This And That In The News… Trans Students

"This And That In The News" is about articles in the news that have caught my eye and I want to share or comment about. These are the articles that caught my attention last week.

Dane County in Wisconsin conducted a survey of student’s in the country and they included the option of identifying as transgender.

Dane County survey provides insight on transgender youth
The Badger Herald
by Alex Arriaga
Posted Jan 30, 2014

Brian Juchems, director of programs at the Gay Straight Alliance for Safe Schools, said it was one of the few surveys that allowed for students to identify as transgender. Transgender youth are more likely to report having mental health problems when compared with non-transgender peers, he said.
[…]
Sixty-two percent of transgender youth reported having no long-term mental health problems compared with 78 percent of non-transgender students, Juchems said.

Thirteen percent of transgender students reported having depression compared to 10 percent of cisgender respondents, and 14 percent have other mental health conditions, not including attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder compared with 2 percent of non-transgender youth, Juchems said.

I think the results are not surprising to anyone who is trans.

Meanwhile, out in California…

New Law on Transgender Students Is Tested in Manteca
KQED
Ana Tintocalis
January 30, 2014

Ashton says he still felt extremely uncomfortable at school because he was treated like a female student. He saw an opportunity for change last year when a bill giving transgender students more rights on campus made its way to Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk.

That bill, AB1266, is also known as the School Success and Opportunity Act. The law was enacted this year, and Ashton decided to use it after he was assigned to an all-girls aerobic class.
[...]
“We had a lot of conversations about how to deal with this,” says Clara Schmiedt, Manteca Unified’s director of secondary education, who was picked to develop a new district policy after Ashton came forward. “Controversy on either side of this is something that a school district does not want.”
[…]
Manteca Unified now joins other school districts that are granting accommodations on a case-by-case basis. In Ashton’s case, his teachers have to address him by his new name and use all the corresponding male pronouns. And he is free to use the boys’ restroom and the boys’ locker rooms.

Of course there is opposition to their decision,

“When I was in high school, I know of so many boys who would have loved to have switched their identities for a day to walk into a girl’s locker room or a girl’s restroom,” Mendoza says. “My prediction is an increase of sexual assaults in the public school system.”

The old bogyman in the bathroom to create fear and panic.