It feels like some words are too painful to print.

We felt that way listening to transgender students speak at an anti-hate rally about a month ago. This was the third annual rally students at Guilderland High School have organized.

Students at each of the rallies spoke from the heart; they spoke courageously about hurt they had suffered — from fellow students, from teachers, from staff, from the community at large — because they were perceived as being different from or lesser than a norm.

This year’s rally was particularly seering because several of the students who spoke are transgender. Unlike, say, a Black student or an Asian student who has a family of the same race, some transgender students are at odds with their own families.

Also they live in a time and a place where being transgender — something that they are rather than they chose to be — can be regarded as evil or wrong or simply not true.

“We, in America, are in the process of a trans-genocide,” said one of the students to the attentive crowd of more than 100 who sat on a sunny day in the parking lot of their high school.

This student described the stages of genocide and said we are at Stage 7 — “disguising the bigger picture of what has happened with phrases like ‘protect the kids’ in order to mask the real intention” — which comes after Stage 6: “polarization when the media starts to criminalize and create prejudice against a marginalized group like saying transpeople are predators or dangerous in the same way that Adolf Hitler said that transvestism should be eradicated.”

The student cited laws in the United States that allow transgender children to be taken from their parents, allow the government to force grown adults to detransition, or deny trans people health care. “These are the laws that make 32 percent of transgender people attempt suicide …,” the student said. “Trans people are dying. Trans kids are dying.

“So, when you say things like, ‘It just grosses me out’ or ‘I just think it’s bad for the kids,’ you may not mean that you think transgender people should be kidnapped or killed but, by doing so, you are agreeing with those people. That’s the side you are taking regardless of how neutral you think you are.”

When trans kids are being harassed in the locker room, the student said, “Your quiet apology afterwards isn’t enough .… Do yourself a favor and be on the right side of history.”

It wasn’t just the reference to Adolf Hitler that reminded us, as we listened, to the words of German pastor Martin Niemöller who, after World War II, spoke openly about his own early complicity in Nazism and his eventual change of heart.

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist,” said Niemöller. “Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.”

The student was right. Our shared humanity depends on each of us speaking out.

So we were heartened that one of the themes of this year’s rally was encouraging allies. Allyship, said another of the speakers, is not “a quick fix” but rather a journey. “It’s being present for the long haul. It’s taking a stand that begins with having an open mind and ears ready to hear ….

“If I didn’t have allyship, I would never have the confidence to speak what I believe or face the hate I get as a person who’s part of the LGBTQ+ community.”

This student described being in gym class “just trying to play volleyball … I was discriminated against for being trans. I was spit on and purposely misgendered and I still am by this student. It was awful to cope with but these people who I barely knew started to stand up for me and help me cope with what this student did to me.

“Instead of watching me shaking and crying any time I had to go in the hallway or even be near him, they helped me. They stuck by my side and helped me overcome this fear of him.”

The student concluded, “No one has to fight this awful battle of hate alone ….If we just keep fighting, we’ll win in the end.”

If we view overcoming discrimination as a battle, we could say help arrived this month like a cavalry on the hill. The State Education Department put out a 42-page report, “Creating a Safe, Supportive, and Affirming School Environment for Transgender and Gender Expansive Students: 2023 Legal Update and Best Practices.”

The report correctly states, “All students need a safe and supportive school environment to progress academically and developmentally. Administrators, faculty, staff, and students play an important part in creating and sustaining a healthy and respectful environment.”

The report cites the 2021 National School Climate Survey by the Gay, Lesbian, Straight, Education Network, which found that 68 percent of students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer felt unsafe at school due to their sexual orientation, gender identity, and/or gender expression. Students who reported victimization experienced lower academic outcomes and poorer mental well-being.

The report also cites, as the Guilderland student did, a high percentage of suicide attempts: Last year, more than half of transgender and nonbinary youth seriously considered attempting suicide and nearly 1 in 5 attempted suicide, with rates being even higher for youth of color when compared to their white peers.

But, the report says, LGBTQ youth in schools with cultures that create a safe space reported lower rates of attempted suicide. LGBTQ youth who reported having at least one accepting adult in their lives were 40 percent less likely to attempt suicide.

So allyship is a matter of life and death.

The report goes over issues that teachers and the rest of us need to be aware of, starting with pages of definitions, and stressing the importance of using the names and pronouns a person has chosen.

“I shouldn’t have to learn to accept people calling me the wrong name,” said one of the Guilderland students who spoke at this year’s rally, saying their family, church, parents, bus driver, and friends use their birth name rather than their chosen name.

“My teachers still call me ‘she.’ It shouldn’t be that hard to call people by the pronouns they want to be called by,” they said.

They also advised, “You don’t need to make it a big deal if you mess up. Just correct yourself and move on … Everyone has an identity whether they find out when they’re 12, 17, 30, or 60. Everyone deserves to have that identity known and respected.

“Allyship doesn’t have to be this big all-consuming thing. It doesn’t have to be a big show. It can be just as simple as checking in with someone or correcting someone else.”

Some gender-based practices are so engrained, many of us don’t realize we are using them. “Gender-based policies, rules, and practices can have the effect of marginalizing, stigmatizing, stereotyping, and excluding students, whether they are TGE [transgender and gender expansive] or not,” says the report from the State Education Department.

The report includes a list of gender-based practices set beside gender-neutral practices. For example, a teacher, instead of addressing a class as “boys and girls” or “ladies and gentlemen,” could instead refer to students as friends, learners, scholars, athletes, readers, writers, historians, or mathematicians.

Events such as father-daughter dances could be family dances; instead of a prom king and queen, there could be a royal court; for graduation, instead of boys in red and girls in white, there could be one color gown or students could choose the color they want to wear.

It’s important to start gender-neutral practices in the earliest grades, including all children to participate in all activities. The harm of forbidding discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in the elementary grades, as for example the state of Florida did last year and expanded to all grades this year, was made clear by one of the students speaking at the Guilderland rally.

“When I was 10 years old, I thought to myself, ‘I think I was supposed to be a boy.’” said the Guilderland student. “At night, I would cry fantasizing about the body I wanted, the body I felt I should have had. Imagine a 10-year-old crying at night because his body says ‘girl’ when his mind says ‘boy.’”

He felt, if he told an adult, he’d be rejected. “So I told another kid. I sat down at lunch and I said to her, ‘I think I want to be a boy.’”

The girl’s response made him feel bewildered, alone, ashamed, and disgusted. “I spent the next two years questioning myself with a deep burning rage and frustration, thinking about how I could hurt the people who hurt me ….,” he said. “I was told I didn’t have gender dysphoria, that I was too feminine to be a man.

“I was threatened with violence … I just assumed that I would be miserable as a woman my whole life. At that point, I would have rather been dead than a girl. But then I met my actual friends, the people who are still with me today, the people who allowed me to explore myself and figure out my sexuality and gender ….

“Not everyone is so lucky. I feel grief for the experiences of my brothers, sisters, and siblings living in communities where they are unsupported and unwanted, where they have to spend their years as a minor uncomfortable with their bodies, hair, and voice, the way people see them, where they must live in fear of being assaulted, disowned, or killed ….

“Hateful people may say trans people are going to hell but I have lived through hell worse than any that satan could ever put me through …. Trans people, trans kids die without support. I am 17 years old. It should not be my responsibility to worry over my Floridian friend, Liam, who can be taken away from his family because Florida passed Senate Bill 254, a bill that allows the state to take custody of a minor if they deem them at risk of receiving gender-affirming care.

“I should not have to figure out how to call the friend I consider my brother and tell him that Tennessee has given him a year to detransition. I should not have to look around me and watch adults as they say they want trans people to wear armbands, marking us, and I should not have to watch videos of people taking their hatred out on packs of Bud Light, imagining it was me.”

The Guilderland student concluded, “I am a man, a man who is in danger. Our lives and rights are in danger. You cannot leave us behind …. You can help us — at the very least, make us feel seen and supported and wanted.”

You are seen. You are supported. You are wanted.

We are grateful for your courage in speaking out. Thank you for showing us what we need to do.