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Report Finds Transgender Students In New York Face Harassment

6 minute read
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By Maya Rhodan
Updated: | Originally published: ;

Eleven-year-old Casey just wants to be treated like any other girl her age. But at a public school in New York state, she’s not treated the same.

Because Casey is gender non-conforming — she’s not openly transgender but she lives and expresses herself as a girl — she is separated from other girls in her class.

“I have to use a separate bathroom and I’m not allowed to use the girls locker room for gym,” Casey said on a conference call hosted by the New York Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday. “For gym class, I have to use the nurse’s office to change clothes.”

She added, “it makes me feel like I’m a freak and I don’t belong.”

Casey’s story is one of several highlighted in a new report from the New York Civil Liberties Union titled “Dignity for All? Discrimination Against Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Students in New York State.” The report finds students across the state face harassment, bullying and discrimination in school, despite the existence of a state policy enacted to protect youth from being ostracized and abused.

In an analysis of statewide reporting on harassment incidents in schools, as required under the state’s Dignity for All Students Act of 2010, the NYCLU found schools reported 24,478 harassment episodes, 19% of which were related to student’s sex, gender or sexual orientation.

“In public schools across New York, transgender and gender nonconforming children as young as five face relentless harassment, threats and even violence for trying to access their right to an education,” NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman said in a statement. “And instead of supporting kids, too many schools are magnifying the problem by imposing discriminatory and even illegal policies.”

Though transgender and gender non-conforming students across the country are protected by federal anti-discrimination law through Title IX, a handful of states, including New York, have enacted state legislation to further shield students.

In 2010, New York passed historic legislation to protect students from discrimination due to their perceived or actual gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation. New York is one of 18 states and D.C. that have such protections in place. According to the NYCLU report, however, the State Department of Education has “failed to issue guidance to school districts on how to follow the law regarding transgender youth.” Because that guidance hasn’t been issues, it has been left up to individual schools and districts to establish policies in regard to transgender and gender non-conforming youth.

Photos: Meet Transgender America

Laverne Cox Laverne Cox grew up in Mobile, Ala., a town where she recalls everybody being in everybody else’s business. In third grade, after a teacher saw Cox flitting a handheld fan like Scarlett O’Hara, she called Cox’s mother with a message: your son is going to end up in New Orleans wearing a dress. That moment, Cox says, was “profoundly shaming.” Cox later attempted suicide in sixth grade. Her lonely youth started to change when she went to an arts academy for high school and then on to New York City, where she became an actor, landing a featured role in Netflix’s hit Orange Is the New Black. “I absolutely have a lot of work that I still have to do around shame, lingering shame from childhood,” she says. “It’s a struggle every day, to stay present, not to become that, you know, eight-year-old who was bullied and chased home from school.” Gillian Laub for TIME
Laverne Cox Laverne Cox poses for a portrait while on her way to an event in New York City.Gillian Laub for TIME
Paisley Currah Paisley Currah made the decision to transition after he had already become a tenured political science professor at the Brooklyn College, City University of New York. “It’s hard to get fired when you have tenure, but even in that situation I was nervous about it,” Currah says. It went relatively smoothly, much like his childhood in the “gender-free culture” of the 1970s, when there were fewer rules about how young ladies were expected to act. Like many other trans men, he says that his path, though trying, has been an easier one than those trans women have to walk. “The culture tends to assign more authority and gravitas to men,” says Currah, noting that he gets fewer late papers now than when he appeared female. “It makes me think a lot about the pervasiveness of sexism.” Gillian Laub for TIME
Jamie Ewing Jamie Ewing served in the Army and then the National Guard for five years—until November 2013, when she says she was discharged for being transgender. (The military does not allow trans people to serve openly.) Ewing is now working as a defense contractor, getting paid much more for similar work. “I would trade my current job in a heartbeat for the Army if it meant I could wear a uniform again," she says. “It's all about that sense of serving my country.” In her current role, she interacts with many of the same commanders she worked with while in uniform. "They know me. They know my work ethic and skill sets, and they have no issues,” the 28-year-old says. “I'm still the same person." Gillian Laub for TIME
Cassidy Lynn Campbell Cassidy Lynn Campbell learned at a young age that she identified as a girl. But she was ostracized by her peers when she showed up in middle school wearing long hair and girl jeans. After pretending to be gay through most of school, a decision she says instantly made her friends, Campbell finally came out as transgender at the beginning of her senior year. Her classmates in the conservative California town of Huntington Beach turned around and elected the 17-year-old homecoming queen. Her father, who still introduces her as his son Lance, hasn’t been so accepting. “I wish he could see me as what I want him to see me,” she says.Gillian Laub for TIME
Cassidy Lynn Campbell Cassidy Lynn Campbell poses with her friend Victoria Avalos, 18, who has also transitioned from male to female. Gillian Laub for TIME
Ashton Lee After coming out to his family at the beginning of sophomore year at Manteca High School, Lee started collecting signatures to support a California bill that would ensure his right to use the boys’ bathroom and play on boys’ sports teams at his school. The measure, the first of its kind in the U.S., was signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2013. “People used to shove me in the hallways and call me names,” he says. But that’s changed with the new law. “People have been standing down and backing off,” he says, “because they know they’ll get in trouble.”Gillian Laub for TIME
Rose Hayes Rose Hayes, a software engineering director at Google, quickly lost her wife of nearly 23 years when she came out a few years ago. But despite a painful divorce, she says her life is generally much happier. “There’s no comparison,” she says. “There are so few pictures of me smiling from before … and my ability to interact with people, I don’t have this veil in between me and them that used to be there.” Before identifying as transgender, Hayes went through phases of identifying as queer, bisexual and gay. She says that she isn’t a different person now than when she understood herself to be a male, just a more fully realized one. “Yes, my center of gravity moved from that tiny area it was trapped in, but that tiny area is still part of me.”Gillian Laub for TIME

In the report, superintendents complain that the lack of guidance has made them more susceptible to lawsuits. According to the data and stories laid out within it, it has also often left space for harassment and bullying to occur.

On Wednesday’s call, a woman named Michelle shared the story of how she had to take her transgender daughter, Sara, out of a New York school because the anxiety and depression she faced as a result of harassment made learning impossible.

“I never know when she is going to burst into tears or start yelling. She thinks no one likes her, even her family. I spend 75% of my time helping her deal with her anxieties and bringing her to therapy,” she says in the report.

Eliza Byard, the executive director of the advocacy group GLSEN says after the organization’s 25 years of working to ensure that LGBT students experience equity in education it’s “heartbreaking” to see how much work still has to be done to make that a reality.

“Education is the bedrock of individual achievement and societal cohesion and for any group to be systemically excluded as trans and gender non-conforming and lesbian and gay students are in many district is extremely damaging not just to the individual but to all of us in creating risks within society,” Byard says.

Having protection for LGBT students in schools, she says, is critical to their development and overall mental health. Transgender people face staggering challenges from homelessness to family rejection to physical harassment, particularly transgender people of color. About 41% of transgender people report having attempted suicide at least once. According to GLSEN’s 2013 school climate survey, 75% of transgender students feel unsafe at school.

“This report underscores a critical fact—when you pass laws designed to protect youth, you then move on to the rest of the work which is making sure that that law is effectively implemented,” she says. “That the promise of the law becomes reality.”

The NYCLU recommends the state take immediate steps to protect transgender and gender non-conforming students in schools. By passing statewide regulation to make sure students are treated equally, issuing specific guidance on how to address issues like bathrooms and locker rooms, and improving training and data collection, the NYCLU says state could make a real difference in the lives of all students.

There are some signs of progress on the local level, too. In New York City, officials have released guidance for schools to follow on the rights of transgender students and the report highlights at least one school in the city that they feel is getting it right.

The New York State Department of Education is in the process of developing guidance on work school districts can do to establish safe environments for transgender and gender non-conforming youth. The guidance is expected to be released before the start of the 2015-16 school year.

“The most important thing we must do is keep every student safe,” said New York State Education Department Spokesman Dennis Tompkins in a statement to TIME. “The New York State Education Department Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Students Guidance Document can be a tool for school administrators to use to create an inclusive school culture where transgender and gender nonconforming students are empowered to learn and to succeed.”

For students like Casey, however, this is personal.

“I just wish this school would just treat me like every other girl,” she said Wednesday.

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