This essay was also published in my column on www.parentsociety.com
When I go scuba diving—a new venture
in my life—I’m always amazed at the incredible diversity of creation in the
deep blue sea. Lobsters and other shellfish with wondrous colors and textures
crawling and swimming on the ocean floor; moray eels sticking out their thick
green bodies as they nibble on whatever goes by their rocky homes. Fish of all shapes and sizes seem to change
color instantly as they glide by my effortlessly. On one of my first dives I was treated to an extraordinary
opportunity of touching an octopus when it was placed on top of my hand. And as
long as I kept moving my hand slightly the tentacles of the octopus would cling
to my hand while its very body changed appearance when a stronger current
jostled us both. Cool!
Coming
up to dry land, I’ve been caught up in the equally fascinating diversity of
creation around me. My memory of these undersea adventures was sparked as I
read the story of six year-old Coy Mathis, a young first grader at Eagleside
Elementary School in Colorado who was banned from using the girls’
restroom. The reason for banning this
little girl from going to the girls’ bathroom is because she was born with male
genitals but behaves like a girl since she was eighteen months old. She’s
always played with Barbie dolls while her same-aged brother played with
dinosaurs. When she was four years old she was telling her mom that something
was wrong with her body. She was diagnosed as “gender identity disorder.” But
her doctors recommended not immediate medical intervention but suggested she
just live life as a girl. She has always appeared as a little girl, with other
students and teachers using the female pronoun to refer to her, and she used
the girls’ bathroom. Before that, she used some of the school’s bathrooms that
had no gender designation, but for those schools she visited that did, she used
the girls’ bathroom.
In
December 2012, all that changed when the school district said that she could no
longer use the girls’ bathroom. What is remarkable about this story is that
there is no problem with Coy currently.
This restriction is because of what may happen with Coy in the future.
To complicate things more, the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act prohibits
discrimination against transgender students of all ages in public schools. Currently, Coy is simply being home schooled,
though she misses her teachers and classmates.
Amid
the controversy, something exciting is going on in this world, in which this
story is but one of many untold tales that is showing a shift in our national
consciousness about the place and presence of lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender, and questioning people of all ages. How we are constructed anatomically
is as natural in the absolute broadest sense of the word as everything else under
the sun that is natural, including sexual identity and orientation. It is all
made possible by the condition of simply being born on Mother Earth. And to identify or change one’s sex from male
to female, or female to male, is a result of many combined natural forces at
work within us. And such a transformation is not up for discussion: just ask
six year-old Coy, or all the other men and women who have transitioned throughout
time. What is called for now is nothing less than this: love. The hope is that
others in this story take the attitude that Coy’s mom and dad, siblings,
classmates, and teachers have done: not seeing this as a tragedy, but an
opportunity to love people as they are as we joyously open up our understanding
of human diversity…and the marvelous multiplicity of ways of being on dry land
or under the sea.
Go here for the article: http://www.parentsociety.com/news-2/6-year-old-transgender-girl-banned-from-girls-bathroom/
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