If you’ve been reading these pages, you know how bad it’s getting for trans people right now. On top of statewide bans on gender-affirming care for teens and adults, coupled with the threat of Tr*mp’s “big beautiful bill” forcing thousands of trans folks on Medicaid to go completely without care, teens who are simply trying to express their identity are being told that who they are is “too political” for school.
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We saw a version of this a few years ago, when Florida activist Zander Moricz was told he couldn’t bring up his queerness in his valedictorian speech. So he found a clever workaround: he talked about the plight of folks with curly hair instead.
For a teen graduating this year, finding an analogy wasn’t so easy. TikToker @monstrouscrows was told they could not give their graduation speech if it made reference to their transgender identity, something deemed “too political” for the school.
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After being named valedictorian at their unnamed school in North Carolina, they were given a prompt for their speech: “Striving to Excel.” So they did what any trans person would do in this timeline: talk about their own success in terms of the many trans folks who historically were not allowed to live out their lives proudly and openly. They also talked about how it’s their mission to inspire trans kids to succeed and overcome obstacles in their own lives.
A week before graduation, they were told they could not give their speech unless it was heavily censored. The school board stated that “political or social statements” had no place in the speech. They were even told by the attorney for their school board that “the subject of transgender people was one that should not be broached in a graduation speech.”
Which is the whole problem in a nutshell. Trans people didn’t make this decision for themselves. Our identities are assigned as controversial and political by everyone around us, without our having any say in it. When entire human beings get used as political pawns, it ends up—surprise!—hurting us in immeasurable ways, along with infringing on our right to free speech.
This graduate is currently fighting the decision in court, and we wish them luck. But we also wish that trans kids didn’t have to enter litigation to say the things they need to say to the world, and to have those things be heard.
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