An 11-year-old child of an American servicemember who identifies as a female has been banned from the girls’ restroom at a U.S. military-run elementary school.
“Blue is the only transgender person on this base required to use a gender-neutral bathroom,” the fifth grader’s mother, Jess, told NBC News in an article published Friday. “I’m furious, absolutely furious. My blood is boiling, I’m so mad.”
Blue is the first transgender student at Ramstein Intermediate School in Germany, but not the first one enrolled in the school network. She asked for NBC not to publish their last names in order to protect her military husband.
Jess said the school initially supported Blue’s public gender identification change, establishing a transition plan with school officials on Oct. 3 that was supposed to take effect the next week.
However, she was informed that the superintendent of the Bavaria district of the U.S. Department of Defense Education Activity, Elizabeth Dunham, had decided to reverse the decision by the school’s principal and banned the 11-year-old from the girls’ room. Blue has the option of using the boys’ bathroom outside the classroom or a distant single-use bathroom.
“She’s terrified of having to use the boys’ bathroom,” said Jess, adding that Blue is purposefully refusing to drink and “holding it in” to avoid deciding between the out-of-the-way bathroom or face bullying in the boy’s bathroom.
“For Blue to go to the bathroom, she has to go down three floors, leave the building, cross the courtyard to the other building, just to find a single stall bathroom. She says today she barely made it; she almost wet herself. She could have cut through the library, but it was full of kids, and she was afraid she would wet herself in front of everyone.
“My husband and I were in a meeting with my husband’s commander at the time. If she had wet herself and I had gotten a call from the school, I can’t imagine what I would do. By the way, my husband’s command is in total support of us,” she added.
A spokesperson for the Department of Defense told NBC that the “DoDEA is committed to ensuring that students are provided a safe and secure learning environment … Students who are transgender currently attend DoDEA schools, just as they attend other school districts across the nation. It is the Department of Defense’s position, consistent with the U.S. Attorney General’s opinion, that discrimination based on gender identity is a form of sex discrimination.”
The DoDEA’s Equal Opportunity office has received the discrimination complaint and told Blue’s mother they will be investigating the matter.
