Gender Nonconforming Girl Singled Out for Humiliation at HS Graduation
In Mississippi a gender-nonconforming girl was told to walk in her underwear because she’d come to the graduation wearing pants. Earlier a trans girl decided to skip the same ceremony because she was instructed to dress as a boy by school officials.
by Evan Urquhart
We’ve been told the movement is about protecting children from hasty medicalization. We’ve been told it’s about fairness in women’s sports. We’ve even been told, counterintuitively, that it’s because trans people reinforce gender roles. The claims of the anti-trans movement have long been couched in such high-minded terms, despite being allied with hateful messages and even calls for violence. So how are things going in the movement for medical safety, support for women in athletics, and the abolition of gender roles? In Mississipi, it has resulted in the harsh enforced of a gendered dress code, used to single out two girls, one who was trans and the other merely gender-nonconforming, for humiliation. According to local news, the gender nonconforming girl was pulled out of line on the day of the ceremony and told she had to walk in her underwear.
National attention had already been focused on the graduation ceremony at Harrison Central High School when a trans girl identified as L. B. was called into the principal’s office and warned she would be expected to dress as a boy during her high school graduation ceremony. The girl is being represented by the ACLU, but late last week a judge turned down a request that she be allowed to graduate in a dress, following the girls’ dress code. L. B. decided not to attend the graduation under these humiliating circumstances.
However, a local outlet is reporting that another student in the same school also missed walking in her graduation due to the dress code. This time it was a gender-nonconforming girl who showed up in pants and a white shirt. This student had no prior warning that her clothing was unacceptable in the hours leading up to the ceremony and was instead pulled from the line at the last minute and told that wearing pants wasn’t acceptable. The solution reportedly suggested by the school was that she remove the pants and walk for her high school graduation in her underwear.
screenshot from WAFB 9
When considering the anti-trans movement in America it’s important to ask if the rhetoric matches the outcomes. The rhetoric of just-asking-questions or having a few reasable concerns has not resulted in greater protections for children, whether they’re cisgender, transgender, or gender nonconformng. Bans on trans girls in athletics opens the door for genital inspections performed on young girls, if their identities happen to be challenged for any reason. Questions about medical treatment have resulted in draconic bans on all gender-affirming care, mandating that children who have lived happily in their gender for years undergo a dangerous, destabilizing state-mandated detransition. Loving parents are facing child abuse investigations.
The story in Mississippi is representative of the reality of the reactionary anti-trans backlash. A figleaf that gestured at the ideal of protecting kids from harm has fueled a moral panic which results in singling young people out for humiliation to enforce regressive dress codes. As has been long anticipated by the trans community, gender-nonconforming girls are particularly likely to be singled out and made an example of, alongside transgender people of all gender identities. If the anti-trans movement was what it depicted itself as, none of this would be happening. None of this should be happening. Trans and gender-nonconorming youth deserve to experience normal childhoods, not ones where adults mark them for humiliation and work to deprive them of self-esteem and dignity.