Thursday, July 29, 2010
The truth about men who molest children, by Rob Tisinai
Reposted from prop8trialtracker
This is a good site, full of information about the state of all LGBT peoples civil rights. Go, look and spread the word.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
On the Streets: The Federal Response to Gay and Transgender Homeless Youth
Every child deserves a supportive and loving home. But for many lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender children and youth, that home is not available.* Gay and transgender youth are disproportionately represented among homeless youth in our country, experiencing extreme rates of violence, discrimination, and poor health while homeless.
This is happening at least partly because gay and transgender people are coming out at younger ages as society becomes increasingly supportive of equality. Twenty years ago, most people started coming out in their 20s, well after most had left home and started working. If someone’s family rejected them for being gay or transgender, it may have been emotionally painful, but the person could still likely take care of himself or herself.
Today, the usual coming out age is in the mid-teen years, when youth still depend on their families to meet their material needs and are particularly vulnerable if their family outright rejects them. For gay and transgender youth in these situations, family rejection can lead to a chain reaction of events that sends them cascading through social safety nets that are not equipped to support them.
Indeed, too many youth who come out are rejected by their families, harassed and victimized in schools, discriminated against in out-of-home care facilities, and brutalized in homeless shelters. They often resort to criminal activity, such as theft or “survival sex” in order to survive. The high rates of rejection, violence, and institutional discrimination combined with hostile school environments and social prejudice lead to an over-representation of gay and transgender youth among the homeless youth population.
The federal government can and should do more to respond to this problem. Of the approximately $4.2 billion the government spends annually on homeless assistance programs, less than 5 percent of this funding, $195 million, is allocated for homeless children and youth. Even less actually goes to serve unaccompanied homeless youth.17 Further, each year the federal government spends $44 billion on rental assistance, public housing, and affordable housing programs, yet less than 1 percent of these funds, only $44 million, is allocated for homeless youth housing assistance.
There are currently no federal programs specifically designed to meet the needs of gay and transgender homeless youth, and there are no federal protections, and few state laws, in place to keep these youth from being discriminated against while accessing federally funded homeless services.
What’s worse, federal grant awards for homeless youth services are being awarded to providers without mandating that they not discriminate based on sexual orientation and gender identity, leaving vulnerable youth open to harassment from staff and other residents. Nor are these grantees required to abide by basic standards of gay and transgender health care. In short, the lack of inclusive policies and targeted resources for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth in federal grants prevents this population from having equal access to federally funded services.
The federal government can take several steps to reduce the incidence of gay and transgender youth homelessness and improve the services and treatment these youth receive if they do become homeless. Specifically, the Obama administration should:
- Strengthen families with gay and transgender children through evidence-based support services so youth do not become homeless. The Administration for Children and Families should develop programs that help families from all communities support and nurture their gay and transgender children to promote positive development and connection to families and communities.
- Establish schools as a safe haven for all youth, including gay and transgender youth. The Department of Education should address the role of unsafe schools in promoting youth homelessness, and aggressively address school bullying. They should also take all possible steps to ensure that homeless youth are able to continue their education.
- Acknowledge and protect those youths who continue to fall through the cracks. The first step to do this is an executive order recognizing both lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender homeless youth and homeless youth in general as special-needs populations, and protecting them from discrimination by federal grantees.
- Take concrete steps to expand housing options for gay and transgender homeless youth through Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Housing and Urban Development programs.
- Initiate research in this area as gay and transgender youth homelessness, and the programs to address it, are not being adequately tracked or documented. Affirming data-collection methods for homeless gay and transgender youth should be established for all federal programs serving homeless youth. Programs to address homeless youth must be rigorously evaluated to understand what works.
Taken together, the five steps outlined above would create a coherent and consistent federal response to the crisis of gay and transgender homeless youth, which is critically needed at this time. As our nation’s society becomes more supportive of gay and transgender issues and youth come out at earlier ages, the federal government must step up and respond to the needs of these youths.
This report offers a blueprint for approaching this work. In the pages that follow, we will examine gay and transgender youth homelessness against the backdrop of overall youth homelessness in America and show the extreme levels of discrimination and violence many gay and transgender youth face at home, in school, in youth and adult homeless shelters and on the streets. We will specifically examine the many failing safety nets for these youth, and then demonstrate why our recommendations, if implemented, would do much to help ensure that all youth have a chance at a happy and healthy future.
* In this report the term gay is used as an umbrella term for all youth who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or queer.
By Nico Sifra Quintana, Josh Rosenthal, Jeff Krehely
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
300,000 to 400,000 LBGT Youth facing Homelessness Each Year by Dr. Jullian T. Weiss
It is not a pretty picture.
According to the report, there are approximately 1.6 million to 2.8 million homeless young people in the United States, and estimates suggest that disproportionate numbers of those youth are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender.
The portion of the homeless youth population who are gay or transgender is estimated to be 20 to 40 percent, although gay and transgender youth comprise only 5 to 10 percent of the overall youth population.
Here's a few numbers:
320,000 to 400,000: A conservative estimate of the number of gay and transgender youth facing homelessness each year.
14.4: The average age that lesbian and gay youth in New York become homeless.
13.5: The average age that transgender youth in New York become homeless.
The report can be found here. It is extremely well written, and is an engaging mix of facts, individual stories, policy and history. Well worth reading.
The information in the report is shocking and saddening. Of the approximately $4.2 billion the government spends annually on homeless assistance programs,less than 5 percent of this funding, $195 million, is allocated for homeless children and youth.
Even less actually goes to serve unaccompanied homeless youth. Further, each year the federal government spends $44 billion on rental assistance, public housing, and affordable housing programs, yet less than 1 percent of these funds, only $44 million, is allocated for homeless youth housing assistance.
Children on the street, looking for comfort, looking for solace, looking for food, looking for shelter, looking for a friendly face, looking for love -- and where can they turn?
I, as an adult, found myself after transition without friends, without family, without job or material resources. It was terrifying, frightening, soul-killing. Did I turn to unsuitable people and places and things to try to stem the well of tears from my descent into the maelstrom?
Yes.
And I was 36 years old, with education and other racial and class privileges.
Imagine a 13 year old trying to cope with social abandonment, with the material and emotional resources of a 13 year old.
Also from the report:
Whenever I hear about this issue, my resolve to get involved becomes stronger. I think about my own son, who has grown up into a wonderful young man. The thought of his being mistreated makes me angry; and it makes no difference that the youth being tortured by society through abandonment and homelessness are not my own.
One of the programs designed to shelter homeless LGBT youth is the Ali Forney Center in New York City. The work they do is nothing short of amazing. You can read more (and more importantly, donate) here.
The information in the report is shocking and saddening. Of the approximately $4.2 billion the government spends annually on homeless assistance programs,less than 5 percent of this funding, $195 million, is allocated for homeless children and youth.
Even less actually goes to serve unaccompanied homeless youth. Further, each year the federal government spends $44 billion on rental assistance, public housing, and affordable housing programs, yet less than 1 percent of these funds, only $44 million, is allocated for homeless youth housing assistance.
Children on the street, looking for comfort, looking for solace, looking for food, looking for shelter, looking for a friendly face, looking for love -- and where can they turn?
I, as an adult, found myself after transition without friends, without family, without job or material resources. It was terrifying, frightening, soul-killing. Did I turn to unsuitable people and places and things to try to stem the well of tears from my descent into the maelstrom?
Yes.
And I was 36 years old, with education and other racial and class privileges.
Imagine a 13 year old trying to cope with social abandonment, with the material and emotional resources of a 13 year old.
Also from the report:
- Homelessness disrupts a young person's normal development, often leading to issues in mental and physical health, educational attainment, and behavior.
- Sixty-two percent of gay and transgender homeless youth attempt suicide compared to 29 percent of their heterosexual homeless peers.
- The Ruth Ellis Center, an organization that exclusively serves gay and transgender homeless youth in Detroit, reported in 2006 that more than 60 percent of their high school age youth population had dropped out of school due to bullying or discrimination.
- A full 58 percent of gay homeless youth in Midwestern cities had been sexually victimized.
- 44 percent of homeless gay youth reported being approached to engage in sex in order to meet their basic needs.
- A 2004 study found that gay homeless youth were more likely to suffer from major depression than heterosexual homeless youth, and lesbian homeless youth were more likely to have post-traumatic-stress syndrome than heterosexual homeless young women.
- A 2006 study found that 42 percent of gay homeless youth abuse alcohol compared to 27 percent of heterosexual youth.
- Injection-drug use is significantly more common for gay homeless youth than heterosexual homeless youth.
- Homeless gay and transgender youth also report higher rates of unprotected sex than heterosexual homeless youth, as well as higher rates of HIV infection.
Whenever I hear about this issue, my resolve to get involved becomes stronger. I think about my own son, who has grown up into a wonderful young man. The thought of his being mistreated makes me angry; and it makes no difference that the youth being tortured by society through abandonment and homelessness are not my own.
One of the programs designed to shelter homeless LGBT youth is the Ali Forney Center in New York City. The work they do is nothing short of amazing. You can read more (and more importantly, donate) here.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
No biological reason for lgb people? Not from my viewpoint.
The religious say that lgb "chose" to be attracted to same sex partners.... That G_d doesn't make mistakes. And when scientists began saying we think it's genetic to be lgb, they again spoke up, saying that making around 10% of the population non-reproductive makes no sense at all. Well no, not from a current view of life. However if you look at humanity through the lens of how we lived for thousands of years, in small tribal communities, things make much more sense.
Bisexual men have the largest brain size of all men. It's estimated that around 40% of men claim to be at least somewhat bisexual. In modern society where each person is more or less an island, this has no effect on their social standing. In a tribal setting it all makes perfect sense.
The ancient Greeks felt that having your battle partner be a loved sexual partner gave them extra incentive
to fight harder.
Phaedrus, in Plato's Symposium, on the power of male sexual relationships to improve bravery in the military:
There are three main groupings of people in a tribe. The children, who while at the end of their childhood are starting to produce for the tribe, for the most part only absorb materials brought into the tribe. Materials being of course, food, clothing, and heat. The producers, who bring into the tribe materials. And lastly the makers, these are the elders, the heavily pregnant, the ill and the crippled members. This group takes what is brought into the tribe and turns it into food, clothing, and processing food in some way to preserve it for tomorrow.
This is where I feel that gay and lesbians had a genetic job to follow. Gays would be another body to hunt, trap and fish and to fight off enemies. Since he is not producing offspring, his extra would provide a cushion of security for the tribe. Lesbians would also bring in more materials than they would be using. Allowing gay and lesbians to have partners would also provide parents to children who had lost theirs. If you add up 10% of calories over the course of a season, that quickly becomes a vast storehouse of reserve, which in a time of famine could be the difference between survival and death.
Narrowing down the acceptable sexual partners to only allowing m/f combinations, could in theory have caused some major problems for a tribal form of life. Each time you put limits on sexual combinations, a bond is snipped, often forever weakening our connection with our fellow tribesmen. We have all heard of older cultures that accept gay and lesbian people. Before westerners came to Japan, they didn't have a word to describe homosexuality, it was just a normal part of human sexuality to them.
And as for trans people? If you noticed I didn't add the t onto lgbt earlier on. I can not find a biological reason for being trans. To be honest, I feel that it is a birth defect due to improper hormone flooding the fetus. But hey, this is all my own musings, feel free to contradict me!
Bisexual men have the largest brain size of all men. It's estimated that around 40% of men claim to be at least somewhat bisexual. In modern society where each person is more or less an island, this has no effect on their social standing. In a tribal setting it all makes perfect sense.
The ancient Greeks felt that having your battle partner be a loved sexual partner gave them extra incentive
to fight harder.
Phaedrus, in Plato's Symposium, on the power of male sexual relationships to improve bravery in the military:
But if you go back even further into our dim past, the genetic role of a bisexual male, in my mind at least, becomes even more important. So, how does having many of the men be bisexual help? Sex, pure and simple. If these men were engaging with sex with other men in their troop then it would draw them closer together. Your hunting group, your defense group bound by the ties of sexual feelings and love will provide a closer knit team. If at the same time they are in a sexual relationship with a female that is also based on love and sex, they are providing for the future in the form of many children. These multiple bonds would provide a closer more cohesive tribal unit.... he would prefer to die many deaths: while as for leaving the one he loves in a lurch, or not succoring him in peril, no man is such a craven that the influence of Love cannot inspire him with a courage that makes him equal to the bravest born
There are three main groupings of people in a tribe. The children, who while at the end of their childhood are starting to produce for the tribe, for the most part only absorb materials brought into the tribe. Materials being of course, food, clothing, and heat. The producers, who bring into the tribe materials. And lastly the makers, these are the elders, the heavily pregnant, the ill and the crippled members. This group takes what is brought into the tribe and turns it into food, clothing, and processing food in some way to preserve it for tomorrow.
This is where I feel that gay and lesbians had a genetic job to follow. Gays would be another body to hunt, trap and fish and to fight off enemies. Since he is not producing offspring, his extra would provide a cushion of security for the tribe. Lesbians would also bring in more materials than they would be using. Allowing gay and lesbians to have partners would also provide parents to children who had lost theirs. If you add up 10% of calories over the course of a season, that quickly becomes a vast storehouse of reserve, which in a time of famine could be the difference between survival and death.
Narrowing down the acceptable sexual partners to only allowing m/f combinations, could in theory have caused some major problems for a tribal form of life. Each time you put limits on sexual combinations, a bond is snipped, often forever weakening our connection with our fellow tribesmen. We have all heard of older cultures that accept gay and lesbian people. Before westerners came to Japan, they didn't have a word to describe homosexuality, it was just a normal part of human sexuality to them.
And as for trans people? If you noticed I didn't add the t onto lgbt earlier on. I can not find a biological reason for being trans. To be honest, I feel that it is a birth defect due to improper hormone flooding the fetus. But hey, this is all my own musings, feel free to contradict me!
Monday, May 24, 2010
My trans life
I must have been around 5-ish or so when I first had "The Dream", at least that I remember, and yes that's how I have always thought of it. My dreams have always been very vivid, but soon after awaking they fade away, but many of The Dream's have remained in my mind, clear and bright even years later.
In this first dream I remember playing and riding my bike, a skill newly learned that summer, and somewhere along the dream I realize that while it's me, I'm in fact a boy. My dream self is running and jumping into puddles happy as can be. I awoke with an urgent need to pee, and ran to the bathroom as fast as possible. Slamming the bathroom door shut, pulling down my pj's bottoms, I stood in front of the toilet and was confused thinking, "Where is my penis?" But the need to pee over rode much thought, and quickly turned around and sat down to pee. All day long I felt off kilter, and was confused every time I went to the bathroom. I have had these dreams ever since, when I was younger they were much more frequent, and as I have aged my dream boy self has aged along with me.
I have always been told to stand like a girl, sit like a girl, act like a girl, talk like a girl, which always confused me to the point of not knowing how to act in any given situation.
While I was taught to do all the normal girl stuff, cooking and sewing and the like, every minute possible was spent outside running around, normally with my trusty iron steed, my bike. I was forever falling off stuff, over stuff, out of things, up things, and more normally down stuff. I loved burning ants with a magnifying glass, catching bees in a jar and shaking it to see them get all angry. Yeah, I never claimed to be very smart….., and yeah I did let them out on occasion getting stung every single time, again me being a kid. We lived in apartment complexes and while there were girls around, to be honest I only really ever played with the boys. Football was my favorite sport. It combined several of my most loved activities, running, knocking people down, and mud, mud, mud! If I could still see the color of what I had on, it wasn't a good game for me. I never wanted to control the ball, nah that was boring. I was fearless and no matter the size of the boy I would run at them full tilt, rarely failing to ground them.
Now I had a cousin that I was very close too, he was 15 months younger than me, but he was always bigger and taller than me. Time has passed and I'm around 12 now, and my crazy mom has dumped me off on my aunt and uncle for the summer, which was fine by me! And one fine day, the cousin and I were out with a gang of boys, and Cuz said something that angered me, quicker than quick he was on the ground with me sitting on his chest slapping his face. Well, needless to say that caused him to lose face among the neighborhood boys, he was so furious with me that we didn't speak for a few days. Each day I'm getting madder and madder at him, because the local boys are siding with my Cuz and I'm left alone with nothing to do. One afternoon I over hear them planning a cow pie fight, which was one of my favorite things ever! So, I decide to swallow my pride and apologize, grovel if need be, anything that will allow me to be included in the fun.
I know if the apology is in front of everyone it will been seen as having learned my lesson, so I swallow that humble pie and out I go to grovel and be allowed back in their good graces. I go out. I laid it on thick, and deep. Made him the good guy. I was the villain. He just looked at me and said, "You just don't get it. You are a girl. Go do girl stuff, I'm tired of you hanging around." After sputtering around for a bit, he repeated himself to me in no uncertain terms, "You. Are. A. Girl. Go away."
I was hurt and devastated to say the least. Things did improve between us before the summer was over, but I had to be invited along, no longer was it just accepted that I could tag along. And I was often left at home.
School would be starting soon, and so it was back home to live again. One day I woke up and felt rather odd and icky, but went to school anyway. As the day progressed I couldn't figure out why I felt so weird, but shrugged it off and continued on. By the time school ended I had an upset stomach and felt just icky. I go to the bathroom and there is blood… at first I thought I was dying. And then I remembered the school nurse taking the girls aside and telling them the facts of life. While she was explaining things to them I wondered why I was in there with them. This had nothing to do with me, so why was I included?
And then it dawned on me, my Cuz was right, I am a girl, and my life tilted completely out of balance. Massive amounts of tears, and large scale grief, and dark black days of depression. I had no frame of reference, nothing to hang on to. I was a girl, a girl? How on earth did that happen, and when? I pulled away from the kids at school and started skipping a lot of days, my life was adrift on a sea of uncertainty. It seemed that month by month my body was changing, and there was no way to stop it, and I hated every single change. Boys wouldn't let me play with them any longer, and I had nothing in common with the girls, they lived in a alternate world without a guide book.
I'm now 15 and my home life has completely spun out of control. My mother is going through a very long, unbroken spell of crazy. She is beating me a great deal and the mental abuse is crushing. I have somehow become the parent/adult in the house. Its my job to take the $8.00 and go and by food for the week. My job to cook, clean, wash and iron, check the mail, and remind her to pay the bills. And at night many times after her losing complete control of her anger and beating me, she pleads from her bedroom for me to come in a tuck her in….and don't forget to turn on the nightlight…
This is also the year that I realize that I have something that boys want, my body. Still not reconciled to being a girl, it's a rather nice feeling to have someone want that part of me. I work on the weekends as a busboy, my mom was a waitress at the private club. Now one of the cooks sees how my mom treats me in front of everyone, and he is very sweet to me, and I'm desperate for a kind word, a nice gesture. One thing leads to another, and the innocent that I was, he got my clothes off me, praised my beauty and starting having sex with me. I panicked and tried to get him to quit. Stop! So, my first time was forced, what a lovely way to lose ones virginity, huh? He came back several times, and I was conflicted about it. I loved being held, and being told I was pretty, and being touched that didn't involve pain. But the sex I really didn't want, and didn't like, and I always tried to make him stop, and he never would.
The sex, the abuse from my mom, the girl body became more than I could bear, and it opened up a dark well inside of me. I started drinking, and hanging around older guys, and if they would get me drunk or high I would have sex with them. It wasn't me they were having sex with, it was my body, which wasn't me at all. I stopped eating and at one point weighted around 86 pounds. I truly didn't care if I lived or died. I had nothing to live for. And then one day I woke up in the next town, with people I didn't know, naked. I called my Angel Uncle and he came and got me, no questions asked. From that day on, I started cleaning up my life. I had decided that living for me, was enough to live for.
And I started trying to be more girlish, and started wearing much more feminine clothing and trying out makeup. I have made it out of the house only a few times in my entire life with lipstick on. I apply it, and then at the last moment run and wipe it off, for whatever reason that is just one thing I can't manage to reconcile myself to wearing.
The only time I have really enjoyed and loved my girl body is when I was building babies. But those years were very short lived, and it was back to hating my body. To explain the extreme disconnect between me and my body, I looked in the mirror as little as possible. I was often surprised when reflections from oddly placed mirrors in stores and businesses turned out to be me. It always took me a few minutes to recognize that reflection as myself, well it still does. I've stopped avoiding mirrors lately, but am still surprised by what I see, but at least I understand why I have these feelings.
Since my coming out birthday in January, I have done a great deal of soul searching, and have made a few discoveries. If I could, I would transition, no doubt about it. Hormones, top surgery, and metoidioplasty. However, I can see no way at all of doing so without losing what I have worked so hard at building, a family. They might accept my status as transgendered, but I sincerely know they would never accept me in a male form. And my husband has made it very clear, that changing the girl package is not something he would accept. So, keep the girl body, keep my husband and my adult sons, and lose myself. Or gain myself by transitioning, and lose husband and sons….
So the disconnect between what I am and what I see will continue forever, or until I just can't stand it any longer. Right now I'm really having issues with the realization that there is no way for me to transition. And every single time I'm perceived as female, it hurts. I'm ok with having to live this way one moment and then crashingly despondent with the knowledge this is who I will be forever. I will never have a chance to be the real and true me. My image will never reflect who I really am, and that is hard for me to cope with.
Here I stand, on a fence, the grass is greener on both sides, and sides are filled with grief. No matter what I chose, I lose.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metoidioplasty
In this first dream I remember playing and riding my bike, a skill newly learned that summer, and somewhere along the dream I realize that while it's me, I'm in fact a boy. My dream self is running and jumping into puddles happy as can be. I awoke with an urgent need to pee, and ran to the bathroom as fast as possible. Slamming the bathroom door shut, pulling down my pj's bottoms, I stood in front of the toilet and was confused thinking, "Where is my penis?" But the need to pee over rode much thought, and quickly turned around and sat down to pee. All day long I felt off kilter, and was confused every time I went to the bathroom. I have had these dreams ever since, when I was younger they were much more frequent, and as I have aged my dream boy self has aged along with me.
I have always been told to stand like a girl, sit like a girl, act like a girl, talk like a girl, which always confused me to the point of not knowing how to act in any given situation.
While I was taught to do all the normal girl stuff, cooking and sewing and the like, every minute possible was spent outside running around, normally with my trusty iron steed, my bike. I was forever falling off stuff, over stuff, out of things, up things, and more normally down stuff. I loved burning ants with a magnifying glass, catching bees in a jar and shaking it to see them get all angry. Yeah, I never claimed to be very smart….., and yeah I did let them out on occasion getting stung every single time, again me being a kid. We lived in apartment complexes and while there were girls around, to be honest I only really ever played with the boys. Football was my favorite sport. It combined several of my most loved activities, running, knocking people down, and mud, mud, mud! If I could still see the color of what I had on, it wasn't a good game for me. I never wanted to control the ball, nah that was boring. I was fearless and no matter the size of the boy I would run at them full tilt, rarely failing to ground them.
Now I had a cousin that I was very close too, he was 15 months younger than me, but he was always bigger and taller than me. Time has passed and I'm around 12 now, and my crazy mom has dumped me off on my aunt and uncle for the summer, which was fine by me! And one fine day, the cousin and I were out with a gang of boys, and Cuz said something that angered me, quicker than quick he was on the ground with me sitting on his chest slapping his face. Well, needless to say that caused him to lose face among the neighborhood boys, he was so furious with me that we didn't speak for a few days. Each day I'm getting madder and madder at him, because the local boys are siding with my Cuz and I'm left alone with nothing to do. One afternoon I over hear them planning a cow pie fight, which was one of my favorite things ever! So, I decide to swallow my pride and apologize, grovel if need be, anything that will allow me to be included in the fun.
I know if the apology is in front of everyone it will been seen as having learned my lesson, so I swallow that humble pie and out I go to grovel and be allowed back in their good graces. I go out. I laid it on thick, and deep. Made him the good guy. I was the villain. He just looked at me and said, "You just don't get it. You are a girl. Go do girl stuff, I'm tired of you hanging around." After sputtering around for a bit, he repeated himself to me in no uncertain terms, "You. Are. A. Girl. Go away."
I was hurt and devastated to say the least. Things did improve between us before the summer was over, but I had to be invited along, no longer was it just accepted that I could tag along. And I was often left at home.
School would be starting soon, and so it was back home to live again. One day I woke up and felt rather odd and icky, but went to school anyway. As the day progressed I couldn't figure out why I felt so weird, but shrugged it off and continued on. By the time school ended I had an upset stomach and felt just icky. I go to the bathroom and there is blood… at first I thought I was dying. And then I remembered the school nurse taking the girls aside and telling them the facts of life. While she was explaining things to them I wondered why I was in there with them. This had nothing to do with me, so why was I included?
And then it dawned on me, my Cuz was right, I am a girl, and my life tilted completely out of balance. Massive amounts of tears, and large scale grief, and dark black days of depression. I had no frame of reference, nothing to hang on to. I was a girl, a girl? How on earth did that happen, and when? I pulled away from the kids at school and started skipping a lot of days, my life was adrift on a sea of uncertainty. It seemed that month by month my body was changing, and there was no way to stop it, and I hated every single change. Boys wouldn't let me play with them any longer, and I had nothing in common with the girls, they lived in a alternate world without a guide book.
I'm now 15 and my home life has completely spun out of control. My mother is going through a very long, unbroken spell of crazy. She is beating me a great deal and the mental abuse is crushing. I have somehow become the parent/adult in the house. Its my job to take the $8.00 and go and by food for the week. My job to cook, clean, wash and iron, check the mail, and remind her to pay the bills. And at night many times after her losing complete control of her anger and beating me, she pleads from her bedroom for me to come in a tuck her in….and don't forget to turn on the nightlight…
This is also the year that I realize that I have something that boys want, my body. Still not reconciled to being a girl, it's a rather nice feeling to have someone want that part of me. I work on the weekends as a busboy, my mom was a waitress at the private club. Now one of the cooks sees how my mom treats me in front of everyone, and he is very sweet to me, and I'm desperate for a kind word, a nice gesture. One thing leads to another, and the innocent that I was, he got my clothes off me, praised my beauty and starting having sex with me. I panicked and tried to get him to quit. Stop! So, my first time was forced, what a lovely way to lose ones virginity, huh? He came back several times, and I was conflicted about it. I loved being held, and being told I was pretty, and being touched that didn't involve pain. But the sex I really didn't want, and didn't like, and I always tried to make him stop, and he never would.
The sex, the abuse from my mom, the girl body became more than I could bear, and it opened up a dark well inside of me. I started drinking, and hanging around older guys, and if they would get me drunk or high I would have sex with them. It wasn't me they were having sex with, it was my body, which wasn't me at all. I stopped eating and at one point weighted around 86 pounds. I truly didn't care if I lived or died. I had nothing to live for. And then one day I woke up in the next town, with people I didn't know, naked. I called my Angel Uncle and he came and got me, no questions asked. From that day on, I started cleaning up my life. I had decided that living for me, was enough to live for.
And I started trying to be more girlish, and started wearing much more feminine clothing and trying out makeup. I have made it out of the house only a few times in my entire life with lipstick on. I apply it, and then at the last moment run and wipe it off, for whatever reason that is just one thing I can't manage to reconcile myself to wearing.
The only time I have really enjoyed and loved my girl body is when I was building babies. But those years were very short lived, and it was back to hating my body. To explain the extreme disconnect between me and my body, I looked in the mirror as little as possible. I was often surprised when reflections from oddly placed mirrors in stores and businesses turned out to be me. It always took me a few minutes to recognize that reflection as myself, well it still does. I've stopped avoiding mirrors lately, but am still surprised by what I see, but at least I understand why I have these feelings.
Since my coming out birthday in January, I have done a great deal of soul searching, and have made a few discoveries. If I could, I would transition, no doubt about it. Hormones, top surgery, and metoidioplasty. However, I can see no way at all of doing so without losing what I have worked so hard at building, a family. They might accept my status as transgendered, but I sincerely know they would never accept me in a male form. And my husband has made it very clear, that changing the girl package is not something he would accept. So, keep the girl body, keep my husband and my adult sons, and lose myself. Or gain myself by transitioning, and lose husband and sons….
So the disconnect between what I am and what I see will continue forever, or until I just can't stand it any longer. Right now I'm really having issues with the realization that there is no way for me to transition. And every single time I'm perceived as female, it hurts. I'm ok with having to live this way one moment and then crashingly despondent with the knowledge this is who I will be forever. I will never have a chance to be the real and true me. My image will never reflect who I really am, and that is hard for me to cope with.
Here I stand, on a fence, the grass is greener on both sides, and sides are filled with grief. No matter what I chose, I lose.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metoidioplasty
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Alphabet Wars
I know that as a group the LGBT are not the most cohesive group ever. We only have a few things that truly bind us together, the lack of civil rights, the need for civil rights, and a banding together for protection. And while it makes sense that we don't see eye to eye on many topics, there is one topic that we all should agree on. If you self identify as any of the letters in LGBT then you are family, we have your back and you have ours.
However, there is grief afoot in rainbow land. The fight to get ENDA passed has many of the LGB community throwing T under the bus. They are so eager to have protection under the law, and really who can blame them, that they are willing to start pushing people off of the life raft to get what they want, civil rights. A discussion on ENDA at The Bilerico Project on April 29, 2010 brought one person to say this in the comments.
I have contacted my representative and 2 senators to make clear that I and the gay constituents I know all support passage of ENDA with or without protections for so-called "gender identity".
I (hopefully) made clear that the inclusion of this extraneous category was the product of political maneuvering among certain gay groups, but that it had no resonance with the vast majority of gay voters. If legislators are wary of creating a federal right to sue employers over "gendered" bathroom access and workplace cross-dressing, then the answer is to cut that out of the bill and consider it separately.
That is what I told my reps. As to the folks on this blog, I can only ask why you are so insistent on driving a wedge in our community by insisting that ENDA go down to defeat rather than remove gender identity. Very divisive, IMO.
Suze | April 29, 2010 2:09 PM
Ok, so "Suze" shot a few holes in the life raft. It seems as though she doesn't believe in gender identity, and wants HER civil rights even if it means denying someone else theirs.
And unfortunately there are many in the LGB who don't believe that T should be a part of the family. They claim that with LGB its all about sexual orientation, and that T is about gender orientation. Hmm, well could be, could be, but then look at it this way. "Leaf" is born male, but Leaf's gender is female. Leaf's orientation before transitioning is "straight" as Leaf is interested sexually in women. Leaf has SRS, and yes Leaf is still sexually attracted to women, and now not only has Leaf's body transitioned, but her sexual orientation has as well, Leaf is now a lesbian. Or in my case I'm androgyne, which means my gender is both, and I lean more on the male side of the scale. So.... I guess that I am both straight and gay? My female side enjoys men, as does my male side.
If any of you read AJ, then I'm sure that you read his post on Bisexual softball players having to fight to be included in the Gay World Series. If you haven't heard of this, click here to catch up.
How many times have you heard someone say that Bi is only a station stop on the way to admitting that they are in fact gay. Ok, in our society, yes it can be a much easier step to think of one's self as bisexual rather than gay. For many teens labeling themselves as bi is a much easier for them to handle. If you stop and remember your teen years, do you remember the raging hormones? The silliest things that could set you off? Yeah, a puff of wind blows by 3 counties over and your ready! And for many, these raging hormones confuse the whole orientation question, because if anything turns you on, how can you see clearly who you are truly attracted to?
Yes there are actually bisexual people out there, lurking in our alphabet world. They take a great deal of hate from both gays and straights. It must be hard to be hated by so many, and to be understood by so few.
The other day I read something that caused me to pause and re-read, and read yet again. Yes, this person actually said if you were LG and had only had sex with a same sex person, you were a "pure" gay. Pure? Alrighty then! And on this very blog was a discussion of hatred towards effeminate gays. I see it all the time, men describing themselves as "masculine" "manly", as opposed to "girly" or "fem". I wonder if part of this is indeed masked sexism, I don't know.
What I do know is this, we are a minority in our country who are deprived of our civil rights, and every step forward seems paired with a step back. Attitudes are changing in our country towards more acceptance and more support for civil rights being at long last bestowed on LGBT. It is slow and often glacial movement, when by rights our civil rights were already granted in the laws of our nation, but were taken away with unconstitutional laws. It's time we stopped this inner bickering, this judging each other on our worthiness, asking if "they" should really be allowed to join the club, and unlike the parable, put all of our eggs in one basket and push for rights. Even if you don't plan on getting married, have no interest in serving in the military, and your sex and gender match so using a public restroom is easy peasy.
I watched this video over at Queerty.com today, and this young man says it better than I have ever heard before. Enjoy!
However, there is grief afoot in rainbow land. The fight to get ENDA passed has many of the LGB community throwing T under the bus. They are so eager to have protection under the law, and really who can blame them, that they are willing to start pushing people off of the life raft to get what they want, civil rights. A discussion on ENDA at The Bilerico Project on April 29, 2010 brought one person to say this in the comments.
I have contacted my representative and 2 senators to make clear that I and the gay constituents I know all support passage of ENDA with or without protections for so-called "gender identity".
I (hopefully) made clear that the inclusion of this extraneous category was the product of political maneuvering among certain gay groups, but that it had no resonance with the vast majority of gay voters. If legislators are wary of creating a federal right to sue employers over "gendered" bathroom access and workplace cross-dressing, then the answer is to cut that out of the bill and consider it separately.
That is what I told my reps. As to the folks on this blog, I can only ask why you are so insistent on driving a wedge in our community by insisting that ENDA go down to defeat rather than remove gender identity. Very divisive, IMO.
Suze | April 29, 2010 2:09 PM
Ok, so "Suze" shot a few holes in the life raft. It seems as though she doesn't believe in gender identity, and wants HER civil rights even if it means denying someone else theirs.
And unfortunately there are many in the LGB who don't believe that T should be a part of the family. They claim that with LGB its all about sexual orientation, and that T is about gender orientation. Hmm, well could be, could be, but then look at it this way. "Leaf" is born male, but Leaf's gender is female. Leaf's orientation before transitioning is "straight" as Leaf is interested sexually in women. Leaf has SRS, and yes Leaf is still sexually attracted to women, and now not only has Leaf's body transitioned, but her sexual orientation has as well, Leaf is now a lesbian. Or in my case I'm androgyne, which means my gender is both, and I lean more on the male side of the scale. So.... I guess that I am both straight and gay? My female side enjoys men, as does my male side.
If any of you read AJ, then I'm sure that you read his post on Bisexual softball players having to fight to be included in the Gay World Series. If you haven't heard of this, click here to catch up.
How many times have you heard someone say that Bi is only a station stop on the way to admitting that they are in fact gay. Ok, in our society, yes it can be a much easier step to think of one's self as bisexual rather than gay. For many teens labeling themselves as bi is a much easier for them to handle. If you stop and remember your teen years, do you remember the raging hormones? The silliest things that could set you off? Yeah, a puff of wind blows by 3 counties over and your ready! And for many, these raging hormones confuse the whole orientation question, because if anything turns you on, how can you see clearly who you are truly attracted to?
Yes there are actually bisexual people out there, lurking in our alphabet world. They take a great deal of hate from both gays and straights. It must be hard to be hated by so many, and to be understood by so few.
The other day I read something that caused me to pause and re-read, and read yet again. Yes, this person actually said if you were LG and had only had sex with a same sex person, you were a "pure" gay. Pure? Alrighty then! And on this very blog was a discussion of hatred towards effeminate gays. I see it all the time, men describing themselves as "masculine" "manly", as opposed to "girly" or "fem". I wonder if part of this is indeed masked sexism, I don't know.
What I do know is this, we are a minority in our country who are deprived of our civil rights, and every step forward seems paired with a step back. Attitudes are changing in our country towards more acceptance and more support for civil rights being at long last bestowed on LGBT. It is slow and often glacial movement, when by rights our civil rights were already granted in the laws of our nation, but were taken away with unconstitutional laws. It's time we stopped this inner bickering, this judging each other on our worthiness, asking if "they" should really be allowed to join the club, and unlike the parable, put all of our eggs in one basket and push for rights. Even if you don't plan on getting married, have no interest in serving in the military, and your sex and gender match so using a public restroom is easy peasy.
I watched this video over at Queerty.com today, and this young man says it better than I have ever heard before. Enjoy!
Monday, April 12, 2010
The Employment Non-Doscrimination Act (ENDA) Needs YOU!
Hello All,
Ok, it looks like ENDA is finally going to be up for a vote, soon-ish, and it needs you! The steps are super simple to follow and will take very little of your time. This is your chance to stand up and tell congress that you deserve to have your civil rights honored. No more complaining, no more whining, just drag that cell phone out of your pocket and make a few calls.
This is the body of the email that I received today from National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund.
The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) is moving in Congress again — and in a few short weeks we’re going to need your help to ensure that, this time, there are no more delays.
Elected officials focused on health care reform for months. Now that it’s passed, we have to act to make sure millions of LGBT people aren’t left out in the cold when it comes to equality in the workplace. ENDA has been delayed time and time again, but now it looks like it will be up for a vote very soon. Now is the time to act — our elected officials need to hear that further postponement just isn’t an option.
Right now people can be fired in 29 states for being lesbian, gay or bisexual and in 38 states for being transgender. It’s wrong — dead wrong. There’s no excuse for this kind of backwards discrimination in this day and age. ENDA can’t wait.
Help ensure that we pass ENDA once and for all. Please make a short phone call now to your legislators to keep the pressure on. They need to hear loud and clear from people who support equality. Even if you’ve called before, and even if you think your representative is supportive of ENDA, it’s critical that they hear from you again today.
Just follow these three steps:
1) Call the Capitol Switchboard at 202.224.3121 and ask to speak to your representative. (If you’re not sure who your representative is, simply give the operator your zip code and they will connect you.)
2) Follow this script:
My name is _____ and I live at (say your street address) in (say your city and state). I am calling to ask that you please pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act now! Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people can't wait any longer for protection from job discrimination. So, please — no more delays. Pass ENDA right away. Thank you for your time.
3) Go back to step 1 and call at least one of your senators — we need to make our voice for equality as loud as possible.
It’s a quick, easy way to make a real difference in the fight for equality today. And in a few weeks, when ENDA finally goes to a vote, we’ll be calling on you to take action again. We’ll need to mobilize every last supporter we can to make more calls, send e-mails, and get friends and family to do the same. This legislation is being fought tooth and nail by the right wing, so no supporter of equality can afford to be silent.
Thank you for acting with the Task Force today.
Sincerely,
Rea Carey, Executive Director
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund
© 2010 National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund
Contact us at ActionFund@theTaskForceActionFund.org or call 202.639.6312.
Ok, it looks like ENDA is finally going to be up for a vote, soon-ish, and it needs you! The steps are super simple to follow and will take very little of your time. This is your chance to stand up and tell congress that you deserve to have your civil rights honored. No more complaining, no more whining, just drag that cell phone out of your pocket and make a few calls.
This is the body of the email that I received today from National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund.
The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) is moving in Congress again — and in a few short weeks we’re going to need your help to ensure that, this time, there are no more delays.
Elected officials focused on health care reform for months. Now that it’s passed, we have to act to make sure millions of LGBT people aren’t left out in the cold when it comes to equality in the workplace. ENDA has been delayed time and time again, but now it looks like it will be up for a vote very soon. Now is the time to act — our elected officials need to hear that further postponement just isn’t an option.
Right now people can be fired in 29 states for being lesbian, gay or bisexual and in 38 states for being transgender. It’s wrong — dead wrong. There’s no excuse for this kind of backwards discrimination in this day and age. ENDA can’t wait.
Help ensure that we pass ENDA once and for all. Please make a short phone call now to your legislators to keep the pressure on. They need to hear loud and clear from people who support equality. Even if you’ve called before, and even if you think your representative is supportive of ENDA, it’s critical that they hear from you again today.
Just follow these three steps:
1) Call the Capitol Switchboard at 202.224.3121 and ask to speak to your representative. (If you’re not sure who your representative is, simply give the operator your zip code and they will connect you.)
2) Follow this script:
My name is _____ and I live at (say your street address) in (say your city and state). I am calling to ask that you please pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act now! Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people can't wait any longer for protection from job discrimination. So, please — no more delays. Pass ENDA right away. Thank you for your time.
3) Go back to step 1 and call at least one of your senators — we need to make our voice for equality as loud as possible.
It’s a quick, easy way to make a real difference in the fight for equality today. And in a few weeks, when ENDA finally goes to a vote, we’ll be calling on you to take action again. We’ll need to mobilize every last supporter we can to make more calls, send e-mails, and get friends and family to do the same. This legislation is being fought tooth and nail by the right wing, so no supporter of equality can afford to be silent.
Thank you for acting with the Task Force today.
Sincerely,
Rea Carey, Executive Director
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund
© 2010 National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund
Contact us at ActionFund@theTaskForceActionFund.org or call 202.639.6312.
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