Just a mere two months or so after the US Supreme Court ruled same sex marriage constitutional, and opened the door for more tolerance of the LGBTQ+ community, an incident at a high school in Jefferson County, Missouri proves that acceptance might be farther away than we think.
Lila Perry, a senior at Hillsboro High School, faced an unthinkable display of rejection when she tried to use the girls’ locker room during gym class. Seems pretty innocuous – all she wanted to do was use the locker room she felt most comfortable with. But because Perry is a transgender teen, well over 150 of her fellow students walked out of the school in a defiant gesture of disapproval.
Perry, who claims that the walkout was based more on “bigotry” than any possible discomfort they claimed to be experiencing, soon after dropped out of gym class for her own safety.
The fact that something like this is still happening in 2015, after the country expressed vehement approval for same sex marriage, is appalling. It only goes to show that while gay and lesbian individuals in the US have enjoyed more support in recent years, trans persons continue to remain marginalized in society. They have not experienced the same popularity in the media, be it movies, television series or even the news (how often do you see reports of trans hate crimes versus gay hate crimes?). While this tide is beginning to turn with stars like Laverne Cox, more attention needs to be paid to the plight of this traditionally oppressed population. If a senior girl can’t even use a locker room in her own high school without being publicly shamed, we clearly aren’t even close to being an equal society for all.
The school has given Perry the option of using a “gender neutral” bathroom, but she isn’t settling for less than what she believes is her right. As she explained, “I wasn’t hurting anyone and I didn’t want to feel segregated out. I am girl, I shouldn’t be pushed off to another bathroom.”
Perry didn’t face shunning from everybody: some 30 to 40 students came to her aid and formed a counter-protest, something that Perry greatly appreciated. And just yesterday roughly 100 people attended a rally called #LiftingUpLila in the town to get behind her cause.
We can only hope that this means Perry might just get what she so rightly deserves, and on a larger scale that this event might shed light on this predicament.