A decent article in the NYT about high schools, crossdressing, and identity:
At Wesson Attendance Center, a Mississippi public school, just that sort of fight erupted over senior portraits. Last summer, during her photo session, Ceara Sturgis, 17, dutifully tried on the traditional black drape, the open-necked robe that reveals the collarbone, a hint of bare shoulder.
“It was terrible!” said Ms. Sturgis, an honors student, band president and soccer goalie, who has been openly gay since 10th grade. “If you put a boy in a drape, that’s me! I have big shoulders and ooh, it didn’t look like me! I said, ‘I can’t do this!’ So my mom said, ‘Try on the tux.’ And that looked normal.”
Shortly thereafter, students were informed that girls had to wear drapes for yearbook portraits; boys, tuxedos.
The Mississippi chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union wrote to the school. Rickey Clopton, superintendent of Copiah County schools, did not return phone calls. Last month he released a statement affirming that the school’s decision was “based upon sound educational policy and legal precedent.”
Last month, Veronica Rodriguez, Ms. Sturgis’s mother, paid for a full-page ad in the yearbook that is to include a photograph of her daughter in a tuxedo.
What a great mom!
“All this is too much for some educators, who say high school should not be a public stage to work out private identity issues.”
Did these people skip adolescence? This is what being a teenager IS in a nutshell. You can’t prevent it short of putting every child into isolation.
Leah certainly nailed that one. Straight kids and non-trans kids have been expressing their sexualities and gender identities in schools since day 1. Somehow it’s only when the other kids join in that it becomes An Issue Of Concern.