I wrote this comic for Terry Flemming’s blog post about Trans teens on her Parenting Teens blog.
The research I mention in the first panel is called How Safe by Holly Painter (edited by Philippa Keaney).
As for the research she mentions; whenever trans people are included in research I’m all like:
So basically, all y’all researchers should do it more.
Also the little text at the bottom reads:
*People who are gender diverse usually do not identify with their assigned sex. They may identify outside of the gender binary, as both male and female, or as neither male nor female. Gender diversity is a term that can be inclusive of Mahu, Vakasalewalewa, Palopa, Fa’afafine, Akava’ine, Fakaleiti, and Fakafefine (for more information about MVPFAFF check out Phylesha Brown-Acton’s amazing AsiaPacific Outgames speech: http://www.wellington2011.org/transcript.html?id=2-1306228428-826.
Discussion (9) ¬
Well put.
At my college, there were these Safe Space signs that said some people were friendly to LGB and T people, so I starting trying to get support from some of the staff with these signs and it was kind of hard. I knew they’d taken a class about what it means to be LGBT and that the class had a unit on working with and helping out trans* people, so I was kinda baffled at their lack of correct information. Then I chatted with a cisgender neighbor who’d observed the class. She began reeling off outdated and even bigoted information that she had learned there. And then she told me I was wrong because as I trans* person I couldn’t possibly know as much as the cis gay guy giving the class because he was the president of the gsa. And that moment was when I realized that it was a horrible mistake to come out to anyone outside my very closest circle.
Over the following years, “certified” people I’d come out to outed me to known transphobes, lectured me about how it was my responsibility to keep them from being transphobic by constantly educating them, and of course continued to misgender me. Eventually the gsa even stopped doing a drag show because they couldn’t handle me being a transguy queen (or the fight we had when they put it in their program that the show helped people understand “what it is to be transgendered”). Thank the gods I’m graduated and back in the closet now.
Yes, I think this is a major flaw when it comes to the ‘safe space’ signs. It sounds like a really terrible time!! I am glad that you are ok now.
Kia ora Sam! Love the comic and posted it now to Parenting Teen Stories. Honoured to have your post there and to have diverse parents and ex-teens contributing their stories.
Terry Fleming
http://parentingteenstories.wordpress.com/2014/01/26/when-we-can-be-ourselves-were-pretty-awesome-sam-orchard-on-gender-diverse-young-people/
I really hate it when having discussions with people they reference trans* people as being a rare thing, or that “they don’t know any other trans* people.” I try to correct them, to tell them that we’re everywhere, but it’s really hard when you can tell that they don’t believe you. I don’t really know how to combat this and I’m not really sure why so many people are entrenched in such views – and it’s often from otherwise very open-minded, accepting people.
The third last panel that says “if we haven’t told you, it’s probably because there are no signs to tell us it’s safe to” … THIS IS THE WHOLE THING! It works fabulously for divergent sexualities as well as genders. I want to cut it out and stick it everywhere.
Can confirm. Turns out trans people were once young and had to go to school. I’m still unbelievably angry at how my old school is and how utterly depressed and suicidal I was because of it