Saturday June 26 @ 8 pm. Occidental Center for the Arts presents’ Readers Theater Revealed’. Enjoy a fine selection of theatrical readings by members of our Readers’ Theater group! This virtual event will be shared on our YouTube Channel beginning at 8 PM on June 26th, and available thereafter to view. Dramatic readings include a scene with Lady Bracknell and Jack Worthing from “The Importance of Being Earnest” by Oscar Wilde, “A Debutante at a Dance” monologue by Ruth Draper; scene from “The Lion in Winter” with Eleanor of Aquitaine and King Henry II, “I’m Still Here” from the Follies by Stephen Sondheim, and more. Readers are Andrea Van Dyke, Steve Fowler, Joan Ambrosini, Lynn Van Cleave, Jeff Sheppard, Amanda Claiborne, Noel Yates and Kathleen Hardy. Keeping the Arts in Our Hearts @ www.occidentalcenterforthearts.org. 707-874-9392. 3850 Doris Murphy Ct. Occidental, CA. 95465
The San Francisco Giants will support Pride Month on the field and on their uniforms and caps.
On Saturday against the Cubs, the Giants will feature Pride colors in the SF logo on their game caps along with a Pride patch on the right sleeves of their home uniforms — making them the first major league team to do so.
“Very proud that the San Francisco Giants are taking this step. Very proud to be part of it,” manager Gabe Kapler said Tuesday before San Francisco hosted the Los Angeles Angels. “Looking forward to the impact and the support that we can provide for the LGBTQ+ community.”
The 11 colors represented in the new Pride logo are: red (life); orange (healing); yellow (sunlight); green (nature); blue (serenity); purple (spirit); and black and brown for LGBTQ+ people of color. Light blue, pink and white represent those who are transgender.
“We are extremely proud to stand with the LGBTQ+ community as we kick off one of the best annual celebrations in San Francisco by paying honor to the countless achievements and contributions of all those who identify as LGBTQ+ and are allies of the LGBTQ+ community,” Giants President and CEO Larry Baer said in a statement.
Additionally, the Giants will host Pride Movie Night at Oracle Park on June 11-12.
A court in India ordered state and federal officials on Monday to draw up plans for sweeping reforms to respect LGBTQ rights, in a ruling that went far beyond the narrow terms of a case brought by a lesbian couple who said they had been harassed by police.
Judge Anand Venkatesh of the Madras High Court ruled in favor of the couple, who had complained that police had subjected them to harassing questioning after their parents filed a missing persons report.
But the judge also used the opportunity to issue a broad ruling that called for the elimination of what he described as illegal discrimination against members of the LGBTQ community. He ordered state and federal government departments to report back with steps they intend to take to comply.
Among his recommendations: police and government officials should be given awareness training to ensure they respect LGBTQ rights. Medical practitioners who claim to be able to “cure” homosexuality should have their licenses revoked.
Schools and colleges should make gender neutral restrooms available, and gender-nonconforming or trans prisoners should be housed separately if needed to protect them from sexual assault.
“Ignorance is no justification for normalizing any form of discrimination,” Venkatesh wrote in his order. Educators should reach out to parents, to help “sensitize parents on issues of LGBTQIA+ community and gender nonconforming students, to ensure supportive families,” his order read.
Activists hailed the order as a major step toward equality for marginalized groups. Although the court could not by itself impose such widespread change with a single ruling, government departments could not ignore the order to report back on the steps they plan to take to comply, and the arguments raised by the judge could serve as precedent for future cases.
“This is the first major order that addresses most challenges concerning the whole LGBTQIA+ community and issues specific directions,” said L Ramakrishnan, vice-president at SAATHII, a Chennai-based public health advocacy group.
“I am hopeful of change given the judge has indicated he would follow up on the directions on a regular basis,” he said.
In reaching his ruling, the judge said he had sought information on same-sex relationships from a psychologist. The judge described himself as not “fully woke” and said he belonged to the majority in India, who are “yet to comprehend homosexuality completely”.
Holly Duchmann, who lives in Lafayette, Louisiana, plans to attend a Pride celebration for the first time this year.
“In the years before the pandemic, while I was out to my friends, I was still really scared to go to Pride,” Duchmann, 27, said. “Because I’m bisexual, I kind of pass as straight a lot, and so that kind of created anxiety with me for years, making me feel like I didn’t really belong in the LGBT community.”
She felt more accepted after finding queer community through her roller derby team, and in 2020, she was looking forward to going to her first Pride event. She even picked up pieces of “extravagant” clothing here and there to wear. But then everything was canceled because of the pandemic, and, during quarantine, she turned to TikTok to feel connected to other LGBTQ people.
“The pandemic helped me realize I need to celebrate life when I can,” she said. “It’s like being cooped up made me want to burst out. So I’m fully vaccinated and making plans with friends to go all out this year.”
Duchmann plans to go to New Orleans to celebrate, though New Orleans Pride, which has organized the city’s main Pride events in the past, disbanded in 2020. There’s no central Pride event planned this year, but Duchmann isn’t worried.
“I really see Pride as being larger than just an event held by one organization,” she said. “NOLA is great about gathering and celebrating. It’s kind of like Mardi Gras. It’s a whole season.”
In the last few decades, Pride has been celebrated in cities around the globe with bigger and bigger events such as parades, marches and protests. In June 2019, an estimated 5 million people attended NYC’s annual Pride march, which coincided with WorldPride, which moves to a different major city each year. The celebrations were expected to be just as big in June 2020, the 50th anniversary of the first Pride march — then called Christopher Street Liberation Day — which began a year after the Stonewall Riots of June 1969, a dayslong protest that began after police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in downtown Manhattan.
But in April 2020, the pandemic brought plans for the 50th anniversary of Pride to a halt, forcing event organizers across the U.S. to pivot to all-virtual programming. Now, Pride — in New York and beyond — will return with a mix of in-person and virtual events. Organizers are balancing concerns about safety with increasing vaccination rates and the LGBTQ community’s excitement to return to Pride after a year of social distancing.
‘More strategic’ virtual programming
Last spring, the group behind NYC Pride, the country’s biggest annual Pride celebration, canceled its in-person march for the first time in a half-century because of the Covid-19 crisis, and then had two months to create a virtual event in June.
“That was a shock that we had to think about very quickly on our feet to adapt to,” Dan Dimant, media director for Heritage of Pride, the group behind NYC Pride, said. “We did our best, but what we had this time around was the luxury of time and foresight.”
This year, Heritage of Pride will host some face-to-face events — like its annual street fair — but its well-known march, which has attracted millions in previous years, won’t be coming back in the same way just yet.
NYC Pride organizers will hold virtual events like a family movie night, a human rights conference and a rally, among others. It will also hold its usual Pride march on June 27, though it will be mostly virtual with “in-person elements that are to be determined,” Dimant said, adding that any in-person element would take place in a supervised area with perimeters to limit attendance.
“We put together a much more strategic virtual program for most of our events, and we’ve also kind of left the door open for most of this year to kind of wait and see what we could do in person,” Dimant said. “We believe that we certainly can’t have millions of spectators in one massive crowd just yet. It’s just too soon for that. But there are some events that we can do safely in person.”
‘Playing the safe card’
Other groups in large cities are organizing their events similarly.
Los Angeles Pride will host a free streaming concert June 10 on TikTok featuring Charlie XCX, a virtual “Thrive With Pride Celebration” on ABC7. LA Pride will also debut its “LA Pride Makes a Difference” volunteer calendar, which will enable people to volunteer — both in-person and virtually — for local nonprofits that support LGBTQ people.
People march in the 50th annual Pride parade on June 9, 2019 in West Hollywood, Calif.Chelsea Guglielmino / Getty Images file
Noah Gonzalez, the vice president of the board of directors for the Christopher Street West Association, the nonprofit behind LA Pride, said its signature parade and festival, which in 2018 drew more than 100,000 attendees and participants, can take six months to a year to plan, so the board had to make a decision about how to host the events in December.
“We had no idea where we were going to be, so we had to plan for what we knew at the time, and keeping the responsibility and safety in mind, we knew we could do something virtual,” he said. He said the group’s in-person events — the volunteer opportunities — allow people to decide what level of exposure they’re comfortable with, and don’t involve large crowds.
“From a celebratory perspective, we’re sort of pulling back a little bit and playing the safe card, but when it came to giving back to the community or being involved in community, our perspective was … we will create these opportunities and bring them to the community, and you can decide what you would like to do,” he said.
A crowd cheers on those participating in the 50th annual Pride parade in Washington on June 8, 2019.Caroline Brehman / CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images file
Some Pride organizers in big cities have committed to larger in-person celebrations, but they are limiting capacity, adhering to strict health requirements or not holding their events until the fall.
LA Pride will host a Pride night at Dodgers Stadium on June 11, with a special package available to fully vaccinated attendees, and an in-person outdoor LGBTQ movie night on June 26. Similarly, San Francisco Pride is having two Pride movie nights on June 11 and 12 at Oracle Park and a Black Liberation Event at the African American Art & Culture Complex on June 18.
Chicago Pride plans to bring back its Pride in the Park concert in person, with Chaka Khan and Tiesto as headliners, but the event is ticketed, and attendees have to verify that they’ve been vaccinatedor provide other health information through an app no more than 12 hours before arriving to the two-day event, which takes place June 26 and 27.
“We worked with [the app] Health Pass by CLEAR so that we could create a very safe environment where people [who] are either tested or have been vaccinated are the only people that can come into the event right now,” Dustin Carpenter, president and lead organizer for Pride in the Park, said.
People march in the 50th annual Pride parade in Chicago on June 30, 2019.Kamil Krzaczynski / Reuters file
Atlanta Pride also plans to host a festival, though the group traditionally doesn’t celebrate until mid-October. The events will take place in Piedmont Park, which is outdoors, unfenced and allows for social distancing, Jamie Fergerson, executive director of Atlanta Pride, said.
“There’s a lot of concern about health and safety, obviously,” Fergerson said. “People have a lot of questions, and we — as a nonprofit organization that works for a community that’s been historically marginalized in a number of ways, including access to health care and access to good health care — we take health and safety very seriously.”
Some events are still on standby. In Philadelphia, Philly Pride Presents planned to host a festival on Sept. 4, but shared on its Facebook page Friday that the event is “a work in progress” and “not yet ‘fully open’” after the city issued guidance on reopening. Pride Houston has a few smaller events listed on its website, including Rock the Runway, a Pride fashion show, and said a “big announcement” is coming this month.
Other groups, like Boston Pride, have postponed their usual June festivities until the fall.
Some LGBTQ people said, regardless of the number of precautions taken, they don’t feel safe attending in-person Pride events just yet.
“I wouldn’t feel comfortable attending a Pride event as a fully vaccinated person, because I don’t know who is vaccinated and who is not,” Justice Dominguez, who is 24 and lives in Corpus Christi, Texas, said in an email. “Even with social distancing and mask requirements, it still feels like a risk. We know that less than half of all U.S. adults are fully vaccinated (per CDC). I thought these numbers would discourage Pride organizers but I was wrong.”
Other LGBTQ people said they won’t be attending large Pride celebrations and will instead attend community-run events, such as New York’s Queer Liberation March, which is organized by the activist group Reclaim Pride, started by community activists in 2019 as an alternative to NYC Pride.
“Being a transgender woman of color, Pride celebrations at large have not included the trans community,” Houston resident Eden Torres, 36, said. “I am moving back to NYC this summer after 13 years in Texas. I will attend any grassroots, no corporation, trans-centered Pride celebrations, but will not participate in corporate Prides any longer.”
But Duchmann isn’t alone in her excitement for Pride festivities — some people are also looking forward to finally being face-to-face.
Patrick Murphy, 71, of Santa Fe, New Mexico, said he and his partner of 49 years will be attending an in-person event.
“We believe that we must continue to show the world that we are still here and will always be strong,” Murphy said. “We survived AIDS and Covid! Just by being there shows the younger generation of LGBT people that they do have a future.”
Twitter is set to add the long-sought option to add pronouns to users’ profile pages.
As part of a sprawling design shakeup, the social media platform that boasts some 192 million daily active users will introduce a new ‘About’ tab on accounts.
Alongside options to add their date of birth, job title, current location and interests will be a dedicated section to list their pronouns.
The ‘About’ tab will be to the left of the already existing ‘Tweets’, ‘Tweets & Replies’, ‘Media’ and ‘Likes’, according to mock-ups seen by TechCrunch.
Twitter has not provided a timeline for the slated update, but did say it would be “coming soon”.
“The profile hasn’t been meaningfully updated since 2014, which is a little mind-blowing, considering how much both Twitter and the world have changed since then,” said Andrea Conway, the lead designer on Twitter’s identity and profiles team, in a statement.
“Today, we don’t give people a ton of ways to express themselves and, in turn, we limit the number of signals available to understand the quality of that account and help people determine who and what to trust on Twitter.
“Additionally, from a design perspective, we’re dealing with a serious lack of space on the profile, and we really want to change that.”
Alongside the ‘About’ tab, the company is also taking steps to reopen its public form to request verification, otherwise known as the blue tick, according to a blog post on Twitter’s website posted Thursday (20 May).
While it remains unknown at the time of writing how Twitter will launch the new support for pronouns, Instagram may have supplied a blueprint.
Namibia is on pace to decriminalise homosexuality by the end of the year as ministers pave a long-sought path to scrapping its decades-old anal sex ban.
The government’s Law Reform and Development Commission, a law reform agency, recommended in reports published Monday (17 May) that the country’s sodomy laws be overturned.
Justice minister Yvonne Dausa confirmed to the Windhoek Observer, a local newspaper, that she will be submitting draft proposals to the cabinet to do just that in two weeks time – with a potential for the ban to be binned by the end of the year.
As the committee reports were handed to her department, Dausa said that state-sanctioned homophobia must come to an end, the Windhoek Express reported.
“No Namibian should be comfortable with any part of our society feeling either they are second class citizens, that they are being excluded, or stigmatised and discriminated against either on the basis of their sexual orientation, or the basis of their disability, or status in a particular society,” she said.
In one report, committee members wrote that the ban’s “very existence violates the fundamental rights of the individuals who could be affected, as well as creating and reinforcing a culture of homophobia and intolerance against LGBT+ people”.
Committee members stressed in their report that between 2012 and 2019, 23 men were arrested on sodomy charges.
The provisions might only infrequently enforced, but they still reduce queer people to “criminals” and “enough to create a realistic fear of possible arrest”.
Dausa stressed in a statement to the Observer that the reports are not law, “but rather informed conclusions based on legal research” by the commission.
“After which it will go through the normal law-making process,” Dausa explained of the next steps.
“Principal approval from Cabinet, scrutiny from the Cabinet Committee on Legislation, possible further discussions with the Law Reform and Development Commission, certification from the Attorney General, drafters and then National Assembly.
“I think give or take we may see this go to the NA before the year ends.”
Namibia’s laws around being queer have long been one of mixed messages. Indeed, being gay per se is perfectly legal in the republic – anal sex, however, is illegal and has been since the late 1800s.
When Namibia gained independence 1990, it inherited the colonial-era Roman-Dutch sodomy provisions, locking the ban into place for decades to come.
Ever since the laws have rarely been enforced and attitudes towards LGBT+ people have overall eased. Namibia’s lawmakers and officials have, often in fits-and-bursts, sought to scrap the ban, but progress remains spotty and sluggish.
“Freedom will ring,” wrote advocacy group Equal Namibia on Facebook.
“The future is equal because every one of you stood up and demanded justice for all vulnerable Namibians.
This summer, New York City will launch the nation’s largest and most comprehensive workforce development program for at-risk LGBTQ youth.
NYC Unity Works, a $2.6 million initiative that will reach 90 participants over the next four years, is targeted at young adults ages 16 to 24 who are homeless or at risk of experiencing homelessness. Along with job training, it will provide educational opportunities, mental health services, paid internships and job placement, all with the goal of establishing long-term employment and a secure financial future.
The program is an offshoot of the NYC Unity Project, a citywide effort to help at-risk LGBTQ youth launched in 2017 by New York City’s first lady, Chirlane McCray, wife of Mayor Bill de Blasio.
In a statement, McCray said Unity Works “marks the first time that any city has taken this particular set of comprehensive steps to provide training, mental health services and social supports that are critical to long-term success and stability for LGBTQI youth.”
Ashe McGovern, Unity Project’s executive director and a senior LGBTQ policy adviser in de Blasio’s office, praised McCray for prioritizing queer youth.
“I can say unequivocally if the first lady was not at City Hall championing this project, it wouldn’t exist,” McGovern, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, said. “She’s personally committed to it. She’s pushed for it.”
The pilot program will be run through the Department of Youth and Community Development in partnership with the NYC Center for Youth Employment and the Ali Forney Center, the nation’s largest LGBTQ homeless youth service provider.
But a Supreme Court ruling isn’t a magic bullet, McGovern cautioned.
“Nondiscrimination policies aren’t self-actualizing,” they said. “They don’t automatically create a pathway for success for people who have been marginalized their whole lives. Who have been rejected by their families … We need to give young people the skills to be competitive for jobs — even entry-level jobs. It’s an important paradigm shift.”
A recent survey by The Trevor Project, a nonprofit that provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to LGBTQ youth, found 35 percent of LGBTQ young people experience employment discrimination. For young transgender people, that percentage jumps to 61 percent.
Up to 40 percent of homeless young people identify as LGBTQ, according to numerous studies. Many are forced out of their homes due to a lack of support and seek acceptance in large (and typically expensive) progressive cities like New York. Without a permanent address, suitable work clothes or even reliable internet, they can be locked out of the job market.
“Many of them are literally in survival mode,” McGovern said of Unity Works’ target applicants. “There’s not space, time or support to think long term or feel energized and joyful about the future. We’re trying to give them that.”
To ensure their success, the staff will help participants with challenges such as changing identity documents and accessing public benefits. And participating agencies and employers are expected to demonstrate cultural responsiveness and competency.
In addition to two years of direct services, Unity Works participants will receive an additional year of followup from LGBTQ-affirming case workers and therapists.
“We know that young LGBTQ people are largely homeless because their family rejected them,” McGovern said. “They may face peer rejection, school rejection, community rejection, so we knew this had to be trauma-informed. It’s not enough to just give people resumé building tips and say ‘good luck.’ This program is a larger support system to help them feel empowered.”
Mario Smith, a 20-year-old who identifies as transgender and nonbinary and uses gender-neutral pronouns, said Unity Works has the potential to be life-changing.
“Giving trans people the tools to work and get educated — it’s not a handout,” they said. “It’s going to create such a productive group of people who can turn around and help their community.”
Smith immigrated to the U.S. from Jamaica as a teen and worked with the Ali Forney Center to get a green card and housing. Now they’re enrolling in Unity Works to study psychology and eventually become a youth health advocate.
“Everyone’s at a different place in their life,” they said. “Some people need job placement, some need help furthering their education. You can’t just have a cookie-cutter answer. This program is tailor-made to the individual.”
As much as Unity Works will benefit Smith and the other New York-based participants, McGovern is thinking even bigger.
“Ultimately we want to build a model we can prove and push it across other jurisdictions,” they said. “I want this to be such a success that it’s replicated all across the country.”
Justin Santiago, 66, the first trans man in Puerto Rico to change his name and gender on his birth certificate, remembers the long-ago incident that led to years of pain he hopes other teens don’t have to endure.
During biology class in the mountain town of Barranquitas, Santiago would sit at his desk, take a wooden pencil, grab a sheet of paper and write love letters to his teacher.
She had a voluptuous body, Santiago recalled, and wore her curly blonde hair tied back. He wrote the letters hoping that one day she would reciprocate his feelings. Every time Santiago wrote a love letter he would leave it in the teacher’s mailbox and hope for the best.
One day, the school counselor asked him to visit her office. She told him that leaving such notes was wrong.
“Because she is my teacher?” Santiago asked.
“No, because she is a woman, like you,” the counselor replied.
“But I’m a man,” said Santiago, then 15 and a trans youth.
The incident led to years of conversion therapy — an unscientific practice that seeks to change people’s sexual orientation and gender identity through psychological techniques, causing guilt and shame.
“They broke me and turned me into a sick person,” Santiago said. The treatment involved prescribing him psychiatric drugs that led to other dependencies, he said, with no one ever held accountable.
On May 6, a Puerto Rico Senate committee killed Senate Bill 184, which would have banned conversion therapies in Puerto Rico. The failure to advance the bill was a blow to LGBTQ advocates like Santiago, who had told his story before the Committee on Community Initiatives, Mental Health and Addiction.
Though former Gov. Ricardo Rosselló had signed a 2019 executive order banning conversion therapies in the U.S. territory, the bill’s sponsors wanted the ban codified into law, to prevent a future anti-LGBTQ+ rights governor from annulling Rosselló’s mandate.
“Don’t hurt your children”
Santiago hopes telling his story serves as a cautionary tale for younger generations. “If my story helps one person not have to experience the torture that I went through, for me that is enough,” he said.
He pleads with parents: “Don’t hurt your children.”
After telling his school counselor that he was a man, Santiago was removed from class and he never saw that teacher again. The counselor called his parents, Jesús and Justina, to inform them about Santiago’s notes. To continue studying there, he had to visit a psychiatric center in Río Piedras in the island’s capital. His parents, a farmer and a housewife, traveled by public transportation for nearly 2 hours to get Santiago to his appointments.
Santiago recalled that he had to sit in a chair in front of the desk of his psychiatrist, who constantly questioned him about his gender identity. She had a cross on her wall and sometimes mentioned God.
“I remember that she asked me if I would ever be happy. And I asked her, are you?” Santiago said.
He insisted that all he wanted was to have surgery to make his body look like he felt — a man. But the psychiatrist emphasized that that was not possible.
“She immediately prescribed drugs,” Santiago said.
When Santiago was 18, the psychiatric center gave him a letter with his dead name (the name he was given at birth) written on the envelope.
“Don’t open it!” the psychiatrist said, telling him it was for his parents. But he ignored her orders and learned he was being diagnosed with schizophrenia and chronic neurosis. The report also mentioned that Santiago “felt no guilt about the damage he was doing to his parents.”
Santiago, who insisted he wasn’t suffering from mental illness, said he and his family never discussed what happened in those sessions. He stopped using the prescribed medications, but said he became an alcoholic.
LGBTQ activist Justin Santiago.Courtesy Justin Santiago
Miguel Vázquez-Rivera, a psychologist who has served trans, queer and nonbinary communities for over a decade, says that the use of prescribed medications can lead a person to seek ways to relieve pain through other substances, like tobacco and alcohol.
“The psychiatrists constantly told me that I was going to hurt my parents and my family. It caused me to get sick. I never wanted to hurt them,” Santiago said. “The idea of committing suicide was always in my head, but I did not do it, so I wouldn’t hurt my family. That’s why I did not kill myself.”
Santiago doesn’t remember psychiatrists telling him that loving a woman was wrong. But they rejected his gender identity as a trans man.
A right to raise children “according to their convictions”
Conservatives like Sen. Joanne Rodríguez-Veve and Rep. Lissie Burgos-Muñiz, of Proyecto Dignidad (The Dignity Party), a Christian-led party founded in 2019, opposed the bill against conversion therapies. Rodríguez-Veve has argued that “parents have a right to raise their children according to their convictions.”
Rodríguez-Veve, who voted against bringing the bill to the Senate floor, was criticized by LGBTQ activists for repeatedly questioning if the legislation would open the door to allowing minors to undergo hormone-blocking processes without parental consent — which was not the case. Rodríguez-Veve did not respond to requests for comment.
It is not the first time that the island’s Legislature has blocked a bill against conversion therapies. When a version of this year’s bill was introduced in 2019, the House of Representatives’ Legal Committee denied that those practices were carried out on the island. At the time, the body was chaired by Rep. María Milagros Charbonier, who resigned last year after being arrested on federal corruption chargesand has a long history of spearheading anti-LGBTQ measures.
Since the bill was introduced, conservative and religious public officials have argued that conversion therapies do not exist on the island. Vázquez-Rivera, the psychologist, disagrees. Through his practice, he says he’s seen conversion therapy lead to anxiety, depression, drug abuse, maladaptive behaviors and suicide attempts.
Eunice Avilés, a doctor in psychology with 16 years of experience working with trans communities, insisted that conversion therapies are not always called that, making them harder for officials to identify. Sometimes, they are sold under the guise of “religious counseling sessions.”
“When they insist that who you are (your gender identity) and what you feel is wrong, that damages you from the innermost fiber of your body to the outside,” Avilés said. “That is violence.”
Several LGBTQ+ community members who offered their testimony in the public hearings for the bill said they had been exposed to these practices through religious groups.
“Sin is not homosexuality,” Pedro Julio Serrano, a well-known LGBTQ+ activist, said at the public hearings. “Sin is homophobia.”
Serrano urged Santiago to tell his story. He knew that Santiago would not agree to tell his testimony before the commission without the support of his community. Although conversion therapies had been going on in Puerto Rico for years, the issue is now coming to light, and Santiago would finally have the opportunity to tell his story, Serrano said.
Santiago says he had to prepare himself to tell his story in public. Decades have passed since he was put through conversion therapies, but he does not feel like he has healed.
“My parents would have loved me”
Santiago recalled a visit to his father just a few years ago. He told his dad that he never had identified with the name he was given at birth. He told him he planned to change it and call himself Justin Jesús, in honor of his parents.
His father looked at him for a few seconds and, looking concerned, told him it would be difficult to call him Justin Jesús because he would feel like he was talking to someone else.
“You are my father. You can call me whatever you like,” he replied. Santiago asked for his blessing and told him that he loved him. His dad hugged him and said he loved him, too.
“That conversation didn’t last 45 seconds. It took me 62 years to have that conversation with my father,” Santiago said. “This is all those people’s fault. My parents would have loved me.”
When his mother died in 2007, Santiago assumed in full his gender identity, decades after the first time he expressed he was a man. During a nine-month period, he began taking hormones, underwent surgery, and changed his name and gender on legal documents.
“Making history”
In 2018, Judge Carmen Consuelo Cerezo of the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico declared that the local government’s policy of not allowing trans people to change their birth certificates was unconstitutional.
The timing allowed Santiago to make history as the first trans man to legally change his gender identity in Puerto Rico.
Carmen Padilla, a friend of Santiago for more than 30 years, accompanied him to his double mastectomy. Padilla lived in Boston and came to Puerto Rico for three weeks to help Santiago during the post-operation recovery. “He was prepared for this. I’m very happy that he found himself,” Padilla said.
Serrano, the activist, who has known Santiago for a decade, said that for many years Santiago “manifested himself as a lesbian with masculine experiences,” before being able to affirm his gender identity.
When Santiago began to assume his identity as a trans man, he looked “much happier, more dynamic and more assertive,” Serrano said. After Santiago was administered hormones and had surgery, Serrano said he soon saw the effects — hair growth on Santiago’s chin, changes in his voice and gait, and a masculine haircut.
“He looked empowered. It was a rebirth,” Serrano said. “He recognized that through his experiences he could become a leader in the trans community.”
Santiago is now an icon of activism in the transmasculine community who has blazed paths for other transgender Puerto Ricans. Younger generations affectionately call him “TransPa.”
He and other LGBTQ activists say they will continue to advocate against conversion therapy and push for legislation against it.
As a teenager, Santiago wrote letters to his teacher. Decades later, after his surgery, Santiago wrote a love hymn to himself.
I do not transition; I reaffirm myself from my skin and my own identity
I free myself and vindicate
before an oppressive binary system
that insists on controlling and invalidating my existence
in diversity
His existence, Santiago says, is “a cry of freedom” that he now shares with the world.
Trans and non-binary people experience barriers to accessing cervical screenings due to discrimination, new research has confirmed.
The findings from Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust, which were published in the British Journal of General Practice on Tuesday (18 May), surveyed 137 trans men and non-binary people about their experiences with cervical screening.
Among the respondents, 47 per cent reported they were eligible for cervical screening – but just over half (58 per cent) of this group had ever been screened for cervical cancer. Only 53 per cent of those eligible felt like they had sufficient information about cervical screening.
According to the research, trans men and non-binary people faced a range of factors impacting their ability and intention to attend cervical screenings. This included female-focused information, not receiving invitations for screenings and being discouraged or turned away from attending cervical screenings. Some participants felt they would not be able to attend the test because of of medical professionals’ lack of expertise in gender dysphoria.
Almost all the participants in the study, which was conducted in partnership with the Gender Identity Clinic at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, felt that training for healthcare professions would be useful. Participants said this should include LGBT+ awareness training, education on inclusive language and terminology and “reports from those with lived experience of gender diversity”.
The NHS says any person with a cervix between the ages of 25 to 49 should be invited to a cervical screening every three years. All people with a cervix who are registered with a GP and aged 50 to 64 are invited for a cervical screening every five years.
But according to the charity’s report, the NHS cervical screening programme invites only people who are registered as women or female to take part. The researchers said this means trans and non-binary people, who are registered at their GP as male, will usually have to request a test.
Laurie Hodierne, a trans man and doctor, told the BBC that he was re-registered as male by his GP surgery, meaning he could potentially miss out on being flagged for life-saving cervical smear tests.
He said, as a doctor, he understands “how the systems work and the language”, but he still finds it “exhausting” to keep asking for appointments and chase up on results.
“You keep coming up against a brick wall,” Hodierne said. “It’s a healthcare inequality in the sense that you aren’t able to get access to the screening programme in the same way.”
Of the participants in the research, only 61 per cent were aware that being registered with the GP as male meant they are not routinely called for cervical screening appointments.
Rebecca Shoosmith, acting chief executive at Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust, said in a statement that accessing the live-saving screening can be difficult for many people but especially for trans and non-binary people.
Sunday, June 13 @ 4- 6 pm. Occidental Center for the Arts 2021 Summer Series Concerts. OCA is delighted to invite you to join us in our outdoor amphitheater for – at last! – a live music concert featuring two stellar Sonoma County acts: Mimi and Gabe Pirard (Dijin, SonoMusette) and the Phil Lawrence Band! There will be limited seating following current public safety guidelines in our amphitheater, which is shady by 4 pm. Please bring cushions to sit on. Advance tickets are required, and will be on sale to the public starting May 24th. Tickets are $20 for OCA members, $25 for non-members. There will be refreshments available for sale, and our new lobby and plaza will be open for safe and socially distanced use. Wheelchair access/seating will be facilitated. We can’t wait to see you! More info at www.occidentalcenterforthearts.org. 3850 Doris Murphy Ct. Occidental, CA. 95465. 707-874-9392. OCA is a non profit performing and fine arts center dedicated to ‘Keeping the Arts in Our Hearts’.
