Boston music school cancels ex-transgender college student’s awareness presentation

A student at Berklee College of Music who reconnected with his biological sex after identifying as transgender says he and Congressman Seth Moulton “poked the same beehive” after the school canceled a presentation on his lived experience.

Simon Amaya Price, a 20-year-old Bostonian set to graduate from Berklee in December, looked to share his “Born in the Right Body: Desister and Detransitioner Awareness” presentation on campus last month before officials postponed it indefinitely.

Amaya Price told the Herald that the decision came as a shock, especially after he secured funding through the school’s Office of Diversity & Inclusion and permission to use the office’s logo in advertisements.

Amaya Price, who identified as transgender from age 14 until age 17, received an email from the college’s vice president and executive director, Ron Savage, stating: “Congratulations on your upcoming event. What a tremendous leadership step in organizing this Event.”

Classmates and people from outside the school blasted Amaya Price when he made an initial post about the talk scheduled for Oct. 20, just days before. They also slammed Berklee officials for approving the presentation.

“When I talk about this topic with most people, they tell me they’ve never even heard of desisters and detransitioners,” Amaya Price wrote in his post. “As a desister myself, I find this worrying and I have decided to organize an event this Sunday to raise awareness about this community.”

A desister is “someone who previously identified as transgender but later re-identified with their biological sex before undergoing medical intervention,” while a detransitioner is “someone who was once transgender but no longer identifies as such.”

Backlash

When he woke up the next morning around 400 “overwhelmingly negative” comments greeted him on his Instagram post, “many of them threatening, many of them hateful,” Amaya Price told the Herald on Friday.

One commenter told Amaya Price that he should be “TERRIFIED” and another threatened to “throw expired groceries” at him. Dozens referenced how they felt he was “transphobic.”

A student-led online petition collected 1,998 signatures urging officials to shut down the event, which organizers claimed would “harm the mental well-being of individuals in the transgender community.”

Amaya Price and his father, Gareth Amaya Price, met with Savage on Oct. 17, with the student accepting a recommendation to postpone the Oct. 20 presentation due to safety reasons amid the turmoil.

Just days later, the student and father met with Savage again about plans to find another date and venue for the talk, but the vice president called it off “indefinitely,” Simon Amaya Price said.

“For events on campus, our first priority is always safety,” a college spokesperson told the Herald on Saturday. “The event you reference was postponed due to safety and other logistical concerns shared by both the student responsible for planning the event and the institution.”

New avenue

Through networking and advocacy, Amaya Price will be hosting his presentation, which he said is a project for a “Songwriting and Social Change” course, at MIT on Nov. 24.

He said he worked with MIT Open Discourse Society, an independent group, and received support from Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender in getting it moved and rescheduled.

“Talking to a lot of people who will engage with me in good faith,” Amaya Price said, “their issue is with the existence and legitimacy of desisters and detransitioners.”

“My experience at Berklee is not the exception,” he added. “At our elite institutions, people with dissenting views are really afraid to speak up. … We can do better as a society and we should do better. This is a real problem.”

Amaya Price said he “completely” supports Massachusetts Democrat Seth Moulton’s post-election comments that Dems were “out of touch with the American people,” especially on transgender issues, which drew a sharp rebuke from critics.

Moulton, telling the New York Times that he doesn’t want his daughters getting “run over on the playing field by a male or formerly male athlete,” has blamed his party for the Republican red wave and Donald Trump’s victory.

“This gender ideology is right in our schools. It should not be compulsory in the way that it is,” Amaya Price said. “We should embrace diversity of thought.”

His father, who identified himself as a Democrat, also agreed with Moulton’s comments, saying that he worries about the party’s future if it continues to reject differing viewpoints.

“What surprised me is that the administration would just fold in the face of this pressure,” he said. “That they would show no backbone, no support for alternate points of view and diversity of opinion that is already present at this school.”

Slides on Amaya Price’s initial post about his presentation stated: “What happens when you realize you were wrong about being trans?” and “Minors can’t consent to a tattoo but can consent to elective, life-altering surgeries.”

Commenters called the student out for spreading “misinformation.”

Per Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell, minors have the right to “access gender-affirming health care” with permission from a parent or legal guardian.

In some instances, though, parental consent is unnecessary if a “doctor believes you are mature enough to give informed consent to the treatment, and it is in your best interest not to notify your parents,” Campbell’s office states.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a national nonprofit that defends free speech, has advocated for Amaya Price. Earlier this month, the organization wrote a letter to Berklee Interim President David Bogen urging him to rescind the postponement.

“Critics of the event argue that offensive speech should be silenced because it could, ironically, undermine their own voices,” FIRE wrote in a blog post. “However, in doing so, they fail to recognize what true silencing looks like.”

Amaya Price, who lives with his parents in Boston, said he was diagnosed with “gender dysphoria” in high school while he felt “out of touch” with his body and started questioning whether he was truly transgender or not.

After a year at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, a liberal arts school in Great Barrington, where he met “lots of other transgenders,” Amaya Price said he withdrew because he felt he didn’t in well.

That’s also when he said he started to detransition. Over the past few years, he admitted he’s grown comfortable with himself.

“We’re failing a lot of young people who suffer from gender dysphoria medically right now because they are not getting the help that they need,” Amaya Price said, “and the help that we’re often giving them is exactly the opposite of what would be good for them.