The Challenges LGBTQ+ Youth Face

Picture this: a student, let's call her Sarah, who identifies as female but was born a male. In Maine, laws are in place that say you may use the bathroom or locker room correlating to the gender you identify as. However, Sarah has heard criticism from both male and female peers and was told that she makes other students uncomfortable. In the end, she decides to travel across the school to get to the only unisex bathroom available. Perhaps some of you have been in an uncomfortable situation similar to this before, or perhaps not, but people across the country, and across the world, are facing this and much worse every day.

To bring this into a broader view, states such as Illinois have laws declaring that everyone must use the bathroom of the gender they were assigned at birth. Two years ago, a girl named Kelsi Williams who, at the time, was a senior at Lindblom Math and Science Academy in Illinois, wrote an article about the things she sees at her school every day because of this law. According to Williams, transgender students at her school who do so little as attempt to be proud of who they are have been suspended or expelled. Others have been forced to use bathrooms and locker rooms that are labeling them as something they are not.

Furthermore, all LGBTQ youth face criticism on a day to day basis whether it be from teachers, parents, or classmates. However, in my research, I discovered that the most recent problems revolve more around gender identity as opposed to sexual preference. The 2017 biennial National School Climate Survey which began its work in 1999 and has grown to be the largest body of research on the experience of LGBTQ youth in schools, has shown that over the last two years, verbal harassment in accordance with gender identification has heightened, and, throughout the same time frame, no improvements were made in the number of physical attacks. However, the regularity of physical harassment and assault in accordance with sexual preference has continued to decline.

Equally important is the Maine Integrated Youth Health Survey which has shown that cisgender teens (those who identify as the gender they were assigned at birth) are 20% more likely to get support from adults opposed to transgender and gender non-conforming youth. This survey also showed that over half of the trans students in Maine considered suicide in the past year, and close to 75% were clinically depressed. Don't these statistics concern you? Personally, I fear that these numbers will only continue to increase.

In the past decade, we have witnessed revolutionary progress in breaking down the walls that divide people of diverse sexualities and genders with cisgender and heterosexual people, but despite efforts, we still have a long way to go. There are cases in which the progress has slowed, or there is little to no change at all. For the first time in a decade, victimization rates have ceased to decrease at rates seen in previous years. As a matter of fact, for transgender and gender-nonconforming youth, it has gotten much worse. Based on the National School Climate Survey, in a month's time, more than a third of LGBTQ students failed to show up to school due to feeling unsafe and about two-fifths of these students avoid bathrooms and locker rooms altogether.

For many years, we have been ignoring the intolerance in our society and that needs to stop. It has led to numerous hate crimes across the United States, from simple name-calling in a classroom to physical violence on the street, and even mass shootings. These things are making it harder and harder for children and adults of every generation alike to come out to their friends, parents, colleagues, and peers. So let's think about what it's like to be a teenager; now add the questioning of your gender and/or sexuality. It certainly compounds adolescence.