Earlier this month, a trans-identifying female entered a public high school boys’ locker room in Loudoun County, Virginia, after gym class and began filming male students with her phone. 

Filming students in locker rooms is not only a breach of privacy—it’s illegal. And yet, instead of taking steps to hold the trans-identified student accountable, Loudoun County Public Schools has launched a Title IX sexual harassment investigation against the three male students who were wrongly filmed after they stated they felt uncomfortable in that moment and questioned why there was a girl in the boys’ locker room.

Loudoun County Public Schools’ Policy 8040, passed in 2021, allows students to use the restroom and locker room that aligns with their “gender identity.” The policy still stands even following two sexual assaults in the district’s high schools, in which a male student, now an adult named Hunter Heckel, committed the atrocities in girls’ bathrooms.

According to reports, Heckel was wearing a blouse and skirt the day he raped a freshman female in the girls’ bathroom at Stone Bridge High School. The assault rightly triggered parental outrage, but the district’s priority was and remains on students’ so-called right to use whichever facility they prefer. Its decision to punish male students understandably concerned about their privacy rights proves as much.

Suzanne Satterfield, a Loudoun County mother and chapter leader of the Independent Women’s Network, strongly opposes Policy 8040. On May 20, at the county’s school board meeting, Satterfield held a sign that read, “End 8040.” In her public testimony, she said, “Every girl and boy has the right to feel secure using private spaces without being invaded by the opposite sex. Every day that Policy 8040 remains in play, children are being lied to that they could be born in the wrong body, can change their sex, and that this board and administration actually care about their safety, dignity, and mental health.”

Satterfield told IW Features the majority of people who spoke about Policy 8040 at the school board meeting opposed it. 

There was also, according to Satterfield, palpable tension while entering the building and during the meeting. She said, “Once again, the LCPS school board showed their disdain for public speakers by continuing to make them feel more like criminals than constituents. Before being allowed to step foot in the building, a hired guard stood with a cardboard acceptable purse size indicator, and everyone had to go through a metal detector.”

Many Loudoun County parents and students join Satterfield in the religious and scientific belief that biological sex is immutable, and therefore oppose Policy 8040. In fact, in the locker room video, one of the male students can be heard saying to the boy next to him, “Why is there a girl? I’m so uncomfortable there is a girl.”

But beyond the debate over sex-exclusive spaces, many Loudoun County parents are also wondering why more focus hasn’t been paid to the fact that the trans-identifying female student was video-recording boys in their locker room without their consent. 

In response, a Loudoun County Public Schools official said that the female student videoing the boys in the locker room didn’t violate their privacy because no one appeared in a compromising position. That’s like saying it’s fine to drive intoxicated as long as you don’t get into an accident.

The district’s sexual harassment investigation into these boys, who arguably are victims of a crime, is abhorrent. And yet it’s hardly the first time liberal school districts in Virginia have targeted students who engage in “wrongthink.” 

A father of one of the male students now being investigated for sexual harassment said, “There were other boys asking the same question. They [LCPS] created a very uncomfortable situation. They’re young, they’re 15 years old. They’re expressing their opinions, and now they’re being targeted for expressing those opinions.”

Loudoun County students’ rights to free speech and privacy are clearly being sacrificed in the name of gender ideology, in the same way that females’ rights to fair competition in sports are now routinely violated by officials who grant trans-identified male athletes access to their teams and events.

Indeed, while the number of people claiming to be transgender in the U.S. is actually quite small, the number of people, children included, whose rights are being violated to “affirm their identity” is large. Loudoun County is case in point.