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An Open Letter to the Student Who Will “Fail High School” if Trans People Use Her Locker Room

Sigourney Cole, a freshman at Emmaus High School in Emmaus, Pennsylania has claimed that the Obama Administration’s directive to allow trans students to use locker rooms and bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity will cause her to “fail high school“.

In a statement to the school board, found in this video, Cole goes on to explain that “Gym requires us to participate to pass high school and if I don’t change I am not allowed to participate, so my options are to let myself be discriminated against or fail gym for not participating and not pass through high school, which would jeopardize my future.”

I have a lot of issues with Cole’s reasoning, starting with the fact that she has the audacity to claim that allowing trans students to use the locker room they identify with is discrimination towards her. Cole is cisgender, meaning that she already has an inherent privilege over any of her trans peers and therefore has never been subjected to the kind of discrimination that they have. She has no idea of the constant struggle that trans people face in our society and is oblivious to the fact that her desire to be separated from transgender people is discrimination in and of itself. While Cole seems to be worried about her safety or privacy in the locker room a survey of transgender and gender non-conforming people in 2008 and 2009 found that trans people were actually much more at risk in restrooms/changing facilities than their cisgender counterparts.

“About 70 percent of the sample reported experiencing being denied access to restrooms, being harassed while using restrooms and even experiencing some forms of physical assault,” writes Jody Herman, a public policy expert at the UCLA School of Law who conducted the survey.

So not only is Cole blatantly prejudiced against her trans peers, she is also oblivious to the struggle that they face daily, a struggle caused by the hatred people like herself perpetuate.

Cole also attempts to make the case that Obama’s directive breaks the Pennsylvania state law which ensures students privacy. By this logic you could argue that gym class itself is breaking Pennsylvania law by requiring students to change clothes in the first place, but that claim, just like Cole’s would be an absurd one to make. A student’s privacy is no more infringed on if a transgender student is in the locker room than if it were entirely cisgender teenagers changing together. Either way it is an awkward and uncomfortable pubescent rite-of-passage, and even more so for trans people.

In short, there is no logical basis for Cole’s statement, because it doesn’t come from a place of logic, it comes from hatred.  Cole’s argument is not with the school system or the Obama Administration, it is with transgender people as a whole. Refusing to change in the same place as trans people is transphobia plain and simple, and only serves to alienate members of the community who already face so much discrimination.

(Photo Credit: Margie Peterson/The Morning Call)

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