It Gets Better Page 11

Thousands of teens are homeless because their parents don’t accept or understand their sexuality, and I could’ve been one of those kids, had my mom not stepped in that day. Although there was a lot of arguing, my mom assured me that I wasn’t going anywhere, and got my dad to back off. With time, the tension in the household eased, but the pain I felt in that situation remains.

  It’s moments like these that remind me every day that the biggest gift you can give yourself and to others is acceptance. If you can just learn to love yourself for who you are and be the person you were meant to be, it won’t matter how many people are against you. Yes, there are probably always going to be closed-minded people who don’t condone the LGBT community, and sometimes those people may even be your own parents, but at the same token, there are many more people in today’s world who accept people like me with open arms. When I hang out with my straight guy friends and hear them talking about how much they support my different sexuality, I know that times are changing for the better.

  I used to suppress who I was, but nowadays, nearly everyone around me accepts and loves me because I have learned to accept and love myself. I’m popular in school because I’m everyone’s friend, and I treat others the way that I want to be treated—a far cry from my middle school days. I’m the happiest I have ever been, and I only wish that more teens who are struggling with their sexuality could come to the same realization that I have; that we are all beautiful individuals just the way we are.

  Stewart Taylor is a singer/songwriter who lives in Connecticut. He plans to attend Berklee College of Music in the fall. Stewart’s video was part of We Want It to Get Better, a video created by teachers Jeremy Leiner, Ethan Matthews, and Chris York with the students of the Studio New Canaan (New Canaan, Connecticut) as a way to give teens an open platform to share their generation’s perspective and send support to their peers.

  A MESSAGE FROM SENATOR AL FRANKEN

  WASHINGTON, DC

  I’m Senator Al Franken, and I wanted to take a moment to talk about the recent string of suicides by LGBT youth across the country. It’s beyond heartbreaking that so many students have taken their own lives for being bullied for being gay or perceived as gay.

  To any young people out there who are reading this, you may feel alone and that there’s nothing you can do, but you’re not alone. There are people who want to help, so please reach out to someone. If you don’t feel like you can talk to somebody in your family or community, you can call the Trevor Project—a totally anonymous hotline that you can call twenty-four hours a day to talk to someone. The number is 866-4-U-TREVOR.

  Just know that there are people and communities all across this country who care about you and are working to make your lives better. I, and more than twenty-five of my colleagues in the Senate, am taking part in this effort. We’re working hard to pass a law that would provide you with the same legal protection against discrimination and bullying as other students have now.

  And it will get better. When you’re in school I know many of you feel pressured to fit in and be like everyone else. And that means, sometimes, hiding who you really are. But you can believe me when I tell you that once you leave school, once you start making more choices for yourself, you’ll find that the same things that made you feel different in high school are what make you interesting and unique.

  Bullying is a deadly serious and an all-too-frequent part of school life. And, tragically, it’s often ignored by teachers or administrators. This needs to change. It does get better, and we are going to make it better. Visit my website at Franken.Senate.Gov to learn how you can help.

  Senator Al Franken was born on May 21, 1951, and grew up in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. He graduated from Harvard in 1973, where he met his wife, Franni. They’ve been married for thirty-four years, and have two children: daughter Thomasin, twenty-nine, and son Joe, twenty-five. In 2008, Al was elected to the Senate as a member of the DFL (Democratic-Farmer-Labor) Party from Minnesota, and was sworn in July of 2009 following a statewide hand recount. He currently sits on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee; the Judiciary Committee; the Committee on Indian Affairs; and the Special Committee on Aging.

  TRANSSEXUAL PRAIRIE GIRL

  by Tamsyn Waterhouse

  SAN FRANCISCO, CA

  I’m a transsexual woman. I grew up in rural Canada in really conservative surroundings, and in a rather conservative family. I went to a pretty conservative school as well, and when I was growing up, it was all about conforming, fitting in, and doing what was expected of me. I was never even able to think about issues like my gender identity or sexual orientation until I had grown up. In my high school, you just had to fit in. It wasn’t a particularly bad time for me; there was just no opportunity for expressing or discovering myself then.

  I always felt awkward and different, but that was all I knew, so I came to assume that that was just what being alive feels like. This is high school we’re talking about, after all. So I learned how to fit in, and I think I did pretty well at it. I’m mostly gay, so living as a boy and being attracted to girls didn’t create any problems. I love hockey and pizza, too, so there you go.

  It got better when I came out, when I was able to tell my friends and family that I’m still me but I’m not quite who you thought. When I was able to say, “I’m transgender,” it got a lot better. My friends were there for me. My family was there for me. My colleagues were there for me.

  When I came out to my mom, who is a retired bassoonist, I had been dreading that conversation for a long time, not knowing how she would react. Finally, I just said, “Mom, I’m transgender.” She replied, “That’s all right, dear; we had a lot of that in the orchestra.”

  Overall, my family and friends have been great: supportive, kind, and curious. Sometimes I think they treat my transsexuality as a sacred cow, though, and I find myself wishing they’d just lay in and razz me about it for once.

  Right after I transitioned, I was really self-conscious. Any time I was in public and I made eye contact with someone, I got really nervous and thought, “Oh, this person is staring at me because I’m transsexual.” And then straight guys started asking me out, and I realized that there’s more than one kind of staring.

  It’s always okay to ask questions, especially when it’s questions about yourself. It’s okay to ask, “Who am I?” It’s okay to ask, “What gender am I?” You should never be afraid of those questions.

  If I could tell my teenage self one thing, it would be: “Hurry up and get your wisdom teeth out, please. Do me a favor.” And if I could tell my teenage self two things, it would be: “Dude, you’re a girl. It’s okay. Get used to it and enjoy it. Be yourself and don’t be afraid of anything.”

  I love who I am. I’m very proud to be transsexual, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

  Tamsyn Waterhouse grew up just outside Winnipeg, spent a decade in university studying mathematical physics, and dropped out when she finally achieved her life goal of owning her weight in LEGO. She now lives in San Francisco and works in renewable energy R&D. She loves film, food, games, airplanes, and communal living, but she does not love writing autobiographical paragraphs.

  ART FROM RAGE

  by Jake Shears

  NEW YORK, NY

  I was fifteen years old when I came out. I went to a big high school, and since there were so many kids there, I thought it would be as good a time and place for me to come out as any. So I started telling other kids that I was gay, launching what was probably the worst year of my life. I was harassed; I was followed; I was threatened; kids wanted to kill me. I couldn’t go from class to class without being accosted. Kids would throw desks and chairs at me in class and the teachers would just pretend that they didn’t see what was going on.

  I would get sent to the principal’s office with these kids that were obviously torturing me, or I would go on my own accord, and be told that this was happening because I wasn’t keeping my private life private. Any school administrators w
ith that attitude today should be put in prison in my opinion.

  I’m here to tell you that even though it’s horrible and these terrible things happen, and you may have this idea to kill yourself, to hurt yourself, don’t. I thought about it. I thought about killing myself quite a few times during this period of my life but I’m so glad I didn’t, because I’m living the dreams now that I created when I was fifteen years old. I’m living out those fantasies that I had. It’s such a rewarding, amazing life that I’ve gotten to lead.

  I’m having so much more fun than I did when I was fifteen, that’s for damn sure. The experiences that you have when you’re a queer teenager—and I’m using the word queer in a very broad sense, covering everyone who feels different—are going to give you a whole new perspective on the rest of your life. And they can instill in you a sense of joy, a sense of inspiration, and an amazing sense of humor.

  I get to run around onstage in front of a ton of people and rip at my clothes and shake my ass and act as gay as I want to be. I get paid to express myself however I want to in an explosive way. That’s a direct response to the fact that I didn’t feel like I could do any of that when I was fifteen. I’ve made a career out of my rage. I’ve turned it into a job. I still have a lot of rage in me and I still have a lot of anger about that time of my life, and I probably always will. But you can take that anger and use it for your own good. They say blondes have more fun. Well, I say queers have more fun, and blonde queers have the most fun.

  However hard it may seem, however bad it gets, whether it’s from your parents, or from fellow students, or your brothers and sisters, or your crazy religious next-door neighbors, or whomever, breathing down your neck, telling you that you are a bad person, or that you’re full of sin, or that you don’t deserve to have as good of a life as anybody else, just realize they’re crazy. Those people are crazy. If you remember that, that they’re just crazy people who have nothing better to do than insinuate themselves into to other people’s lives and try to control them, if you just remember that, then you’ll be okay. Then you can go on to make lots of friends and create a family full of people that don’t behave that way.

  You are a special person and you’ve got so much to offer the world, and even though you may feel sad right now, you can turn your sadness into joy and you can turn your rage into art.

  Jake Shears lives in New York City and is the lead singer of the band Scissor Sisters. He’s also cowritten the musical version of Tales of the City, which will open at ACT in San Francisco in June 2011.

  IT GETS BETTER /(BTKOUN AHSAN)

  by Bashar Makhay /

  NEW YORK, NY

  Original transcript:

  Original translated transcript:

  When I first came out to myself, I realized why I wasn’t happy with my life; I was in the closet and I wasn’t living my life truly. When I first came out, I was really scared of what my friends and family would think and do. I was scared they would hurt me, abandon me, or just maybe love me for who I am. In the end, after a lot of time and a lot of discussion, more people in my life came to love me for who I am, but there are still many people in my life that have a difficult time understanding why I love someone of the same gender.

  I think the issue of our people is that we do not talk about sexuality. Before I came out of the closet, nobody I knew spoke about sexuality. I think that when our people think about sexuality, they don’t want anyone to ask about sexuality or tell anyone their sexuality. This is an issue.

  In the end, when I came out, I told the whole world, I told everyone I know, the news, Internet, newspapers. For the first time in my life I started to see people talking about sexuality, a lot of people. Today I am very happy with my life; I have a lot of friends and people in my family who are proud of me. All I can say is that it takes a lot of time and discussion but life gets better, life gets a lot better.

  Bashar Makhay proudly identifies himself as a Progressive Gay Chaldean Iraqi-American Christian man. He began his organizing work with ACCESS (Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services), providing HIV/STD counseling, testing, and referral services to Arab and Chaldean gay men. Working at ACCESS, after struggling with his own coming-out process, Bashar realized that the Middle Eastern gay community needed and wanted to be organized. Bashar left ACCESS and then cofounded Al-GAMEA (The LGBT Association of Middle Eastern Americans), a first-of-its-kind organization, created to provide a forum for support, socialization, education, and awareness inside and outside of the Middle Eastern community in metropolitan Detroit. Bashar currently works as a program associate for the Arcus Foundation, a private foundation that works to achieve social justice based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and race.

  TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE

  by Cameron Tuttle

  SAN FRANCISCO, CA

  No one bullied me in high school because absolutely no one knew I was gay. Definitely not me. It took me years to figure that out.

  I was one of those squeaky clean, annoyingly mainstream, overachiever types. I got good grades, did student government, sang in musicals, played team sports, and joined lots of clubs to fatten up my college applications. But even though I was popular and friends with lots of different people, I felt alone, really alone, like no one knew the real me.

  How could they? I was trying so hard to be perfect.

  On the outside, I was a thriving, active, make-my-family-proud, successful teenager. But on the inside, I was emotionally numb, comatose, flat-lining. My mom had died of breast cancer two weeks before the beginning of ninth grade. She was an amazing mom, loving and supportive, and she gave me enough freedom to explore who I was so I could succeed or fail with my own personal style. After she died, I was devastated. But I was determined to prove to the world and to myself that I was okay.

  I found myself working really, really hard to be the best because I was scared. Scared of being different. Scared of being defective. Scared of feeling my feelings. So for years, I didn’t let myself feel.

  I got a lot done in high school but I didn’t have a lot of fun. And even though I wasn’t ever bullied by other people, I was relentlessly bullied by my own thoughts and fears about who I was, how I was supposed to behave, and what would happen if I didn’t.

  I actually had this pathetic idea that I would somehow let down my community—people I barely knew in the conservative, snooty neighborhood where I grew up—if I ended up being a lesbian. How ridiculous is that?

  Bullying isn’t just what real people in real time say to you or try to do to you. Bullying is everywhere—it’s in the words of fearful, judgmental parents who are trying to control you. (BTW: it’s also in the words of well-meaning but misguided parents who are trying to “protect you from being hurt.”) Bullying is in the news and in government policy. It’s in the imagery of pop culture. It’s in religion. And as a result, it gets into your head.

  How did it get better for me? Slowly. It helped that I went to college across the country, as far away as I possibly could go from my hometown without needing a passport.

  I eventually found the guts to stand up to my inner bully, the judgmental, fearful, bossy voice in my head that kept telling me, You can’t . . . You shouldn’t . . . Don’t you dare! And then I finally found the confidence to listen to my body and to my heart and to be honest with myself.

  And then I moved to New York.

  When I was living there, I met tons of people who were a lot like me—squeaky-clean, annoyingly mainstream overachievers who just happened to be gay: former high-school cheerleaders, homecoming kings, class officers, student leaders, star athletes. And I realized . . . yeah, I can do this. Yeah, I can be this. And now, I love being different—in my squeaky-clean, annoyingly mainstream way.

  If your school is like the rest of the world (and it is—no matter how weirdly “normal” it seems or tries to be), 5 to 10 percent of the other students around you are gay. Whether you’re trying to fit in and hide in plain sight like I was, or you’re
determined to stand out and never fit in, you are not alone. Others are there, wondering, doubting, fearing, experimenting, exploring, and struggling just like you, struggling to find their place in the world. Not just a place—the place, the right place, the honest place, that feel-good happy place. They may not look gay, they may not act gay, they may not even know they’re gay—yet. But they are there. Trust me.

  In my twenties, in New York, was the first time I really relaxed and let myself fall madly in love. And you’ll never guess who I fell in love with: a girl from my hometown, from my own high school, a girl from right up the street. And it was amazing.

  Cameron Tuttle is the author of the bestselling series The Bad Girl’s Guides, The Paranoid’s Pocket Guide, and the new Paisley Hanover series for teens, which in no way resembles her own high school years. She lives and writes in San Francisco.

  JOURNEY TO A BETTER LIFE

  by Juan Carlos Galan, MS

  MIAMI, FL

  I grew up in the small conservative town of David, Panama, in Latin America. Ever since I was a little kid, I felt different from all the other boys in the neighborhood. I was not good at sports. I did not like aggressive games. I hated having to hit the piñata at birthday parties. And I always preferred reading books and playing with the girls. I was raised by my very traditional and religious grandparents in a culture of homophobia and machismo. In my hometown, it was culturally acceptable for gay and lesbian people to be publicly subjected to humiliation, disrespect, and discrimination. I remember hearing stories of gay men being verbally and physically attacked.

  Because I was not masculine, the kids in school made fun of me constantly. They would write profanities about me in the bathrooms, taunt me during PE class, and call my house and say nasty things to me on the phone. I remember walking into a classroom and having all the students yell offensive and derogatory things at me while the teacher did nothing about it. The school staff just let the bullying happen. They believed that I was asking to be bullied by being different from everyone else. At school, I only felt safe around my friend Angie, whom I had known since I was a little kid. She stood up for me when I was threatened by my classmates. At home, I was bullied by my own family, which was even more painful than the harassment I received at school. My family was constantly telling me that I needed to change my mannerisms; they would criticize the way I spoke and walked.