In Colorado this week Coy Mathis’s family is going up against the girl’s former school for not allowing her to use the girls bathroom. One thing that’s different about this first grader is that she is transgender. Born a boy, she now identifies as a girl. She wears normal girl clothes, has long hair, and wants to use the girls bathroom just like the other girls. Starting after their winter break, the young girl was allowed to use the girls bathroom. The school’s argument is that she has the anatomy of a boy and if she uses the girls bathroom then other girls will be offended and confused. The parent’s of the girl say that they are already punishing the little girl for things that haven’t happened yet. No one has been offended so far by her using the girls bathroom, but the school wants to prevent it from happening.
There are so many different things with this rule that bug me. First being that the little girl has legal documentation identifying her as a girl. Both her passport and state issued identification have her listed as a girl. She is considered a girl in classes and throughout the school, but when she needs to use the bathroom, that’s a different story. Now she has left the part of the building where she is allowed to be what she is and be considered a female, and is told that she has to go use the boys bathroom because that is the sex she was born with. Now I don’t know much about little kids, but I know that first grade boys are sure going to make fun of a student dressed as a girl being in their bathroom. For girls she would look like everyone else and because of the stalls, no other child should be seeing anything that would make them uncomfortable.
The school said that in order to make it so that the girl did not feel uncomfortable in the boys bathroom, she could use the gender neutral family bathroom or the nurses bathroom. This further alienates her from her peers. She would be the only student using these bathrooms and other kids would notice. When one kid does something different from other kids they tend to get picked on. Drawing attention to the fact that this girl was born a boy, the other kids might respond by using bullying and taunting toward her. These kids will then be learning at a young age that it is acceptable to single someone out because they are different than you. If the school were to let her use the girls bathroom then the kids would learn that it is okay for a person to be different and that sometimes people are born one way but on the inside they are different.
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