'As I am': One transgender York County student shares his story, wisdom
Tina LocurtoWhen Finch Milsten was a small child, he prayed to God to make him a boy.
"I would lie awake in bed, fingers and toes crossed, the shame burning on my face stifled in the cotton of my pillow as I detailed each and every part of me that I wanted to change," Milsten remembered.
"And I realized, what a pitiful thing for a girl to do. A girl who isn't religious to lie in bed with her eyes screwed shut begging another man's deity," he continued, "to change who she was. To make her a boy."
Finch, a 17-year-old junior at Central York High School, has an unconventional transition story.
Like most people, Finch gradually came to understand who he was. He never had a grand epiphany or a period of intense darkness before realizing he was transgender, he said.
"When I got older, I realized sort of what those feelings meant for me and the more complicated intricacies behind them," Finch recalled. "And by ninth grade, I understood them enough to understand that, I am trans and I am a boy."
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Though Finch is out and proud — with overwhelming positive support from family and friends — the anti-trans legislation spreading across many school districts and state legislatures continues to frustrate and disappoint him.
These anti-LGBTQ+ policies crossed into Finch's backyard in recent years.
One York County school district is expected to consider a policy Wednesday night that will restrict how students define themselves. Four South Western School Board members had a short discussion on Tuesday as they looked over a policy that defines name, sex and gender identity and voted to send it to the board. Currently, the district doesn’t have this type of policy in place.
The Red Lion Area School Board, meanwhile, passed a series of restrictive policies last year in response to anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment that control which bathrooms students can use, which sports teams they join and even what pronouns they can use.
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In addition to anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and policies, transgender and nonbinary students on a national level have been the target of increasing violence against them. Transgender people are over four times more likely than cisgender people to experience violent victimization, including rape, sexual assault, and aggravated or simple assault, according to a study by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law.
Nex Benedict, 16, who used he/him and they/them pronouns, died earlier this month after a fight in a bathroom at Owasso High School in Oklahoma. Nex’s mother, Sue Benedict, shared wrenching stories about the bullying Nex faced due to his gender identity.
In body camera footage from a police officer’s interview with Nex, he described how three students “jumped” him after he threw water on them because they were bullying him and his friend over the way that they dressed, NBC News reported. On Monday, at least 40 students at Owasso High School walked out to protest what they describe as a pervasive culture of bullying with little accountability, which they believe led to Nex's death.
"It frustrates me because, at the end of the day, we're just other people," Finch said. "I know that being trans is something that a lot of people aren't exposed to and don't understand. The point I always try to get across to people is that you don't have to understand and you won't understand, because you don't experience something that complicated, intricate and very individual."
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Finch added that no two transgender people are the same.
"And so if you're not trans, you're not going to know what it's like or how to handle it," he said.
Finch noted that his parents — including current Central York Board President Amy Milsten — have been supportive. But other young people aren't so lucky, he said.
Finch, who has inadvertently become an activist simply by existing, said he hopes to spread a positive message. Finch touched upon this idea publicly when he recited a poem during Central's recent diversity celebration.
His poem, initially part of an assignment for a theater class, touched upon the good parts of being transgender.
"I am happy as I am. I am proud of who I see when I look in the mirror," Finch said. "I want other trans kids to know that that's possible, and know that that is something they can reach for — to love themselves not despite their transness, but alongside it and because of it."
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Finch said he knows he will never be a cisgender boy — but doesn't have to be to have confidence in himself.
"Being trans at its core, is an act of self-creation. It's an act of being so in tune with who you are that you make yourself something so different than what you were born as," Finch said. "It can be a really cool thing. It's not this dark thing that we need to be afraid of. It's not this epidemic that's plaguing the kids.
"I hope that one day we will be able to have a society in which it's embraced as what it could be, as the really amazing thing. It could be right."
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