Thinking of the children -- Pride 2024

For the rest of my reading, it mostly breaks down into two sections (with some overlap).

One area is activism, which I hope to write about that next week. I hope that I can learn things that will be helpful now.

The other part seems to start with empathy -- reading about people with different experiences should lead to increased empathy, so that tracks -- but then it seems to turn into being protective.

There's still a lot of overlap. 

I already mentioned When We Rise by Cleve Jones. He has primarily been an activist, so most of his memoir is about that. Several of the things I have jotted down for further research came from his book. However, the part of his book that has stayed with me the most was reading that as a teenager he had a stash of pills set aside for when it became unbearable; he gave them up when he found a magazine talking about other gay people.

He was not the only one who envisioned suicide. Others actually attempted. 

After all, regardless of what they knew was available, as children most of them had some difficulty fitting in and were punished for that, by contemporaries if not by family. 

Here are the rest of the memoirs, two of which were cited last week:

In the Form of a Question: The Joys and Rewards of a Curious Life by Amy Schneider
Ten Steps to Nanette by Hannah Gadsby
The Boy Beneath My Skin: A Black Trans Man Living in the South by Charley Burton
The Risk it Takes to Bloom: On Life and Liberation by Raquel Willis
Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration by David Wojnarowicz

For the record, my favorite was Ten Steps to Nanette. Gadsby's recounting of her life and the analysis of how it created her comedy special was really insightful and interesting. I also liked The Risk it Takes to Bloom very much.

The Boy Beneath My Skin was really rambling and repetitive. It had unique elements, like some symptoms in early life that sounded like schizophrenia and also addiction that had much of his journey correlating to 12-step programs. There was untapped potential there.

Close to the Knives was the least traditional memoir. What really stayed with me is that he deals closely with two deaths. During that time he is ill as well, but it seems like he isn't, like maybe he was going to be one of the survivors. He died a year after its publication.

I didn't enjoy Amy Schneider's book as much as I thought I would, but I still learned from it.

And still, very consistently, there is bullying. 

Very frequently there is molestation. I would speculate about how there being a part of themselves that they feel they need to hide leaves them more vulnerable, but honestly sometimes molestation just seems really common regardless of orientation or upbringing; what is the deal with that?

As they get older, where they are at the age of consent, there are still situations that sit wrong as they are manipulated or fetishized, most noticeably with the Black transgender people. What is the deal with that?

Beyond this reading, it is not uncommon that you will see big age gaps in queer relationships. That is not automatically predatory, but it's a thing that happens. 

I think it happens more easily because the stigma on talking about queer relationships at all prevents talking about how to have healthy relationships.

To be fair, that is not limited to queer people. We see big protests about any sex education for children -- even though that largely focuses on being able to recognize and seek help for being sexually abused -- because of an apparent reluctance to tell children that their body belongs to them and they don't have to allow abuse. I mean, where would that stop?

Therefore, so much of the focus on danger to children focuses on drag queens, when the actual abuse cases over and over again are relatives, youth pastors, scout leaders, and people on set for kids in show business.

I know some people have a really hard time accepting that queer people exist and that can be okay, but my question is whether we can realize that this denial is harmful to many people, including many children. 

Bigotry can only cause harm.

We're in for a long string of lessons on how wishing harm to others will spread beyond our desires, but that specific lesson on child safety has been around for a while. Let's learn it.

One of the most interesting things was reading a small bio of Sylvia Rivera. 

I had read about a tendency on her part to make false claims about some of her actions, so had some skepticism. 

I had not known about her father abandoning her when young and her mother committing suicide when Sylvia was three. I had not known that she left home at ten, partly because of the disapproval she faced. 

(And that was after reading another book on her, which was a children's book, but seems like it could have been more informative. Fairy tales have children orphaned and on their own.)

That is so young to be fending for yourself. I could see how there might be some grandiosity and confusion. She did real work, and maybe it did not feel like enough. I just know that the more I learn, the more compassion I feel.

I want us to do better for all of the children.

Hispanic Star en espagnol: Sylvia Rivera by Claudia Romo Edelman and J. Gia Loving

Sylvia Rivera (Leaders Like Us) by Kaitlyn Duling

There was one book that was really disappointing.

My New Gender Workbook by Kate Bornstein

It had been on my radar for several years, and then it occurred to me that it would fit in here. 

I was expecting that I would regret writing about my gender before reading it. Nope. It is too cutesy and scandalous and daring, all of which made it really aggravating for me.

That is a shame, because it can be really hard figuring it out. There are better resources and role models out there now, but we still have a ways to go.

I want people to have resources. I may not be the best source for some help, but if you see an opportunity to help, take it.

Need is only going up.