Dusty Farr is fighting for his transgender daughter’s right to use the girls’ bathroom at her Missouri high school.
Before his transgender daughter was suspended after using the girls’ bathroom at her Missouri high school. Before the bullying and the suicide attempts. Before she dropped out.
Before all that, Dusty Farr was — in his own words — “a full-on bigot.” By which he meant that he was eager to steer clear of anyone LGBTQ+.
Now, though, after everything, he says he wouldn’t much care if his 16-year-old daughter — and he proudly calls her that — told him she was an alien. Because she is alive.
“When it was my child, it just flipped a switch,” says Farr, who is suing the Platte County School District on Kansas City’s outskirts. “And it was like a wake-up.”
Farr has found himself in an unlikely role: fighting bathroom bans that have proliferated at the state and local level in recent years. But Farr is not so unusual, says his attorney, Gillian Ruddy Wilcox of the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri.
Yep, and people that have done the work to rethink their preconceived notions are very helpful in helping others along. Speaking as a trans person, there is a lot of stupid, painful and upsetting questions that even well-intentioned people ask when they are learning about trans people.
Yup 100%, I know that all too well. It can be hard to deal with, especially at first, but it’s worth doing. Much more than just assuming bad intentions and that they’re just hateful people.
Ignorance ≠ Hate