Cross Dressing Teen Disrupts Class?

I’ve lost the initial thrust of what I was going to type – got distracted and suddenly, the emotion I was feeling towards this issue just evaporated – but the story is still worth discussing.

Here’s an item in my local paper about a teenage boy who just moved to Georgia from Miami. He happens to enjoy dressing in women’s clothing, and did so on his first day of high school. Suffice it to say, the high school where he is enrolled is not known for having a progressive nature. There were fights. People called him a faggot. The school, concerned for his safety, sent him home. He’s since withdrawn.

On the surface, a fairly simple story about the bigotry that still exists regarding transsexual people (if, indeed, that’s still the correct way to refer to someone who identifies with the opposite sex without going so far as to have surgery). And it gets even more play because it’s here in Georgia, which is the South, which is where all ignorant and retarded people live in an uncivilized and wholly backwards “society”, if you can even call the loose pastiche of our cultural fabric being of sufficient enough character to be deemed a “society”.

But then you learn more. Like the fact that boy left home because his parents couldn’t handle his predilection. Or the fact that he wasn’t content just to dress like a girl, he insisted on being allowed to use the girls restroom as well. Or that the administration attempted to provide him a workable solution (he was offered the faculty bathroom to use, to avoid the mess of him going into the girls and the potential danger of him going into the boys) and he instead went into the girls restroom anyway.

So how do we break this down? How do we determine what’s really going on here? Is this about a kid being able to express himself as a transsexual person? Or is it about a kid who’s trying to just garner attention?

Is it freedom of speech for an individual or is it about the rights of the larger student body (no matter how intolerant they may or may not be) to learn in an environment that’s constructed to provide as few distractions as possible?

And how do you address those kids who would wear gang t-shirts? Or Christian t-shirts? Or anything else that might provide an emotional spark to a gaggle of hormonally charged teenagers who don’t yet have the necessary mental equipment to handle things like this?

I don’t know the answer. I feel bad that the kid can’t be himself, if this is really who he wants to be. He shouldn’t have to be called a faggot or queer. He shouldn’t have to worry about getting the stuffing kicked out of him because he’s perceived as strange.

But that’s assuming he’s sincere. How can you really know? What if he’s just exceptionally bright and has found a loophole to exploit? What if he just doesn’t want to go to school at all, and rather than just drop out, he wants someone else to make the decision for him?

If we’re dealing with that kind of a person, then what he’s doing is unfair to the rest of the kids. They should be able to learn in peace, or as close to it as you can come in high school, where everything is judged by everyone else as everyone tries to figure out how to fit into a society that isn’t necessarily geared towards you.

So what do we do? Let him be him, and endure the consequences of his actions? Make everyone else bend to his standard?

And whatever the choice, what are the implications for the rest of the student body? If you force him to dress in a way he doesn’t want to, you enforce the already high and holy sense that teenagers have of alienation and oppression. But if you allow him to do as he pleases, then it’s open season – everyone has to get their way or you risk causing a riot.

Is this a civil rights issue?

Again, I don’t know. But it presents the great dilemma of a society that embraces and values freedom: that the ideal is always easier than the reality.