I was treated better as a trans woman but changed my mind…now my college won’t let me talk about it

A leading American music school is under fire for breaking its own rules on freedom of expression by preventing one of its students from discussing his problematic history with gender reassignment.

Simon Amaya Price, 20, says Boston’s Berklee College of Music canceled his talk about the three years he struggled to live as a woman after the event sparked a backlash on campus.

Campaigners say this is the latest example of ‘woke’ professors giving up freedom of speech in defiance of the narrow left-wing consensus that permeates academia.

“I wanted to talk about abandoning transgender identity, but that was too much for Berklee,” Amaya Price told DailyMail.com.

“Once the political backlash became clear, Berklee administrators postponed my event indefinitely.”

Berklee, a venerated 79-year-old university in Massachusetts that claims to support “creative expression,” did not return DailyMail.com’s request for comment.

Amaya Price, an indie pop singer-songwriter at the school, was scheduled to give a presentation at a campus location on Oct. 20 as part of a course on “social change.”

His classmates discussed homelessness, eating disorders and motherhood in their conversations.

He wanted to talk about his teenage years as a woman and how he came to “quit.”

He started questioning his identity and transition when he was 14 – a difficult time in his life when he was mocked by peers and faced ‘complete social exclusion’.

Amaya Price says he made the transition because he was confused by his autism, puberty, sexual abuse and problems with friends.

He was urged to do so by online trans activists and peers at a summer camp where teens introduced themselves in “pronoun rituals.”

“I noticed that people treated me much better when I said my pronouns were anything but he/him,” Amaya Price said.

‘I thought, “Okay, this makes me feel better. People treat me better. This has to be the right thing for me.”

He started going by ‘Ash’. Doctors at Boston Children’s Hospital immediately confirmed him and suggested cross-sex hormones, he says.

But his father, Gareth, “put his foot down” and didn’t let him take gender reassignment medication until he was 18, he adds.

He never did much more than mix up his wardrobe a bit.

His appearance – as man, woman and non-binary – was always androgynous.

Amaya Price describes a “turning point” when he was about seventeen and began to see “logical fallacies” in gender identity politics.

He started developing friendships with men and enjoyed being ‘one of the guys’.

He also saw trans friends undergoing medical procedures harm themselves.

The teenager started calling it quits and is now campaigning against gender ideology, especially when it comes to children.

“I don’t think there is a situation where minors should be allowed to use cross-sex hormones or puberty blockers or undergo these surgeries,” he says.

‘Scientifically, we don’t know how to distinguish between the children for whom it might work and for whom it doesn’t work.’

This view makes him an “apostate” for trans activists and leftists, says Amaya Price.

“I’m falsifying one of the core tenets of their ideology, which is that anyone with gender dysphoria should undergo medical transition, which is simply not true,” he says.

He wanted to explain all this in his Berklee speech, entitled ‘Born in the Right Body: Desister and Detransitioner Awareness.’

The college was initially willing to support his event, but pulled the plug after Amaya Price’s promotional flyers and Instagram post sparked an angry response.

Within hours, he had received more than 400 “overwhelmingly negative” responses, he says.

Berklee students called him a “Nazi” and a “transphobe.”

One said he should be ‘afraid’ to give his presentation, another threatened to throw ‘expired messages’ at him.

Angry students gathered some 2,000 signatures in an online petition demanding Berklee cancel the lecture.

They said it would “harm the mental well-being of individuals in the transgender community.”

Within days, the school’s vice president, Ron Savage, postponed the event “indefinitely,” citing safety concerns.

The Office of Diversity and Inclusion also withdrew its support, saying the event “will no longer take place as planned.”

Amaya Price says the council overestimated the security threat, which he said would only amount to harassing protesters.

He was supported in this criticism by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (Fire), a nonprofit freedom of expression organization that focuses on America’s increasingly liberal schools and universities.

Fire highlighted Berklee’s stated support for “creative expression” and rejection of “censorship” and those who “seek to hinder the free exchange of ideas.”

Officials canceled Amaya Price because he had the ‘wrong’ things to say,” Fire said.

“Any discussion of transgender issues is likely to spark controversy and offend some listeners,” Fire said in a statement.

“But police are effectively telling Amaya Price that he is not allowed to share his own life story – and that others are not allowed to hear it and respond to it – simply because some may find it offensive.”

The group stands up for scientists from across the political spectrum, but warns that American institutions have veered to the left.

Most attempts to cancel speakers in recent years have targeted conservatives, the group says.

Yet that could change.

Of the 25 recorded attempts to sanction US scientists this year, most were led by right-wing individuals, groups and activists, Fire’s database shows.

Many of the targeted academics had spoken out in support of the Palestinians or the militant group Hamas amid military confrontations with Israel.

Conservative groups linked to Donald Trump are trying to restrict universities they see as too liberal, but it is not clear whether this will be a priority for the Republican president-elect’s administration.

Amaya Price, who graduated from Berklee on Dec. 12, says he wasn’t deterred by the cancellation.

Instead, he hosted a similar event at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on November 24.

As well campaigningHe records music and performsand has applied to become an officer in the US Space Force.