Transgender Day of Remembrance-Vigil Speech

November 20, 2008
Portland State University
Portland, Oregon

My name is Jenn Burleton and I am the Founder and Executive Director of TransActive. I am the wife, spouse, partner and significant other of the woman with whom I’ve shared my life for the past 26 years. We have been the foster parents of two transgender youth.

In the aftermath of the 2004 Indonesian tsunami, I traveled to Phuket, Thailand and volunteered whatever talents, skills and abilities I could to the recovery effort. I am old enough to have marched with Jesse Jackson, Ralph Abernathy and James Groppi in the fight for civil rights and fair housing in the late 60’s and I am young enough to have voted enthusiastically, idealistically and teary-eyed for President Elect Barack Hussein Obama. I am a middle aged, middle class social liberal.

My name is Jenn Burleton; I am a woman who happens to be transgender and today just happens to be my birthday. It has always been a special time of reflection for me.

Early on, it was the yardstick against which I measured the time it was taking my mother to accept and support the little girl that lived within me. During my teen years, it became the hourglass through which the sand that was my changing body flowed. And in adulthood, it is the day on which I take stock of how far we’ve come as a culture and how far we still have to go with regards to gender identity and expression.

Since 1999, November 20th has been the day we set aside to remember our sisters and brothers, sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, lovers, companions, friends and total strangers whose lives were cut short by violence, ignorance, misogyny and fear. This is our day to honor and remember those who died simply because they were or were perceived to be sharing our transgender umbrella.

We know that at least one trans person dies violently every month. Many of these murders remain unsolved. This does not include those who take their own lives after having been slowly but surely emotionally assassinated by intolerance, indifference, poverty and isolation. Those of us who share, to one degree or another, a trans identity are the survivors… and when I did the math with regard to my own life, I realized how very fortunate I have been. As of today, I’ve survived 496 months since first coming out as transgender at 12 years of age.

Lawrence King was not as fortunate.

I did not have the privilege of knowing Larry in life; however I did spend several weeks earlier this year in Oxnard, California speaking with Larry’s friends, teachers, counselors, mentors and neighbors.

Joined by my friends and colleagues, Hayley Klug, Mariette Pathy Allen and Esther Griffin, I met with school administrators, the Mayor of Oxnard and even Larry’s father and family members of the boy who shot Larry. I have taught classes at E.O Green Middle School… 20 feet from classroom #42 in which Larry was shot in the head twice from behind at close range. Several of the students who were there that day were in the classes I taught.

You may have read that Larry was a troubled and flamboyant gay teen who liked to wear women’s clothing and harass straight boys. That Larry flaunted his sexuality. That one of the boys Larry liked finally wouldn’t take it anymore and brought a gun to school and shot Larry twice in the head as Larry sat at a desk in the computer lab.

I’m here to tell you that the only true part of any of that, is that one of the boys Larry liked brought a gun to school and shot Larry twice in the head. The remainder is nothing more than a cisgender-centric manipulation of Larry King’s trans identity in order to fit his death into a politically useful, binary gendered model of what homophobic violence is.

An article in The Advocate even suggested that support and encouragement for Larry’s overtly feminine gender identity and expression and his presumptively "gay" sexual orientation contributed to Larry’s death. It’s time for the hijacking of Larry King’s identity to stop. Larry, who told friends he preferred the name “Letitia”, was transgender.

It’s true that Letitia had male anatomy and at 15 was boy crazy (as are many straight girls at that age). But as many of us in this audience already understand, our identity… her identity existed between her ears and not between her thighs. The inability of some cisgender people in ALL communities to understand and respect that simple fact lies at the center of the identity theft that Letitia King was subjected to in life and most tragically, in death.

Letitia ’s life was complex, challenging, inspiring and, in the days prior to her murder, even joyous.

Born on January 13, 1993, Letitia turned fifteen one month prior to being killed. She had been taunted, harassed and abused for being feminine from elementary school on. Long before she may have even had a sexual orientation, Letitia understood that non-conforming gender expression is at the core of LGBT oppression. And yet, this small for her age child never backed down from being who she was.

Everyone who knew Letitia said that the weeks after she began fully expressing her true gender identity were the happiest of her life. Far from being the outcast some have portrayed her to be, Letitia had many friends at school, mostly other girls, and was well-liked by many in the school faculty and staff.

She loved butterflies. A child after my own heart, she loved the music of Crosby, Still & Nash. Her favorite song though, was “Lean On Me”, which she confidently told her chorus teacher she wanted to sing the solo on at the Spring 2008 school concert.

Letitia was described as a sweet child who befriended stray animals. Together with her adoptive mother, she crocheted scarves to send to the troops in Afghanistan and she loved Archie, the dinosaur-sized therapy dog at Casa Pacifica, the residential care center she was staying in at the time of her death. When asked how she withstood the teasing, bullying, harassment, physical and emotional abuse of others, including possibly members of her family, Letitia would simply say; “I am what I am.”

While some have tried to co-opt, manipulate, pigeon-hole and minimize Letitia’s identity in order to serve political or social causes, the brilliance of who she was lights the way out of the shadows for those who were fortunate enough to have known her. Averi, one of Letitia’s friends wrote this poem a few days after her death:

“I was his friend
And loved him till the end
You all treated him bad
You made him feel so very sad
Now take your life and change it up
So God can fully fill your cup”

Whether one attends a church that believes in a Supreme Being, or worships as I do at the intersection of equality, justice, respect and hope, we must all keep our cups filled with the compassion needed to understand those who are different than us and the courage to, despite all opposition, stand together not just as men and women of trans experience, but as human beings first and foremost.

Another victim of senseless violence, Martin Luther King, once said:

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

We owe it to those we remember today, to Letitia King, to Cameron McWilliams who took his own life at age 10 after telling his mother he wanted to be a girl, to Ian Benson and Gwen Araujo, to Brandon Teena and Barry Winchell. To the transgender children of today and tomorrow whose quality of life and whose very lives hang in the balance of what we do on their behalf in the days, weeks, months and years to come.

To each of us who has traveled our own unique road to where we are, and to where we’re going. To all of these and to those whose names and lives may never be known, let us remember… and let us promise them that from this day forward, we will never again be silent about the things that matter.

Peace.


Jenn Burleton
Executive Director
TransActive

A Broken Youth: Why Gay Adults Should Be Able to Adopt

(I wrote this for my English class. I liked it so I decided to post it here)

A Broken Youth: Why Gay Adults Should Be Able to Adopt

The glass dish slams against the wall barely missing his face. The sound of the plate shattering breaks the screaming of the house. More then dishes are being broken tonight. A fourteen-year-old boy begins to run from his family. He runs with only one thing on his mind: an escape. He did not believe his family could hold so much hate. He cried and began to pant as his bare soles hit the pavement, and blood trickled down his face. He held onto his heart in sheer panic and collapsed next to the freeway entrance. It may sound unrealistic, but this situation is real for thousands of children. I know, because I am one of them.

When lesbian, gay, biseuxal, and/or transgender (LGBT) people come out to their families loosing everything is a real possibility. The state should allow LGBT parents to foster and adopt young people in need. According to a study by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force on LGBT youth, “over twenty six percent of youth are forced to leave their home when they come out,” which is incredibly daunting (Ray). We are dealing with thousands upon thousands of children who become homeless. Young LGBT people who come out do not have a lot of options and there is a basic right, even for LGBT children, to have a safe place to live. Adults in the gay community become foster parents to give back and provide a safe place for these young people to live. Unfortunately, many do not think LGBT people are suitable parents (Rekers). In this paper I will use academic evidence and a personal example to disprove the position which proposes LGBT parents are unfit. If these young people do not find a safe, supportive place to live they can fall into the problematic foster care system, the criminal justice system, the homeless system, or even death. America is failing our young people, and we must increase tolerance and understanding if we expect to save our most vulnerable.

George Rekers, from the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, claims that “homosexual people are not fit to be parents.”His number one claim in his paper is that “homosexually behaving adults have more stress in their lives then heterosexual people and thus would be more damaging to young people in care” (Rekers). This claim exposes biased research because he claims LGBT people should not be parents because of the stress of an LGBT parental unit, while never addressing why they may have more stress. LGBT people have more stress in their lives, and in their family structures, because of society’s stigma, institutionalized discrimination, and rejection of LGBT people. They do not have more stress because gay people inherently have more tension in their lives. The APA, the American Psychological Association, agree by stating on their website,

“The widespread prejudice, discrimination, and violence to which lesbians and gay men are often subjected are significant mental health concerns. Sexual prejudice, sexual orientation discrimination, and antigay violence are major sources of stress for lesbian, gay, and bisexual people (APA).”

Rekers also exposes his own bias with how he identifies LGBT people as “homosexually behaving” adults. The term used by Rekers is rejected by mainstream scientific organizations like the APA, as evident with the removal of homosexuality as a disease in 1973 (Bradly). He minimizes gay people by claiming that being gay is a behavior, that can be corrected, not an intrinsic identity. He also compares gay parents to “households with a pedophilic behaving adult, households with practicing criminals, households with drug dealers and drug abusers.” The irony in his statements is that no matter how he much he argues, LGBT people are not sex offenders, drug dealers, or, since 2003 (Lawrence vs. Texas), criminals of the state.

Rekers continues to infer in his paper that gay people can change their orientation and that the behavior is socially damaging to society. Rekers seems to be scapegoating gay people as carriers of destruction, disease, and wickedness. His statements are a reflection of the organization he represents and the organizations it aligns itself with.
I do not agree with Rekers research and conclusion and I have a personal example here to be shared within the context of this academic paper about the success of parents happen to be to be gay. LGBT people should be able to foster and help young people because LGBT adults may have gone through similar situations in their youth. They can accept, and support this specific group of young people on a different level then a heterosexual parent. I ran away when I came out because my family did not want anything to do with me anymore and it is interesting to note who exactly I lived with when I ran away. I lived with a lesbian couple.

There were a couple places I could have gone, but I decided to live with this specific couple because of the love they accepted me with. The reason I found support, acceptance, and love is because they were able to understand me. I wanted a family to cherish, nurture, and love every part of me, not cherry pick what they found acceptable and what they believed to be distasteful, especially an identity. I wanted a family who would not question if I had antagonized the bullying at school, or if getting spit on while I rode the bus was my fault. I longed for a family to stand up for equality, justice, and fairness, not just pass by with the status quo. This couple became my family. I lived with them because they were able to support me on a whole different level then my heterosexual rejecting parent. I believe this is a personal story that many young people hold to be truth when raised by a family member of similar characteristics. It helps to be able to connect with the youth you are caring for.

But it is not always this positive, it is disappointing that many people who provide a home for homeless youth, or youth in care, but do not recognize their own bias for getting involved in the foster care system. Many youth, as evident from the Task Force’s study on homelessness, happen to be LGBT. Between 20-40 percent of homeless youth identify as LGBT (Ray). Many conservative faith based institutions and families discriminate against LGBT youth who happen to wind up on their doorsteps. A youth who was rejected from their family may be further traumatized as another rejects them (CWLA). We need to make sure this does not happen by not only allowing all eligible and stable adults to be foster parents, but also invest in culturally competent and accepting adults to help our young people. Not all heterosexual adults are good parents, and neither are all LGBT adults, but that does not mean we should exclude an entire minority because of cultural bias.

Popular science further supports the fact that LGBT people are suitable parents and refutes the idea Rekers and other conservative organizations promote. The APA released a study in 2004 solidifying research from the 70’s that homosexual parenting is normal and suitable to a child’s development (APA). They found no evidence to suggest the contrary. The APA also stated that stress in LGBT homes are likely caused by external factors like society refusing to recognize LGBT people as legitimate members of society, then anything else (APA). They state that the rejection of the child’s family “sends a signal to the child and society that their family situation is unacceptable and subject to ridicule. “ This statement directly refutes the claim made by Rekers.

The APA expands on past research that LGBT parents raise healthy children on their website:
“Studies comparing groups of children raised by homosexual and by heterosexual parents find no developmental differences between the two groups of children in four critical areas: their intelligence, psychological adjustment, social adjustment, and popularity with friends. It is also important to realize that a parent's sexual orientation does not indicate their children's.”

So we know there is an overrepresentation of LGBT homeless youth but the question is what do we do now with this data? This academic paper exists to promote an end to bans on LGBT people being included in the general pool of foster parents. Research by the APA, scholarly journals, and respected researchers confirm that LGBT adults are capable of raising children into healthy and productive members of society (APA). LGBT adults may even be more likely to relate to specific groups of young people from similar situations, like gay youth and help them grow into productive members of society (CWLA). With bans on gay people adopting and being foster parents in states such as Florida, Mississippi, Utah, and now Arkansas, it seems the battle is heating up (Ruggeri). As American citizens it is our duty to respect everyone and to recognize that impartial scientific evidence must trump public opinion, otherwise we may as well live in a Stone Age theocracy minimizing all minorities and those who disagree. That is not a democracy. America was created on the principle that “all men are created equal,” and like Harvey Milk, a gay leader, said “no matter how hard you try, you can never erase those words from the constitution.” I believe in the constitution.

I conclude with a poem named London by the poet William Blake. It reminds me of the challenges facing our young people. In this poem Blake describes London with desolation and how it is infesting thoughts with negativity. He describes a London that is ignoring its civilians and turning a horrible situation even direr. London may not specifically be about LGBT youth in care, but it does represent a feeling that many LGBT youth find themselves in. The emotion they often feel is one of hopelessness. LGBT youth have daunting statistical data suggesting that they will break, fail, and die faster then other youth, but it is not just mind-forged manacles that Rekers suggests with his flawed data, but factual data of society’s intolerance and what it causes. LGBT youth should be provided safe, stable, accepting homes and LGBT adults should be able to foster and care for these, and other youth. Parents who can relate to these young people will be able to help them grow when no other adult would. Let us not neglect our most vulnerable.


.

Making Sense of the Senseless - and What Can Educators Do? with SSC's Beth Reis

This article by our co-chair, Beth Reis, was just published in Teaching Tolerance Magazine, a project of Southern Poverty Law Center.

Certainly there are potential costs for a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender student's honesty … discrimination by teachers, rejection by "friends" and, yes, even assault, rape, or murder. Are these experiences universal consequences of coming out? No. Do they happen? Yes.

But there's a flawed prevailing assumption: that being out necessarily increases a child's risk over some sort of bully-free baseline. Gay and, especially, gender variant children are often harassed long before consciously deciding whether to be out. It starts in primary grades. Gender variant little kids don't "choose" to be defiant about the larger culture's gender straight-jackets; it's how they're born. They may become more overt about it as they become more aware, at puberty, of its meaning and of their rights, but the harassment is hardly something they bring on themselves. In fact, whether you're gender variant or gay/lesbian/bi or both, coming out sometimes reduces the harassment you experience. It's not so much fun to hurl the vicious, "What are you ... gay or something?!" at a person whose response is a simple, non-defensive "yes."

The secrecy of the closet isn't without its own costs. These can include academic decline if you can't pay attention in class for worrying when a word or a gesture might lead to your life's unraveling. The costs can include profound loneliness. You can never be sure if those who love you are loving the mask or the person. You may deny yourself a supportive peer group because even accessing the gay-straight alliance may feel dangerous. You may deny yourself conversations with caring adults, unsure if you'll lose their esteem. You may forgo the typical adolescent social venues and, instead, find yourself in riskier adult environments. The closet can lead to depression and self-harm.

Read all of:
Making Sense of the Senseless: The Murder of Lawrence King
by Beth Reis, Safe Schools Coalition Co-Chair
Published in Teaching Tolerance Magazine, Number 34, Fall 2008

Web Exclusive! What Can Educators Do?
Teaching Tolerance sat down with Beth Reis and Helen Stillman of the Safe Schools Coalition, which shares the latest research, programs and ideas about preventing and responding to anti-gay harassment in schools to zero in on ways teachers can curb anti-gay bullying.

And: RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

Newsweek Gets It Backwards

Newsweek's cover story this month is entitled "Young, Gay and Murdered: Kids are coming out younger, but are schools ready to handle the complex issues of identity and sexuality? For Larry King, the question had tragic implications." [ http://www.newsweek.com/id/147790/page/1 ]

The reporter, Ramin Setoodeh seems to me to have concluded that it was because Larry came out and because he dressed in a vampy way and directed sexual and romantic comments toward boys at school that he was gossiped about, harassed and finally murdered. I would question the chronology. I am totally skeptical about the assumption that his behavior led to the other boys' hostility rather than their hostility fueling his behavior. Because it’s the latter that I have seen so often. A little kid starts out gender variant by nature, even in pre-kindergarten. But often subtly so. Then other kids' discomfort and grown-ups' refusal to address their discomfort or teach about stereotypes leads to their excluding that child from play and refusing to sit with the child at lunch. The teachers continue to hope the problem will go away.

In each grade, the class' meanness grows and teachers still don't talk with them about gender as a continuum rather than a binary concept. They don't even bring up female athletes or male dancers. In each grade, the targeted child tries new strategies to manage the hurt. One year, they will hardly talk at all. Another year, they'll talk nonstop. Often, eventually, they will become defiant and exaggerate what comes naturally: a gender expression others find discomfiting. Their peers' meanness -- and adults' refusal to address it in meaningful ways -- often accompanied by isolation from healthy well-adjusted LGBTQ role models -- precipitates the targeted child's using bitter humor and dramatic flair as a defense. And sometimes that works. Once you are clearly not trying to hide your sexual orientation or gender identity or whatever about you is different, it sometimes makes calling you "gay" anti-climactic and gets kids off your back. Sometimes, it doesn’t work. It didn't work, in the end, for Larry.

Know that I am not saying that transgender youth are necessarily exaggerating anything. I have no idea if Larry would have eventually identified as trans or not. I just imagine that, in time, Larry's spike heels and glitter might have given way to more garden-variety femininity or andogyny. If it hadn't, so what?

The point is that Setoodeh infers from his interviews, especially with Brandon's father, that the way to protect Brandon would have been to change Larry's behavior. But liking someone and wanting them to like you back is not a crime. Middle school is the time when most kids get crushes and tell friends. It doesn't sound to me as if Larry's behavior had risen to the level of stalking at all. If it did, then why haven't all the girls on that pre-Valentine outdoor quad been charged with stalking? Their behavior and Larry's appear to have been the same.

Maybe, rather than changing Larry's behavior, the most effective way to protect Brandon would have been to help him see someone's flirting -- even another boy's -- as flattering instead of insulting. We let homophobia and transphobia go unchallenged all the time and then we seem shocked when a young person becomes enraged at the thought that his peers might think he was gay. We let Brandon down not by failing to prohibit Larry from saying he liked him. We let Brandon down by letting him grow up believing that who Larry was (and who he would be by extension if he liked Larry back) was the worst thing a person could be.

And we let Larry down by letting his whole school grow up hating his difference and making his life there hellish. His femininity and his getting a crush didn't lead to his murder. Brandon's soul-searing transphobia and homophobia did. And adults' behavior, in turn, led to that.

Another LGBT Issue More Important Than Gay Marriage

On May 20th, the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) put out a report on anti-LGBT hate violence that indicated a 24% increase in incidents from 2006 to 2007. I wish I could say I am surprised to hear this.

Jovida Ross, the Executive Director of Community United Against Violence in San Francisco, stated that the increase indicates that “more people within the queer community are reporting sexual assaults” and considered it a “hopeful sign that [queer people] are coming out of isolation to heal from trauma” and a demonstration of “the positive impact of education and outreach.”

While Ross’ optimistic, “the glass is half full” approach to the rise in reported anti-LGBT violence is refreshing, I remain skeptical. So does Avy Skolnik, National Programs Coordinator of the New York City Anti-Violence Project, who suggests that the actual number of violent anti-LGBT incidents is probably even higher than reported: “We know that the 2, 430 people who called on our organizations in 2007 are only a small fraction of the actual number of LGBT people who experienced bias-motivated violence.”

Over the past year, LGBT-related bullying and violence has particularly stood out as a daunting challenge to the self-determination and self-expression of students in public schools. Perhaps the biggest tragedy was the February 2008 murder of eighth grader Lawrence King by fourteen-year-old classmate Brandon McInerney in California.

King’s death touched close to home for many educators, including myself. I witness verbal and physical harassment regularly in the hallway of my school, often involving words like “faggot” and “sissy,” and it frequently goes unreported by students and teachers alike. This year a large number of violent attacks have been made by and on our students, both inside and outside of the building of my school. While none of these attacks have been explicitly connected to LGBT issues, gender plays so significant a role in the nature of the aggression that it seems inextricably linked to gender identity and expression. Unfortunately, though, bullying is considered a fact of life for middle schoolers - “well, they’re in middle school, what do you expect?” and “it builds character” are used far too often by teachers and administrators as excuses to look the other way.

Fed up with our school’s general complacency about bullying, which is a more pressing concern than bubble sheets in the lives of our students, several teachers – most of us queer women - created a group called Respect For All to meet once a week. Despite its cheesy name, we anticipated that Respect For All would jump-start our school’s progress towards effectively addressing bullying. Unfortunately, founding and maintaining this kind of group has proven extremely challenging. Initially, several unnamed colleagues in the school expressed discomfort about the group, telling administrators that it would take up valuable time even though the meetings took place after school hours. Administrators failed to attend meetings, provide resources, or lend an open ear. Also, few educators have the energy to create and advocate for institutional change while mired in individual lesson planning and the everyday exhaustions of teaching. Between administrative discouragement and a lack of teacher investment, for which I am partly responsible, Respect For All has disbanded.

Combating bullying requires more than the existence of groups like Respect For All – it requires a collaborative effort and careful allocation of schools’ resources. As in many public schools under No Child Left Behind, my administration will abruptly halt regular school programming to give “pop” standardized tests. But it seems unfathomable that a school-wide day of education about the devastating effects of widespread bullying could feasibly take the place of scheduled classes. The efforts of Respect For All to create a “Respect Week” to kick off the 2008-2009 school year are wasted if administrators at our school aren’t willing to make room at the beginning of next school year for anti-bullying, pro-awareness workshops and activities for students.

So what can we do, in schools and outside of schools, to combat anti-LGBT violence?

First, we must advocate for collaborative efforts among teachers, staff, and administrators to confront bullying and violence in schools. Everyone in schools must recognize that classroom time and the learning students do in the education system are about more than test preparation – regardless of what the state and federal governements would lead us to believe. Tearing down No Child Left Behind is crucial in this endeavor.

Second, there needs to be a shift of some of the focus of LGBT organizations and resources away from gay marriage and onto issues like anti-LGBT violence and homophobia and transphobia in the education system and the justice system. Though I’m not inherently opposed to gay marriage, marriage laws will not fundamentally change the fact that violent homophobia and transphobia seem to be socially sanctioned just about everywhere in the nation. We need some of HRC’s - for one example - money and time to be channeled into ensuring universal LGBT and HIV-positive health care access, eradicating LGBT harassment in schools, fighting police brutality, ending the discrimination against undocumented immigrants that affects many LGBT communities, and addressing the abuses of transgender people in United States prisons.

Third, we must challenge the misconception that throwing more people into jail will effectively address anti-LGBT violence. Though Brandon McInerney committed a horrifying act of hatred, trying McInerney as an adult and pushing for a life sentence without parole will not ultimately help to prevent anti-LGBT violence. Though some might convince themselves that it will in order to cope with the anger such a tragedy incites, the prison industrial complex is more about quarantining society’s “unwanteds” than it is about rehabilitation or protection. Even hate crime legislation may not ultimately serve LGBT aims. Due to their selective enforcement, bias laws may ultimately harm "the most disadvantaged members of society and ironically those whom [they] are intended to help,” as Frederick M. Lawrence states in the abstract for his recent book. The criminal justice system is notorious for its blatant targeting of minorities, transgender people, and queer youth, and reinforcing its power by looking to it to solve our problems with anti-LGBT violence without addressing its many problems will only hurt LGBT people more in the end.