Pickens County schools once allowed transgender students to use the bathroom that corresponded with their gender identity but after receiving death threats, the school board decided to reverse that decision due to potential safety issues, according to Slate.
In a statement made by the Pickens County Board of Education, the decision was made because of here “many serious safety concerns raised in the past few days,” such as death threats, harassment, and vandalism. All over transgender people using the bathroom that matches their gender identity. Ridiculous. Can you imagine getting this angry about people peeing in a bathroom?
Luckily transgender students aren’t forced to use the bathroom that correlates with their biological sex, but instead, they will use the single-stalled bathroom once reserved exclusively for teachers. However, one student complained that using the single-stalled bathroom caused discomfort for them as well as the teachers, but this policy must be maintained until law enforcement and safety officials deal with the threats.
So you may be wondering who made these threats, right? Well wonder no more: it was the parents of students, according to Pickens County Superintendent Carlson Wilson. That’s right, the people who have fully developed brains and should definitely know better than to make death threats are the ones causing this commotion. Wilson commented about this ordeal, saying that “The way some called names has been embarrassing and disappointing to me, and that’s hard to get over” and that he recognizes that with things like this, the crazies come out and that sometimes people can die in situations such as this, which is very true considering the number of transgender people who have been murdered this year.
Wilson also added that an arrest has been made after making threats on social media and that a girl’s bathroom in one school has been vandalized and that the transgender students who have been affected by this did not deserve to be treated in the way that they’ve been treated.
It’s sad that people are still being treated like this. People, regardless of their gender identity, should be treated with basic respect and the fact that parents are threatening death is truly despicable because they should know better.
But unfortunately, ignorance is as pervasive as it is contagious.
Source: Slate