Never in my life did I ever think this day would come. The day I’d be nominated as prom king. The day my journalism class voted me for prom king nominee I was shocked and a little terrified because a lot of people are going to have an opinion on me even running and if I ever won, I know I’d have to brace myself for the hell of a lot of people would want to bring down on me. So the question I ask today is, “Is It Possible to Have a Transgender Prom King?” I know my generation, Gen Z, wouldn’t hesitate to agree, but for anyone else on the edge I want to be able to provide some sort of clarity on my own personal experience as well as maybe benefits of this and the history of this in the past.

When it was announced that I was nominated to be prom king, I felt so many mixed emotions, but fear and joy trumped most of those emotions. I was felt joy and hope in representing the LGBTQ+ community as the first transgender prom king at Santiago High School, but I also felt a lot of fear. I had this doubt in me. This voice in my head telling me, and still telling me, nobody’s going to vote for me because it’s not fair. But how is it not fair? Most would say it’s not fair because I wasn’t born a boy. I wasn’t raised to be a boy. I didn’t have the opportunities other guys did. I don’t have the hormones or physical body parts like any other guy. How does this make me less of a man though? I have been told so many times that my being confident in my own skin, accepting who I am and just the way I handle myself is manlier than any of the guys they know. How I identify shouldn’t be dictated by someone who isn’t me. Me running for prom king doesn’t hurt anyone and it certainly isn’t unfair towards cis-gendered people because it more so puts me at a disadvantage.

A similar event happened when transgender male Dex Frier at Johnson High School in Georgia was nominated for prom king and rejected by school officials. He was told that he could only run for prom king because he was born a woman, which upset a lot of people worldwide. The students at Johnson High School decided to stand against this discrimination because of the fact that Dex was being excluded from a high school experience due to transphobia and bigotry. He wanted to make sure anyone else didn’t have to go through this discrimination and continued to battle the school with the help of people all over the world. Georgia ended up making the Prom King and Queen more genderfluid terms as they named them the Two Royal Knights, to include everyone. By encouraging this change from traditional policies to non-traditional policies and fighting this battle with the support of many people worldwide, Dex has paved the way for other transgender men and women who dream to run for prom king or queen. This event happened in 2019, only 3 years ago and now I would also like to mark my name in history and pave the way for other transgender people like me.

In my first article about my own personal experience with figuring out who I was, I received a lot of positive messages from friends and random people, as well as private messages from others like me who thanked me and told me I helped encourage them to figure themselves out and accept who they are. This feeling of lifting up others through my own personal experiences has become so addicting, so why not add a happy ending to the chapter of my life that is high school. Even if I don’t win, the fact that I was even considered to run for prom king and so much support through the process has been rewarding enough and I want to thank the people at Santiago High School for being so open-minded and accepting. I’ll see everyone at prom.