Transgender youth: Everyday items, everyday rights.

• Author: Luhtanen J.D., Melissa

The public bathroom can be a major source of anxiety for transgender youth. Using a public restroom may result in their status being discovered. If they identify as transgender and have not yet revealed their identity, they may feel like an imposter. Worse yet, trans teens may be subject to ridicule, abuse or assault, physical or sexual, in public lavatories. Issues concerning use of the restroom may be the first notice that a school receives that a child is transgender.

--Which Way to the Restroom? Respecting the rights of transgender youth in the school system

The task of protecting transgender youth in schools has begun. A topic that ten years ago was rarely discussed is now at the forefront of policy-making in many school boards across the country. The job of protecting transgender youth has not been easy and is still in the beginning stages, but it is a source of endless debate and discussion, which means it is on the radar of those who care for youth.

In schools, the discussion has centered around harassment, gendered washrooms and change rooms, segregated sports, dress codes, names and pronouns. Looking at this list, it is easy to see that much of it is a list of details; everyday items that make up a person's day: getting dressed, going to the bathroom, changing for gym, having your friends call you by name, and playing on a sports team. Part of the reason that transgender youth are fighting task by task is because a youth, for the most part, cannot have surgery to live in their identified gender. For a youth, this option is not possible and so they fight the battle of details. Their rights cannot stem from the fact that they have proof of surgery or proof of gender on an identification document. This is not to downplay the complexities of gaining rights for transgender adults, but instead to highlight the struggles for youth.

One of the legal debates has been: when does the law accept transgender persons as being the gender that they identify? Some laws and policies depend on the occurrence of gender reassignment surgery and say that a person must have had some surgery that reflects the identified-gender in order to obtain particular rights. More recently some rights have been permitted to transgender people who self-identify their gender. Policies protecting transgender youth cannot depend on the status of surgery, and so have often allowed for self-identification to obtain rights, such as participating on a particular gendered...