Picking a Fight: How the Media Got One Transgender Bathroom Story Wrong
Doe Schall and Park Long — two Colorado Springs high school students — were among the first to lead the fight for transgender bathrooms. But their story ended up being much different than they imagined.
Doe Schall and Park Long are tired of talking about transgender bathrooms.
After a swarm of local news coverage about a gender inclusive restroom they created at their high school in Colorado Springs, the two recent graduates worry that real issues facing the LGBT community are getting swept up in a jumble of narratives created by the media.
But if they were reluctant to talk to me before our interview in early June, I wouldn’t have known it. They’ve made it a point to talk to all interested local media about the restroom, which opened in March at Palmer High School. For each question I had about the restroom, they answered with automatic, but polite, explanations.
“We’re a little rusty with our interview skills,” Long said, after Schall talked through a justification for creating the bathroom for the seventh time.
“I think we’ve been interviewed like six times,” Schall said.
Like the rest of the local media, my editors and I were intrigued by their story. Schall and Long created the first gender inclusive restroom in a Colorado Springs public high school just as the issue was becoming one of the most heavily debated topics across the U.S.
But for the students, the issue hasn’t been quite as polarizing as the media has made it seem. Schall and Long have faced some struggles with the restroom, but they said the media is missing the point — there are far more pressing issues surrounding the LGBT community, they said.
The students, who led their school’s Gay-Straight-Trans Alliance as seniors, brought the idea to create the bathroom to their principal, Lara Disney, late last school year, just after attending a Gay-Straight Alliance workshop at Colorado College.
They knew there was a locked, unused restroom in the school, and figured it would work as a separate facility available to students of all gender identities.
They met with their principal about four times, and filled out some paperwork, and months later, the bathroom was open. It was as simple as that.
Then, the media came.
The story first started picking up steam before the restroom opened when the high school’s student newspaper, The Lever, ran two opposing student opinion pieces.
“They put it online, and it got a massive amount of attention, lots of shares, hundreds of comments,” Schall said.
“A lot of old people from Ohio (commented),” Long said.
“Like people this doesn’t affect at all,” Schall added.
Inside the school, the students didn’t face direct opposition. But on social media, posts from students who were against the restroom circulated back to them. After the restroom opened, the students started to receive attention on a larger scale.
“After all the interviews aired, I went out and bought some pepper spray, just ’cause people have started recognizing me. Not like in a bad way. At Safeway, someone asked, ‘Do you go to Palmer? I saw you on the news.” — Park Long
When the restroom officially opened in March, the public was already paying attention to the issue. And when every southern Colorado TV news channel started airing stories, it was a becoming a household debate.
In May, the Obama Administration announced a sweeping directive that required every public school in the U.S. to allow transgender students to use the restroom that corresponds with the gender they identify with.
And in April, the country reacted, with a polarity common in American politics, to North Carolina’s law that requires people to use the restrooms with that correspond with the genders they were born with.
In the eyes of the local media, Schall and Long’s story was too good to pass up. If we’re being cynical, the story was a goldmine for TV stations and newspapers looking for viewers and readers. And if we’re being idealistic, the story was a chance to localize an issue that has consumed so much of the public’s attention lately.
But regardless of intentions, the media, on both a local and national level, was missing the point.
The same story was told multiple times, by different outlets, by changing the angle slightly. This is nothing new in journalism — looking at issues from different perspectives is part of what makes stories interesting and essential.
But for Schall and Long, there was only one story to be told about the transgender restroom, and the many more to be told about other issues in the LGBT community, including violence.
“A lot of people have said, or at least implied, like, ‘Oh, gay marriage is legal now. There’s nothing else to do. LGBT rights are in full swing,” Schall said. “Oh, no, no.’”
“Like ‘Oh, you can get married now,’” Long said. “’What more do you want?’”
“Maybe not to be killed when walking down the street?” Schall said.
Just days after our interview, a gunman walked into Pulse, the gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and shot 102 people, killing 49 and injuring 53. Early reports said the gunman was disgusted, once, when he saw two men kissing, an anecdote that has provided at least some explanation for the shooting.
The first iteration of the gender inclusive restroom story was told months before the shooting, but it emphasized that transgender restrooms are a new frontier for the LGBT community. When the reporter asked Long if he thought that was true, he said he tried to explain that it wasn’t.
“And I told her straight up, I was like, ‘Gee, I sure hope not because that’s not really what it’s about,’” Long said. “When it comes down to it, it’s about violence against trans people and protecting them from that.”
“That’s the big picture, and bathrooms are just a small part of that,” he said. “It’s important. That’s why we did it. It is a small part of it. She ignored that because that was their whole headline, like, ‘Bathrooms are the new frontier for the LGBT.’”
In each interview, as they’re viewed chronologically, Schall and Long change a little. In the first interview, conducted by KRDO, Schall is in tears. But by the time they got to me, they were still passionate, just a little more exasperated.
“After all the interviews aired, I went out and bought some pepper spray, just ’cause people have started recognizing me,” Long said. “Not like in a bad way. Like at Safeway, someone was like, ‘Do you go to Palmer?’ And he was like ‘I saw you on the news.’ And I was like ‘Cool.’”
“But yeah, just the idea of that happening with a not-so-accepting person is just, like, yeah. That is actually the reality of many LGBT people, and especially trans people. It can be scary going down the street in the middle of the day.”
I began to wonder why they decided to talk to me and so many other local reporters, especially when they were starting to feel threatened. For them, it came down to using their resources to speak up for others, and provide an inclusive atmosphere.
“I just knew a lot of kids that would just like hold it until they get home or until they could get off campus to find a single-stall bathroom, like a family bathroom,” Long said, “which is really unhealthy and definitely distracts from their learning.”
Schall, overall, wanted to speak up for a group that has been misrepresented lately.
“You’ve got to be able to look at the privilege you have and use it to the best of your abilities. Like, use the platforms you have,” Schall said. “Like, with our school and people who want to interview us, and just speak for those who don’t have the ability or people who want to listen to them.”
It’s just up to the media to get the story right.
