Students gather in Piazza to rally for transgender, non-conforming rights

Senior ethics major Lelia Mamone supported transgender and gender nonconforming people at the rally Feb. 28. Photo by Jackie Cohen

About 20 people gathered on the steps of the Leatherby Libraries Feb. 28 for a rally in solidarity with transgender and gender nonconforming people.

The rally came less than a week after the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice announced plans to withdraw protections introduced under the Obama administration for transgender students, which allowed them to use bathrooms that match their gender identities. The conflict comes from an interpretation of Title IX, which bans discrimination in schools based on sex.

Lelia Mamone, a senior ethics major who organized the rally, said that the event in the Attallah Piazza was organized with the LGBT Center OC and some of Mamone’s friends.

About 20 students sat on the steps in front of the library, holding signs to be in solidarity with transgender and gender non-conforming people. Photo by Jackie Cohen

“I’d been wanting to organize something for transgender and gender nonconforming solidarity for a long time, and there’s a lot of media surrounding the recent Title IX rollbacks,” Mamone told The Panther. “We are protected by the law, but we shouldn’t need law or awareness of the policy to be treated like people … It’s not about law and it’s not about policy, necessarily. We shouldn’t need those things to have the right to exist.”

The term gender nonconforming refers to a person who has physical or behavioral characteristics that do not correspond with those usually associated with the person’s biological sex.

Students who attended the event held signs that read “Black trans lives matter,” “We’re here and we’re queer” and “Protect indigenous trans people.”

About halfway through the rally, Mamone held a moment of silence for transgender people who have recently been killed. According to the Human Rights Campaign, 22 transgender people were shot, stabbed or otherwise violently killed in the U.S. from January to December 2016.

One of the topics discussed at the event was the Supreme Court case of Gavin Grimm, a transgender 17-year-old from Virginia whose school board passed a policy that barred Grimm from using the boys’ bathroom at his school.

Dannie Cesena, a transitions services coordinator at the LGBT Center OC, spoke during the rally about the recent proposed changes to how Title IX is interpreted.

“This is not about the bathrooms, this is about us existing as human beings. By attacking our existence, they’re basically saying, ‘You cannot be true to who you are,’” Cesena said.

Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill in September 2016 that would require, beginning March 1, all single-gender bathrooms in businesses, government agencies and public places to be identified as all-gender toilet facilities.

Jess Herb, a junior digital arts major, spoke at the rally.. Photo by Jackie Cohen

There are 11 restrooms on the university’s main campus and Chapman Studios West that are designated as all-gender.

“I didn’t even know that we had a gender-neutral bathroom on the first floor of the library,” said Jess Herb, a junior digital arts major who attended the rally. “Now I know, but I didn’t know that forever … People don’t even know that transgender and gender non-binary people live here.”

A study by the University of Southern California School of Law found that 0.76 percent of people living in California – roughly 218,400 people – identify as transgender, compared to 0.58 percent nationwide. People between the ages of 18 and 24 are the most likely demographic in California to identify as transgender, the study found.

Herb said that rallies like this one are a small step, and that the biggest thing people can do is show their support.

“When you see something that is in any way damaging to someone’s gender identity, then tear it down, or actively talk it out,” Herb said. “Form your own rally, form events. You have as much power as you think you do, especially on a college campus. There is so much power and there’s so much you can do.”