The Windmills Never End

I sometimes get very discouraged from all the hate that is directed at us, the trans community. It seems like the more we get our rights the more hate that is directed at us.

For decades there never was any problems with schools, bathroom, and public accommodations until the Republicans stirred up the hate and added it to their political goals to pass attack legislation directed at us.

This is an interesting article about that hatred.

How this Iowa town became a 'political war zone' over transgender rights
The Des Moines Register
By Courtney Crowder
August 18, 2016

AIRFIELD, Ia. — Fairfield High School’s band and choir trip to St. Louis in mid-May was the one of the last school-sponsored activities that Draven Spicer, a senior, took part in before graduation. He couldn't wait to hang out with his choir and band friends at the zoo and Six Flags amusement park.

But he was most excited to stay overnight in a hotel room with other boys. Assigned female at birth, Spicer struggled with his gender identity for years before coming out as a transgender boy at the end of his sophomore year.

“I was finally going to get to room with boys … and I knew I was going to feel so much more comfortable than I had before when I roomed with girls," he said. "It was going to feel right. I knew it.”

What Spicer didn't know as he and the other kids boarded the bus early that Saturday morning is that his rooming with boys coupled with a just-released federal Department of Education “Dear Colleague Letter” instructing K-12 schools to allow transgender students to use the bathroom aligning with their gender identity was going to ignite a controversy in his school district.

That controversy has divided the school board and the town, known as a hub for transcendental meditation and a bastion of progressive thinking. The last few days of the school year became what students and activists have called a “political war zone,” marked by an increase in bullying and threats of physical violence. The tension lingered throughout the summer, reaching a fever-pitch Monday, with the start of school less than a week away.

So what did happen on that overnight trip? Absolutely nothing,

On the trip back to Fairfield from St. Louis, Spicer reflected on rooming with the boys, which he thought had gone well, although they’d stayed up too late eating jelly beans. Spicer was mostly looking forward to going home to use the bathroom. He hadn't used the restroom since leaving the hotel, unaware of Missouri law regarding transgender bathroom usage and a little scared to test the waters.
[…]
As he got off the bus and grabbed his bag, he noticed something wrong with his car. When he got closer he realized someone had used chalk to vandalize the windows with drawings of penises and the phrase, “U r a girl.” His friend’s car was tagged, “Gay people suck.”

How did a weekend that went so good turn into hate? We just have to look at the parents and outside agitators,

"But I could tell once parents were getting involved, it was going to become ugly,” Spicer said.

And outside groups…

Members of Citizens United for Students’ Rights and Liberties group, a community organization that opposes the school's new guidelines, walked out of the meeting after they were approved.

“It’s clear that Fairfield’s transgender policy, which extends to the district’s middle school and three elementary schools as well, endangers the safety and privacy of schoolchildren,” the Family Leader, a conservative, Christian organization, wrote in an article posted to its website Wednesday night. “Girls hesitant to use the restroom or change in the locker room in front of biological males is understandable. Boys uncomfortable with dropping their drawers while a girl is using the adjacent urinal makes sense.”

It was when outside groups and parents started to complain that the students got the clue that it was alright to start to pick on Spicer.

The following week of school was marked by increasing intensity and anxiety caused by rumors and misunderstanding, said Shea Malloy, a friend of Spicer's who also just graduated from Fairfield. “It was sort of like the game telephone gone wrong,” she said.

On Monday, May 16, divisions began to form between student groups within the school, Malloy said. When Tuesday came, the kids supporting the right of transgender students to use the restroom of their gender identity wore black armbands as a way to identify themselves as LGBT allies, Malloy said. But some perceived those armbands as threatening and began to wear red armbands as a sign they disagreed with the guidance. On Wednesday, the two sides wore different color T-shirts for the same reasons.

We see this all around the country. In Maine, the school didn’t have any problems with a trans student until a custodian grandparent told his grandson to go into the girls bathroom and when the school disciplined the boy the grandfather brought in a so called “Family” organization that stirred up the hate. The case went all the way to Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court.

We see it in all of those laws that Republican states legislators have introduced where in one bill they wanted to put a $2500 bounty on our heads, if you catch us in the bathroom of our gender identity and you win $2500. Or in North Carolina where they actually passed a law to make us criminals.