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A Message to Trans Teens: Suicide is Not the Answer
Too many trans teens are choosing suicide over life. They are doing this is a mistaken belief that their suicide will send a message. We don’t need more teens sending a message this way. There are plenty of us adults who get it, who know your pain. We are working to make your lives better. Please stick around to see our progress.
We need you to be role models, not martyrs.
If you are contemplating suicide, please seek help.
Trevor Project Hotline: 866-488-7386
Trans Lifeline
US: 877-565-8860
Canada: 877-330-6366
Why Are Conservatives So Afraid of Trans Girl Scouts?
“Sexual anarchy.”
A “slap in the face to Christian parents.”
A “dangerous policy.”
That’s what some conservatives are calling the Girls Scouts acceptance of trans girls into the organization.
I have to admit that I’m a bit confused by the reaction to the policy update posted on the Girls Scouts blog this week, because it’s pretty much been in place since 2011.
“If a girl is recognized by her family, school and community as a girl and lives culturally as a girl, Girl Scouts is an organization that can serve her in a setting that is both emotionally and physically safe. Inclusion of transgender girls is handled at a council level on a case by case basis, with the welfare and best interests of all members as a top priority.”
Let’s look at each of the conservative quotes in turn…
AFA President Tim Wildmon interviewed Concerned Women for America’s Penny Nance on the American Family Radio program “Today’s Issues.” (Note that comments are turned off on the video. Were they afraid of receiving more negative responses to their conversation than supportive ones?)
Wildmon asked about the Girl Scouts’ “venture into sexual anarchy.” It seems the first issue here is that they don’t understand that gender identity has nothing — zero, zip, zilch, nada — to do with sex. Gender identity is how a person views themselves inside, in their heart and mind. Body parts don’t come into play at all. Attraction to others doesn’t come into play. It’s simply a person’s sense of self.
Pence responded to questions saying that the policy is “just one more slap in the face to Christian parents.” Well, I’m sorry, but WE are Christian parents and our daughter is a Girl Scout. There was no face-slapping here. What we have is acceptance from an organization that has lead to immense happiness in our child.
I’m also confused how a secular organization that promotes values found in most religions can be a problem for Christians. The Girls Scouts do encourage girls to learn more about their personal faiths and earn recognition for the efforts, but no one religion is promoted. And since many Christian denominations are completely accepting of trans identities, I fail to see how acceptance in a secular setting hurts anyone except those who CHOOSE to follow a denomination that sees being trans as a choice rather than as the way a person is born. (It isn’t a choice, by the way.)
And finally, we get to the last quote. The American Family Association has a petition urging the Girl Scouts to reverse the policy of acceptance, which is calls a “dangerous policy.”
I’m sorry, but dangerous to whom exactly?
The petition says “Boys in skirts, boys in make-up and boys in tents will become a part of the program. This change will put young innocent girls at risk. Adults are willing to experiment on our kids – both the boys who are confused and the girls who will wonder why a boy in a dress is in the bathroom with them.”
Ahhhh, there it is! Penises are dangerous. Anyone in possession of a penis is a predator. (Although I find it interesting that these conservatives have no problem with adult men — whom I’m pretty sure possess penises — having leadership roles in the organization.)
Let me tell you a story. During one of our Girl Scout meetings, the girls ran down the hall to the bathrooms, as they always do, in pairs for safety. As my daughter was using the restroom, sitting down as girls do, the other girl crawled under the stall wall to try to tickle her legs.
The. Other. Girl.
My daughter was terrified. She is not in the bathroom playing games. She isn’t in the bathroom peeping in stalls or trying to expose herself. She is sitting down, hands in her lap with a wad of tissue covering herself so that if anyone were to look in, they wouldn’t see her private parts.
The other girl thought it was funny to crawl into the stalls. Not my girl. Where is the danger again?
So if these aren’t the real issues at play, just what is it that scares some conservative commentators about the policy?
Two things come to mind.
First, they are worried that their precious innocent daughters will be exposed to a “lifestyle” that they don’t accept. They are worried that their daughters will be taught about being transgender and possibly start to question themselves. That was the issue one parent brought up recently when the book “I Am Jazz” was read in an elementary class. A child had questions later, and since the parent didn’t know how to answer them and felt uncomfortable with the subject, the questions were interpreted as the child being confused about being transgender himself. (It’s really an easy conversation to have, by the way. “So, you are wondering if you are trans, too? Do you feel like a girl? No? Ok, then you aren’t.”)
But guess what, even though the girls in my daughter’s troop made a joke about earning a Transgender Badge for learning what being trans is when she and a visiting friend outed themselves as trans during a meeting recently, there isn’t a Transgender Badge. Check for yourself here. See? No Transgender Badge.
What I think they are really worried about is that trans girls are already in the Girls Scouts and no one knows who they are. That terrifies them. They want to be able to label trans girls as “boys in skirts” who will confuse the other girls. But when kids transition, no one can tell. Before puberty, kids pretty much look the same. Only hair and clothes help us differentiate males from females. They are scared witless that they can’t go to a Girl Scout troop and point a finger at the “dangerous” kid.
After my daughter and her friend outed themselves, I met with our area leadership. On the off chance that any other parent complained (they didn’t), they wanted me to know that my daughter was absolutely welcome and supported. They also said that they are aware of at least a dozen other trans girls in our region, and there are probably more because not all parents tell the council about their girls’ trans status. Do a little math and you can figure out that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of trans girls in scouts all across the country. But we don’t hear news reports about them. We don’t see stories of “innocent girls” being assaulted by a “boy in a skirt” in bathrooms and tents.
Trans girls are participating in Girl Scouts without any problems. They are participating because they are girls. Period. And everyone sees them as nothing more than girls. Period. That is at the root of these conservatives fears. Despite all of their hemming and hawing and predictions of doom, nothing bad is happening.
So thank you, Girl Scouts, for providing my daughter and others like her a safe space to grow, learn, make new friends, and become empowered as the girls that they are.
My Little Advocate Makes a Splash in Her Avery Chat Video
We knew. We knew that the time would come when AJ wanted to speak out for herself. As her parents, we were hoping it wouldn’t be for a long time. You know, the way you never want your kids to date.
We thought we had time. We thought we could be better prepared. We wanted to protect her.
But she is an amazing kid. An amazingly headstrong kid, too.
With so much coverage of trans issues in the news, from the NBC Nightly News covering two trans kids to the big Bruce Jenner interview, we stumbled across a post from Entertainment Tonight listing 9 Inspirational Stories of Transgender Kids and Their Supportive Parents.
We were one of the families. When AJ saw the post, she asked why all of the kids’ faces were being show except for hers. We told her it was for her privacy, so that people wouldn’t know exactly who she is.
Her reply?
“But I’m proud of who I am. I don’t want to hide! I want people to know me so that I can help change the world.”
——————————- Whew. Deep Breath. ——————————-
We took a baby step. We posted photos of us at the Equality House in Topeka, Kansas.
Then she asked to make a video to put on YouTube. (She’s always wanted her own YouTube channel and has been pretending she has one by making “Avery Chat” videos for a couple of years. So I helped her put one together, thinking that once she saw it, she would reconsider having it online.
But it only made her more excited. She was ready. She wanted her story told in her own voice. So with that, here is her video…
The response was immediate and overwhelmingly positive.
She was added as one of the profiles on the New York Times page for Transgender Today with an essay by my husband, Tom.
MTV picked up the story and shared it with their viewers, calling her “inspirational.”
And one of our favorite pieces was from The Next Family called 10 Reasons Why We Love Trans Girl Avery Jackson and Her Family. “Pink hair, don’t care!”
Thank you all for the support. And stayed tuned for more episodes of Avery Chat.
Bruce Jenner, Celebrity Praise, and What the Trans Community Needs Now
It’s been a week since the “interview the world is waiting for” has aired. Bruce Jenner announced to the world that he (current pronouns of choice) is a transgender woman. Twitter was on fire during the interview and a few hours later with dozens upon dozens of celebrities posting tweets in support of Jenner — from Lady Gaga to Sam Smith, Miley Cyrus to Jimmy Fallon and my personal favorite, Ricky Martin. There’s even a new trend now for people to paint their fingernails in a show of support. That’s nice, but…
Celebrities, if I may be so bold in saying this, praising Bruce is a great but we need you to speak up for every trans person, to be just as loud and vocal about ensuring trans rights, and to help end the prejudices that lead to so much violence against the trans community.
What I’ve learned from personal experience in the last year is that one small voice can have a huge impact. Celebrities, you already know that your words and actions carry a lot of weight and can influence people, for good or bad. Will you please take the enthusiasm you’ve shown for Bruce and spread the love to the trans community as a whole?
I was especially pleased to see so many L, G, and B celebrities coming out to support a T celebrity. It’s a painful truth that there’s often a division between the letters of the LGBT family. We need to harness this positive energy into promoting further progress for the most at-risk in the community.
As marriage equality rolls across the land, the trans community is seeing a backlash. Despite the moment of the “Transgender Tipping Point” touted last summer, anti-trans rhetoric is increasing. Anti-trans “bathroom bills” have been proposed in several states. Non-discrimination policies covering trans students are being reconsidered and rescinded in school districts across the country. Suicides among trans teens are occurring at an alarming rate. And let’s not forget how 6 trans women of color were murdered in the first two months of the year, that we are still waiting for justice for Islan Nettles who was murdered in 2013 and that TWoC have a life expectancy of only 35 years.
Celebrities, what will you do to support *these* trans lives? Will you help promote petitions or attend rallies against the bathroom bills? Will you show and celebrate the stories of other trans people on your social media pages so that your followers can see what the rest of the community looks like? Will you push for more positive depictions of trans characters (or even better, promote the hiring of trans actors) in your movies and tv shows? Will you help the 92% of Americans who don’t know a trans person see that trans women of color are humans deserving of the same dignity and respect as everyone else?
With my one small voice, I will keep showing the injustices my trans friends and loved ones face as they lose jobs, are discriminated against, and are assaulted verbally and physically. I will keep sharing the victories and positive stories of kids who transition and are welcomed by their friends and schools, of couples who stay together as a bonded family after a transition, and of trans people being promoted and elected into influential jobs. I will share the research about the damage of reparative therapy and push for laws to protect our youth. I will share the photos and names of trans women who are murdered for no other reason than being who they are, and I will push for justice in their names.
What will you do, celebrities, that will make a difference in these lives? You have influence. Please use it to help. Trans lives matter. All of them.
#translivesmatter #BruceJenner #transkids #twoc #bathroombills #LadyGaga #SamSmith #MileyCyrus #JimmyFallon #RickyMartin
White House Responds to Petition to Ban Conversion Therapy for LGBT Youth
In December of 2014, Leelah Alcorn, a 17-year-old transgender woman in southern Ohio wrote a message that appeared online posthumously after her suicide. In the message she attributed a significant portion of her despair to attempts by her family and church to fix her gender identity using what is known as conversion or reparative therapy. She called for those reading to “Fix Society” so that others like her might have productive lives. At such a young age, she had already lost that hope.
Leelah’s message touched hearts around the world. Trans-Parenting.com worked with several other organizations including the Transgender Human Rights Institute and Everything Transgender NYC to sponsor a pair of online petitions through Change.org and We the People calling for an end to conversion treatments that have the goal of changing a subject’s sexual orientation or gender identity, with special emphasis on protecting young people. Both petitions exceeded their signature goals.
In their official petition response statement of April 8, 2015, the White House joined with accredited health organizations, and several state governments in condemning the practice of coercive conversion treatment. The White House called on families to be accepting and more supportive of their LGBTQI+ children and asked state governments to ban conversion treatments by licensed therapists.
OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE RESPONSE TO Enact Leelah’s Law to Ban All LGBTQ+ Conversion Therapy
Response to Petition on Conversion Therapy
By Valerie Jarrett
“Tonight, somewhere in America, a young person, let’s say a young man, will struggle to fall to sleep, wrestling alone with a secret he’s held as long as he can remember. Soon, perhaps, he will decide it’s time to let that secret out. What happens next depends on him, his family, as well as his friends and his teachers and his community. But it also depends on us — on the kind of society we engender, the kind of future we build.” — President Barack Obama
Thank you for taking the time to sign on to this petition in support of banning the practice known as conversion therapy.
Conversion therapy generally refers to any practices by mental health providers that seek to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.[1] Often, this practice is used on minors, who lack the legal authority to make their own medical and mental health decisions. We share your concern about its potentially devastating effects on the lives of transgender as well as gay, lesbian, bisexual, and queer youth.
When assessing the validity of conversion therapy, or other practices that seek to change an individual’s gender identity or sexual orientation, it is as imperative to seek guidance from certified medical experts. The overwhelming scientific evidence demonstrates that conversion therapy, especially when it is practiced on young people, is neither medically nor ethically appropriate and can cause substantial harm.
As part of our dedication to protecting America’s youth, this Administration supports efforts to ban the use of conversion therapy for minors.
The use of conversion therapy
The medical and mental health communities have long made clear that they reject the practice of conversion therapy, aimed at “changing” one’s sexual orientation. Recently, efforts to change an individual’s gender identity have also been shown in countless instances to have dangerous effects. More than 40 years ago, the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder, and in 1998 released a statement “[opposing] any psychiatric treatment, such as ‘reparative’ or ‘conversion’ therapy.” It asserted that “such directed efforts are against fundamental principles of psychoanalytic treatment and often result in substantial psychological pain by reinforcing damaging internalized attitudes.”[2]
Similarly, the American Psychological Association has repeatedly affirmed its stance against these practices, recently stating that efforts to change an individual’s sexual orientation can pose serious health risks to LGBTQ+ individuals. Numerous other accredited medical and mental health organizations have echoed this sentiment, including the World Health Organization, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the American Counseling Association.
Steps by states
As part of their duty to safeguard the health, safety, and welfare of their citizens, several states have taken their own steps to protect minors from the potentially dangerous effects of conversion therapy. California, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia have all banned licensed professionals from using conversion therapy on minors. Since last year, lawmakers in 18 other states have introduced similar legislation.
In a 2013 signing statement for his state’s legislative ban, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie expressed that “exposing children to these health risks without clear evidence of the benefits that outweigh these serious risks is not appropriate.”[3] In February 2015, a New Jersey Superior Court judge ruled that advertising a service that could change a person’s sexuality is fraudulent and violates the state’s consumer protection laws.
While a national ban would require congressional action, we are hopeful that the clarity of the evidence combined with the actions taken by these states will lead to broader action that this Administration would support.
The importance of family support
Family relationships are pivotal to the physical and emotional well-being of any child, including LGBTQ+ youth. Every child needs love, support, and acceptance to grow, dream, and thrive. LGBTQ+ youth with supportive families and friends show greater well-being, better general health, and significantly decreased risk for suicide, depression, and substance abuse.[4]
Countless families and guardians across the country proudly support their LGBTQ+ children. Too many LGBTQ+ youth, however, lack this support system, which can have devastating consequences. Negative family reactions to LGBTQ+ youth can be perceived as rejection by children, often contributing to serious health issues and inhibiting a child’s development and well-being.[5] And when it comes to LGBTQ+ youth, some actions by family and caregivers can be harmful, despite even the best intentions.
This Administration believes that young people should be valued for who they are, no matter what they look like, where they’re from, the gender with which they identify, or who they love.
We hope that the resources below can be of use to LGBTQ+ youth, their families, and friends.
LGBTQ+ youth issues are an Administration priority: Resources for LGBTQ+ youth, their families, and friends
Bullying
In 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services launched StopBullying.gov, aimed at providing valuable resources and support to youth, parents, and community members with the goal of building a safe environment for all youth, including LGBTQ+ youth.
Family acceptance
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) supports positive dialogues between providers, families, and LGBTQ+ youth, and has developed A Practitioner’s Resource Guide: Helping Families to Support Their LGBT Children to help providers implement best practices in engaging and helping families and caregivers to support their LGBTQ+ children.
LGBTQ+ youth homelessness
To advance the Administration’s goal of ending youth homelessness by 2020, federal agencies have developed partnerships to create and promote a research-informed framework that focuses on improving data quality and service capacity to support highly vulnerable homeless youth, including LGBTQ+ youth, youth involved in the foster care or juvenile justice systems, and pregnant and parenting youth.
[1] See generally California Senate Bill No. 1172 (2012).
[2] American Psychoanalytic Association, Position Statement on Attempts to Change Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, or Gender Expression (2012).
[3] New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s Statement Upon Signing Assembly Bill No. 3371 (Aug. 19, 2013).
[4] (SAMHSA, p. 5).
[5] (SAMHSA, p. 2).
