(OPINION) As a girl, I was taught to respect the privacy of my body, and to speak up if I felt unsafe or if something made me feel uncomfortable. Now I’m 14 and shocked to learn not all adults take you seriously when you say you don’t feel safe or comfortable. In fact, they may even punish you for speaking out.

That’s what happened to me when I said I didn’t think a teenage male should be allowed in the girls’ locker room where my teammates and I undress and change. I’m a private person when it comes to my body, even in the safety and comfort of home. But at school, apparently there’s no problem with a male student freely watching us girls change our clothes.

It was a conversation I had with some peers in French class that landed me in trouble with the officials at Randolph Union High School in Vermont. Someone overheard me telling my friends that a dude doesn’t belong in the girls’ locker room, and they reported me to the co-principals, even though the male student didn’t hear me and wasn’t in the class.

The controversy didn’t start in French class, though; it started when the school allowed a male who identifies as a girl to compete on our girls’ volleyball team. When the male student entered our locker room, we were changing. Some of us didn’t have a shirt on; others of us were only in our underwear. Naturally, some of us were uncomfortable and asked the student to leave, but we were ignored. (SOURCE)