#37 (aka: Another workshop, another blurb)

On Wednesday, my school's Gay-Straight Alliance and I are leading a workshop about how to combat homophobia in public schools at a conference being held at a local middle school. For this workshop, I elected to be one of our group's three or four student speakers so that I could tell my own story and do my part by spreading the word not only about discrimination happening inside academic locations, but also in the world at large. This isn't exactly the assignment given to me by the GSA members and advisors, but it's what I came up with.

Hi, I’m Elliot. I’m eighteen, and I’m a high school senior. Like most other people in my class, I’m making preparations to go to college next year, I fight almost daily with my younger sibling, and I’m in a romantic relationship. The only real difference is that I am a transgender man.

Being a member of a minority group within a minority group, and with so many people being unsure of what being transgender means, you might think, Man, I bet he gets a lot of backlash for just being himself, but I actually haven’t. No; I’ve never been more violently harassed than being called names, or being told that I was wrong for expressing this part of my identity. Not even from some of my less than open-minded classmates. Instead, I hear about discrimination not while it’s happening, but afterward. Afterward, when all I can do is write down how the news makes me feel, or talk about it with friends and cry on their shoulders because the pain felt by victims of hate crimes is not only felt by them, but by everyone who hears about it and knows they could be next. Afterward, when I pray “it” doesn’t ever happen to me. Afterward, when I am warned that my furious passion is going to get me in trouble someday, and I am told to calm down. Afterward, when I refuse to just stand back and watch and not do anything.

That is why I am here. I’m here today to try my hardest to prevent another situation like that of Gwen Araujo, a transgender woman, who was only seventeen when she was murdered by three guys her age who were supposed to be her friends. I’m here to stop another Logan Smith incident before it happens, because the police definitely won’t – those officers of the law kicked him so hard in the abdomen that they punctured his bladder, which lead to his death, due to septic shock.

I’m here for my lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, two spirited, same-gender-loving, third sex, pansexual brothers and sisters who cannot be, either because they’re too scared to “come out”, or because they’ve been physically, emotionally or mentally hurt so badly that they can’t stand up for themselves, or because they’re no longer alive.

The great lesbian poet Audre Lorde once said, “When I dare to be powerful; to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid”. As I stand before you today, and tell you all of this, I am afraid. But today, I also dare to be powerful, so with each passing second, my fear is conquered by my mission to make our world, starting with our schools, safer for us all.

Wish us luck! With this being the first workshop being led at a conference for most of my fellow group members, I think we'll need all the well-wishes we can get.