Johnny Blazes

To the Honorable Members of The Joint Committee On The Judiciary,

My name is Johnny Blazes and I am transgendered resident of Massachusetts.  I was born in Cambridge, MA and attended a small, independent elementary school in Jamaica Plain before attending Boston Latin School.  After four years of college out of state, I immediately returned to Boston.  I am currently a drama and circus arts teacher at the same elementary school that I attended.

I am blessed to be working with the teachers who have known me since I was three years old, and who have watched me grow and transition as an adult.  They are loving, accepting people who have never implied that my non-conforming gender or trans-identity were cause for me to lose my job—which is as it should be.  They, and I, firmly believe that children need role models of all sorts.  They need adults of all races, ethnicities, abilities and gender presentations to serve as models for them so that they might learn what a beautiful multifarious world we live in.

However, many transgendered teachers in this state are not so lucky.  I know a gender non-conforming person who was not asked to return as a school aide, despite being well-loved by students and faculty alike, because a school administrator was discomfited by this person’s gender presentation.  That was the administrator’s prerogative, because that town does not yet include gender identity in their non-discrimination legislation, as Boston and Northampton do.  This is why I am asking you to please help pass H.1728/S.1687, “An Act Relative to Gender-Based Discrimination and Hate Crimes,” so that this kind of discrimination will no longer go unchallenged.

I recently heard an ad aimed at scaring people into believing that this act will allow predators to access young girls in public bathrooms.  This is a sadly ignorant campaign.  As a teacher of young children and as a person of sometimes ambiguous gender presentation, I can say that I have much more fear for the violence that gender non-conforming children and adults risk whenever they use public bathrooms, than I do of this law suddenly giving child molesters free rein. Every single gender non-conforming person I know, child or adult, without exception, has been harassed in a public bathroom at some point.  Passing this legislation will not change people’s ignorance, or their insistence on correcting people they believe to be miscategorized, but it will give legal backing to individuals’ choices to use the bathroom where they feel safest.

Thank you for your time and for your support of H.1728/S.1687.

Sincerely,

Johnny Blazes