Boy living as girl challenges school policy
Coy asks to use girl’s restroom
FOUNTAIN, Colo. — At first, Coy took his sister’s pink blanket, and shunned the car his parents gave him for Christmas.
Then, Coy told his parents he only wanted to wear girls’ clothes. At school, he became upset when his teacher insisted he line up with the boys. All the while, he was becoming depressed and withdrawn, telling his parents at one point he wanted to get “fixed” by doctors.
When Jeremy and Kathryn Mathis learned their son had gender identity disorder — a condition in which someone identifies as the opposite gender — they decided to help Coy live as a girl. And suddenly, she came out of her shell.
“We could force her to be somebody she wasn’t, but it would end up being more damaging to her emotionally and to us because we would lose the relationship with her,” Coy Mathis (left) plays with sister Auri at their home in Fountain, Colo. Coy has been diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder. Biologically, Coy, 6, is a boy, but to her family members and the world, Coy is a transgender girl. Kathryn Mathis said. “She was discussing things like surgery and things like that before and she’s not now, so obviously we’ve done something positive.”
Now, her family is locked in a legal battle with the school district in Fountain, a town 82 miles south of Denver. Coy, 6, wants to use the girls bathroom, while school officials suggest one in the teachers’ lounge or another in the nurse’s office. Her parents say using anything other than the girls’ bathroom could stigmatize Coy, and open her up to bullying.
“The doctor’s bathroom is only for sick people and I’m not sick,” said Coy, who is a triplet. She spoke to a reporter at her house. She wore white tights, a red dress and a sweater.
Fountain-Fort Carson School District 8 declined to comment, citing a com- plaint filed on behalf of the Mathises with the Colorado Office of Civil Rights that alleges a violation of the state’s anti-discrimination law. School officials, however, sent a letter to the family, explaining their decision to prevent Coy from using the girls’ bathroom at Eagleside Elementary, where she is a first-grader.
“I’m certain you can appreciate that as Coy grows older and his male genitals develop along with the rest of his body, at least some parents and students are likely to become uncomfortable with his continued use of the girls’ restroom,” the letter read.
School districts in many states, including Colorado, have enacted policies that allow transgender students to use the bathroom of the gender with which they identify. Sixteen states, including Colorado, have anti-discrimination laws that include protections for transgender people.
Coy is being homeschooled now, along with her siblings, while the issue is being litigated.
Legal battles such as the one the Mathises are facing are rare, said Michael Silverman of the New York-based Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund who is representing the Mathises. He sees about a dozen cases each year. Silverman refers most cases to social workers who work with districts to work out a solution to a well-recognized medical condition.
Psychologists don’t know what causes the condition, but it was added to the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual in 1980.
There’s no consensus on how to treat it in somebody Coy’s age.