Protesters won’t silence me on transgender issues
When I stepped up to the podium at a rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court recently, I couldn’t remember a time in my life when I saw so much vitriol and hate.
Not five feet in front of me, a middle-aged woman on a bullhorn blared. Several men shouted and chanted. Others, who had elbowed their way into the crowd, yelled slurs and called me names that don’t belong in print.
I had come to speak up for women. To tell my story. To lend my voice. Instead of doing the same, they had come to try to shut me up.
Yet even though this was a unique experience — I’m usually not one for rallies, and this experience won’t leave me looking for others — the way it made me feel was all too familiar.
This wasn’t the first time I was nearly intimidated into silence. When I was little, my sister and I spent years in the foster care system. I felt lost — hopeless, and nameless, without a place to call my home.
But when my parents adopted me, they gave me a home. They gave me hope. They also helped me find my voice. Through their love, I’ve learned to be courageous and bold and to speak my mind even when it seems like the world will do anything it can to silence me.
My journey to the steps of the Supreme Court started with another situation when I was pressured to stay quiet. That time, those in power trampled on my privacy and my dignity.
It started during my junior year at Boyertown High School in Pennsylvania. One day, I walked into the girls restroom and found a boy standing there. I was caught off guard. My heart was pounding; I was confused and shocked. I ran out of the bathroom and down the hall. As soon as I could compose myself, I went to tell my principal what had happened.
I expected to be heard and understood. I expected the school officials would respond in a way that would protect my privacy and my dignity. But they didn’t.
Instead, they told me that this was the new normal. Instead of listening, they made me think I was the problem for feeling uncomfortable and vulnerable with a boy in my restroom. They changed the rules without telling us or our parents. Boys who identified as girls could intrude on our privacy based on their own self-perception. School officials didn’t care what I thought.
In time, I decided to speak up and join a lawsuit filed by my Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys against my school district because many adults at my school failed to take my dignity and my privacy seriously. They failed to look out for me and other girls like me, and I wanted to do everything I could to make sure girls younger than me weren’t forced into the same situation.
While the Supreme Court didn’t take my case, it did hear oral arguments in a case that raises similar questions. That case — R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes v. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission — asks whether the government can rewrite the rules in a way that will require employers and encourage public schools to take away private spaces for women like me.
I’m praying that won’t happen. I’m praying that the laws will continue to protect and respect women.
I know what real discrimination feels like — I’ve experienced it — and I don’t want anyone else to go through that kind of pain. But there are good ways to make room for everyone without letting boys enter the girls locker room, restroom or shower area because of their beliefs about their own gender.
I’m speaking up because women and girls deserve to have our private spaces respected. I’m speaking up for young girls — like my little sister — because many of them haven’t found their voice yet.
I’m using my voice for them, even if that means getting shouted down and cursed by grown men and women who ought to know better.