bullying, gender-neutral bathrooms, safer space, school board, support, transphobia
Jonathon: We had a bit of a negative experience.
Alex: Yes. A couple of negative experiences.
Jessica: Well, same, same kid.
Tara: Yes.
Jessica: Blocked her from leaving the bathroom. Saying you know “You’re a boy. You have to prove it to me.” And it could have gone somewhere yucky, but didn’t. And then the next week, uh, he crawled under the stall and pulled down her pants and touched her.
Alex: Like “You have to prove to me that you’re a boy, because you dress like a girl, and I don’t believe you.”
Jessica: So then yes, then eventually let her leave but said “Don’t tell anybody.”
Alex: Yeah, and so of course she didn’t want to use that bathroom anymore.
Tara: Of course.
Jessica: She’s never used a boy bathroom since that moment.
Tara: Okay.
Alex: But it was difficult because she couldn’t use the girl bathroom either. Because people like...
Jessica: She was getting in trouble from the custodians. So it was like “I just need to pee!”
Alex: Because they didn’t know, so.
Jonathon: And when we brought that up with the principals, and staff, they’ve been very open to talking to people about it.
Alex: They say “We’ll talk to it about them, and we’ll get them some training and stuff.”
Jessica: We found them instantly, they brought in people, that’s when they got really serious about making sure that like, that she was safe. So the equity team came in, and people, uh… grade seven and eight. I think they’re trying to do it with younger kids, it’s just hard to breach this subject, especially for other parents there can be like blow-back.
Tara: Right.
Jessica: But yeah, there’s there's…
Jonathon: They instated a gender-neutral bathroom almost immediately.
Jessica: Yeah! Gave her options for that, and discussed it with the custodians.
Alex: There are signs saying this is a safe space, and stuff like that everywhere
Jessica: Rainbows everywhere, triangles, and discussed like with the custodians, basically top down, how, how you talk to people.
Alex: Like everybody in that school knows her.