Leading up the inauguration, The California Report magazine is airing letters from California teenagers to the incoming president. They’re some of the more than 12,000 letters collected as part of a collaboration between KQED and the National Writing Project. You can search all the letters by topic here.

This one comes from Skyelar, a 10th-grader at Marysville Charter Academy for the Arts in Yuba County.

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Dear Future President,

I believe that transgender people don't have enough policies that help protect their rights. There are no policies that stop a school from suspending or even expelling a child because of their gender expressions. They can also refuse to let them use their preferred bathroom (or) call them by their preferred name. These issues can cause for social harm for the person as well as internal conflict and it may cause emotional struggles such as depression, anxiety or make gender or body dysphoria worse for some who already suffer from that.

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We have made a lot of progression towards sexuality and helping to diminish discrimination as much as possible against the gay/lesbian/bisexual community by legalizing marriage and many other steps. But still nothing protects transgender people from the hate of the people in society. Schools, businesses, the regular citizen are all ways transgender people get hate towards them and there is nothing to stop this.

Not having anything to protect transgender people affects more than a few people. It affects about 1.4 million adults in the us. Young children are being kicked out of schools, their homes and adults are being refused jobs or service in public areas. As a transgender youth I do find my life very hindered by the discrimination I get from my family, school faculty and even other students.

My home life is very affected by the views my family has and how uncomfortable I make them with the way I am. I get in trouble and stopped when I try to speak to them about it. I also have issues at school, for an entire year one of my teachers refused to call me my preferred name and when he finally told me he couldn't until it was legally changed or put on roster I asked the staff to change it, they agreed as long as I had my mother's consent. They changed it and I got my name. A few days after that my teacher saw me go into the boys bathroom and I was called into the principles. We talked and he asked how my mother felt about me, my name, and my pronouns. After going over it he said the teachers could call me my preferred name but not a male. This upset me a lot but I didn't say anything because I didn't know what I could do to help the situation, I wasn't allowed to be referred to as a male until my mother accepted me regardless of my wishes.

I was lucky enough to get my name but what would happen if my mother didn't let me have that either. I would be stuck being seen as a female with my birth name for who knows how long. When this first happened I was greatly affected and fell into a deep depression. One of the things I absolutely want most is to be seen as a male and be comfortable with myself as I already have bad body and gender dysphoria. This issue got me to look into if there were any policies that could protect or help me in my school so I would freely be myself as just another one of the males in the school. I was disappointed to find nothing for me. I am completely positive there are many other teenagers facing problems just as bad and worse than I am and I believe that there should be way more policies helping protect me and so many other transgender people like me.

Constantly thinking about these issues I have come up with some solutions or steps we could take to a society where transgenders are just looked as normal people. One of these solutions has to do with schools (as most are) I believe we shouldn't regulate how much acceptance and the treatment that the kids based on what their parents believe. School should be place that the students can freely express who they are and be treated with respect to this.

Unfortunately that isn't the case if schools aren't thinking about the student and only thinking of what their parents would be okay with. Another idea I have that isn't for schools is a simple solution that should have been applied from the start. The idea is to make sure that people can not refuse to serve someone based solely on the fact that they are transgender as that wouldn't be a decent option and argumentatively can be seen in a way such as refusing service to someone just because of their color of their skin. As a part of this it would be important to make sure that transgenders would have all the basic rights that a normal cis-gendered person would. These are only two ideas of so many simple and easy ways to help the transgendered people on their path to equality.

In conclusion we should have more policies protecting transgender people and there are many ways to make that possible from schools, to workplaces to other businesses the lives of so many trans people can be affected in a very positive way without that much change for the rest of society and simple things that could really make a difference in the overall quality of our lives, because we all want to live in a world where everyone is happy and living a life that will be a reflection of the societies strengths.

We all want that perfect society with no judgment somewhere deep down, and we headed on the road towards that. First with equal rights towards women and people of different skin colors, and more recently the lgb part of the lgbt community. Our next step is to give trangenders the rights they deserve and so desperately want.

Sincerely,

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Skyelar

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