On Wednesday, Feb. 23, the Department of Justice rolled back protections for trans* students in public schools. Under the Obama administration, the Departments of Justice and Education issued federal protections for all trans* students to be able to use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity, extending Title IX’s interpretation to include discrimination based on gender identity. Conservatives immediately opposed the protections, believing that the issue should be left to states to handle. Essentially, what we’re now left with is no federal protections for trans* kids, and no trans* persons for that matter.

Before I go any further, I want to note that I write this opinion as someone who is not trans*, and immediately want to check my privilege and recognize that I do not know what it’s like to be trans*. However, as someone who is queer and has experienced “othering” because of their sexual orientation, I write this as someone who sees the necessity for the LGBTQ+ community to do more to advocate for trans* rights, since trans* persons have often been excluded or forgotten in various discourse.

In these debates over who should be setting the standards for bathroom guidelines in schools, trans* kids are getting left behind, as well as all trans* persons in the greater discussion. The debate is hardly bringing into consideration what it could possibly feel like to be a trans* student, and how uncomfortable and scary it must be to choose to use the bathroom that corresponds to your gender identity. Instead, we focus on how uncomfortable it makes cisgender people to share a bathroom with trans* persons, that they need to be “protected,” as if they’re in some sort of danger. As if being trans* makes you predatory. And this fear-mongering belief is what drives certain states to have bathroom bills that force people to use the restroom that corresponds to their biological sex.

Do you know how many people have been “attacked” by a trans* person in a bathroom? Zero. Absolutely none. So you know who is in danger right now? trans* persons. Among youths, suicide rates are highest for LGBTQ+ kids, especially trans* kids, with 50 percent reporting contemplating suicide and 25 percent actually attempting. A study for the Williams Institute focusing on trans* persons found that around 70 percent of the participants in the study had experienced some form of discrimination when trying to use the bathroom, including being ridiculed, told they were in the wrong bathroom, asked to leave the facility, asked intrusive questions about their gender identity, and in some cases, physically forced from the bathroom or physically assaulted. Even scarier, trans* persons are subjected to high homicide rates, with trans* women of color often the victims. These murders are almost never seen as hate crimes.

Yet we continue to block progress for trans* rights in order to protect cisgender comfortability. And when marginalized persons are rejected or left behind, there is often a human toll.

At Calvin, it really seems as if nothing is being done to make trans* students feel safe. There are very few gender inclusive bathrooms on campus, making it very difficult for gender non­conforming students to use the bathroom comfortably on campus. There also seems to be very little accommodation made for trans* students that choose to use a bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity. On the vast majority of Calvin forms and surveys that require students to indicate their gender, there are only two options: male and female. And overall, it seems as if the community does not even consider that fact that trans* students exist and could be attending Calvin. Often in discussions about LGBTQ+ issues, both formal and informal on campus, trans* persons seem to be completely excluded, both intentionally and unintentionally. As a queer person, I myself often feel silenced when cis­het persons talk about the queer experience and other LGBTQ+ issues that they may not have proper insight on, and I see other members of the community pretty explicitly silenced when the discussion turns to heterosexuality vs. homosexuality, and doesn’t even consider non­binary gender identity. In and outside of the classroom, when my cis­het peers make discriminatory or condemning comments about the LGBTQ+ community, that indicates to me that they do not even consider the possibility of there being LGBTQ+ students around them because they do not measure the weight of their words.

I think there really needs to be a call for more understanding and acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community as a whole, but especially trans* persons, on campus in order for us to create a more inclusive and safe environment. This is really a time when people need to put aside their bigotry so that other people can feel more comfortable here. As a queer person, I don’t think that anyone has a right to be discriminatory on the basis of religious belief, despite whether they believe that they are “hating the sin, not the sinner” or whatever other justification they use to be prejudiced. People are fearing for their lives, and even dying, because their existences are being rejected based on their gender identity. People cannot continue to silence others and erase existence by continuing to foster a cissexist community. It is often necessary to put aside some of our comfortability in order for others to feel accepted  — or, in this case, safe — and we need to see more of that happening at Calvin, especially in making bathrooms more inclusive for trans* persons. Trans* rights are human rights, and I hope that more people start to realize that.