High school students, fed up with a policy that allows non-binary, gender-fluid and transgender students to use any bathroom or lock rooms they want to based on their gender, have taken matters into their own hands by staging a walkout.
Frustrated pupils at Woodgrove High School, in Loudoun County, Virginia, walked out of their classes to protest Policy 8040, a scheme curated by the School Board back in 2021.
Between 50 and 100 students joined the walkout demanding Loudon County School Board revert back to its policy that saw female and male-only spaces in its schools, including bathrooms, locker rooms and showers.
Speaking to WJLA, one male student said: “In the locker rooms in the morning it’s an invasion of privacy, as I said because when men and natural-born males are in our locker rooms, and they are showering in the morning, natural-born females can walk in there as they please.”
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He added: “And that is not OK. And it goes against what we believe in.”
A female student also spoke out, describing how they had stopped using the bathroom at school due to the policy.
She said it was a “safety risk” that the school doesn’t “do anything about”.
She continued: “We express these concerns and they ignore us and write us off as right-wing crazies.
“We’re not crazy. We just don’t want to be in danger on a daily basis in this building. I think it’s people finally stepping up and just being sick of it. We’re sick of being here and just being completely ignored. I stopped using them [the bathrooms] because I don’t know what’s going to happen to me in there. And people can be like, ‘Oh, well, that’s paranoid’.”
The pupil added: “I’m telling you right now half the women in this building feel the same way.
“We don’t use the bathrooms. We hold our pee until we can’t. I mean, there are girls in PE [Physical Education class] who still get changed in the bathroom stalls in there because they’re afraid of who might waltz in.”
Others adding their voice behind the movement included another male student who said they did not feel comfortable that “other genders” were watching him change after football practice.
He said: “I feel that girls feel the same way about the situation. How would you feel if you were a female changing with a male?”
However, not everyone backed the protestors.
Pride flags were waved at the school in support of the bathroom policy, it was reported.
One supporter said they were to back “all of the children… no matter who they are… yours, mine – all of them”.
Another added that there were “a lot of people who are scared to speak out against it, so they stayed inside because they don’t want to see the backlash”.
