Where can they turn now?

There was a boy at my school who wanted to be heard.

The first time I met him was in the middle of the stairs. He’d walked out of the lesson, because the teacher read his deadname from the register. It was the first week back after summer break, and it hadn’t yet been changed. And when he raised this to the teacher, all he got back was a shrug, and a comment from his desk-mate about being difficult.

His friends have questioned his decision since coming out to them, and constantly ask if he’s sure, if he’s just following the popular trend, if he’s confused.

The anger had been building for a long time, longer than the rest of us fully realised. He started having more frequent outbursts in class, shouting at people who made fun of his hair or his requests to use the disabled toilet, as designating a gender-neutral bathroom is 'too difficult' to do.

When everyone tells him to pick an easier name to remember, one that sounds like his ‘other’ name so they won’t keep forgetting. When aunts and uncles and grandparents refuse to use the right pronouns, because ‘there was none of that in my day, so I won’t stand for the nonsense now’. When strangers recognize how to use ‘he/him’ when greeting in a restaurant, but his parents interrupt with, ‘no, she’s a girl, she’s just not acting like it today.’ When they talk about parts of his body he is desperate to remove, and being reminded of what ‘biology’ expects of him.

He has grown into a young man that sees the world as the enemy, because it hasn’t shown him the kindness he needed when it mattered most. And despite moving across the country, away from the society that rejected every part of him, those same people still try to tell him right from wrong, who he is and why he needs to stop ‘pretending’.

And they wonder why he cut them out of his life so harshly.

This boy at my school just wanted to be himself.

***

There was a girl at my school who never smiled.

She wears a rainbow bucket hat all day, a gift from a close friend for her birthday last year. After the last period, it goes back into her locker, hidden underneath a mountain of bible pages and pamphlets and promises to a God she long stopped believing in.

Dresses and long hair and pinks and purples colour her life.

A secret relationship. Seven months together, promises of forever. Ruined in seconds by an overzealous christian mother. The words ‘corrupt’ and ‘sinner’ and ‘Hell’ forever etched into the minds of those innocent teenagers; one condemned to damnation, the other forced further into a closet growing to the size of Narnia, hiding between the coats and layers of those who push her down, who control her.

Church sermons, Bible readings, and Sunday School preachings fill her free time. The sight or mention of anything ‘alternative’ in her mother’s eyes is quickly shielded from view, along with a tiresome and repetitive so-called ‘explanation’ as to why they are wrong, how they will ruin the body and soul.

She hides behind a closed door, wishing and waiting for the day she can escape. For her own day of judgement.

To know what might have been, had she been free.

This girl at my school just wanted to be happy.

***

There was a teacher at my school who tried to educate the next generation.

‘Forget those people,’ he would tell us. ‘Forget those people outside these walls. They don’t know, because they never got the chance to learn that you can love yourself and be loved back in a different way than they do.’

He endured ridicules and rude remarks and writings over his classroom desks. Being openly out in a high school, as a teacher it seems, is almost the same as being openly out in a high school as a student.

Despite being taller, older, and wiser than the kids in the room, it sent him spiraling back into the small child he had once been.

He should have realised it sooner, he thought. Those same boys who made jokes in the changing rooms, who pushed him into lockers, and whispered ‘GAY’ over and over again, not as an adjective but as an insult - it was their children who walked into his classroom every morning.

Despite being taller, older, and wiser, he had never felt so small under their scrutiny

The teacher at my school just wanted to teach.

***

There was a councillor at my school who brought them together.

The group she created, their very own Secret Society, was their safe space. To talk freely in front of each other and be safe from the judgement from the wider community. To share stories and experiences and dreams and worries and needs and wants and desires.

She pushed for students to be able to advocate for themselves - to choose the name they are happy to be called, regardless of what is on their birth certificate. She advocated for them when they could not speak for themselves, and broke the barrier separating the staff from understanding their students.

They finally felt heard. She saw a smile for the first in a long time.

And just when she hoped a change could happen, a new change was made. She was no longer allowed to have them meet together, unless all parents of those involved were informed and gave consent. No longer could they choose a preferred name without running it by someone at home first. Students could not speak to a teacher about personal information, as everything must be reported home on the same day.

The government cited they want ‘transparency’ between home and school. ‘No secrets should be kept from a parent’ they said. ‘We want the children to trust and respect the adult’s decisions; they are too young to know any better.’

Gone were the smiles. Gone were the listeners. Gone was the trust, the hope, the faith in a safe space for individuals who felt they had nowhere else to go.

The councillor at my school just wanted to help.

Where can they turn now?