Lila Perry: Transgender Hillsboro High School Senior Sparks Walkout Over Bathroom Use
Lila Perry, a transgender student at Hillsboro High School, sparked a mass walkout earlier this week. Approximately 200 students left their classrooms to make their voices heard in the ongoing transgender bathroom debate. The Missouri senior began wearing girls clothing, makeup, and a wig last school after thoughts of feeling “more like a girl than a boy” surfaced, Perry said during an interview with the New York Times.
Transgender student Lila Perry pictures, 17 sing the girls’ bathrooms http://t.co/ESbf1my1Y0 pic.twitter.com/XLZWvdhGqk
— infowe (@infowe) September 2, 2015
As previously reported by the Inquisitr, Perry came out as transgender after coming out as a gay male. When classes resumed at Hillsboro High School in Missouri, Perry decided to no longer use the faculty unisex bathroom offered by district officials, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.
Lila Perry: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know http://t.co/HeUJsZqgHX pic.twitter.com/Z8f1XzRK4U
— monrpg (@monrpg1) September 1, 2015
Perry’s demand to use both the girls locker room and the girls bathroom angered some students and parents in the Jefferson County district. The district permitted the students to walk out of class and protest the transgender bathroom issue for two hours during the school day. The transgender senior was reportedly locked in the principal’s office for safety reasons during the protest, Fox2Now reports.
Apparently one’s right to use their preferred bathrooms is based on whether they pass or not. #transphobia #LilaPerry pic.twitter.com/6fOPTob2vp
— HereComesTreble (@BrinnSpencer) September 1, 2015
The Hillsboro High School walkout happened after a school board meeting discussion was had about Lila Perry. Some parents voiced concerns that the transgender student was getting “special rights” at the expense of the other teens at the school. Parents upset that the privacy rights of their daughters would be violated if forced to shared a bathroom or locker room with a genetic male.
https://youtu.be/KKWk2Ec9eRQ
A small group reportedly attended the meeting in support of the transgender bathroom debate. Supporters claimed Perry was not comfortable going back to Hillsboro High School. Perry dropped out of physical education class after citing allegations that a lack of supervision could create an unsafe situation.
“I wasn’t hurting anyone. I didn’t want to be in something gender-neutral,” Perry said, in reference to using the unisex faculty bathroom.”I am a girl. I am not going to be pushed away to another bathroom… It feels really awful that people are going to these extremes against me, not just in school but all over the Internet. But I’ve also received so much support. It feels really surreal to be in the middle of all of this.”
The Christian advocacy group, the Alliance Defending Freedom, drafted a “student physical privacy policy” to submit to the Missouri school district. The policy contains 3,500 signatures, MSN reports. The policy would mandate that students use either bathrooms and locker rooms based upon their biological sex or unisex facilities.
The Missouri Gay-Straight Alliance Network, an LGBT rights group, contends that there is a difference between sex and gender and those feels upset about the Lila Perry transgender bathroom issue only see the transgender student as the sex assigned at birth.
What do you think about the Lila Perry transgender bathroom debate at Hillsboro High School?
[Image via Screengrab / Twitter]
