Around this time of year, Riley Williams, a senior at Charles R. Drew High School, should be campaigning for her classmates to vote her in as Homecoming Queen.
Instead, she’s campaigning for her school officials, and the nation, to recognize her humanity.
Williams is a transgender girl. Her classmates support her bid for the title, she said. But the district, Clayton County Public Schools, blocked it, citing federal regulations and fears about losing government funding.
“I’m not doing this for me,” Williams told Atlanta News First. “I’m doing it for the next transgender person who decides to run.”
In particular, the district referenced Title IX in its decision to restrict Williams’ Homecoming Queen campaign, ANF reports. The law is largely associated with equal opportunities in academics and scholastic athletics.
Today, efforts to use the law to target transgender girls are often couched in half-hearted declarations about “fairness in women’s sports.”
But, as Williams emphasized, that does not apply here.
“There’s no competitive advantage” inherent to her gender identity or sex that could conceivably help her win Homecoming Queen, she told ANF. “As a matter of fact, people are less likely to vote for me,” she said.
The school also allegedly said Williams could still campaign, but only for Homecoming King.
Clayton County Public Schools does not have any policy that would require excluding a trans candidate for Homecoming Queen. But a spokesperson for the district told ANF the decision was based on federal “law, regulations and guidance” pertaining to Trump’s version of Title IX.
According to the district, these dictate that “gender-based distinctions” be “based on biological sex.”
This rendering of Title IX isn’t law, even if the President issues copious numbers of executive orders declaring otherwise.
Still, the Trump Administration has gone to great lengths to warp the equal rights law into a weapon for enacting state-sanctioned, gender-based violence, especially against youth. This interpretation of Title IX, and its conservative ideological underpinnings, have been used to dehumanize women athletes through practices like sex testing, and to erode the human rights of trans people.
Trans women, or people that anti-trans extremists have decided are trans women, have also been targeted across all levels of society and competition. A Jeopardy! contestant, a candidate for local office, chess and e-sports champions—all of these are among the high achievers who have been subjected to backlash under in the name of gender parity, simply because they are transgender women.
There is no evidence to suggest federal officials were aware of or directly involved in the decision on Williams.
“I don’t want any other student to feel like they’ve [slipped] through the cracks,” Williams told reporters with ANF. “People are behind me and people support me for who I am.”
I hate the way Title IX has been weaponized by this administration to harm the people it is supposed to protect.
JFC these people need to get over themselves.