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Girls always casually kind of talk to each other about their crushes, but I was
always so afraid to just mention mine.
I decided I'd treat myself like I was nothing
then I felt like everyone would just leave me. One day I was driving with my
dad to the beach
and he goes, "Edson, look at those girls in those bikinis," and I just thought to myself
look at the guy next to them! And immediately after that, I always thought myself,
am I allowed to think that? You really look in the mirror
and um... that's not you. I didn't think that for once nobody was going to not
like me
I felt that I wasn't gonna like myself.
*music*
It's already challenging enough being a teen, because you're just trying to figure out
who you are
in the world. So, for a teen trying to figure out Who am I?;
Who do I want to be in relation to other people?; How do I like other people?
Am I romantically attracted to certain people?; Am I sexually attracted
to certain people?
Whoa! That's a lot to deal with.
Well, I first started to question my sexuality
when I was 12 or 13 in seventh grade.
My name's Amelia and I've been out as a lesbian
for about two years now. Most my friends had already come out
as various different things and I just started to wonder
kind of about myself. At first I came out as bisexual
because I felt that it would be easier.
I later came out as a lesbian. I always knew that something was different.
I never knew what it was. I'm Edson Montenegro. I identify as gay as of
middle school in 2009. I mean I knew I could talk to my parents about absolutely
anything and at that point it was like school, people are frustrating me,
but that kind of depth of
personal issues- I still wasn't necessarily a 100% ready to
really
say, "You know what? I am gay." I didn't really think that I was ever a lesbian,
but I knew that I was attracted to women.
So, I guess that's where bisexual comes in for me.
My name is Ana Escalante and I identify as a bisexual woman.
Up until the 11th grade I was very
embarrassed by the idea being gay.
As time went on, I knew that it wasn't going to go away.
I saw women the same way I saw men. It can be really challenging to talk about the
LGBTQ community
because as in today there are SO many different
gender identities and sexual orientations. It can be really confusing
for people.
One of the most common questions we'll get asked is, "What is the difference
between gender and sexuality?"
L, G, and B are sexual orientations. It's about who you're attracted to.
Who you might be romantically attracted to or sexually attracted to.
Gender is more about who you identify as.
You can identify as male, you can identify as female,
gender-neutral, genderqueer, or gender fluid.
It's empowering because there's all these different identities.
But, then it's also overwhelming because there's all these different
identities.
Where do I fit in all of this?
My super specialty has become working with gender non-conforming kids and
transgender adolescents and young adults.
The gender journey actually starts at birth and sometimes even before birth.
"Is it a boy or girl?" That's one of most prominent questions that's asked when somebody
is pregnant.
Looking at that baby's anatomy, we start making stories about what that child
should do as they grow up. I was
confused about who I was. I always had like
you know, kinda like a little voice in your head saying, "No, if you be this way you're never
gonna make it anywhere in life."
"Your family will hate you." I'm 13
I identify as a transgender girl, or just Zoey.
So one day I'm talking to my brother and my brother's like,
"You're not a girl." And then he's like, "You have that."
And I was like, "I know I have that, but doesn't everyone have that?"
I knew that I felt different.
I identify as a heterosexual male. And I was
walking around dressing like a little boy
up until 14-15 once puberty started.
I knew that I didn't feel like I was a girl.
I didn't have the knowledge
or the language to be able to verbalize it
to anyone around me. What's fascinating about younger gender non-conforming kids
is they don't have a coming-out process. They just
like what they like and they tell us. My dad, he used to throw away my mom's
high heels cuz I used to walk around in the house with them. They start to understand
at 6 or 7 when they get into first grade
"Hey, you're a boy. You shouldn't like dolls, that's not okay. I'm not going to be your friend if
you like pink and that's your favorite color." And so they start to
internalize those messages.
I was extremely self-destructive.
I was self-loathing. I wasn't
physical with myself. I wasn't hard on anyone else.
I just - I didn't like myself. They're sitting
on what feels like a huge secret for a really long time
and that be really damaging. So I tried hiding who I was from myself.
Cuz at the time I didn't know what transgender was or the name of it.
And I was telling her, "Mom, I'm a girl. I know I'm a girl. I was born this way."
And I was telling her, "I need to be who I am." There's a tremendous
process of being ostracized if you're different.
People were posting about me, calling me "f**."
"Why haven't you come out yet?" One of my friends was really homophobic.
She told me I was gonna burn in hell once.
That can feel like a tremendous target on their back, especially in middle school.
You know, I was called so many things like, "nerd," like
"he-she," like they are thought I was gay. I've definitely heard
other people like friends make homophobic comments and I'm always that one person
that
stops them and corrects them. I'm Isabel and I identify as a straight female.
And I have two moms and I am an ally
to everybody on the LGBTQ spectrum. I feel like I have a responsibility
to go out into the world every day and be as
kind and
sensitive toward the subject of LGBTQ
as I possibly can. You never know
how much it can mean to have you step up and say
"That's not appropriate. What do you even mean by that?" Other teens that might be
hearing you that might "be in the closet," that might identify as gay,
can just be looking at you very differently thinking, "Wow, there's an ally.
There's someone out there."
"Raise your hand if you heard someone say the phrase, 'that's so gay.'"
LGBTQ outreach is really important for TEEN LINE because people can be
really misinformed about the community.
"Do you think that teen is going to feel safe? No."
Once they can understand what it means and how it hurts and affects other
people
they will usually stop. "A high percentage of LGBTQ youth
in the foster care system"... This is just a topic we don't always talk about.
And when we talk about it, we usually hear about suicides
or all these other things that can be really negative and heavy and we don't hear
about how
actually the community can be really awesome and really
empowering. Hello, everybody.
One of the highlights of our work with TEEN LINE is coming in and training
their new TEEN LINE teens. Kind of the most fun ways that we do that is through this
vocabulary game.
I think that it's really important for people to understand
the language and knowing what is okay to say and what's not okay to say.
And simply what things mean, because
there's a lot of language out there and it's always changing.
I think that the way that we've asked people to describe their gender
experience in the past is very
limiting so, that is why I developed the gender abacus,
so that people can have a more complete way to explain what their experience is.
So you can see we start with sex - so your assigned sex at birth based on your
anatomy.
This second rung of the abacus is gender identity - who you are. Do you feel
mostly male, do you feel mostly female? Do you feel
half of both? Do you feel a little more female than male?
Show us. But, the abacus gives people an opportunity to visually represent what
that experience is like for them.
The third rung the abacus is gender expression. How you want the world to see
your gender.
And then sexual attraction. But one kid said me, I thought this is great,
"Can you just have a randomizer button there so that it goes blpsh." You know?
It just goes where, the beads land wherever.
Because that's sort of how I feel about my sexual attraction.
I think it was probably my sophomore year. I was in a social psychology class
and that was the first time I had heard of gender-identity disorder.
And it all clicked. From that moment,
I did come out to my sister almost immediately.
What she said to me what is, "I have no idea what that is,
but I love you. I'm always going to support you and I'll help you
figure out how to come out to dad."
Coming out to my parents was a really gradual process.
I had talked to my mom about things I was having
questions about or I was confused about and she just kind of slowly picked up on
everything.
Well, my mom was totally cool with it- was kind of like our little secret.
And she said, "Nothing's changed, I still see you as my son."
After that is when I told my Dad and he said, "If anyone breaks your heart then I'm
gonna break them."
And that- that's the thing that really just made me feel good, because I just