A transgender educator responds to Trump’s removal of trans student protections
By Bahar Akyurtlu
As a transgender woman teaching in a New York City public school, I have had the privilege of having multiple transgender students come through my school and my classroom. Being transgender magnifies every difficulty life presents: building relationships, navigating an ever-expanding and often hostile world, learning what it means to be yourself. All of which can add up to astronomical dropout rates for transgender students — up to 50 percent of trans students regularly skip school.
Amid all the everyday difficulties we share with our peers, to have your body seen as a threat and your most basic needs seen as exotic burdens on those around you can feel like society is shutting the doors on you just as you are about to take your first steps in. When this way of thinking comes from the president of the United States, it can start to feel like the whole world has lined up to put a target on your back.
So, in light of the president’s Feb. 22 decision to repeal President Obama’s 2016 executive order directing public schools to assure equal access to school bathrooms, do we need to panic? Thankfully, I think, the answer is no — at least here in New York.
The fact is the protections enacted by President Obama in May 2016 enshrined rights for transgender people as matters of law. The president’s order simply clarified that the guarantee of equal access to education based on sex under Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments Act should be interpreted to include transgender students.
This recognition was certainly a critical reassurance for transgender students across the nation, but it was never a permanent solution or an overwhelming civil rights victory. For those of us raising and teaching transgender youth in New York, the removal of President Obama’s order should not meaningfully affect our students. Their right to access school facilities and their right to an education free from bullying and discrimination are currently protected statewide by the Dignity for All Students Act and a directive from Gov. Andrew Cuomo and locally in New York City by the city Department of Education’s Transgender Student Guidelines.
We should be extremely thankful that our transgender students in New York City are still covered by some of the strongest protections in the country. But this is only the tip of the iceberg for meaningfully protecting and fostering our city’s trans youth, who still face overwhelming difficulties around violence and poverty. For example, according to the Ali Forney Center, 42 percent of homeless youth in our city identify as LGBTQ, and many young transgender girls (especially girls of color) are criminalized by police and the courts when they are profiled as sex workers. It’s crucial that we do not lose sight of the most marginalized in our transgender student population.
The ease with which the Trump administration has rescinded the federal protections — as limited as they already were — should remind us that we must fight to enshrine civil rights for all transgender people in our state and federal laws so that they cannot be taken away with a simple stroke of a pen.
Bahar Akyurtlu is a math teacher at Harlem Renaissance High School in Manhattan and a UFT delegate. She is transgender.
