1ºRebecca Fleming Cole The dress code was established before they were aware of needing to specify “at birth”. The time to fight this was not AT graduation, it was at the very least the beginning of the school year. It does specify girls and boys.
Everything is not about “anti trans” just like every thing isn’t about race. There is a right way and a wrong way to get rules changed. This wasn’t really the way. The school district did not waste resources on this. The family took it to court.
And again, she could have worn a pants suit and flats and I would bet nothing would be said.
Hey, it wasn’t really that long ago that my nephew showed up at graduation with a small earring in. The principal walked onto the field and to my nephew and made him remove it. We thought it was the stupidest thing ever. A year or two later, the rule was changed. So I do get rules needing to be changed.
Personally, I don’t care what someone wears under that robe. I am more concerned that they walk down that aisle and receive that diploma because they earned it.
But you have to fight unfair rules in the right time and the right way.
2ºBetsy Malavet No there are none because I am telling you the rules were made at a time when they didn’t see a reason to have the rules for transgender students. I know because the same is true of every other high school here. If any have rules that include transgender it’s because someone has gone to the school board and had them changed previously. Most have had the same dress code for graduation for years.
For instance, I graduated in 81, my oldest 2000, middle child 2002 and youngest 2016. All from the same school. All had almost identical dress codes for graduation. It will change when someone has reason to fight for that change.
I mentioned a nephew in a earlier post, and an earring. After he graduated and fought all year to wear that earring, they changed the rule.
It’s likely, that this rule when change next year. But it takes that fight to get it changed.
3ºDon Joy you think Forbes and USA Today are any better? You must have not gotten very far in higher education, if at all... Show me an article from the NY Times or the Wall Street Journal--those are "papers of record"! Here's a definition, in case you have no clue: "A newspaper of record is a major national newspaper with large circulation whose editorial and news-gathering functions are considered authoritative and independent; they are thus "newspapers of record by reputation" and include some of the oldest and most widely respected newspapers in the world. The level and trend in the number of "newspapers of record by reputation" is regarded as being related to the state of press freedom and political freedom in a country."
4ºSteve Fitzpatrick
Why is it so important she be a he, "Steve?"
Is your existence heavily impacted by how other people are identified?
You MUST insist on her being a "HE!!!" It's imperative in some way.
I don't get it.
I know why I call her a she. It's because she prefers that and it's no skin off my nose to use a simple, easy to pronounce pronoun that makes her life better.
I don't get you.
Do you live for hate? Do you have some kind of insecurity? Is there some compulsion? Maybe it's an inclusion with the people you think are cool .
You're the kind of person who will try to make somebody else's life harder just so the "cool" people will like you.
That's sad.
5ºMark Neil Silber They aren't persecuting them. Hardly. The Trans community do not have the right to push their abbherent behavior or agenda on us. They should not be indoctrinating our kids in school, they should not be interfering or participating in women's sports, they should not be in our girls locker rooms. Our society has always had certain morals and norms. The majority of our society follow these norms. A very small percentage live in a delusional world, not reality. So they should have their own space and place. A trans woman should Never Be Able to win a Woman of the year award. It's becoming a Slap in the face to ALL Wonen
6ºWhat's truly sad in all these comments is the fact that Stupids still have no knowledge or understanding of the how's, why's or what's of Transgender people. Most have had clear signs since infancy of being closer to an opposite gender. Being subjected to gender based on physical attributes is a social construct devised in the 50's and has no relation to the gender anyone feels is within them. Looking at the volume of the cortex using voxel-based morphometry, females-to-male and male-to-female gender individuals had a smaller grey matter volume in their left somatosensory and primary motor cortices in comparison to cisgender male controls. Study some real science instead of relying on how Society tells you to think! Forcing a Transgender person to live within the constructs of who they are not is what causes mental illness and give the high rates of suicide during adolescence. If you allow anyone to be whom they feel they are regardless of those that don't like it, can lower their suicide rates dramatically.
7ºDarrel Evans except for the paper they signed was left open for broad interpretation. As in, the family interpreted it as their daughter needed to dress nicely. The lawyer argued, in this case, that gender specifics weren't clarified. The judge ruled on their personal conservative beliefs that the judge's definition of nicely = someone dressing as the gender they were born with the notion that we should all be following some unspoken gender stereotyped fashion trend. The judge should be immediately removed from their position and the student and their family is deserved an apology. The bigots at the school should be removed from their positions or they should hire someone else to write the dress code and policies so that different interpretations cant happen.
8ºIdiots in this comment section: "Rules are rules!"
Those same idiots the past three years:
"No large gatherings during a raging pandemic? You can't tell us what to do! Plague rats unite!"
"What do you mean I have to wear a mask in this store? You will not infringe on my God-given right to cough directly on retail workers!"
"A rule that says I have to be vaccinated to work here? This is literally exactly what happened to the Jews during the Holocaust. And it's a hate crime because of how much I hate it."
"I don't care about any so-called rules or laws; we're going to smash through the windows, erect the gallows on the lawn, kidnap the Vice President and Speaker of the House, and force them to make Trump emperor for life!"
9ºWayne Patton I thought your question was legitimate until I read the end of your hateful comment. So a big reason why no trans girl is referred to as a biological boy is because it ignores their identity and only operates under the obsession people have with trying to label people and fit them into boxes. "Biological boy" ignores their pronouns are likely she/her/hers (or with the inclusion of they/them). This isn't a complicated concept to understand, that a trans individual just means they aren't presenting and/or identifying as the gender they were assigned at birth. We've also come a long way medically when it comes to hormonal therapy and transitional surgery. I've seen many individuals that have gone through it and I would've never guessed they were trans. So the use of "biological boy" would only be reliant on simply having standard male chromosomes or what may be occurring on a gene level etc; the xx and xy chromosomes have been found to have a plethora of variants we didn't necessarily know about 50 years ago. In addition, the altering of genes is a real thing now FYI so to save from a lot of headaches with attempting to define "biological", it's really easy and shorter to just say "trans [insert gender]". If you can't fathom any of that, then we don't need you as part of our society.
10ºSharon Mixon Kelly the school district wasted time. Time is a resource.
Then the school failed to update their policies. It is the responsibility of the school and school district to ensure their policies and codes are regularly updated. It is not the responsibility of students and student's families to do it.
The principal made a very anti trans comment as reported by this article. You should reread it. The judge made an antitrans ruling. The judge did not act on good unbiased judgement. The policy was ambiguous and the student and their family paid the consequences of an ambiguous policy. It is the fault of the school for that ambiguity. Therefore, the judge made an incorrect ruling.
Regarding your comment of "right time right way". If the student's family and student interpreted the dress code earlier as meaning the student was fine to wear a dress and heals, then they wouldn't have necessarily thought to address what it might have meant earlier in the academic year because they believed it to be a non-issue. There are some individuals who get clarification "just-in-case" and there are some individuals who understand that policies and codes need to be written explicitly, so they believe that exclusions would've been clarified if they were present so they don't request clarification.
This is entirely the fault of the school. An unclear dress code (or any policy) falls on the school, not the student.