An Illinois high school district and voters in the nation’s fourth-largest city have drawn what appears to be a line in the sand in the vast desert of transgender rights and relations.
Conant student Kristina Bozhanova was recognized in 2014 for her graphic design for the district’s brand statement.
Township High School District 211, based in Palatine, Illinois, includes five high schools: Conant, Fremd, Hoffman Estates, Palatine, and Schaumburg. A transgender student filed a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights of the US Department of Education, seeking unrestricted access to the locker room for the purposes of changing and showering.
The student in the complaint was born a boy but asserts a gender identity as a girl. For the purposes of this article, we’ll refer to the student as female, since she has not been named for the record.
A transgender student is a student who consistently and uniformly asserts a gender identity different from the student’s assigned sex, or for which there is documented legal or medical evidence that the gender identity is sincerely held as part of the student’s core identity.
The district has consistently maintained it cares for the needs of all students, including transgender ones:
District 211 has supported — and continues to support — transgender students and their families, while always balancing the rights and concerns of all the students it serves. Transgender students who don’t want separate private accommodations are allowed to use restrooms in accordance with their gender identity, as there are private stalls available. They also can participate on sex-identified sports teams, consistent with Illinois High School Association policy, and are provided with private changing areas, both during the regular school day and while participating in after-school activities or athletic events.
But when it comes to walking around a locker room or showering naked, with full male genitalia on display in the presence of high school girls, the district said that was just too much. The schools have been given 30 days to comply with an order from OCR, a ruling that says the schools must allow the student unrestricted access to the girls’ locker room.
“We are disappointed in the findings,” Superintendent Dan Cates told WLS-TV (ABC affiliate). “We do not agree with the conclusion that we violated the law.”
He indicated, though, that he was somewhat sympathetic to the feelings of the transgender student. “She had to go down a long hallway to the other bathroom,” he was quoted as saying. “She noticed she was singled out, and it didn’t make her feel part of the team.”
In a related matter, voters in Houston, Texas, repealed a city ordinance that would uniformly protect the rights of transgender individuals to use public restrooms according to the gender with which they identify, even if it’s different from the sex they were assigned at birth based on anatomical characteristics.
A friend of mine just had a conversation with her high school-age daughter, whose one friend has a sister who identifies as a boy. She dresses like a boy, has boy friends, and so on, my friend told me.
This mother wonders, sincerely, if a girl who changes in the boys’ locker room would be raped or ridiculed, and her concern is a valid one. And although the case in Palatine is a person with male anatomy who identifies as a girl, turnabout makes a reasonable argument. If the full force of the US government is going to be put behind a person with male genitalia who asserts that she is female in terms of her gender identity, then those laws, according to the 14th Amendment, must apply to students with female genitalia who assert that they are male in terms of gender identity.
But here’s the thing. Thinking you’re a female is not the same thing as being a female (or male). I find it puzzling that the US government weighed in on this, considering the fact that NAEP scores are down, schools are in bad states of disrepair, nobody wants to be a teacher anymore, and some schools just are too hot in August, when kids start school.
Can’t we talk about high school students not getting enough sleep because we make them catch a bus at 5:45 AM? Can’t we talk about the huge heroin problem that faces so many of our high school, and even middle school, students?
Surely, we can consider the rights of high school girls (and their parents) who don’t want to be exposed to male genitalia just so they can participate on a volleyball team. This has serious Title IX implications.
Title IX, which protects students from sexual discrimination, contains a clause that states nothing within the statue prohibits schools from “maintaining separate living facilities for the different sexes.” If our government is making a person with male genitalia get naked in front of high school girls, I think the ruling all but flies in the face of Title IX’s language (lawyers, start your engines) and does so with insensitivity to the sensibilities of the majority.
What mother is going to want her daughter playing on a sports team for which part and parcel of that very participation means being subjected to male nudity? Probably less than half. This ruling is backwards, and even though I wrote last month when this story first hit the news that the rights of the minority must be protected to prevent a tyranny of the majority, I was wrong, because this ruling just goes too far in trampling on others’ rights.
In general, transgender individuals experience great anxiety because their bodies don’t match their identities. The body itself is a constant source of discomfort, which is on top of the discomfort many non-transgender high school students feel about their changing bodies.
Tolerance with compassion is one thing. Nakedness is another matter entirely. Another way of saying that is, if you’re naked, nobody cares how you see yourself or how you identify. No easy answers here.
The school district plans to make accommodations for curtains, and I would recommend curtains or some other form of partition—certainly, there’s enough money in the budget for this simple construction project—and private nudity-requiring areas for all students. Using partitions equally for all students kills two birds with one stone: it eliminates any semblance of discrimination, and nudity is kept private. The idea of common shower areas is a relic of the past and should be put there, lest this issue keeps bogging down our schools.
