited a trans-student dropped out of the school and the GSA club was discussing how to change the climate in school so that no one again will have to drop out of school because of bullying and harassment.

*Not being identified as transgender.