Today's New York Times Style section featured an article that posed the following question: should boys be allowed to wear skirts to school?  Should girls be allowed to attend prom or pose for senior pictures in a tuxedo?

When it comes to arguing, there isn't any more overused rationale than the good of "the children."  We should have universal health care so our children don't die of cancer if their parents can't afford treatment.  We shouldn't have universal health care so our children don't have to pay for it.  Etc.  In the case of school codes, the favorite argument against letting kids wear the clothes they feel best express their gender so long as those clothes are in keeping with the rest of the school dress code is yet another paean to our besieged youth: classmates who cross-dress are, like, soooo distracting!  " It’s hard enough to get kids to concentrate on an algorithm — even without Jimmy sitting there in lipstick and fake eyelashes," says one woman in the article.  Other educators the authors discussed this with say that "high school should not be a public stage to work out private identity issues. School, they say, is a rigorous academic and social training ground for the world of adults and employment."

I call shenanigans.  And here's why.  I'm sick of the idea that we have to sanitize the living shit out of the entire fucking planet--schools above all--for the sake of the dear, sweet little children.  Yes, school is a social training ground.  And one of the most important aspects of social training is learning to pay attention to your work even if people dress, look, or act in a way that's different from what you're used to.  If Johnny truly can't concentrate on his algorithm because Jimmy is sitting there in lipstick and fake eyelashes and presumably minding his own business, congratulations Johnny's parents, you've raised an immature little douchebag who won't last long in a diverse workforce unless he learns to mind his own business and concentrate on his work instead of his classmates' dress.  And assuming it's not ridiculously short, how distracting can a guy in a skirt possibly be, anyway?  If the answer is "so much that I can't concentrate on anything," you need help and the problem isn't the guy in the skirt, it's your lack of ability to focus.

I learned this lesson early, and that was good.  When I was in preschool one of my classmates had some kind of neurological issue that made her completely disoriented, so she had a guide dog to, you know, guide her.  There was only one problem.  I didn't want to sit like a pretzel or sing the ABCs or play "duck, duck, goose."  I wanted to pet the doggy.  So I basically stalked this girl all day despite the teacher's warnings and when my dad came to pick me up from school we had a little talk about how the doggy is there to work and I needed to pay attention to the teacher and follow directions and do my very best not to be distracted by the doggy, and then ask Lisa (my classmate) if I could pet her doggy during free time, only if she wasn't busy.  If it's reasonable to expect a four-year-old who loves dogs more than people to curb her enthusiasm and pay attention to the task at hand so that her classmate can learn comfortably (and it is), then it's DEFINITELY not too much to ask a high school student to look at the board and listen to the teacher instead of obsessing over a guy in a freaking skirt and lipstick.  

Imagine being an employer whose staff member comes up to you and says, "Listen, I really like Farha, but she wears that headscarf thing and it's just so...distracting.  I can't pay attention to my work because I'm spending all this time just...staring at her.  I've never seen anyone who dresses that way and I just truly can't handle it."  You'd have doubts about their ability to perform their job duties, right?  If that person gets so easily distracted by a coworker's choice of dress, then how much time does she spend on Facebook when she should be putting together expense reports?  Distractions, be they a guy in a skirt, a lady in hijab, or social networking sites are constant and predictable facts of life.  No, people shouldn't come to work naked or dressed like skanks, but trans people deserve to dress in a way that's comfortable for them, and if that means a male prefers to wear a conservative skirt-and-jacket combo (for example), his colleagues need to have the class and maturity to not flip out about it.  And it's better for everyone involved if they learn that class and maturity in high school or earlier. 

Plus, come on.  Most high schoolers dress like idiots anyway.