sometimes it floors me how far we’ve come since i was even in high school. this video is amazing.
That was awesome and actually made me cry. I know I’m in a really emotional state right now anyway, but damn that kid is amazing and super cute.
When I came out to my mom about being bisexual, I just told her that “hey, I have a girlfriend” and she just said “that’s great!”. There are good, tolerant people a plenty in this world, so we all (not just LGBT people, but our allies us well) need to raise up our voice and not let the hate overwhelm the conversation.
We’ve made progress; there are still countless progrems and hateful, ignorant people, but yet gay people can get married in so many places (soon including my country) and the acceptance is slowly spreading. But trans people have always got the worst of it and that’s where we need to focus a large amount of energy right now IMO.
I only know one trans child, so my experience is necessarily limited. She’s a good kid.
But the school meeting where the other parents found out that there was a trans kid attending classes with their own precious flowers was pretty horrifying. Today’s “helicopter parents” seem to want their children’s schools to be indistinguishable from prisons, with all doors locked, all activity and speech monitored, and all deviance from 1950s Charles Schulz models of behavior severely punished. The tearful soliloquy about bathrooms one mother gave was frankly embarrassing, and the amount of anger directed at an unnamed child was a sad thing to see. Several of the parents, who had always seemed to be decent and reasonable people before then, were basically insulted and enraged by the idea that the school wasn’t protecting their children from finding out that transgender people exist.
I was glad that the school did not release her name, and I was kind of flattered that my family had already been told months before. I believe two families left the school in disgust - and while it’s easy to say good riddance to those parents, it’s too bad the kids had to leave their more accepting peers just to satisfy their parents’ bigotry.
Heartwarming!
Also, so much respect to the girl in the back with the beat trouble. Keep trying - you’ll get there!
Not much to say. Rock on kid, hope you have a happy life.
The obsession some people have with bathrooms and the non-existent threat posed by transgender would be amusing if it weren’t so depressing and even frightening. Once a transgender friend of mine asked me to stand guard while he went to the men’s room. He and I were part of a small group setting up for a party in a Unitarian church. In the unlikely event that someone had walked in on him I doubt anyone would have noticed anything or cared if they did. I didn’t question it, but at the time I found his request a little odd. That was nearly two decades ago, and with what I’ve learned since then I have a better understanding of why he felt like he wanted me standing guard.
This kid gives me hope that things are getting better.
That is the worst. I think transgender women get it worse, because womens’ bathrooms are a bit more gregarious than men’s rooms. My worst fears with transitioning FTM was men’s bathrooms. Not the public ones because I’m scrappy, and don’t care. The ones at work, where I have to see those people day in and day out, and hope I a masculine enough looking for guys to leave me alone.
I actually had a guy follow me into a men’s room once to gender check me. I turned on him, and backed him up asking, “What? You gonna hold it for me?” He bailed, and I got to pee without being harassed. I wish it was the only time. Especially if you don’t get read as your gender.
When you stop and think about it, bathroom segregation is a pretty weird concept, but they are physical manifestations of the dominant culture’s obsession with concrete gender identity. They are literally built into civil structures. How do you fix that?
A lot of college dorms have unisex bathrooms now. I think they’re optional, as in you don’t get unwillingly assigned one with your housing arrangement. Personally I’m uncomfortable with crapping in the presence of women but maybe if I’d been raised that way… that would be a start? I don’t know. A self-identified woman would bother me but not an FTM trans person. All in all I prefer shitting in the woods, alone with my mixtapes and hypotheses and where did this weird newspaper come from.
(Didn’t Asimov’s Foundation civilization have extremely private toilet customs?)
I think Asimov dwelled more on bathrooms in The Caves of Steel, where people in men’s rooms got private cubicles and were supposed to ignore each other when encountering each other in common areas. Bathrooms for women were allegedly more convivial, although the readers never got to see the inside of one.
Wow, the stuff one remembers…
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
