Parents of trans youth say bullying starts at the top
Often left out of the conversation, they say politicians and other parents are to blame for harassment.
Hazel Ray just wanted to go on a school field trip to the Grand Canyon. As a junior at a small school with a graduating class of 19 students, nobody took issue that Hazel—who is a trans woman—planned to share a room with other female students. It also wasn’t the classmates who complained and inquired about what bathroom Hazel planned to use. Instead, it was a parent who had met Hazel before she was out but had a problem with her transition.
Right before the trip, that parent called the school and threatened to contact the media.
Hazel, who is now 19 years old and graduated, worried about public backlash and that the parent would sue the school. She acquiesced and arranged to get her own room, but she said it was an uncomfortable and scary experience for a teenager who had never stayed alone in a hotel before.
Although her mother, Nancy, said she didn’t feel her daughter was in direct danger, she was livid that her child had to make separate accommodations. She was also angry at other parents and lawmakers who put her child in that position in the first place.
Nancy also said people who show up at school board meetings and the Capitol to spread anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and harass trans kids and their guardians or parents—whom they often disparagingly and untruthfully call “groomers” or pedophiles—cause harm that isn’t easy to shrug off.