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A look at Some Experiences from two Transgender Students at Dexter High School
WRITTEN BY DIA BIGGS
“I used to think that I was gender fluid because I had days where I was like, you know, I don’t feel as bad about myself. But then it was kind of a realization that, like, oh, wait, no, it’s not that I don’t feel as bad about myself. It’s just that I have days where I don’t feel completely awful. You know, I don’t feel like absolute trash.”
That’s what junior Rose Dray when asked about her experiences of being a trans girl. There are multiple transgender students at Dexter High School, all of which having different experiences with their transitions.
Two different students at DHS were willing to detail parts of their stories. Junior Nai Amber shared their experience coming out as nonbinary to their parents.
“When I first came out to my parents, they said, ‘we accept you. Can you just tell us more about it because a lot of people don’t really understand what nonbinary means.’”
The first step of the process for most is coming out. Rose shared their coming out process plus their fears with it.
“You don’t know if any family or friends that are super transphobic or homophobic, but it’s still awkward,” Rose said. “You know a lot of people say stuff that’s very lightly transphobic, and then you kind of feel very scared to come out to them.”
Coming out is a different process for everyone, and can amass a number of reactions. Nai brought forth some stories of negative interactions following coming out.
“There are some not-so-nice kids in this school who just go out of their way to just be mean to you,” Nai said. “It’s like there’s a lot of people who are really accepting or just don’t care, but there are those select few in the school who just go out of their way to be mean to you, or misgender you, or dead name you. I think this is just very uncomfortable.”
When being transgender the negative parts of school don’t just happen with the kids at school.
Nai mentioned that “my power school, my canvas, they all said my old name. So I had to email all of my teachers beforehand and I had to basically tell them, ‘hey, this is where my name will show up as, but this is not what I like to go by and I go by these pronouns.’ [The counselors] told me to put a little thing at the end of my email that says my name and my pronouns, and that’s the only thing that they could do for me.”
DHS Principal Melanie Nowak noted various legal issues involved.
“There is different legislation and guidelines on if we can change legal names,” Nowak said when asked about the issue of names and pronouns for PowerSchool, Canvas, and email. “So there are some legal restrictions that we have to follow right now.”
To summarize, administrators can’t modify the information for the names due to the legal restrictions. Names and pronoun problems for students don’t always end there, however.
“Some teachers just don’t really try, with pronouns I mean,” Nai said. “I couldn’t tell if it was they weren’t trying or they were just really bad because they just did not say my right pronouns once. I had a lot of teachers who were completely fine. And, as long as they try, that’s all I care for.”
Rose, however mentioned some positive actions put in place for transgender students.
“There’s the support groups. So I think having those is really nice,” Rose said. “I know that those exist and I’ve been to a couple of other meetings and they’re pretty cool. So having that support stuff is nice.”
A talk with DHS administration also seems to provide some hope.
“I would expect some changes,” Nowak said. “There should be some upcoming news on stuff like that with current legislation that’s happening in Lansing right now.”
When talking about legislation, there are two main things that come up specifically when it comes to transgender students: the question of restrooms and sports. When asking the DHS students about their thoughts in a Squall survey, this was the data received.
Over 60% of the students surveyed said they are fine with the usage of bathrooms and being on sports teams associating with someone’s gender identity. There was a 4.4% increase in discomfort with the thoughts of transgender students playing sports vs. using restrooms of the gender they identify as.
“Gender, it’s not just two boxes,” Nai said. “A lot of people think of it like male, female, two boxes. I like to think of it of kind of like a color wheel. You can lie anywhere on that color wheel… Thinking of it as two boxes just doesn’t work.”
