Missouri students stage walkout over transgender girl in locker room

About 200 students walked out of class at a Missouri high school this week to stage protests in a dispute over whether a student, who identifies as a transgender girl, should be allowed to use the girls’ locker room facilities during gym class. 

The students protested for about two hours on Monday at Hillsboro High School, 40 miles southwest of St. Louis, in the ongoing debate involving 17-year-old high school senior Lila Perry. 

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that “most” of the students who protested on Monday did so in opposition to Perry, while a “smaller group” came together to voice their support for her. 

Perry, who spoke with local reporters, said she felt targeted for identifying as a transgender girl. She has since dropped out of the gym class and has stopped changing in the girl’s locker room, citing safety concerns. 

“It wasn’t too long ago [that] white people were saying ‘I don’t feel comfortable sharing a bathroom with a black person,’ and history repeats itself,” Perry told Fox 2, the local St. Louis Fox affiliate. “I think this is pure and simple bigotry. I think they are using the claim that they’re uncomfortable as an excuse to target me.” 

Those who objected to Perry using the locker room said it is not about bigotry, local media reported. “I find it offensive because Lila has not went though any procedure to become a female — putting on a dress and putting on a wig is not transgender to me,” Sophie Beel, a student, told Fox 2.

But another student, Skyla Thompson, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that she supports Perry because she is a “such a good person,” and that opponents were just “judging her on the outside.” 

Parents also weighed in. “Boys need to have their own locker room. Girls need to have their own locker room, and if somebody has mixed feelings where they are, they need to have their own also,” Jeff Childs, a parent opposed to allowing Perry to use the girl’s locker room, told local CBS affiliate KMOV. 

Perry had reportedly been using a gender-neutral faculty bathroom to prepare for gym class last semester, but said she didn’t want to want to feel segregated. 

“I didn’t want to be in the gender-neutral bathroom. I am a girl. I shouldn’t be pushed off to another bathroom,” she told KMOV. 

Perry also told Fox 2 that the school’s administration has done a good job of making her feel safe and welcomed, but she said she had been attacked on social media.

The school district’s superintendent handed some reporters a written statement Monday, saying that the district "will promote tolerance and acceptance of all students" no matter their race, nationality, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation. It added that the district would not tolerate "bullying" or "harassing behaviors of any type in any form,” the St. Louis Post Dispatch reported. 

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 states that "no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance."