Around 150 students at Hillsboro (Mo.) High School walked out of school Monday to protest against a trans classmate using the girls’ locker room during gym class. Thirty or forty students also protested in support of Lila Perry, a Hillsboro senior who has identified as female since age 13 and came out as trans last school year.

The protest followed a contentious school board meeting last Thursday, where some parents voiced their concerns about their girls sharing a locker room with another girl.

“There’s a lot of ignorance, they are claiming that they’re uncomfortable. I don’t believe for a second that they are. I think this is pure and simple bigotry,” Perry told local news station KMOV.

As if to make her point for her, the protesters, including a number of adults who claimed to have relatives at the school, seemed to be in denial that trans women are women.

“Boys needs to have their own locker room. Girls need to have their own locker room and if somebody has mixed feelings where they are, they need to have their own also,” protester Jeff Childs, holding a sign that read “Girl’s Rights Matter” [sic], told KMOV.

The station also reported that some parents claimed to be worried that Perry’s gender identity is just a complicated ruse to gain access to the girls’ locker room. Apropos of nothing, the year is 2015.

Perry declined the school’s offer of a Title IX-compliant gender neutral locker room on principle, deciding to drop gym class altogether. She tries to avoid using the bathroom at school, but when she does, she uses the girls’ bathroom. And she will continue to do so.

“I am a girl,” she said, “I am not going to be pushed away to another bathroom.”

[h/t Opposing Views, Photo: KMOV]