Here Is Some Good News!

[Content Note: Transphobia.]

Six-year-old Coy Mathis started identifying as a girl just a few years after she was born. When she started kindergarten, her parents told the school "that their child identified as a girl and should be treated as one. Initially, the school, just south of Colorado Springs, agreed. But a few months into first grade, the district barred Coy from using the girls' bathroom, telling her parents that as she grew older and developed, some students and parents would likely become uncomfortable. It was best that Coy use staff bathrooms or a gender-neutral one in the school's health office, the district officials decided."

I love (don't love) the idea that Coy's fellow classmates would have "become uncomfortable" with a peer they had always known as a girl using the girl's bathroom, but not by their peer having to go see the school nurse every time she needs to take a piss. Children don't work like that—and no one knows (or should know) that better than school administrators, but it's just so gosh darn convenient to use children as scapegoats for the prejudices that they have to be taught by their parents and (some of) their schoolteachers and the judgmental culturein which we live.

Anyway. Coy's parents pulled her out of school and, with the help of the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, filed a complaint with Colorado's civil rights division, "claiming the district had violated Colorado's 2008 antidiscrimination statute, which expanded provisions for transgender people." And here comes the good news:

After an investigation, the division, which enforces Colorado's antidiscrimination laws, agreed. It noted that while Coy's birth certificate stated she was male — an argument made by the school district — more recent medical and legal documents identified her as female.

It was clear, the state said, that Coy had completely integrated into society as a girl — wearing girls' clothing, standing in the girls' line at school and choosing to play with girls.

But the state's ruling went even further, saying that evolving research on transgender development showed that "compartmentalizing a child as a boy or a girl solely based on their visible anatomy, is a simplistic approach to a difficult and complex issue."

Depriving Coy of the acceptance that students need to succeed in school, [Steven Chavez, the division director, wrote in the decision], "creates a barrier where none should exist, and entirely disregards the charging party's gender identity."

..."We knew that this was discrimination. So it was validating to get the state to say 'Yes, it is very clearly harassment,' and they were doing something they shouldn't have been doing," said Kathryn Mathis, Coy's mother.

"When I told Coy we won, she got this giant smile and her eyes bugged out. She said, 'So I can go to school and make friends?'"

All the blubs.