Madhu Balasubramanian 

College Writing R1A 

Ms. Baptiste 

March 16, 2019 

The Impact of Ignorance 

Imagine you are calmly minding your own business on your way home from school, 

getting lost in the engrossing book, Anna Karenina. As most of the commuters desperately 

search for an open bus seat, you drift into sleep, losing your awareness of the environment 

around you. All of a sudden, you jolt up. Your mind brings you back to reality as you notice 

something is very, very wrong. You look down as your skirt becomes a shimmering illusion of 

red and orange; you are on fire. This was the incident that left Sasha Fleischman, an 18-year-old 

private school teenager who identified as agender, a victim of a hate crime assault. In ​The 57 

Bus,​ by Dashka Slater, first published in 2017, she tells us the tragic story that happened six 

years ago when a public school boy, Richard Thomas, lit the skirt of an agender teen on fire and 

was charged with two felonies, facing the possibility of life imprisonment. Although Slater never 

explicitly excuses Richard’s violent action towards Sasha, Slater uses Richard’s behavior to 

address adolescent ignorance regarding gender identity and uses her telling of the story to 

educate her readers about gender identity itself. 

It would be easy to assign the blame to Richard as it was him who lit Sasha’s skirt on fire. 

However, Slater attempts to show that Richard’s actions didn’t represent a hate crime towards 

Sasha, but a mere ignorant prank that turned into a total disaster. Slater brings up a key social 
issue around adolescents’ ignorance on gender identity by illustrating how Richard wasn’t even 

educated enough to know what homophobia means. For this, she quotes Richard who says, “I 

wouldn’t say that I hate gay people, but I’m very homophobic” (p. 143) to show her readers that 

the 16 year old doesn’t even have a clear understanding of homophobia. Slater uses Richard’s 

testimony to clarify that Richard’s ignorance is a common phenomenon among adolescents. 

There are many adolescents, similar to Richard, who have feelings of discomfort and get tense 

when they see people that don’t conform to binary norms. In fact, “​hate crimes have increased by 

17 percent nationally [since] 2017​”​ and 5% of those were committed against the LGBTQ 

community (FBI, 2018).​ ​Majority of these gender identity related crimes arise from sheer 

ignorance. People who make assumptions about those that do not conform don’t understand why 

their actions are wrong, largely due to lack of formal education about concepts such as gender 

identity. In ​The 57 Bus, ​Slater uses Richard’s perspective on gender identity to demonstrate a 

general societal ignorance surrounding gender identity among many adolescents. 

Another factor that contributes to Richard’s crime was that it was a result of peer 

pressure. It was almost as if Richard lit Sasha’s skirt on fire because he was desperate for his 

friend’s approval. Jamal says, “‘You might as well do it,’...Richard slunk back to Sasha, flicked 

the lighter...He glanced at Jamal, grinned, and flicked the lighter a fourth time” (p. 113). Each 

time the lighter didn’t work, both Jamal and Lloyd prompted Richard to try again until it was 

successful, making Richard have more of a desire to make sure the lighter worked, thus gaining 

his cousin’s and friend’s approval. Had Jamal and Lloyd not been there, handing Richard the 

lighter and prompting him over and over again to commit the action just so the boys could have a 

laugh, Richard wouldn’t be facing two felonies and the frightening possibility of life 
imprisonment. Therefore, it becomes clear that peer pressure was the driving force and not 

Richard's alleged homophobia. Slater is making the readers recognize that Richard didn’t 

specifically intend to injure Sasha; it was a mere prank that went awry.  

At first glimpse, the whole incident may come across as just a result of peer pressure. But 

on top of that, Slater shows that Richard’s ignorance about gender identity is not restricted to just 

him but is evident in Lloyd and Jamal as well. When Jamal gave Richard the lighter in the midst 

of laughing at Sasha’s decision to dress the way they pleased, Jamal said to Richard, “Go ahead, 

you do it,” (p. 112), showing that Jamal was not comfortable seeing a teenager who resembled a 

boy wearing a skirt. It is true that Richard seemed to be committing the crime based off the fact 

that he was being pressured by his cousin and close friend. However, this prompting stemmed 

from Jamal’s and Lloyd’s inner ignorance about gender identity in the first place. It’s one thing 

to acknowledge that this ignorance is evident in those two boys, but we can’t forget the fact that 

Richard actually confessed in his police interrogation that he felt a range of discomfort from 

seeing someone that appeared to be a boy wearing a skirt. The fact that all of these three boys are 

ignorant about how to accept someone who doesn’t conform to gender norms is an indication 

that this is a social issue among adolescents as opposed to an isolated incident. An example of 

this ignorance being a social issue is reflected in the way that it wasn’t just Lloyd, Jamal, and 

Richard who embodied ignorance, but also reporters who covered the incident weren’t educated 

enough as well. In the news it said, “​a man wearing a kilt-like garment was set on fire as he slept 

on a public bus” (p. 144).​ These reporters would consistently refer to Sasha as male, not 

acknowledging the fact that they were getting Sasha’s identity completely wrong. Being referred 

to as “he” upset Sasha, as it would anyone, since they were being misrepresented in eyes of the 
media. As more and more people read that article, the idea of not understanding gender 

non-conforming teens becomes stronger and stronger until it reaches blatant ignorance. The 

initial step in changing this conception is to realize that it is a problem that we must strive to 

change. We should reinforce the importance of educating ourselves on what it truly means to be 

genderqueer in order to prevent people from coming to inaccurate conclusions about transgender 

people. This would also prevent people from committing disrespectful actions, like Richard’s, 

that were out of sheer ignorance.  

Slater takes this into consideration and tries to educate her readers about gender identity. 

This desire to create a place of safety for people who don’t conform is highlighted by her 

decision to include definitions of gender affiliated terms in her book, including 

“trans/transgender- feels their gender is different from their birth sex, whether or not they have 

physically changed their body or outward presentation” (p. 34). She takes the trouble to define 

each term in depth in hopes that her readers will communicate this knowledge to other people. In 

doing so, Slater brings attention to this topic in the hopes that it will decrease gender-bias related 

crimes. Encouraging the knowledge of these terms helps us better understand people around us, 

making it easier to empathize with them. When we don’t understand what people are going 

through, it’s easy to make snap judgements on them based on our own personal biases. Another 

important benefit of educating her readers on these terms is that by normalizing the use of these 

terms, our society creates a place for people with these identifies to feel like they fit in. While it 

is common for many transgender or gender non-conforming people to grow up only seeing 

examples of traditional gender roles, these terms create an opportunity for people of these 

identities to say “that’s me”. Slater says, “because language is evolving rapidly... always adopt 
the language individuals use about themselves, even if it differs from what’s here” (p. 33). By 

addressing the fact that we should respect other people's’ identities, no matter how far they stray 

from the norm, Slater is promoting gender diversity. If more writers were to join Slater in 

propagating this message, we would be one step closer to eliminating gender related crimes and 

gender bias once and for all. People reading this book should be eager to change the way our 

society views non-conforming people and do everything they can to change the stigma around 

them. It’s essential for everyone to realize that ignorance is not acceptable.  

While there were many factors that contributed to Richard holding up a lighter to Sasha’s 

skirt, burning and severely injuring her as a result, the main factors Slater chooses to highlight in 

the 57 Bus is that Richard’s action was a display of true, blatant ignorance. It was adolescent 

ignorance that propelled him to take drastic measures as a result of the discomfort he felt after 

seeing Sasha express themselves in an unconventional way. It was adolescent ignorance when 

Lloyd and Jamal continued to prompt Richard to commit the crime in the first place. And it was 

ignorance that Slater chose to bring attention to in hopes of educating society as a whole with the 

goal of lessening the number of hate crimes against people that don’t conform to gender norms.  

References 
Slater, D. (2018). ​57 BUS: A true story of two teenagers and the crime that changed their lives​. 
Faber and Faber. 
LGBT Hate Crimes Increase, FBI reports. (n.d.). https://www.ebar.com/news/news//268510