Dusty Farr is fighting for his transgender daughter's right to use the girls' bathroom at her Missouri high school.

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.

  • Jeena@jemmy.jeena.net
    19·
    7 months ago

    That reminds me of this poem:

    First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
      151·
      7 months ago

      Very much so. Except he’s one of the lucky ones because he’s white, cis, probably heterosexual and male, so no one will ever need to speak out for him.

      • MagicShel@programming.dev
        14·
        7 months ago

        It’s that privilege that obligates us to speak for others. Because even though I can’t speak from personal experience, I’m more likely to be listened to. So I do the best I can to speak for those who go unheard, imperfect as my understanding is.