8th Grader Calls School Transgender Policy ‘Dangerous,’ ‘Rooted in Sexism’
A Virginia middle schooler is condemning recent proposed transgender policy that would allow “boys into girls’ locker rooms.”
Fourteen-year-old Jolene Grover spoke against Loudon County Public Schools’ proposed policy at a school board meeting.
“Two years ago, I was told policy 1040 was just an umbrella philosophy and you weren’t going to allow boys into the girls’ locker rooms. But here you are doing just that,” she said, referencing the previous policy that affirms “sexual orientation, gender identity.” The policy in question, 8350, allows transgender students to “to use the facility that corresponds to their gender identity.”
“Everyone knows what a boy is—even you,” she continued. “Your proposed policies are dangerous and rooted in sexism. When woke kids ask me if I was a lesbian or a trans boy because I cut my hair short, it should tell you these modern identities are superficial.”
These sexist and dangerous policies are changing, Grover claims, and when she addressed her concerns with her school guidance counselor, the counselor allegedly responded by pointing to the safety the bathroom stalls provide. In a Fox News interview with Grover and her mother Natassia, who pulled her out of school in August 2020 and now homeschools, addressed the fear for her friends still attending the school. “You don’t see any other girls talking about it publicly,” Natassia said.
Grover added that she felt “so few” adults and students were speaking up, so she felt that she had to. “I was hoping that if I started speaking out, other people would too.”
“Now, boys are reading erotica in the classroom next to girls,” Grover said during her speech, “and you want to give them access to girls’ locker rooms, and you want to force girls to call those boys ‘she.’
“You do this in the name of inclusivity while ignoring the girls who will pay the price,” she added. “Your policies choose boys’ wants over girls’ needs.”
This is not the first time Grover has been vocal about the policy changes being made in LCPS schools. She attended a school board meeting in 2019 where she asked the school board to remove the “gender identity language” from policy 1040, citing the “uncomfortable” situation herself and other girls would be put in when asked to change in a locker room with “biological boys.”
“You have no right to do that to us,” Grover, then a sixth grader, stated.
Grover’s concerns echo that of many as policies like these are proposed in schools around the country. LCPS faced a legal battle after suspending physical education teacher Byron “Tanner” Cross for defending his biblical views of gender and sexuality.
Cross, represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, was reinstated earlier this month following his impassioned speech against LCPS policy 8040.
“I’m a teacher, but I serve God first,” Cross said. He said he could not “affirm that a biological boy can be a girl and vice versa because it’s against my religion. It’s lying to a child, it’s abuse to a child, and it’s sinning against our God.”
The school district is appealing the ruling. {eoa}
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