FFS Friday: Maine High School Girls Who Staged a Protest Walk-Out

November 1, 2024

FFS (Female Free Speech) Friday honors women and girls who are speaking out about the harms that “gender identity” poses to women and girls as a sex class. FFS Friday posts are free and shareable. If you would like access to content that delves deeper into the movement to protect the sex-based rights of women and girls and to stop the abolition of sex, please consider a paid subscription. 

Today’s FFS Friday honors a group of female students at Mount Desert Island High School in Bar Harbor, Maine, who staged a walkout on October 21 to protest violence at their school, specifically an incident in which a male student beat a female student while the principal stood by instead of taking action to stop the beating.

Thanks to Jennifer Gingrich (@fem_mb on X) for alerting me to the story!

Photo: Bar Harbor Story

This topic concerns me as a female teenager because as you know, there is a video that went viral of the ‘fight’ where Mr. Haney, our principal, stood by and let a girl get violently assaulted by another student.

- Elsie Yarbrough, MDI High School student

On October 4, a male student (who calls himself female) viciously attacked a girl while the two were exiting a school bus at Mount Desert Island High School in Bar Harbor, Maine. A video of the incident went somewhat viral. According to reports at the time, the male student had attacked a different female student while on the bus, and the victim of the second attack tried to fend him off. The man in the green shirt in the video is Matt Haney, the school principal.

According to the victim’s mother:

He full-on attacks her, gets on top of her and pins her down. So she’s not even able to defend herself in any way because he’s bigger, he’s heavier, he’s like six-feet tall. And then he begins biting her eye and, my daughter said, while he was chewing on her eye he was growling. He’s grabbing handfuls of hair and smashing her head off the pavement. All the while the teachers, the principal, is crouched down next to them.

The female student suffered a concussion and has not returned to school. I have seen no indication that the male student who did this has suffered any consequences.

It is widely known among the school body that the attacker is a boy who calls himself a “transgender girl” and has documented his “gender transition” on social media. Both students previously attended a different high school, where school administrators allegedly allowed him to use the girls’ bathrooms because of his girl “gender identity.” Earlier this year, while at that school, he was accused of peeping at and taking photos of girls and masturbating while in the girls’ bathroom. Female students protested then too, holding signs that read, “I should not be afraid to use the bathroom,” “Protect our bodies,” and “No more peeking through the door.” 

Last Monday, a group of female students at MDI High School decided to stage a walkout during school hours. A girl named Elsie Yarbrough was asked about her motivation for participating in the walkout and she said, “This topic concerns me as a female teenager because as you know there is a video that went viral of the ‘fight’ where Mr. Haney, our principal, stood by and let a girl get violently assaulted by another student.” She didn’t identify the “other student” as male, but it’s hardly a secret. No school administrator will say out loud that he’s male, and one can understand why Elsie would hesitate before doing so. 

It should not fall to teenage girls to stand up to these male bullies. The adults in the room are just afraid of this kid because he claims to be “transgender” and therefore a member of the allegedly “most marginalized group in society.” 

I wish the girls would call him male, but in today’s environment, it’s not hard to understand why they don’t. Given the abuse women and girls receive for speaking out about male violence at all, let alone male violence perpetrated by men and boys who call themselves women and girls, it’s amazing that these girls are speaking out at all. 

So to the girls at MDI High School in Bar Harbor, Maine, today’s FFS Friday is for you.