Gender 101, Episode #27 Redux: Emmi's Gender Non-Conforming Heroes

Benji (a.k.a. Lucy) continues the conversation about Gender with Emmi...



You can find out more about Julia Serano at juliaserano.com

Thanks Lucy and Emmi!

You can see the original posting here.

Namaste,
Lee

Gender 101, Episode #22 Redux: Frankie's Gender Queer Heroes

Lucy continues the Gender 101 discussion with Frankie Palacios, asking about Frankie's Gender Queer Heroes.



Thanks, Frankie and Lucy!

Here's links to more information about:

My Princess Boy

Raja

Morrissey

and

Freddie Mercury.

You can see the original post, here.

16 Year Old Ashley Makes Everyone In Her School Feel Beautiful For A Day

 Imagine if when you got to school today, there was a sticky note on your locker that read:

"You're beautiful."

And not just on your locker.  On every locker in the row.  Every locker down the hall.  Every locker in the whole school!

Well, Ashley did that at her school. 

 Her story of what happened is a great reminder that each one of us can make a difference.  And that sometimes the powers that be don't get it... but good can triumph anyway.  And sometimes, good and kind wins in ways you don't even realize.

Inspiring!

My thanks to Karol for sharing this with me, so I could share it with all of you. 

A 14 Year Old Changes the Beauty Industry... and gets Seventeen Magazine to STOP photoshopping their models! (And how YOU can help Teen Vogue stop photoshopping, too!)

This is really inspiring.  14 year old Julia started this petition on change.org

Give Girls Images of Real Girls!

Girls want to be accepted, appreciated, and liked. And when they don’t fit the criteria, some girls try to “fix” themselves. This can lead to eating disorders, dieting, depression, and low self esteem.

I’m in a ballet class with a bunch of high-school girls. On a daily basis I hear comments like: “It’s a fat day,” and “I ate well today, but I still feel fat.” Ballet dancers do get a lot of flack about their bodies, but it’s not just ballet dancers who feel the pressure to be “pretty”. It’s everyone. To girls today, the word “pretty” means skinny and blemish-free. Why is that, when so few girls actually fit into such a narrow category? It’s because the media tells us that “pretty” girls are impossibly thin with perfect skin.

Here’s what lots of girls don’t know. Those “pretty women” that we see in magazines are fake. They’re often photoshopped, air-brushed, edited to look thinner, and to appear like they have perfect skin. A girl you see in a magazine probably looks a lot different in real life. As part of SPARK Movement, a girl-fueled, national activist movement, I’ve been fighting to stop magazines, toy companies, and other big businesses from creating products, photo spreads and ads that hurt girls’ and break our self-esteem. With SPARK, I’ve learned that we have the power to fight back.

That’s why I’m asking Seventeen Magazine to commit to printing one unaltered -- real -- photo spread per month. I want to see regular girls that look like me in a magazine that’s supposed to be for me.

For the sake of all the struggling girls all over America, who read Seventeen and think these fake images are what they should be, I’m stepping up. I know how hurtful these photoshopped images can be. I’m a teenage girl, and I don’t like what I see. None of us do. Will you join us by signing this petition and asking Seventeen to take a stand as well and commit to one unaltered photo spread a month?

What happened after 86,000 people signed Julia's petition?

Julia's message to all her supporters: "Seventeen listened! They're saying they won't use photoshop to digitally alter their models! This is a huge victory, and I'm so unbelievably happy. Another petition is being started by SPARK activists Emma and Carina, targeting Teen Vogue and I will sign it. If we can be heard by one magazine, we can do it with another. We are sparking a change!"

And here's that Teen Vogue petition!  Let's help these young women change our world for the better!

You can find out more about SPARK here.

Namaste,
Lee

Check out what 16 Year Old Ebonie did to change her school district and make it safer for GLBTQ students like her!

This story is inspiring!

"I no longer have to look over my shoulder at school. I will be safe, just like every student deserves. I will hold my head high. I can be out, and proud."

 YES!


Thank you Ebonie - you're a HERO!  And cheers for your Mom, too, for empowering you to make such a big difference!

Namaste,
Lee

Gender 101 Episode #27: Emmi's Gender Non-Conforming Heroes

Benji (a.k.a. Lucy) continues the conversation about Gender with Emmi...



You can find out more about Julia Serano at juliaserano.com

Thanks Lucy and Emmi!

Namaste,
Lee

UPstander: A High School Junior sues his school for the right to wear his "Jesus Was Not A Homophobe" T-shirt

Check out this story:

Maverick, an openly gay 16 year old Junior at Waynesville High School in Ohio wants to wear this shirt to his school for their April 20th Day of Silence - a student-driven event to raise awareness about bullying.

A close up of the T-shirt. I've gotta get one of these for my June Pride Month T-shirt Project!

The school principal evidently told Maverick that he'd be suspended if he wears the shirt to school, saying that, among other things, the shirt is "sexual in nature."

Maverick, with the help of Lambda Legal, is suing his school district for the right to wear the shirt.

And I'm cheering him on! 

Namaste,
Lee

Gender 101, Episode 24: Nenu's Gender Non-Conforming Heroes

Our Gender Queer friend Lucy, a.k.a. Benji, continues our conversation about Gender with Nenu Cruz, exploring Nenu's gender non-conforming heroes.



You can find out more about Frida Kahlo here.

And how awesome is it for Nenu to be able to refer to Nenu's grandmother as "bad ass?"

Namaste,
Lee

Gender 101, Episode #21: Frankie's Gender Queer Heroes

Lucy continues the Gender 101 discussion with Frankie Palacios, asking about Frankie's Gender Queer Heroes.




Thanks, Frankie and Lucy!


Here's links to more information about:


My Princess Boy

Raja

Morrissey

The Facebook Event Page for the 16th Annual Smiths/Morrissey Convention of 2012

and

Freddie Mercury.


Namaste,
Lee

A Cool Way To Celebrate Rosh HaShana - The Jewish New Year: Check Out These GLBTQ Jewish Heroes!

So there's this campaign by Keshet (Working for the full inclusion of LGBT Jews in Jewish life) to highlight the contributions of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Jewish heroes.

Their first three they're celebrating are Harvey Milk, Kate Bornstein, and Leslea Newman. There are timelines and photos and ways to get involved - they even have posters!

I appreciate the project, but the part I found most fascinating was the page on their website asking for people to share their own personal queer Jewish heroes. That made for some great reading.

So on this Jewish New Year, let's take a moment to recognize the light of these people who are GLBTQ and Jewish!

Namaste and Shana Tova (which means Happy New Year!),

Lee


My thanks to Barbara for the heads-up about this project, so I could share it with you.

Back To School: An Interview with Ethan, Who Started The Non-Profit "The AIDS Cure" when he was 11!

Maybe the hardest part of being a kid is feeling like there's all this stuff happening in the world, and you're not really empowered to do anything about it. You can't vote yet. You don't work yet (at least not full-time) so you don't have a lot of money to donate to help other people's efforts to fix problems. You can't just pick up and fly somewhere to help out in places where people need help. I mean, you're a kid, living at home, going to school. What can you do?

Check out what Ethan did – he started his own non-profit, The AIDS Cure.

I'm really excited to interview him and find out more.

Lee: Hi Ethan!

So, tell me about The AIDS cure.


Ethan: Well, I was 11 years old when I started The AIDS Cure. The reasoning for this was because I was hearing a lot about AIDS everywhere and how much it affected families not just here in the U.S., but that it was a problem on a worldwide scale. I knew that something needed to be done. So, I started small and took donations and clothes and put them in a safe place. There was only one problem, I had no idea who to give the money and clothes to. A couple of weeks later, I was talking to my aunt about this problem and she told me that she knew a non-profit that worked for families affected by AIDS called Ten Thousand Homes. I thought that would be better than sending the money to AIDS research, because millions are already donated to that and basically would be a waste of time. So I talked to my aunt's friend, a mission worker. We had talked about it and he said that I could give everything to him and he would make sure it would go into good hands. So, I went home and I began counting the money I had raised thinking, "I'll only have just a few bucks, but something is better than nothing!" I was surprised to see after about a month I had raised $129.07 and about 3-4 large trash bags full of clothes! I knew with this much money and clothes, they could help many families that are in need. So i thought about it and after a lot of work, I had built The AIDS Cure. What I do is take donations (I stopped taking clothes), set up fundraisers, and spread the word to people about AIDS awareness and how we can help. Now I have had The AIDS Cure for about 2 years now and have taken donations and have given all of the money to Ten Thousand Homes. Happily I have raised a lot more donations since I started. If fact, I have raised at least $50 more dollars in the last month. The best way to summarize what I do is in this little story. A lot of people ask me, "Are you trying to find the cure for AIDS or something?" Without even thinking about it I respond, "In fact, that is not my main goal. Sure, it would be one of the best things the world has ever seen, but my main goal is to go to the heart of the problem, which in my opinion are the families that are affected by the disease. I want to help them in every way I can and I won't stop until there is a cure for this disaster!"


Lee: That's awesome. I'm curious - from your perspective, what do kids your age think about AIDS? For your generation, is there a stigma attached to people who have it or are associated with it - or is it just seen as a terrible disease, like cancer?


Ethan: Well, here is how I see it. Kids my age are exposed to a lot but apparently not to AIDS. Sure kids have heard of the name AIDS, but they don't know what it "really" is. In fact, a lot of the time, I have to explain to people my age when I tell them exactly what my charity is helping. I also see kids making fun of it a lot and saying only LGBT people get it from ... I feel like it's my job to inform the people who " have been lead astray."


Lee: So how do you explain what AIDS is to a kid?

I have the new issue of Harvard Magazine (I did my masters there) on my desk and the cover is "Africa's Epidemic: On the front lines against AIDS" and my child saw it this afternoon and asked about it. As I started to explain, I realized we parents generally don't talk to our kids about diseases - we want to shelter them from even the knowledge about things like cancer, AIDS, Mad Cow Disease... and yet, that sheltering just creates a vacuum of information that gets filled with rumor and things that aren't true.

I told her that AIDS was a disease that some people get and while there are drugs to help, they are very expensive and many people can't afford them. And that on the continent of Africa, there are a lot of people with AIDS who need the drugs and can't afford them. That's a problem, and there are lots of people trying to figure out how to help.

And maybe that's an okay answer for young elementary school kids... But what do you say to other middle schoolers? How do you explain what AIDS is to them?


Ethan: Well, I try to keep it as simple as possible when trying to explain it. What I usually say is this. "AIDS is a disease that affects your immune system so bad, that even the common cold can kill you. Sure, it might be alright for "some" people to get the medication they need here in the U.S., but people living on continents like Africa are mostly poor. In this case, they don't have the money to get the medication they need to stay alive. This is a problem, and what The AIDS Cure is trying to do is to help them by sending money over there so they can get the most important thing they need to not only keep from dying, but to make life easier.


Lee: That's really well said, Ethan. Unfortunately, there are a lot of diseases and problems in the world. Can you share with us why you've decided to focus your creativity and energies on helping with this one - why helping people with AIDS matters so much to you?


Ethan: Here is how I see it. The main one we all know of is cancer. Everyone knowing about it is a good thing and there are a lot of big organizations helping it. Of course there are more, but there are a few that are not "exactly" recognized. AIDS is one of those diseases. Like I answered before, part of what i try to do is spread awareness to the unknowing. Another reason is, because of the day it became personal. My mom's best friend, my uncle Scott, was just recently diagnosed with HIV and I knew right then how families feel. I knew it could get worse for other families than it is for me, especially if the families' relatives were to die.


Lee: Thanks for sharing that, Ethan. I hope your uncle Scott is doing and feeling well. What do you think is the best way to get kids involved and wanting to take action to help if they don't have a person they know dealing with HIV/AIDS? What will motivate other kids to want to help?


Ethan: As anything in this world, sometimes it is easy and sometimes it's hard. In this case, some people just have the good personality and want to help and some have the "I don't really care" type of personality. So, I have relate to both sides. I have to show them what and how things happen when this disease is put into play. The more relatable to them it is, the more they care and want to help. I try to spread the word, so for someone who knows nothing of AIDS, I try to teach them about it and again try to relate to that person. I try to help people understand it on an emotional level as well. I tell them, "People's families are affected so much that people die or they get their medication but don't have enough money to pay their bills." Then I say, "How would you feel if this happened to you? I bet you would want to help them any way you could. That's what I try to do for these people."


Lee: Yeah, empathy - putting yourself in other's shoes - is key.

So, Ethan - What can my blog readers do to help you help others?


Ethan: Word of mouth is the most important thing, first and foremost, to spread awareness. Second, if anyone is interested making donations it can be done (at this time I'm only set up to receive locally, but my blog site is being created) through Ten Thousand Homes in the name of The AIDS Cure.


Lee: Should we invite people to join your cause and/or donate to help at the facebook page? (Here's the full link: http://www.causes.com/causes/488096 )


Ethan: That would be fantastic! The more supporters and donations to help, the better!

My thanks to Ethan for everything he's doing and for telling us about it! I know I’m inspired. How about you?

A Gay Teenager, James Neilly, testifies in Vermont: "It's really hard to feel equal when you don't have the same rights."

I've got a new hero:

James Neilly is a Junior in High School in Vermont, and he testified last Friday on the same-gender marriage battle:




It's amazing to me that James is this eloquent and self-assured at 17.

His parents should be proud of him.

The Gay (GLBTQ) Community should be proud of him.

I know I'm proud of him.

Bravo, James. Bravo!

The news as of now - Vermont's Senate voted 26 to 4 in favor of same gender marriage on Monday. Now it's going to the House, which is also expected to pass the law.

The Governor, however, on Wednesday said he's going to veto it.

It's "unclear" whether the legislature will try to override a possible veto... (Check out this CNN article here for more details.)