An unfinished rant to the faculty of my high school:
Dear faculty and staff of Truckee High School,
In order to attempt anonymity, I will be using a pseudonym and my preferred pronouns, which were different from the ones I was assigned at birth. I hope you will understand and respect these distinctions, because they are in place to protect myself, not necessarily from you, but from potential backlash. Please understand that, if you recognize me throughout this letter, as, undoubtedly, some of you will, I would prefer it if none of you chose to contact me. I have left this part of my life behind, and I would like to keep it that way.
I'm writing to you to ask you to include some kind of queer-inclusive education in your curriculum.
I was a student at your school for four years, and, though I rarely experienced it myself, I witnessed massive amounts of homophobia and other forms of bullying at the hands of both students and staff. This is important to me for many reasons, but the largest one is this:
I am a female to male transgendered person. This means that, though I was assigned "female" at birth, and have female genitalia, I identify as a man. I have learned this about myself while in college, because, in Truckee, I had no access to anyone outside of accepted gender norms. In high school, I acted as a heterosexual teenage girl as a means of protecting myself. My friends who came out of the closet as anything other than cisgendered (anyone who identifies with the gender they were assigned at birth, essentially, not transgendered) and/or heterosexual were brutalized, bullied, and made to feel utterly worthless. I would, on occasion, sneak out to their cars before lunch to erase the slurs that were written in the dust on them.Â
When I was still there, I was one of the founding members of the GSA, and I wrote programs and spoke to you during faculty meetings on many occasions. One program in particular, written and enacted by us, was intended to change how queer (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender/transsexual, questioning, intersex, asexual+) students were treated in the classroom. What we wanted you to do was become more aware of how your language, and the language of your students, affected these students. After months of work, when the program started, we were incredibly disappointed by what came of it. The thing we heard the most from staff members was that they "didn't want to be the bad guy" or felt that their ally-ship was properly shown with the sign outside their door, without actually having to change the behavior exhibited in their classrooms.
What I need you all to understand is that, while we admire you for your willingness to support us, you saying that you don't want to speak up and fight on behalf of your queer students is, to be perfectly frank, a cop-out. I did not get paid to go to high school. But I showed up day after day convinced that I was a monster, because I didn't fit into societal norms, and tried so hard to fit myself into the boxes, hating myself more and more every time I had to use the wrong bathroom, or check the wrong box on a standardized test. The only thing that kept me alive throughout was the belief that, once I got out, something would be better. I didn't know what, but I trusted that.Â
You are all very lucky that I trusted that instinct. If I hadn't, I would have ended up like so many of your students who vanish partway through their tenure at your school, the only culprit to their deaths their own shame, humiliation, and pain.
The thing about being queer is that, unlike any ethic or racial minorities, we do not have the support and understanding of our families, not always. Being queer is sometimes considered an assault by friends and family members, a dismissal of the life that was imagined for you by your parents, and the memories and relationships you have with your friends, and even my college-educated parents find it confusing and difficult to comprehend. They do not relate to me as they used to. They treat me now like they've tragically lost a daughter, rather than gained a more beautiful future with their son. Losing the support and understanding of my parents made it more difficult to focus on my classes, relate to my fellow students, and even imagine a future for myself. It is impossible to envision a life when the one you have is so immensely painful and, seemingly, impossible to escape.Â
In the news recently, Chelsea (previously Bradley) Manning was convicted and sentenced to 35 years in prison. Her desire to live life as a woman has been called "asking for attention". If you assume that any student in a similar situation, who wants to change the way they are living their life or the manner in which they are being perceived by their community, is "doing it for attention", you are mistaken. I have been told the same thing many times, in many situations. I developed an eating disorder as a result of hiding my transgenderism. We do not do this for attention. We do it because we need the people in our lives to understand and stand with us. To call us by the names we wish to be called, and to allow us to love the people we love.
If you do not defend your students, who are being affronted in the hallways, in the locker room, in their own homes, then who will? When will we have a generation of students who are not afraid to go to school?Â
My life was saved by discovering my true gender identity. Please consider introducing queer friendly education into your curriculum. The life you save could be mine. The relationship you build with a student could be the relationships that I missed because I was so afraid that there was something deeply wrong with me. Your queer students are counting on you. Do not let them down anymore.
Thank you for reading, and best wishes,
