Making Schools Unsafe for Transgender Students

Four years ago this week I published an article entitled under the same title the gist of which was that the same Neanderthals who brought us the Scopes anti-evolution trial in Tennessee in our grandparents’ generation are at it again.  A cabal of right wing politicians and fundamentalist Christian terrorists are attempting to make schools less safe for gay and transgender kids in Tennessee by means of legislation that uses bad religion and irresponsible Christian ethics to prohibit teachers from talking to students about gay and transgender issues and requires teachers, administrators and counselors who learn that a student is lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) to report that information to his/her parents.

That peculiar legislation, done in the name of keeping schools safe for Christians to intimidate and harass students without fear of discipline, was just one of many legislative attempts religious conservatives across the nation to restrict the rights of lesbians, gays and transgender students.

Schools should be safe places for children that teach tolerance and understanding of differences without fear that teachers and administrators will “out” them to their parents and fellow students.  So when President Trump rescinded protections for transgender students that had allowed them to use bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity it seemed the perfect time to write about the problems faced by transgender kids in schools.  Just as I was in the middle of writing that essay I had a fortuitous contact with Ash, a transgender boy in the Midwest, who provided me with an essay he had written describing his traumatic experiences as a transgender boy.

Some adults are confused by the concept of transgender and assume it is a “phase” arising from sexual identity confusion that teens will outgrow as they mature, but that is an incorrect understanding of a genuine human condition, a distinct gender identity that is most easily understood when you have met teens who are transgender and have faced the tragic consequences of people misunderstanding who they are and refusing to accept them.  Because I am a youth counselor I have met a number of teens who have had to face the implications of who they are.  Perhaps the best way to begin to understand these issues and concerns is to let Ash tell you his story in his words as provided to me except for minimal editing to make it shorter and an occasional grammatical, spelling, word or punctuation change as necessary for clarity or readability.

Here is Ash’s story:

My story begins a long time ago, even times I can't remember.  First off I am female to male transgender. When I was young, we were poor, in baby/toddler pictures you can see me and my sister in boys’ clothing handed down from my older brother.  When we started to get on our feet I preferred the handing downs instead of my new girly clothing. I remember in pre-school kids would ask me if I was a boy or a girl.  Even though I said girl something inside me made me extremely happy.

When I was 5 we went to see my family in Tennessee. (I do not remember this but my mom and my grandma’s sister told me this.)  I guess I thought since I didn't know them, they didn't know me. And I said it over and over again, I am a boy.  I refused to wear the dress for the family picture and I only did because my mom told me I could take it off right after the picture and the last time I wore a dress was to my dad’s funeral.

My mom really didn't care what I wore from the ages 3-8, I mean I still wore girl clothes willingly, but I had a lot of guy clothing too.  Especially when it came to summer time, my mom didn't care as much what I wore.

I remember being 8 years old, always being shirtless and I wore boxers.  I remember one day seeing teenagers with their pants sagging showing their boxers and I thought it was the coolest thing ever.  I started doing it all the time.

When I got a Nnintendo DS light I loved writing in the name section the boy names I wished I had. My favorites were Jangoe and Owen.

But when 3rd grade came my mom decided my extreme tom-boy "phase" needed to be over.  When school came she only let me wear girl clothes, I got to keep my boy clothes but at a time when I grew out of them.  From 3rd-5th grade my mom only let me wear girl clothes. But after shopping she would let me buy one guy shirt. When it came to the girl clothes I just got whatever my mom wanted me to get. I didn't fight what she got me but I also didn't ask her to buy me more. When it came to buying that 1 guy shirt I looked down every row looking for the previous one and I always wore those shirts at least once a week.

The years went by and 6th grade was here, my mom decided to let me pick the clothes I wanted and without thinking about it I got all guy clothes. I remember the day they came, I couldn't choose which one to wear. I changed a few times that day.

I started getting bullied and people would call me gay girl and dyke. And I would cry to myself because I didn't understand I was a girl, always acting like a boy.  At this time I couldn't force myself to wear girl clothes, but my mom made me once going to Thanksgiving at my now stepdad's old house.  It was the first time meeting my step sister who was in college and I hated that was my first impression.

6th grade ended and it was summer time. I was about to go to a new school, 7th-12th grade, the school I still go to, and I really wanted to make a good impression.  I wanted friends and to at least be cool to them.  I was excited, I was planning for this great year and then my life changed forever.  It was late June, early July in 2012. I was 12 at the time and I was alone at my grandparents’ house watching YouTube.  While I was watching, in the sidebar a video called FTM timeline came up.  No clue what it meant I decided to watch it, and it explained things.  Talk about how they knew and the struggles they went through and by the time the video ended, I knew I was transgender.

It felt like a weight off my chest for but that weight came crashing down on top of me. When I started to think about my religion, family, kids at school, I wanted to erase my memory.  I prayed to God, crying and begging him to fix me for 2 weeks straight, but got no answer.  After that I just kind of accepted that God hated me (It even says it in the Bible, God hates many people!).

School started and I did make friends.  It was great, I even got invited to y first sleepover and my new friends started asking me who I like and after they went through every single guy and in our grade and I said no to everyone, they said I had to like someone. And I did, a girl and I thought my new friends would at least accept me for liking girls so I told them the name of the girl.  C told me she wasn't gay and had a boyfriend, I told her I understood and please please not tell K that I liked her and they both promised.  The next day S told e C told K and all their friends plus the volleyball team that I liked girls. And I started getting bullied bad, very bad.  People pushed me, called me names.  No one even wanted to do class projects with me, I sat alone at lunch every day. (Side note, the harassment only came from middle schoolers, high schoolers couldn't talk to us.)

I went down to the principal many times, sometimes he gave a warning and even one time he yelled at me in front of the bullies and said maybe he should just call my mom because I seemed to be the problem.  Then I went to the counselor and she made excuses for the bullies.  “Well, gay means happy, how do you know they didn't mean that?”  And of course the kids will say that is what they meant.  She said it RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM.

I got so depressed, my grades were horrible, I didn't eat because I was sleeping all the time and after another day of hell I wrote a Facebook status stating I got bullied every day at school and I couldn't seem to find a teacher who cared.  A lot of high schoolers were on my side and some messaged me asking who the bullies were, and I told a few, and some kids started threatening the bullies.  Next day at school I get called down to the office and the school called the cops on me.  They said everything I wrote on Facebook was lies.  People were screaming at me and getting in my face and when my mom and the cops got there they asked me why I was getting bullied, and I said I wanted my mom to leave the room first, and then my principal said I had 10 seconds to tell my mom why I was being bullied or he will tell her.  Yeah he forced me to out myself!

Then my life just crashed, my stepdad took away the wi-fi for 4 months, and my depression just got worse. I just stayed in my bedroom all the time because it felt like my parents hated me. The neighbor’s wi-fi worked in my room and I got a boyfriend who was in 6th grade, and even though I still only wore guy clothes I got ungrounded because I was dating a boy. But after dating him for 5 months I told him I wanted to be a guy and he broke up with me. During that summer I cut my long hair to my shoulders.

October 31, 2014 is the day I told my mom I was transgender, I thought my stepdad was the only problem, I thought she would accept me, I was SO wrong. She screamed at me, told me she would never accept me, looked me in the eyes and said I will NEVER be her son and then told my stepdad. They didn't take away the wifi, but I wished they did. I was no longer allowed to go to friends’ houses or even have a friend in my room with the door closed. They made me get this super girly haircut and made me grow my hair out months at a time.

In the summer of 2014 when they went on vacation I cut my hair short.  It was my first boy haircut. High school had started and I decided to come out as trans. And even though most people didn't care or accepted me, it felt good not to hide anymore.  In 9th grade I fell in love for the first time with a girl. She was a senior while I was a freshman. We were both in band and she lived close to me, my parents didn't take me to the games so she did. And I would say the games were earlier so I could spend time with her. We never did it, but we made and showed our love in different ways. After about 4 months I ended it because I knew in the end she would pick her boyfriend over me.

In April of 2014, I made a transgender page on Facebook and to this day it has 53K likes and I post every day and it is just not helping educate others, it has helped me.  It opened my mind that there are more than two genders. Most of all it made me know that I am not alone….

Every day I go to school I'm forced to use the girls bathroom were people look at me like I don't belong but the school would never let me use the boys.
Sometimes I sit and think it would have been truly better if i never came out, more friends, more freedom, less hate from family and strangers. Teachers don't even try to use male pronouns on me because it causes problems in class. Why are you calling HER a him? Don't you know SHE is a GIRL?  I've been publicly humiliated in class twice for being transgender, once in 9th grade my boxers were showing and one kid was loudly talking about how gross I was and it started a verbal war --"Wait are you a boy or a girl? Yeah that is weird/gross/ disgusting. So does that mean you have a weiner?" That's when I walked out of class.

Then in 10th grade my class was talking about how wrong and gross it was to be transgender and when the teacher asked what everyone was talking about, someone pretended to throw up in his mouth.  I sat at my desk trying not to cry.
People don't bully me any more. I'm just labeled as the freak now a days, and I'm okay with that. Sure, no one talks to me at school except for my best friend, but at least I don't get bullied anymore.  Now I'm a Junior in high school, everyone still calls me female pronouns, but I'm used to it.

In 8 months I will be moving out because I will be 18 and free. I can move out of this house, live with my supportive grandparents and start male hormones. Spending my senior year hopefully getting breast surgery, male hormones, name change and gender change. So when I go to college no one will know I am a girl, no one will call me she, they will just know me as Ash, not what's in my pants, or that I lived the first 12 years of my life as a girl. Just a normal person—what I've always wanted.  

Transgender kids deserve what every kid deserves--to be treated with respect.  Being safe in their own schools seems like a good place to start.

Humanist Perspectives On The Abortion Debate

The abortion debate can and should be held without reference to Christian belief [which I think humanists would prefer] but it rarely is because most of the anti-abortion advocates base their argument in religion. So I will comment from the Christian Humanist perspective by reminding readers that not all religions or even all Christian churches and denominations are part of the anti-abortion movement. The religion-based anti-abortion crowd is pretty much limited to the Roman Catholic Church and various evangelical and fundamentalist Protestant groups that make common cause with them.

Among the various Christian denominations, churches and advocacy groups there are three fundamentally different approaches to the controversial issue of abortion and abortion right.

The anti-abortion Christians largely consist of the Roman Catholic Church and the extreme right of Protestant Christianity (the fundamentalists and the evangelicals), including Southern Baptists.

The middle group consists of some denominations that take a “nuanced” stance, neither supporting nor opposing abortion but stressing the duty of Christians to recognize that there are valid arguments on both sides of the issue and that each Christian must make his own decision on the specific facts and circumstances and in the light of his or her faith conviction. This middle group includes most Lutheran denominations, the American Baptist Association, and southern Presbyterians.

The third group supports abortion rights. This latter group consists of the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Church of Christ, the United Methodist Church, the Unitarian Universalist Association and the Lutheran Women’s Caucus.

A check with the web sites of these various denominations and groups will provide the specifics of each group’s position. However, individual Christians within each of these denominations often differ from their denomination’s position. For example, there are groups of pro-choice Catholics and anti-abortion Lutherans.

When I was a student in theological school in the late 1950s abortion was not an issue. Curiously until 1980 the Southern Baptists, a conservative evangelical denomination with a history of supporting individual rights, took the position that the right to abortion was a matter of individual freedom. Everything changed with the culture wars that began in the 1980s when the Republicans wanted a foothold among southern conservative Democrats and allied themselves with religious conservatives, using abortion as a wedge issue. It worked. The South is now largely Republican and anti-abortion rights.

The majority of Protestants do not accept the argument of the anti-abortion religionists that a fetus is a human being, or an “unborn baby.” Anti-abortionists have been trying to argue the point (unsuccessfully I think) that terminating a fetus is the same thing as killing a child. We beg to differ on that point for a number of common sense reasons and, for those whose beliefs are presumed to be Christian, for theological reasons as well. We affirm strongly that a fetus is not a child.

Some Christians (including your non-theistic writer!) hold that a human life comes into being at birth when the “breath of life” enters the child and it begins breathing. Traditionally it has been understood that a human being becomes such at birth when it is independent of the mother and breathing on its own and is then considered a child or a baby. Prior to birth it is a fetus, not a child. Consider that a fertilized egg is not a chicken, and we could extend that analogy to note that tadpoles are not frogs, larvae are not grasshoppers, and pine cones are not pine trees.

Traditionally the reason that a human being becomes recognized as such at birth goes back to the Genesis birth stories and is an element of Christian theology. In the Genesis story a human being was born when god breathed the “spirit of life” or “breath” into the new human being. Traditionally this is the point in theology that the “soul” (which is another name for the spirit of life, or ruach in Hebrew) enters the body and a new living human being is born. The issue of when a new human being comes into existence becomes complicated to the point of absurdity by the theological issue of the “soul” and whether the soul comes into being at the birth of a human child, or whether it is pre-existing and enters the body at birth, and how the “soul” relates to the fetus.

I do not understand why fundamentalist Christians, who say they believe quite literally in the Bible, seem to be unaware of this concept, which is a very traditional part of Christian theology. [This is not my belief, but is noted for those who hold that belief. I am a humanist, who happens to believe that the teachings of Jesus are worth taking seriously as an ethical guide, thus a Christian Humanist.]

Anti-abortion supporters have a right to their views, to abstain from abortion if they believe it is morally wrong, and to try to persuade others of the legitimacy of their position. They do not have a right to force their beliefs on the rest of us, to compel others to act or not act in accordance with their values, or to deprive the rest of us of our right to act in accordance with our beliefs. In a pluralistic society it has to be that way. Both the pro-choice and the anti-abortion positions are religious interpretations that have support from Christian believers, but they are religious beliefs and the secular laws of the land should not interfere with the religious rights of either side.

Those who believe that abortion is wrong and wish to abstain from abortion are free to refrain, and those who believe differently (for whom it is a private and often painful decision) should also be able to act on their beliefs without interference from the law. We live in a secular democracy. We do not believe, as do the Taliban whose views we are fighting, that religious views of one group should be written into law.

We should make the point here that because we support the right of women to have an abortion if their personal circumstances make that decision desirable or necessary, that does not mean we are “pro abortion” any more than we are “pro appendectomy” or “pro heart surgery.” Abortion is a medical procedure. Sometimes it is advisable. It needs to be available, as any other medical procedure is available.