Close to 150 students walked out of a Missouri high school Monday in protest of a transgender classmate’s request to use the girls’ change room and washrooms.
Students at Hillsboro High School staged the two-hour walkout to protest Lila Perry’s use of the girls change room during gym class.
“There’s a lot of ignorance, they are claiming that they’re uncomfortable. I don’t believe for a second that they are,” the 17-year-old told KMOV4 News in St. Louis. “I think this is pure and simple bigotry.”
About 40 to 50 students also walked out of school in support of Perry.
The walkout comes after a school board meeting last week where staff and parents debated whether the female student had the right to use the women’s facilities.
“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,” a protester told KMOV4 News.
Perry said she’s known she was transgender since she was 13 years old and has yet to undergo any surgical procedures – which some students have a problem with.
“I find it offensive because Lila has not went through any procedure to become female, putting on a dress and putting on a wig is not transgender to me,” Sophie Beel, a fellow student, told Fox St. Louis.
Perry said she was offered the use of a gender-neutral restroom but she turned it down because she didn’t want to “feel segregated.”
Perry dropped out of gym class over concerns for her safety in the locker room.
Comments