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A college student who formerly identified as transgender faced threats, harassment, and cyberbullying for attempting to host an event on his college campus intended to raise awareness about the dangers of gender transition procedures for minors.
Simon B. Amaya Price, 20, was tasked with creating an event about social change for a class at Berklee College of Music, a private music college in Boston. He decided to host a presentation on Oct. 20 titled “Born in the Right Body: Desister and Detransitioner Awareness” to share his own struggles with gender dysphoria in high school and how he overcame them.
After receiving almost 1,000 negative comments on social media, including messages threatening his physical safety and recommending he drop out of school and commit suicide, the liberal arts college’s administration forced him to cancel the presentation, Amaya Price told The Daily Signal.
“The determination and the willingness of these people to go out of their way to essentially harass, bully, and slander me is really remarkable and does not make me feel safe on campus,” Amaya Price said.
Amaya Price is a “desister,” someone who identified as transgender, but decided to live in accordance with his biological gender.
Amaya Price, who has been diagnosed with autism, experienced social ostracism and a mental health crisis in ninth grade, leading him to decide his problem was that he was actually a girl.
He told his therapist, who affirmed his gender dysphoria and referred him to Boston Children’s Hospital for hormones and surgeries. Amaya Price’s pediatrician told him and his father that they could choose between having a “dead son or a living daughter,” and that then-14-year-old Amaya Price would kill himself if denied hormones and surgery.
Thankfully, Amaya Price said, his father immediately shut down the possibility of a medical transition.
“I hated him for that,” Amaya Price said. “But now looking back at that, he did the best thing he could have done.”
The college student planned the Oct. 20 event to raise awareness about the experiences of desisters and detransitioners like himself and his friends, and to discuss the dangers of allowing minors to consent to life-altering gender-transition surgeries.
Berklee’s diversity, equity, and inclusion department initially sponsored Amaya Price’s event, offering funding for food and refreshments, emails between the two parties shared with The Daily Signal show.
Amaya Price put up posters with QR codes to the event page and made an Instagram post to promote his event on Oct. 15. He woke up the next morning to hundreds of negative comments, including “take a long walk off a cliff,” “i am going to go to this event and i am going to throw expired groceries at you,” “bro you should be SCARED for sunday what the f*** were you thinking,” “drop out please,” and “horrible disgusting and disappointing.”
Several commenters claimed that Amaya Price was making up the fact that children undergo transgender surgeries, though a database from medical watchdog group Do No Harm revealed that almost 6,000 children have undergone transgender surgeries, while 8,579 have been given hormones and puberty blockers.
Other commenters disowned Amaya Price from the autistic and “queer” communities. Amaya Price says he identifies as bisexual.
The next day, Oct. 17, Amaya Price met with the school’s vice president, Ron Savage, and the dean of his major, Rodney Alejandro. He says he brought with him to the meeting his father and printouts of the threatening comments on his Instagram post.
Savage recommended Amaya Price postpone his event for safety and logistical reasons, given the number of responses he received. Amaya Price agreed, as he was concerned about his safety after the threats and wanted to get a bigger venue to fit the 117 RSVPs.
On Amaya Price’s way to meet with the campus safety department, he said a number of fellow students yelled “transphobe” and “TERF,” which stands for “trans exclusionary radical feminist,” at him.
On Monday, Amaya Price made another Instagram post announcing the event was postponed, garnering hundreds of additional negative comments.
Amaya Price and his father met again with Savage on Monday, he said, and Savage told him he was “indefinitely postponing” his event.
“The event was supposed to be a necessary, culminating project in my class ‘Songwriting and Social Change,’” Amaya Price said. “The event was approved by my professor, and the fact that Mr. Savage has decided that I am not allowed to do my event is a violation of my academic freedom and a major barrier in my way to graduating on Dec. 12.”
Amaya Price’s father, Gareth, confirmed his son’s account of the meetings with the college to The Daily Signal and said he is proud of his son’s bravery.
“As for [Simon] saying, ‘I know most people are going to disagree with me about this,’” Gareth said, “but I think it’s important, and I’m going to say it: That’s all I could have hoped for.”
“Even if I don’t always agree with him,” Gareth continued, “I’m proud of him.”
The school’s DEI department, which Amaya Price said once supported him, issued a statement saying, “We are aware of your concerns and have been actively addressing this after discussions with the event organizer, the events will no longer take place as planned on October 20, and will not be sponsored by the Office of Diversity and Inclusion.”
On Monday, the day after Amaya Price’s event was supposed to take place, the college’s associate director of inclusive teaching invited LGBTQ students to a “Queer @ Berklee” meeting on Thursday in the same room where the detransitioner event would have been held. Amaya Price said he expects this was an opportunity for students who were disgruntled about his event to air their grievances.
Despite his college’s lack of support, Amaya Price said he hopes to find a safe time and place for his event in the near future. Simon plans to graduate in December, and he needs to throw his event by the end of the semester to pass his class.
“It’s very disheartening, because they were making it very clear that, you know, I’m too diverse for them,” Amaya Price said.
The 20-year-old student said he dreams of a future with a wife and kids, where his kids won’t have to struggle with gender like he did.
“I don’t want to worry, ‘Oh, is my kid going to go to the doctor, and then the doctor is going to tell my kid to go on hormones and have these life-altering medical procedures,’” he said. “That’s why I’m doing this. I’m doing this to save people.”
Neither Savage, nor the Berklee College of Music or its DEI department, responded to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.
