Sometimes, the obvious things need to be said with a level of empathy that is difficult to muster for people who may seem heartless and cruel. Those people are sometimes so ignorant and blind that they don’t see their obvious villainy.
Trans people, trans kids, have always existed. Different identities and sexualities are as old as mankind. When they say they care about kids, they can’t exclude children who don’t meet some made-up standard. I’ve watched people who claim to care about children watch kids die without blinking. I’ve watched them strip away healthcare and education protections. If you truly care about kids, please think about what that actually means.
With that being said, some people who claim to care about kids are now obsessed with where my students are using the bathroom.
The bathroom debate
We have politicized where children go to the bathroom. Old politicians are having debates about where kids poop.
So, this debate has been going on for years at this point. During Obama’s second presidency, a push for gender neutral bathrooms led to the inclusion of many spaces for trans and nonbinary people, but by 2016, like most things involving Trump, hate took over. The HB 2 bill in North Carolina was the most famous example of this at the time.
Despite trans students becoming a bigger target in my state thanks to conservatives requiring teachers to out any student who did not identify by their birth gender, an act I still refuse to do, they still had not jumped onto policing what bathroom they used.
Well, that is changing this school year.
My state implemented a new proviso to force students to use the restroom of the gender they were assigned at birth. It is only for the school year, but it is expected to be implemented permanently. The temporary status is only because the state wanted to rush the new rules into action.
Representative Fawn Pedalino (R – Clarendon) politician in support of the proviso said:
“You don’t want girls having to be seen or see, you know, male parts," said representative Fawn Pedalino, "but you also don’t want boys, you know, having to deal with promiscuous girls and being accused of anything happening in a locker room.”
I made an honest attempt to understand this statement and how it relates to trans students. I can’t figure it out. This just isn’t how things work in the real world. You aren’t just going to see unsolicited male parts in a bathroom or a locker room unless you are explicitly looking for them. As for the promiscuous girls part, yeah, I can’t even attempt to explain that one.
I can explain what is really going on there. She is pretending to care about kids to disguise her hate. This is not about children, and it is disgusting that they continue to push that narrative.
This one blindsided me. They have already put such a big target on the LGBTQ community in my state, but I guess I thought they would move on to something else. I wrote about how my South Carolina is banning books, many of them LGBTQ related, here, and I discussed how they expect teachers to out trans students here. This is a consistent, continued attack with no signs of slowing down.
I’m going to try to move with empathy for people who are truly ignorant of the situation. Perhaps they’ve never actually thought about what it means for the government to interfere with the current setup of school bathrooms.
Let me reiterate, trans people have always existed, and my school has always found what works for each individual student. Like learning plans, we figure out what the child needs and make adjustments.
For some students, this may just mean going to the nurse or some other designated bathroom. For others, they are comfortable using a regular bathroom. We’ve never had to draw attention to where a student did their business. We have several trans students in my school, and I’ve never heard a student complain about their bathroom usage.
Of course, many students are cruel, especially away from adult eyes, and this is where my next point comes in. These laws shine a light on trans students. Look at how adults act. Trans people have always existed, and when some news station tells them to make hating trans people their personality, they pour all of their energy into targeting a statistically small population.
If students get a whiff of this new school policy, which they will, at least some of them will feel justified in targeting and bullying our trans kids. If lawmakers truly care about children, they shouldn’t put any student in this situation.
Also, logistically, how are we going to do this without making students and adults extremely uncomfortable? Are we going to follow the kids to the bathroom? These are clearly laws being made by people who haven’t set foot in a school in decades, and care more about fueling hate than education.
Hate is a distraction, and sadly, they are once again putting children in the line of fire.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of LG Ware's work on Medium.