More than 150 students at Hillsboro High School staged a walkout that lasted almost two hours on Monday, and it was all because their transgender classmate Lila Perry wanted to use the girl’s locker room.
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While local news outlets reported that about 30 to 40 students counter protested in favor of granting Lila Perry, a 17-year-old biological male who came out as a transgender last February, permission to use the girls’ bathrooms and locker room, most of the students at the rally are opposed to granting Perry the special privilege. “Without the privacy they have nothing”. She’s taking a gym class this year, during which she assumed she’d rightfully be using the girl’s locker room. However, Lila Perry says she gives the school administration a 9 on a 1-10 scale for making her feel safe, welcomed and loved.
As if to make her point for her, the protesters, including a number of adults who claimed to have relatives at the school, seemed to be in denial that trans women are women.
What do you think about the Hillsboro High School transgender bathroom debate and the refusal by Perry to use the unisex bathroom?
Administrators at the high school referred the Post Dispatch’s questions to Superintendent Aaron Cornman who told the paper that the district “respects the rights of all students and appreciates the fact that the students we are educating are willing to stand on their belief system and to support their cause/beliefs through their expression of free speech”.
Perry believes these claims are “pure and simple bigotry”.
“The girls have rights, and they shouldn’t have to share a bathroom with a boy”, parent Tammy Sorden said.
Jeff Childs, a parent of two school age children, drove from farming to have his voice heard on a Hillsboro street corner.
Perry is no longer enrolled in gym class but said she plans to continue to use the girls’ restroom. I am a girl.
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The school had offered to let Perry use a separate gender-neutral bathroom, which she declined. “I’m not trying to be ignorant, but [Perry] is bringing it out in public for everybody else to deal with”.
