Does the “v” stand for “versatile”?
Warner Bros. / youtube.com
Warner Bros. / youtube.com
It’s a Saturday night in midsummer at Los Angeles’s Club Shine, one of the city’s best parties by and for transgender women. The party is held at Oxwood Inn, a seedy bar in an unassuming suburb 25 minutes outside of L.A.; it draws droves of trans women and their admirers every week. Tonight, Hollywood’s trans starlets from Amazon Prime’s Transparent, a group of women in their early thirties, have gathered to party with their sisters. Zackary Drucker arrives in blue jeans, high-heeled boots, and a smoky eye. Together with her fellow co-producer Rhys Ernst, Drucker handles everything on Transparent from nitty-gritty feedback on scripts to recruiting transgender actors, writers, and crew.
Now, Drucker cuts through the fog machine’s exhaust toward her friend and colleague Van Barnes, the personal assistant to Transparent’s lead actor Jeffrey Tambor. Barnes is wearing a bright chartreuse skirt cinched at the waist. She and Drucker kiss each other’s cheeks. They’ve been friends for more than a decade and now find themselves employed together in Hollywood. Trace Lysette, an actress on Transparent, emerges between the parted smoke. She has been perched by the bar, her hair slicked into a high bun, gold hoop earrings bouncing against her neck, and now springs from her seat toward the dance floor, moving her hips to the music.
On the show, Lysette portrays a trans woman named Shea. Though she’d been in the film industry for years before Transparent, it never before felt safe to disclose her gender. After twirling once or twice beneath a disco ball, she steals away from the crowd, shifting through more smoke and tightly packed partygoers, then slips out a back door into the parking lot. Resting upon a silver guardrail, she tells me that Transparent is different than any other production she’s worked on. “There is an underlying sense of home."
Alexandra Billings and Trace Lysette
Jennifer Clasen / Amazon Studios for BuzzFeed News
Since she began working on Transparent, Lysette’s career has flourished. She was in an NBC pilot, Curse of the Fuentes Women, and performed alongside legend Sir Patrick Stewart in Blunt Talk, the new Starz series by Jonathan Ames. “We’re on a new frontier,” she says. “Space is being created for us. It’s important we step up and take those opportunities so that the generation that comes behind us will have even more than we did.”
When Lysette talks about space, she doesn’t just mean room at the party: She’s talking about both the cultural movement for transgender equality and the structural integration of transgender talent and staff throughout the production chain of Transparent. From creator Jill Soloway, Transparent follows the transgender patriarch turned matriarch of an upper-middle-class Jewish family, Jeffrey Tambor’s Maura Pfefferman, as she comes into womanhood amid the intersecting storylines of her unhinged adult children. The Amazon Prime series debuted in the fall of 2014 to instant critical acclaim, winning two Golden Globe Awards the following January and five Emmys this past September. While the entirety of Season 2 debuts on Dec. 11, the first episode, which follows Maura’s family during her daughter Sarah’s wedding, began streaming on Amazon Prime Nov. 30. TV fanatics and transgender activists alike are eager to see how the rest of the second season will measure up in terms of transgender representation and, of course, quality storytelling. While mainstream praise of the series abounds, Transparent has not escaped controversy, especially within the transgender community: Many feel the lead role should have been given to someone who is themselves transgender.
Previously, there have been few major accomplishments in mainstream media for transgender representation. Candis Cayne made television history in 2007 when she portrayed a trans woman in a recurring role on ABC’s Dirty Sexy Money. But it wasn’t until the summer of 2013 that the issue became relevant to film industry leaders, or the general public. When Laverne Cox first portrayed a trans character in the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black, her performance dovetailed with a greater cultural and political transgender movement.
Transparent has involved the creative contributions of trans people since its inception, but for the second season, Soloway has doubled down on her mission to employ trans people in every production department. She’s hired an unprecedented number of trans collaborators, including Silas Howard, who directs one of the episodes; a full-time writer, Our Lady J; and model, actress, and It girl Hari Nef.
What does it take to produce a major, multimillion dollar television show that centers on a marginalized, historically destitute population? And how important is it, really, to have members of that marginal community represented both in front of and behind the camera in productions that spotlight their storylines? The transgender community in the United States has a long history, one of survival and kinship within an inhospitable world. Trans people have come to understand their own obscurity within pop culture — for many of them, it’s beyond surreal to see trans life start emerging in the limelight.
Now, outside of the Oxwood, a woman entering the club holds the door for us, and Lysette and I dash through. We’re carried back to the dance floor. There are cisgender men waiting eagerly along the wall, hoping to pick up a beautiful transgender woman. But here, the men are secondary. Women reign supreme.
Zackary Drucker (center)
Jennifer Clasen / Amazon Studios for BuzzFeed News
I witness a similar inversion of power on a bright Monday morning when I arrive at the sunlit studios of Paramount Pictures.
It’s 8 a.m., and the front corridor of a tan, generic Paramount office building, where this morning’s shoot is taking place, has been commandeered by Soloway’s feminist enterprise. Some hundred men and women mill in and out. The production crew have already shot the first several episodes of Season 2; the episode they’re shooting now falls midway through the season. Cameras, lights, and wooden director’s chairs strapped with black canvas, their backs emblazoned with the show's title in orange lettering, dot the room. Jeffrey Tambor is standing near a row of monitors, talking to Silas Howard, Transparent’s first transgender director. (This is the first and only episode Howard has directed for the show; Season 1 was directed by Soloway and Canadian film director Nisha Ganatra.)
I envy the perfect periwinkle lacquer of Tambor’s pedicure. It works seamlessly with his wardrobe: that of an airy, confident, and comfortable Californian woman of a certain age. His long gray wig is held by a butterfly clip. Howard leans in to give him direction for the scene’s next take. As they huddle, a familiar voice sounds from my side. Barnes, Jeffrey Tambor’s assistant, is sitting in a nearby chair. She calls to me with one black headset strategically planted below her coiffed blonde hair, holding another in her hand. “Here, honey, put these on,” she says in her charming country drawl.
The camera follows Maura through the L.A. LGBT Center after she receives her first prescription of hormone replacement therapy. HRT is the medication she’ll take to change her sex from male to female. Hormones are a rite of passage for transgender people — they’re often the first step taken to transition. I’d had my own version of Maura’s moment myself, and I’ve seen countless tearful girlfriends clutch that same crinkling paper bag of pills.
Between takes, Drucker hurriedly breezes past on her way to a meeting. Barnes is seated behind the monitor to my right. Howard give actors feedback on their performances. Two trans crew members, Thomas and Zoe, help orchestrate behind the camera. Natasha London, a trans woman who works in wardrobe, is nearby and ready to assist. Four transgender extras populate the set. Outside of LGBT-centric environments, like a community center or health clinic, being trans can feel like an obstacle between you and the rest of the world. The Transparent Season 2 set feels like a trans separatist commune in the heart of Hollywood.
The trans presence at Paramount isn’t only evident on set. A diverse group of gender-nonconforming people are found both onscreen and off, including trans women, men, and nonbinary individuals. Nearly all of them say that the show has made a significant impact on their lives, including Rain Valdez, who is employed in accounting. Valdez has worked in postproduction for years, elevating through the ranks from assistant editor, to editor, to producer before starting account work for Transparent. Like Trace Lysette, before working on Soloway’s show Valdez wasn’t out about being transgender at work or in most of her personal life. “About a year ago I started thinking about my life and realizing that I never really looked back and appreciated what I went through,” she says. “To do all of that to just be in hiding, to be in secret, just didn’t make any sense.”
In order to break free of secrecy, she went to the L.A. LGBT Center, and began to attend their trans support group, Perceptions. In the fall of 2014, Transparent debuted. Valdez was familiar with the show long before she was approached to work on the second season. “There’s some scenes where [Tambor] is at the group, the transgender Perceptions group, and I was like — that’s my group! This is my life!"
“I started to realize that I’m kind of a success story,” she added. “There’s so many deaths, there’s so many threats, hate crimes, and abuse... I started to realize that, oh my gosh, I’ve been hiding all this time when in reality I could probably be helping people.”
Valdez began working for the Economic Empowerment Group at the L.A. LGBT Center in order to help other trans people find success in their transitions. Unemployment in the transgender community is an epidemic. A study from 2013 titled A Broken Bargain for Transgender Workers, put out by several organizations in conjunction with the Human Rights Campaign, reveals this inequity. Among other findings, the study shows that trans workers report unemployment at twice the rate of the general population, and are nearly four times as likely to make less than $10,000 a year. The study traces this disparity to several factors, including discrimination on the job and in the hiring process. Other obstacles further clarify the cause: Trans people experience difficulty changing legal identity documents, and health care exclusions are common, limiting their options.
When producers Drucker and Ernst contacted the Economic Empowerment Group at the center when they were hiring for Season 2, Valdez was thrilled. Transparent is the first place she’s worked where the person running the show is a woman. “I pinch myself every day,” she says.
Jennifer Clasen / Amazon Studios for BuzzFeed News
Tambor’s trailer is nestled in a small colony near the soundstage. It’s Monday afternoon and he is seated near a desk, his assistant close by. He’s no longer Maura, her periwinkle toes now hidden in thick leather loafers, the butterfly-clipped braid momentarily retired. “This is quite a moment in America,” Tambor says, referring to the contemporary transgender movement. “I certainly am a contender for the ‘luckiest actor in the room’ award.”
This past September, Tambor made history by becoming the first actor to receive an Emmy for a role portraying a transgender person. His was among five Emmys Transparent took home this year, out of 11 nominations. Clutching the golden-winged statue, he thanked the people he called his teachers, including trans producers and collaborators Ernst, Drucker, and Barnes. Earlier in his acting career, he had another teacher: someone who used to say, “When you act, you have to act as if your life depends on it." "And now,” he said, “I’ve been given the opportunity to act because people’s lives depend on it.”
According to Tambor, the role of Maura Pfefferman changed his life. She’s given him a sense of responsibility. Tambor cocks his head to the side. His eyes narrow, and he uncrosses his legs as he underscores the greatness of a truly human transgender character. “I like to say my politics are in my performance... I need to know that the human quotient is there at all times.”
The majority of trans characters are depicted as villains, sex workers, and victims. That is beginning to change in the 21st century, but most Americans, including Tambor, are being introduced to the humanity of the trans community for the very first time. Transgender people are tired of seeing their storylines interpreted by someone outside the fold, because transgender experiences have historically been perverted and sensationalized by gawking outsiders, while the real people those storylines are based on remain oppressed and marginalized.
“What I love about this year is that we’re sort of taking the Bubble Wrap off of her, Saint Maura,” Tambor says of his character’s development in Season 2. The writers have explored her fallibility. Maura isn’t idyllic. She is meant to be a person, with normal needs and flaws. In the season premiere, Maura has taken on a new confidence. In the beginning of the episode at her daughter’s wedding, when standing for a family portrait, the photographer misgenders her, saying, “Chin up, sir” — and, clearly having had enough, Maura marches proudly away from the shoot. In another moment, during an uncomfortable confrontation with an estranged sister who cannot stomach her sibling’s true identity, Maura quickly pivots from an icy conversation to privately choking up at the intolerance she faces even inside her own family. She’s subject to error and anger. “I love that,” Tambor says.
Trace Lysette (center) and Alexandra Billings (right)
Jennifer Clasen / Amazon Studios for BuzzFeed News
He particularly loves that the general audience of Transparent — the cisgender American viewer — can watch Maura and say, “I’m like that,” when they see her short temper, her desires, and her fears.
The second season will also be exploring other complex trans storylines. Hari Nef, who landed a contract at the major modeling agency IMG this past spring, makes an elusive appearance in the season premiere, which intercuts the Pfefferman present-day Jewish wedding with flashbacks to a party in 1930s Berlin, where hundreds of colorful, gender-nonconforming queers dance together with Nef in the center. Here, Transparent stays true to a tradition of ambitiously tackling uncharted chapters of the past century. Season 1 follows Maura to a 1980s cross-dresser retreat, rarely represented in pop culture, while Season 2 has leaped decades back in time and half a world away to portray the exploration of sexual and gender identity in Europe before World War II. The modern-day wedding and 1930s party run parallel until they merge when Nef’s character appears in the final scene, as a figment on a patio chair outside the hotel where the Pfefferman wedding occurred.
Jill Soloway (right) and Hari Nef (second from right)
Jennifer Clasen / Amazon Studios for BuzzFeed News
The actresses’ Twitter accounts read like one long love letter.
"It's the most wonderful extraordinary thing that could have ever possibly happened in my life," she said of the new relationship.
Jason Merritt / Getty Images
"There's a very big age difference between us, which I’m sure shocks a lot of people, and it startles me," Taylor said on WNYC, and laughed off their age difference with, "but as they say, 'If she dies, she dies.'"
Jordan Strauss / AP
Jordan Strauss / AP
Tracee and Jennifer Gardner-Glaze
Tracee Gardner-Glaze and her wife, Jennifer Gardner-Glaze, took their infant son to an Arkansas Department of Health office in Little Rock on Wednesday morning with what they thought would be a simple request: that they both be listed as parents on Jackson's birth certificate.
The women thought the process would be straightforward, because a state judge on Tuesday ruled in favor of three other lesbian couples, finding that both parents from each couple could add their names to the birth certificate of their respective infant children.
But when the Gardner-Glazes reached the front desk, a state official said the couple could submit paperwork and wait indefinitely to hear back, or return another day.
“So, basically, it was a no,” Jennifer told BuzzFeed News. “I said, ‘I don’t understand how the judge could issue an order that holds part of the law [that governs birth certificates] unconstitutional, yet you can do this to me.’”
"I took my paperwork back, and we left.”
Health Department spokeswoman Meg Mirivel told BuzzFeed News that another same-sex couple not involved in the lawsuit was given the same option Wednesday morning.
“We think the best course of action for them is to get a court order [to amend their child’s birth certificate], which is what other couples have to do,” Mirivel said.
When the Supreme Court struck down state bans on same-sex couples marrying, many believed it followed that married same-sex parents would therefore be entitled to the same rights as their straight counterparts, regardless of any state laws still on the books.
Some states, however, have maintained there are additional reasons to justify the continued validity of differential treatment.
“I was very frustrated and upset,” Jennifer said about being turned away, “but I can only do so much. I can stomp my feet and I can cry. I did tear up. But I took my paperwork back, and we left.”
Later Wednesday morning, the office of the state’s attorney general filed a notice it would be appealing the lower court decision to the Arkansas Supreme Court.
In the Tuesday ruling, Arkansas circuit court judge Timothy Davis Fox struck down parts of the state's law concerning birth registration that used gendered terms, such as mother and father, as unconstitutional. The ruling left intact portions of the law that use gender-neutral language.
According to Cheryl Maples, a lawyer for the three couples behind the lawsuit, the judge’s decision applied to all same-sex couples in the same position as the plaintiffs, because it nixed parts of the law itself.
But Mirivel at the Department of Health said the agency treated the Gardner-Glazes the same as straight couples, who must get a court order to amend birth certificates. She said all applications are evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
Although requiring a court order to amend a birth certificate may be gender-neutral, opposite-sex couples generally have no need to do so. Hospitals generally list both of them as parents and pass that information to the state. Because the Department of Health issues birth certificates based on hospital records of the parents, as Mirivel said is the case, if the hospital doesn’t report both same-sex parents, then the state doesn’t list them both on the birth certificate.
Meg Mirivel at the Department of Health said the agency treated the Gardner-Glazes the same as straight couples, who must get a court order to amend birth certificates.
Still, the state has argued in court, Arkansas wants to maintain the standard of requiring a court order to amend birth certificates in order to help preserve original records for archive purposes and vital statistics.
Mirivel did not believe any hospitals in Arkansas had reported same-sex parents to the state for birth registrations prior to the Supreme Court’s decision, she said. For that matter, she also did not know if hospitals reported any same-sex parents to the state after the ruling, either.
In the cases of the three married couples behind the lawsuit, their children were born before the Supreme Court’s marriage ruling in June took effect in Arkansas, and both individuals weren't both listed as parents.
Leigh Wilson Jacobs, one of the plaintiffs, said she was frustrated the Department of Health turned away same-sex couples Wednesday who were not named in her case. Jacobs and her wife sued “because we don’t want other people do have to go through this,” she told BuzzFeed News. “What is the point of being married if you don’t get the same rights as everyone else?”
Judge Fox’s ruling does not explicitly state it applies to all same-sex parents in Arkansas. Although a memorandum opinion struck down the disputed portion of state law, the accompanying order specifically addressed the birth certificates for children of the three couples who brought the case.
Jennifer Gardner-Glaze said she was considering securing an attorney for her own suit against the state. “They are going to fight to the death,” she said, and its latest resistance to same-sex parents has simply “created another problem for themselves.”
“I’m absolutely gutted. Devastated.”
Twitter / @tallpunksteph
Stephanie McCarthy, a musician, sustained a fractured eye socket, facial bruising, a busted lip and swelling behind her ear after being attacked by two men at the Newtown Town Hall Hotel in June.
She told police the attack was fuelled by the fact she is transgender.
Alexis Ozanne, who punched McCarthy in the head five times while Nicholas Wells held her in a headlock, was sentenced to 150 hours community service and a good behaviour bond on Tuesday.
Alexis Ozanne leaves the Newtown Local Court in Sydney on Thursday, July 9, 2015. / Paul Miller / AAPIMAGE
"They just sent a message saying 'I heard the news, I'm really sorry about what happened'," McCarthy said.
"I said, 'What are you talking about?'. They sent me a link to the article and I was absolutely devastated."
McCarthy wanted to attend court in order to deliver a victim impact statement and to "find some closure" on the horrific incident.
It’s about time.
Via youtube.com
Via youtube.com
“I kind of felt like I was putting on a different personality.”
As the holiday party season quickly approaches, many women may think — just for a moment — about rocking a suit. Most will probably dismiss the idea because going the dapper route is simply too hard or too scary. Knowing where to start when looking for a suit, especially one that fits your body type, can be straight up daunting.
We wanted to take the ~fear~ out of wearing a suit, so we had a bunch of women try them on and chat about how the experience made them feel. Here's what they had to say:
Jenny Chang/BuzzFeed
Lauren Zaser/BuzzFeed
Lauren Zaser/BuzzFeed
2016 is the year of Rose Quartz and Serenity!
According to the Pantone website, the annual selection is "a color snapshot of what we see taking place in our culture that serves as an expression of a mood and an attitude."
Pantone / Via pantone.com
In its official announcement in late 2014, Pantone said Marsala "enriches the mind, body, and soul."
Encarnacion Photography / Via encarnacionphotography.com
Pantone
Parents, thank you for trying.
officiallygayfabulous.tumblr.com
Anchorage City Hall.
Bloomberg / Getty Images
A radio host in Anchorage, Alaska, has launched the first stage of an effort to repeal the city’s two-month-old LGBT nondiscrimination law, arguing it allows men to prey on girls in public restrooms.
“We do not believe that a man should be using the same bathroom as our little girls,” Bernadette Wilson, host of Bernadette Live! on KFQD, told BuzzFeed News.
“I will leave up to your imagination what one person may do,” she added. "We don’t think a person with male anatomy should be where a young girl is changing."
Hardly a unique argument, talking points about men in women's restrooms — a dig at transgender women or those ostensibly posing as transgender women — has proven an effective message around the county to repeal or stymie laws protecting LGBT people.
“We do not believe that a man should be using the same bathroom as our little girls.”
On Nov. 25, Wilson applied for a petition to place Anchorage’s two-month-old nondiscrimination law on the ballot.
City officials have until Dec. 11 to certify the application, which contains signatures of 10 voters and a secondary sponsor, before the activists can launch a repeal campaign.
Deputy Municipal Clerk Amanda Moser told BuzzFeed News petitioners would then need to collect 5,754 signatures from registered city voters to qualify the measure for the ballot. If they submit those signatures by Jan. 11, she said, the measure would go before voters on April 5.
Passed by the Anchorage Assembly on Sept. 29, the ordinance bans discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity — expanding rules banning discrimination based on race and other characteristics. Critics bristle because it allows people who identify as women to file a complaint if they are barred from women’s facilities in places of public accommodation.
But there is a notable absence among the petition’s early proponents: leaders of a campaign in Anchorage that successfully defeated an LGBT nondiscrimination ballot measure in 2012.
Jim Minnery, president of Alaska Family Council and a key player in the 2012 effort, told BuzzFeed News in October that he and other faith leaders were pondering whether to run a referendum on the city’s new nondiscrimination law.
“They of course have a right pass what they did,” Minnery said of the assembly, “but we have the right to go back to the polls to see where people really stand on this.”
Minnery did not reply to phone calls from BuzzFeed News seeking comment on Wilson’s petition.
Like Minnery, Wilson was incensed that city officials would ram through a law that was rejected at the polls by a 14-point margin only three years prior.
“It is disappointing to see an assembly throw out the will of the people on something that we just voted on so recently," she said.
“They of course have a right pass what they did, but we have the right to go back to the polls to see where people really stand on this.”
Wilson could cite no examples of inappropriate behavior occurring in Anchorage restrooms since the law was enacted, nor did she know of such behavior in the 17 states and 200 cities with similar laws on the books.
Nonetheless, the specter of men and transgender women using LGBT nondiscrimination laws to sexually assault girls in restrooms has become a national theme among conservatives in recent years. It was the prime battle cry of an effort to repeal such a law last month in Houston, Texas. It was also a message used to repeal similar laws in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and Springfield, Missouri.
Asked if she would oppose the law if it only concerned sexual orientation, and lacked provisions for gender identity, Wilson declined to answer.
“I don’t have time to deal with a hypothetical,” she said.
She also declined to say whether she believed transgender women were indeed women.
“They can have their transgender debate,” Wilson said. “The safety issue is that I don’t think anyone of the opposite sex should be using the bathroom or locker room where a young girl is changing.”
Township High School District 211 and the Department of Education still continue to offer different interpretations of its requirements.
Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary for the Office Civil Rights (right), speaks at a panel in Washington, D.C. on October 1, 2015.
Larry French / Getty Images
A transgender student can change her clothes inside the girls' locker rooms at a public school northwest of Chicago after a settlement was reached early Thursday morning between Township High School District 211 and the U.S. Department of Education.
But despite the agreement, the school district and federal officials differ on the implications of the deal — such as whether the settlement affects all transgender students in the district.
On November 3, the department's Office of Civil Rights (OCR) found Township High School had violated Title IX, which bans gender-based discrimination in public schools, for its treatment of the transgender student for the past two years.
OCR assistant secretary Catherine Lhamon told BuzzFeed News on Thursday that the settlement applies to all trans students in the district, not just the one who brought her complaint to the Department of Education in December 2013.
Education Department officials also said the settlement — which says the student may use a private area to change in the girls locker room — can also change in the locker room like other girls. "There is no requirement that she change in a private area," Department of Education press secretary Dorie Nolt told BuzzFeed News. "She said she plans to, but it is not required."
The student, referred to as Student A throughout the investigation, had requested the use of a private changing area within the girls' locker room, such as a restroom stall. The student argued that she needed access various locker rooms at her school for mandatory physical education classes, swim classes, and sports teams.
According to OCR's Nov. 3 ruling, the district superintendent had denied her request, citing the fact that there were too few stalls and too many students to accommodate her.
In doing so, the OCR found "by a preponderance of evidence" that the district had violated Title IX laws "for excluding Student A from participation in and denying her the benefits of its education program, providing services to her in a different manner, subjecting her to different rules of behavior, and subjecting her to different treatment on the basis of sex."
In the settlement, the school district has agreed to grant the student access to the girls' locker room at her high school and any other school in the district she visits, based on an earlier request to use private changing stations inside.
The district will also install "sufficient privacy curtains" in the locker rooms to "accommodate the transgender student and any students who wish to be assured of privacy." Students who request additional privacy apart from the curtains will have the option to change clothes elsewhere, according to the settlement.
Township High School District 211 will also work with a consultant who specializes in youth gender identity to ensure the terms of the resolution are sufficiently implemented.
However, according to the school district administration, the scope of the settlement will only affect one student.
"This agreement applies only to the student in the complaint," Township High School District 211 director of communications Thomas Petersen told BuzzFeed News. He called the OCR's assertion that it applies to all trans students "inaccurate." Petersen added that if a trans student other than the one mentioned in the ruling did not change clothes in a private changing room, they could face disciplinary action.
OCR's Lhamon said that this is not the case.
Student A's mother spoke to BuzzFeed News shortly after the OCR confirmed to her that the settlement applied to all transgender students. Her identity was withheld to ensure her daughter's privacy.
"I am very pleased that the OCR has taken the position it has, and reaffirmed our belief that she shouldn't be required to use privacy curtains," she said.
Student A's mother added that her daughter had been reprimanded by school authorities for using a girls' locker room, even when she was the only one in the room.
"It's been a long two and half years," she said.
The school board met Wednesday night to approve the Education Department's settlement offer, a meeting that ran into the early hours of Thursday.
Student A's mother said at least three students spoke in support of her daughter at the meeting. One student started a petition urging for the student's access to the girls' locker room.
The settlement is the latest in a series of clashes between the Obama administration and public schools over transgender students. The Department of Justice and the Department of Education, in lawsuits and settlements, has insisted that Title IX of the Education Act of 1972, which bans discrimination based on sex, therefore bans discrimination based on transgender status.
But some advocates say this latest settlement doesn't go far enough.
In a statement issued Thursday morning, the ACLU of Illinois, which represented the student, criticized Township High School District 211 for not supporting the extension of the new agreement to all transgender students.
John Knight, who directs the ACLU Illinois LGBT and HIV Project, called the oversight a "terrible mistake."
"No student should be labeled as different by their school, or denied full and equal participation at school with their peers," he said. "Yet that is precisely what District 211 says it will continue to do, no matter what the agreement actually says."
Lynzy Billing / BuzzFeed
There is a hand-stitched cushion cover that sits, unfinished, in Jeremy Pemberton’s house. He began sewing the design when he could not get out of bed, when he had sunk so far into despair that focusing on each tiny stitch was the only way to stay sane.
The story of how he sank, off work and resisting thoughts of suicide, reaches far beyond the walls of the home he shares with the man he loves. It is the story of what happens when you take on the Church of England. And it is one that Pemberton has never revealed in full – until now.
The case of Canon Jeremy Pemberton, daubed across newspapers and television channels, has been reported so widely that many already know what happened to the first British clergyman to marry someone of the same sex: that he was stripped of his powers as a priest, unable to conduct official duties, and then barred from a job as an NHS hospital chaplain. As a result, he took the Church of England to an employment tribunal on a charge of discrimination.
But what has gone untold is the inner story behind the landmark case, and, remarkably, the household name that was backing him.
The stakes were higher than many suggested: If Pemberton won, the precedent set could begin to unravel the Church of England’s exemptions from same-sex marriage and equality laws. It could also block the church from dictating who the NHS is able to hire. In the battle between religious and LGBT rights, it would be a crucial fight.
The cushion cover cross-stitched by Pemberton while unwell.
Jeremy Pemberton
BuzzFeed News begins contacting Pemberton, 59, in April, two months before the tribunal begins. He says at the time his legal team are feeling “very positive”. And then, in November, 12 days after the judgment comes in, a text message arrives at 3:47am confirming that he will come to BuzzFeed News’ London office for an interview.
Eight hours later, Pemberton sits gazing out the window, explaining why he texted at such an ungodly hour.
“I’m not sleeping,” he says, trying to sound upbeat. “I sleep for about three hours and then wake up thinking about it all.” With so much riding on the case, what has that responsibility been like?
“I feel it quite acutely,” he says softly. “There is no precedent. This is the test case. The way the Church of England has developed the exemptions is just wrong and to use them like this to effectively punish me for getting married went against all natural justice.”
The Equality Act 2010 ensures everyone has the same access to employment, as well as private and public services. The Church of England, however, along with certain other religious groups, enjoys a loophole: It can bar LGBT people from jobs if they're sexually active or, in some cases, in civil partnerships. Similarly, the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 exempts the church from performing same-sex ceremonies – and canon law, which defines marriage in heterosexual terms, is protected. Both sets of exemptions came following lobbying by Anglicans.
Some have said Pemberton should have known what would have happened when he married Laurence Cunnington at a register office in Southwell, Nottinghamshire, on 12 April 2014 – two weeks after same-sex weddings became possible.
“But no one ever told me,” says Pemberton. Guidance from the House of Bishops only materialised a few weeks before, several months after Pemberton had begun planning the wedding. “It would not be appropriate conduct for someone in holy orders to enter into a same-sex marriage, given the need for clergy to model the Church’s teaching in their lives,” said the guidance. The precise repercussions for anyone disobeying were not explained.
Lynzy Billing / BuzzFeed
“The bishops hadn’t thought, ‘Maybe some people will be planning weddings and maybe it’s not very fair to people to expect them to cancel,'” says Pemberton.
Nevertheless, prior to the wedding, Pemberton contacted Christopher Lowson, the bishop of Lincoln, where Pemberton worked as a senior hospital chaplain, to discuss his intentions.
“He assured me he would not be starting a disciplinary action against me,” says Pemberton. Instead, after the wedding, Lowson sent Pemberton a written rebuke and advised him that this black mark would stay on his file forever. It arrived during the couple's honeymoon.
On Pemberton’s return, Richard Inwood, the then acting bishop of Southwell and Nottingham – where Pemberton lives – asked to see him. Inwood had been in his role for just three days before Pemberton’s wedding. At the meeting, says Pemberton, the bishop told him he should not have married, because doing so contravened the doctrine of the Church of England.
“At the end he said, ‘I’ll let you know what I decide,’” Pemberton says, so the canon pressed Inwood for the likely outcomes. The possibilities were: that Inwood would do nothing, or he would present Pemberton with a rebuke, similar to Lowson’s, or he would remove Pemberton’s permission to officiate (PTO). The PTO is the piece of paper priests need to be able to do most of their job. Three days later, Inwood chose the last option.
It meant, says Pemberton, that in the area he lives, “I can’t take services, I can’t preach or take Holy Communion or marry, bury, or baptise. I can play no ritual part in the life of a church.” Under normal circumstances, he says, a PTO is removed for egregious wrongdoing such as breaking the law – if, for example, a priest is accused of sexual abuse. The letter also demanded that Pemberton return the PTO document to Inwood’s office “as soon as possible”.
After more than 30 years of service to the church, what was that like?
“Awful,” he says, his baritone voice cutting out. “Absolutely terrible. It felt so degrading. As if I couldn’t be trusted.”
Pemberton had been a rising star in the Church of England. After graduating from Oxford he trained to be a priest and was ordained while still in his mid-twenties – exceptionally young. By 2005, after serving in several posts and devoting years to working in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Pemberton was made an honorary canon. This title is bestowed upon the best – the most dutiful, long-serving priests. His then bishop advised Pemberton to consider a future as a dean, archdeacon, or bishop. Ten years later, after becoming a canon of Ely as well as Boga in the Congo, that future was stubbed out. He had disobeyed.
Lynzy Billing / BuzzFeed
But as Pemberton talks, his imposing 6’ 2” stature supporting a sweetly authoritative voice, it is compassion and fortitude – albeit dented – that cloak him, not victimhood or embitterment. Given what has happened this seems remarkable – that is, until BuzzFeed News takes him back to his wedding day. What was it like standing opposite his fiancé, exchanging vows?
Suddenly, Pemberton cannot speak. His eyes fill. “Well…” he begins, only to stop again, breathing into the depths to control himself, “it was just me and him and…” He looks skywards – not at anything visible or ethereal, but as if at the highest of human experiences.
“I realised that I was doing absolutely the right thing for somebody I love.”
He pauses and smiles. “I knew it was going to cause trouble.” The problem was he could not be sure what kind – or even from where that trouble would come.
The Mail on Sunday had already turned up at his house the day before the wedding. The journalist, he says, paced up and down outside all afternoon before knocking at their door. Fearful that if they refused to cooperate the reporter would show up at the ceremony, Pemberton and Cunnington agreed to speak to him and have a picture taken, on the understanding there would be no unwanted guests the next day.
Jeremy Pemberton and Laurence Cunnington pose in their wedding attire
The Mail on Sunday / Associated Press
Pemberton characterises the interview as “stilted”, which certainly comes through in the resulting story – the reporter asks Pemberton how he expects to feel after marrying, and receives the reply: “We will feel married.”
Press intrusion was merely one concern, however. Because each bishop can decide how to punish transgressors in their own diocese, the situation now facing Pemberton was almost comically absurd. With one bishop wrapping him on the knuckles and another ripping off his dog collar, every morning he would wake up in Southwell not a priest, and then drive into Lincolnshire for his hospital chaplain job, where, suddenly, across the county border, he was a fully functional priest again. Thus, adds Pemberton, “Not only is my case about discrimination, but the inconsistency of the whole process.”
The compounding problem for Pemberton was that during the meeting with Inwood, he advised the acting bishop that he was applying for a new position – a promotion to senior hospital chaplain – this time in Southwell. “[Inwood] said, ‘It would be difficult to give you a licence if I’d removed your PTO.” And so, on 3 July, four weeks after Pemberton was offered the promotion, he received another letter from Inwood, this time informing him that he would not be granted the necessary licence to take up the position.
“I was furious,” says Pemberton.
Lynzy Billing / BuzzFeed
Pemberton’s new husband, meanwhile, was “incandescent with rage”. Cunnington, 52, detailed on his Facebook page what had happened and implored friends to write to the acting bishop and his archbishop, John Sentamu, to protest against the decisions.
“A tidal wave of post started heading towards them,” says Pemberton, adding that Sentamu “got his act together and arranged a pro forma letter to go out to everybody”. Inwood, he says, replied to no one.
With media coverage of the unfolding scandal intensifying and with his job offer looking imperilled – not to mention the removal of his PTO – Pemberton sought out lawyers to help him, despite having no funds to pay them.
He approached an ecclesiastical barrister, Justin Gau and two further barristers, Sean Jones QC, an employment specialist, and Helen Trotter, an equalities expert – all of whom offered their services for free. The case, after all, could make legal history.
“They said it would be something they would be prepared to do pro bono but would I go home and check my household contents insurance?” he says. “So we went home and discovered we had £100,000-worth of legal cover. I’ve not told anyone this, but thank you, Direct Line!” He laughs joyously: One of Britain’s most recognisable insurance companies, whose logo comprises an old red telephone on wheels, came to fund one of the country’s key equality lawsuits.
“The little telephones came good!” says Pemberton, before pointing out that even this cover wouldn’t have been sufficient without his legal team working at “extremely reduced rates” for him.
The Church of England hired Herbert Smith Freehills, a top international law firm – not the church’s usual choice in legal matters. And it wasn't the kind of case the firm is known for: Herbert Smith Freehills liberally sponsors LGBT charity events.
Pemberton estimates that the church’s legal fees will, by now, be several hundred thousand pounds. (When asked by BuzzFeed News to respond to this claim, the Diocese of Southwell and Nottingham declined to comment.)
“It’s obscene,” says Pemberton. “I feel sick – we have a government determined to dismantle the welfare state, this is going to mean the voluntary sector is going to have to step in. That’s where the money should be going.” He stops for a moment and looks down.
Lynzy Billing / BuzzFeed
“It’s really sad to see an institution that does a lot of good but the good it does is overwhelmed by this incredible obsession [homosexuality], which gives it such dreadful negative publicity. I get people telling me, ‘I’m not taking my kids to a place where they teach people to be homophobic.’” He pauses again. “When I think about the message of Jesus, he was not one for sticking to the rules, he was for finding people others thought weren’t worth bothering with. Well, there’s a clue in there, guys.”
The tribunal itself was still months away. And before any legal preparation could begin, the NHS trust responsible for King’s Mill Hospital in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, withdrew the job offer because Inwood had refused the licence. Pemberton received the news while travelling to France for a break. He returned early. A few days later he was due to go back to work.
“I said to Laurence, ‘I can’t.’ I was very depressed.” He went to his doctor. “I got some antidepressants. Some days…” he begins before jolting himself. “Some days I would just get up and get dressed and go downstairs. That would be it. That was all I could manage. I’d be in bed sleeping a lot.” Was there a point where he did not know how to get through it – where he considered ending everything?
“Yes,” says Pemberton. “There was.” He had already had a breakdown eight years earlier.
But during this period, of late summer and autumn of 2014, Pemberton found something that helped: cross-stitching. “That was my therapy,” he says. “It was something I could hold on to and concentrate on. A cushion cover. It’s my wellness cushion, it helped me get better.”
There was something else that helped.
“Laurence,” he says. “He was wonderful, endlessly patient and supportive.” When Pemberton hid in bed or in the house all day, “Laurence would say, ‘Do you want to go down to the shop?’”
They met on a website for gay fathers in 2008. Both had been married for several decades to women – Pemberton with five grownup children. At 50, the priest finally stopped denying who he was.
“You carry on pretending until you can’t,” he says. “I came out to myself first – in the mirror. I looked at myself and said, ‘I’m a gay man.’” The shame he had lived with for half a century “drained, never to return”, he says. “For me, it was a profoundly spiritual moment.”
Messages between Pemberton and Cunnington on the site led to daily phone calls and, finally, their first meeting.
“You know that thing about going weak at the knees?” he says. “I went weak at the knees.”
Lynzy Billing
Pemberton returned to work in the hospital chaplaincy position in Lincolnshire and began to brace himself for the tribunal. In June 2015, before the proceedings started, he says, one of his barristers offered some advice: “Don’t believe everything you see on telly. There’s no drama.” The barrister was wrong.
The tribunal was packed – full, says Pemberton, with “suits from London”: a registrar of the London diocese, a “top London solicitor who was there apparently to take notes for the Archbishop of Canterbury”, a legal secretary from the General Synod, also there to take notes, and a representative from the legal division of the pensions board, as well as all the barristers and solicitors from both sides.
Pemberton was cross-examined for seven hours.
“I don’t think anybody realised quite how aggressive their silk [Tom Linden QC] was going to be with me,” he says. “He was trying to take my character apart.”
The transcription from the tribunal, obtained by BuzzFeed News, reveals Linden telling Pemberton, “You are an errant priest,” and “You are not in good standing,” and accusing him of being “disingenuous”.
Cunnington had to leave the room, unable to listen to his husband being described in this way.
The confrontation was formidable and fractious: two exceptionally well-educated men grappling over ecclesiastical, employment, and equality legislation, the first of which stretches back to the 16th century.
“You personally and in family relationships undertook that you would exemplify the teachings of the church. In marrying a man, you did not do that, did you?” Linden asked, before asserting that is a matter of “integrity” that “priests must fashion their lives” in accordance with church teaching. To which Pemberton responded: “As a matter of integrity, no one has the right to tell me who I can and cannot marry. It is unlawful for the bishops to say so.”
This was one of the warmer exchanges.
Lynzy Billing / BuzzFeed
Like when Laverne Cox was Laverne Cox.
Augusta Quirk
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Hard to pick just 21, tbh.
Ashlyn Harris / Via instagram.com
Netflix
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Sometimes it’s the simple things that help the most.
Charlotte Gomez/BuzzFeed News
The uncomfortable feelings that come with gender dysphoria can really throw a wrench in your day-to-day life, making even simple tasks seem impossible. This type of dysphoria is often defined as a condition where a person experiences discomfort or distress because the gender to which they were assigned at birth and their gender identity don't match up. When your body and mind aren't seeing eye-to-eye, it's easy to feel pretty low.
We asked people to tell us what they do to make themselves feel good when they're stuck in some serious dysphoria blues. Here's what they said:
"When my dysphoria gets bad, I take out my guitar and play music. Sometimes I like to play my own music, music I wrote. Mostly I just cover songs. When I play, I feel like I'm in my own world, just my mind, my hands and my guitar. I escape into a little space inside my head and fill it with music."
— Anonymous
"I am nonbinary, but I was assigned male at birth. Whenever I experience dysphoria, I usually turn on some music and just let my mind clear. I've also found that it helps to tell myself, out loud, that my body does not define my gender and to point out things about my body that I do like. Just because I have big hands, doesn't mean I'm male. And I know I love my eyes. I have to remind myself that there are still positive things about my body.
Something else that works for me is talking to one of my good friends. They know that sometimes I feel awkward in my body, and they can help reassure me that I'm 100% awesome even though my body doesn't exactly match how I feel that day."
— Anonymous
Topos Graphics for BuzzFeed News
Topos Graphics for BuzzFeed News
What is sex, exactly? If you’re a freshman taking your high school Health class, sex is a flower having its petals torn off. According to philosopher Michel Foucault, sexuality is a discourse, bound up in our societal attitudes and laws regulating the human body. And when I was a teenager staying up late to browse the family computer while everyone was asleep, the Internet’s definition of sex — at least when it came to man-on-man action — was two drunk straight guys who had “never done anything like this before.”
For me, sex was something shameful, marked by a lifetime of disappointment. When I was 23, I told the guy I liked to stop the first time we had sex. It was really painful and it didn’t feel right. The next day, he told me he didn’t want to see me anymore. A week later I had sex with someone else — just to prove that I could. Before I took my clothes off in his bedroom, which was filled with stacked PBR cans and old laundry, I repeated to myself, “I am a person who likes sex, I am a person who likes sex.” I thought if I said it enough times, it would be true. Instead, I accidentally took a shit all over him.
When it came to sex, I thought pain was the only choice I had.
Gay sex is supposed to be transcendently exhausting, so orgasmic that it makes you instantly grab for a pack of cigarettes. In my experience, bottoming is like having a hot knife jammed into my intestines — and I avoided it for the next three years, until I met a man I wanted to like sex for. He was kind and patient, and I tried very, very hard. I relaxed and tried not to be so tense and I made plans to have sex with him every day until it felt “normal”— or like the sex I imagined other people were having — until we slowly had less sex and then stopped. I was tired of gritting my teeth through the constant pain, and I could tell he took it personally, as if he’d done something to hurt me.
I should have realized a lot earlier that the problem was bigger than me, but you’d be surprised how used you get to certain things: like sleeping alone to avoid taking a dump in a stranger’s bed. When it came to sex, I thought pain was the only choice I had. What’s more, I thought I deserved the pain — but I wanted to deserve someone who loved me instead.
This past March, I decided it was time to stop hurting. A jovial internist in Brooklyn advised me to get a colonoscopy to take a closer look, and he came back with news: I had Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
It might seem like there’s little connection between food and intercourse, but when you’re having gay sex, the two are intimately — and sometimes awkwardly —connected. As Zach Stafford wrote in the Huffington Post, “it’s common knowledge that if you are a bottom and plan on having sex, then you shouldn't eat at Chipotle.” If anal sex can be messy, IBS only makes it worse, causing bloating and pain in your lower abdomen if you eat “trigger foods” (mine are dairy, eggs, spicy foods, and the dreaded gluten). For some, Irritable Bowel Syndrome is linked to constant, uncomfortable constipation, but others may experience unpredictable bouts of diarrhea.
If you’re already feeling bloated, having anal sex might be the absolute last thing you want to do — because it only makes you feel worse. I was referred to a specialist who told me what to eat but also how to prepare it. But even for those who manage their symptoms with diet control, many gay men who suffer from IBS continue to be reticent about having anal sex. On sexual health forums, men complain that the nagging fear of pain in the back of your mind kills the experience. “I suffer from lots of bowel problems, which [makes] the idea of being on bottom even less appealing,” a forum poster on RealJock confesses. “Even more of a problem is even on days when my IBS isn't an issue, I just can't enjoy it.” Another user on the IBS Group website claims that after getting diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome, he stopped having sex altogether, because he’s too worried about a flareup.
Sex is a symbol, a language, and a physical encounter — but it’s also a range of experiences as diverse as our bodies themselves.
These men may choose to go the rest of their lives without having anal intercourse — but those with IBS are certainly not alone in finding penetration painful, or otherwise undesirable. According to a 2011 study from George Mason and the University of Indiana, researchers found that just 1 in 3 men who have sex with men (MSMs) are regularly having penetrative intercourse. An earlier study from the Centers for Disease Control in 2005 found that number to be somewhere between 55 and 80 percent (there’s sadly little research overall on the subject).
No matter the specific statistics, a significant amount of gay and bisexual men aren’t regularly having anal sex. But that doesn’t mean they’re being celibate — they’re engaging in mutual masturbation, foreplay, oral sex, and all kinds of sexual behaviors too often deemed as “lesser." In 1998, Bill Clinton claimed that he “did not have sexual relations” with Monica Lewinsky — because she only gave him a blowjob, after all— and it seems that the idea itself has stuck. A 2007 survey from the University of Kentucky found that just 1 in 5 college students classify oral sex as sex.
But the kinds of sex that gay men — and queer people in general — are having force us to rethink those notions, ones that for too long many, including myself, have accepted as the only definition of “what counts” in bed. Sex is a symbol, a language, and a physical encounter — but it’s also a range of experiences as diverse as our bodies themselves, which we too often ignore. And as a number of researchers, therapists, and writers have testified, it’s time to start recognizing them.
Where do we get this idea of what counts? For many gay men, it starts with our own sex partners and friend groups.
I spoke to Noah Michelson, the Executive Editor for the Voices section of the Huffington Post, who told me that this is a problem he regularly encounters. Over the phone, he explained that were he to tell a friend that he’d had sex with someone but that it didn’t involve penetration, he would likely hear something like: “That’s not sex, that’s a hookup.” Michelson said, “They have all these other names for it.”
Gay men often fall into the same limiting notions of sexual intercourse as the undergrads in the Kentucky study — what sex therapist Ian Kerner calls “sex script rigidity.” That term entails a number of different things: For a couple who have been together for 40 years, rigidity might mean that one partner is stuck always performing the “top” position, even if he might like to switch things up. But as Noah Michelson explained, these expectations often frame sexual interactions between gay men from their earliest connections. If you’re messaging a guy on a hookup app, the first question often is: “Are you a top or a bottom?” The question is an indication that — when it comes to this encounter — the end goal is penetration.
And for Michelson, that can feel invalidating. He confessed that he would “fall into that category of people who would say that I’m not having a ton of penetrative anal sex as a gay man.” When I asked him why that is, he explained: “I think it can be a lot of work, especially as a bottom. There are things that you need to do to get ready for anal sex and it just ends up being like, ‘Ugh, do I really want to go through that whole routine to do that?’ I think that anal sex can be amazing, obviously, but other things can be just as amazing.”
The problem is oftentimes not anal sex in and of itself: The problem is the shame our culture makes people feel around their preferences.
Joe Kort, a 52-year-old writer and sex therapist, explained that it’s not just that he rarely engages in penetrative sex. In our phone interview, he told me that he’s never had anal intercourse — despite being in a decades-long committed relationship. Whereas many men label themselves as “tops” or “bottoms,” Kort calls himself a “side.” In an article for the Huffington Post, he defines a side as men who “prefer to kiss, hug and engage in oral sex, rimming, mutual masturbation and rubbing up and down on each other, to name just a few of the sexual activities they enjoy.”
Kort continues, “These men enjoy practically every sexual practice aside from anal penetration of any kind. They may have tried it, and even performed it for some time, before they became aware that for them, it was simply not erotic and wasn't getting any more so.”
As Zach Stafford — now a contributing writer for the Guardian — clarified in an interview, the problem is oftentimes not anal sex in and of itself: The problem is the shame our culture makes people feel around their preferences. When it comes to anal sex, Stafford explained that there’s a pervasive stigma around the act of bottoming. He argued that this shame is partially a result of the 1980s AIDS epidemic — but instead of encouraging people to lead healthier lives, the stigma only creates more blame. “It’s about making you the reason why something bad is happening,” Stafford said, “but what we know from science and from our lives is that stigma doesn’t save the world.”
One way to eradicate the shame of bottoming, or any other kind of sexual preference, is education. In the United States, there’s very little in the way of sex ed for anyone — let alone for queer individuals. That means that many MSMs are forced to educate themselves with the limited resources they have, which often involve the unrealistic depictions found in gay porn. As Kort explains, visual depictions of gay sex take a lot of the messiness out of it. Kort said, “They made sex look so easy and anal sex look so seamless.”
Michelson agrees: “No one makes any weird noises, there aren’t any weird smells, it’s not awkward. That’s not what sex is about. I think it does a great disservice to people in general but especially to young people who have expectations of what sex is going to be like.”
While pornography can be a way to normalize alternative sexual practices — like BDSM or fetish play — it’s a bad substitute for healthy, empowering instruction that allows you to explore your sexuality or gives you a space to do so. That’s exactly what Paul Rosenberg hopes to provide. He founded Seattle’s local Rain City Jacks in 2005, a male masturbation club that meets three times a month. In our chat, he told me that his goal is to give “people a new way of experiencing sexuality in a very positive way,” and he believes that the public nature of masturbation clubs is a way to encourage that. “It’s all in the open,” Rosenberg said. “It invites a sense that this is OK.”
No matter what kind of sex we’re having, Paul Rosenberg explains, it’s important to be honest and open about intimacy. “If you want to create a world that’s shameless around sex, you have to model that for others,” Rosenberg told me. Rosenberg is right — but that also entails being more honest with ourselves.
As a 27-year-old adult, getting diagnosed with IBS was like a second coming out — of learning to be more honest with myself and my partners about what I want. According to Kort, that’s incredibly common. He explained that defining your sexual preferences — what you do and don’t like, or what you’re willing to do — is an important stage of the long coming out process. “I think coming out gay is a different experience than coming out sexual,” Kort said. “When you come out gay, you’re having gay sex and doing stuff, but you’re really coming out with your identity. It has less to do with sex and more to do with who you really are.”
You should be engaging in intimate acts that give you pleasure — not having the kind of sex you think you’re supposed to be having.
If it takes a long time to come to terms with your sexual nature, that comes with a certain amount of trial and error — as well as being open to the process of learning about your body and what it likes. “Working across the spectrum of LGBTQ individuals, I find that the definition of sex is usually pretty elastic,” Kerner said. “I am continually inspired around the flexibility of what defines sex.” Kerner explained that he would “never encourage someone to do something they don’t want to do,” but it can also be important to “push a little outside of [your] comfort zone.”
For me, that entailed trying things I hadn’t done before, experimenting with different toys to help myself relax. My partner and I are working up to penetrative sex — while realizing that, hey, maybe we won’t get there, and that’s OK. We’re also experimenting with anal massage, based on Ian Kerner’s recommendation, and we might even make a visit to New York Jacks.
And earlier this year, I got a happy ending massage on a recommendation from a friend, which helped reframe my notions about what sex was: Instead of needing to have penetration, it became about having an experience. You should be engaging in intimate acts that give you pleasure — not having the kind of sex you think you’re supposed to be having. This is why sex and relationships coach Mark Davian insists to that it’s important to shift away from goal-oriented sex. Instead of looking specifically for intercourse, Davian believes the idea should be that “we’re going to feel good but we’re not so focused on a goal. ... That can open up doors.”
I’m still opening those doors for myself by figuring out what I like and what sex means to me. In doing so, I’ve discovered that there’s no definition of normal — whether that’s in bed, or anywhere else.
New numbers released by the CDC on Sunday show that while HIV diagnoses have fallen roughly 19% nationwide from 2005 to 2014, infection rates among black and Latino gay and bisexual men continue to rise steeply.
While HIV diagnoses among white gay and bisexual men have seen a drop of about 18% over the last decade, among gay and bisexual Latinos, that rate has increased by about 24%. Black men who have sex with men have seen a rise of about 22%, but the starkest numbers were among those aged 13 to 24 — who have seen an 87% rise in new HIV diagnoses in the last decade.
Black women, however, have seen the sharpest decline in new infections, which have been cut nearly in half.
HIV's widening racial gap is "a deeply disturbing finding," Jonathan Mermin, director of the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, told BuzzFeed News.
In recent years, the rise in HIV rates among black and Latino gay and bisexual men has leveled off, Mermin said, due in part to an increase in HIV prevention efforts targeting communities of color. But the fact that the gap is still growing is a pressing public health issue.
"Health disparities have turned HIV from an infection into an injustice," he said.
Centers for Disease Control
As epidemiologist Greg Millett noted in the Advocate, the high rates may also have to do with the fact that the high concentration of HIV among black gay men increases the likelihood of encountering a partner who is HIV-positive — even though studies have shown that black gay couples are less likely to have sex without a condom than white ones.
Other social factors — such as access to healthcare and lingering stigma around homosexuality — also play a well-documented role.
For example, young black and Latino men are far less likely to be taking the pill that prevents HIV transmission — also known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP — than other groups. Partially as a result of this, both populations are disproportionately affected by HIV: In 2010, the most recent year for which numbers were available, black Americans made up 44% of all new HIV infections, while Latinos made up 21%.
"The statistics are hard to ignore and even harder to fathom," Millet wrote.
Because of the deep social causes of health disparities, the battle to tackle the HIV epidemic among black Americans is also increasingly being linked to the Black Lives Matter movement.
“Empire” actor Jussie Smollett and sister Jurnee Smollett-Bell talk about HIV in the black community on World AIDS Day.
screenshot from NBC BLK
"All states must take responsibility for protecting communities that are at risk," Mermin said. "But some states, especially in the South, are years behind."
In 2012, the most recent year for which numbers are available, nearly 14,000 individuals with AIDS died in the U.S.
"We have to accelerate access to testing, treatment, and prevention to work against the disparities that are so prevalent with this infection," Mermin said.
The model/actress is selling a “The Future Is Female” shirt that bears a striking resemblance to one designed by another brand.
The biggest moment of the year in the United States deserves a revisiting — preferably with some tissues.
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"Please take this from me, I don’t want to be gay."
Brisbane man Johann De Joodt knows first hand the horrors of gay conversion therapy.
A participant in numerous programs designed to purge his homosexuality during his twenties and thirties, De Joodt adopted a traumatising routine of church, sin and repentance that looped on repeat every week for 15 years.
“Sunday, I was going up to the altar, crying out to God,” he said. “Monday, I would sin by having sex with another man, and then beat myself up to a pulp so by Saturday I was suicidal. I’d manage to get myself to church on Sunday and then do it again, every week.”
“That was basically my life.”
"When a church leader says being gay is an abomination, people say, 'you’re talking about my uncle who I love very much.'"
The question of whether conversion therapy works was answered long ago: it doesn’t. Leading psychological associations in Australia and around the world have denounced therapy that attempts to change sexual orientation. Earlier this year, a report from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called for nations to ban the practice, describing it as “unethical, unscientific and ineffective and, and may be tantamount to torture”.
Partly as a result of these strident denouncements, the prevalence of such therapy has significantly declined in Australia. Around 40 providers across the country in 2000 have dwindled to just a handful still in action today.
“There’s very little left. It’s in disarray,” says former pastor Anthony Venn-Brown. Venn-Brown, who has himself been through reparative therapy, is the most prominent voice on conversion therapy in Australia. He now works as the founder and CEO of Ambassadors and Bridge Builders International (ABBI), a group that works to combat ignorance and hostility between the LGBT community and churches.
Anthony Venn-Brown.
Hadden Motion Pictures
Speaking to BuzzFeed News at a cafe in Waterloo, Sydney, Venn-Brown suggests another part of the decline is due to a growing acceptance of gay people in wider society – which, of course, includes churches too.
“More people are out, churchgoers have got gay sisters, brothers, colleagues, friends,” Venn-Brown says.
“When a church leader says being gay is an abomination, people say, 'you’re talking about my uncle who I love very much.'”
The most thriving ex-gay programs are in Queensland, where Liberty Incorporated runs alongside the smaller Triumphant Ministries Toowoomba. Sydney-based Living Waters, one of Australia’s longest-running ex-gay programs, closed down last year.
There are also groups that advertise themselves as providing pastoral counselling on dealing with same-sex attraction, but clarify they do not attempt to change sexual orientation. These groups include Liberty Christian Ministries in NSW, and Renew Ministries in Victoria.
However, perhaps due to the stigma now attached to conversion therapy, there is little public information available about the funding, treatment methods and numbers of clients for each of these organisations. While Venn-Brown estimates that the programs would get “very few referrals” these days, their relative invisibility serves as a shield to such information. “We’ll never know the exact numbers,” he says.
At the heart of religious conversion therapy is “a strong belief in an all powerful God”, says Venn-Brown. Programs use a number of methods to exploit this belief, convincing participants that homosexuality is not what God wants for them. Venn-Brown went through dramatic exorcisms, where he convulsed on the floor for hours as pastors gathered around him, screaming for the demon of homosexuality to exit his soul.
Other methods include group and personal counselling, where homosexuality is posed either as a shameful habit that can be broken or an affliction, harking back to the days when it was considered a mental illness.
Brendan Hoffman / Getty Images
Johann De Joodt bristles at the description of gay conversion therapy as “nearly dead”.
“Conversion therapy hasn’t ended in Australia,” he says. “It is alive and well.”
De Joodt came to Australia from Sri Lanka in 1984. A few years later, he found himself heavily involved in the Assemblies of God Pentecostal church movement – now known as Australian Christian Churches – and struggling with his sexuality.
“I went to confess my sin of homosexuality to my pastors,” he says. “I was pretty involved in church life, and the pastor recognised that there were a few other people in the church who were struggling with their sexuality as well.”
De Joodt started the Living Waters ex-gay program in 1990. This was the first of many programs he went through, and when his weekly routine of church, sin, and self-loathing began. It wouldn’t end until 2005.
For years, De Joodt prayed the gay away as various pastors attempted to cast the demons of homosexuality from his soul. He was told his sexuality was a habit that could be broken and changed, that he was gay because he had been sexually assaulted as a child and lacked a decent father figure. He enrolled in courses on self-esteem, and learning how to say no, and did hours of counselling. He prayed, week after week after week.
Unsurprisingly, Johann stayed gay. But the years he spent in therapy ate away at him in other ways. “My health...” Johann starts, then pauses. “I am on antidepressants. Everything I’ve been through has stuffed up my mental health.”
"You were either Christian and heterosexual or you were gay and going to go to hell"
Since 2000, twelve peer-reviewed, primary research studies have found conversion therapy is harmful to mental health. A Columbia Law School project collating conversion therapy research found that among people who had undergone the treatment, there was a prevalence of depression, anxiety, social isolation, decreased capacity for intimacy, and suicidal thoughts and behaviours. “There is powerful evidence that trying to change a person’s sexual orientation can be extremely harmful,” the researchers concluded.
“People have taken their lives, they are now on pensions because they can’t function in everyday life,” says Venn-Brown. “There are PTSD issues, they’ve been harmed mentally, they’re traumatised.”
This manifest trauma and pain is why Venn-Brown has devoted his life to combating ignorance between the LGBT and faith community through ABBI. His daily grind is a softly-softly approach that coaxes people of faith and the LGBT community closer together. “The biggest challenge is fear,” he says without hesitation.
In the past – and in conversion therapy – being gay and being a Christian were seen as incompatible. Venn-Brown says that when he was going through therapy in the 1970s and ‘80s, there was “nobody who believed there was such a thing as a gay Christian”.
“You were either Christian and heterosexual or you were gay and going to go to hell,” he explains. “The gay Christian movement was just beginning to grow then.” After coming out in 1991, he left the Christian faith for six years – but then returned to it after realising being a gay Christian was possible. “There are things [in Christianity] that I can take, that are very real for me,” he says. “Forgiveness, sowing and reaping, having purpose.”
As attitudes have changed and churches become more permissive, many LGBT Christians have been able to reconcile their faith with their sexuality and gender identity. However, a damaging rift still exists between the two communities, with years of betrayal from religious organisations leaving LGBT people fearful and unwilling to engage. Those hurt most by the hostility are LGBT Christians, who are often left feeling as though they belong in neither camp.
“Just as Christians have stereotyped all LGBT people, some LGBT people have stereotyped all Christians,” says Venn-Brown. “We get called perverts, abominations, they get called bigots and haters. And that doesn’t get us anywhere, just sitting back in our camps, our tribes, throwing barbs at each other.”
It’s obvious the division is unhelpful – but is being called a pervert really on par with being called a bigot? Venn-Brown pauses before answering, in short, no.
“It’s about the perception – we will often hear, a Christian like [Australian Christian Lobby Managing Director] Lyle Shelton or [Christian Democrats leader] Fred Nile say ‘I am not homophobic’. But everything that comes out of their mouth is completely homophobic. They just don’t understand what homophobia is, because they’ve never experienced it,” he says.
“We come from our own hurt, and our own pain. And we react, as any human would, when cruel and nasty and insensitive things are said by these people.” He switches into the second person, speaking directly to those who have hurt him. “You don’t know what that does to us, because you’ve never experienced that. You don’t know what it feels like.”
But matters of blame and hostility aside, Venn-Brown is convinced his approach of “dialogue and respect” is best. He knows both the LGBT and the faith community intimately, and says church communities do not respond to “aggressive” activism.
“I introduced [Hillsong Pastor] Brian Houston to a guy in his church who had been referred to somebody [for conversion therapy],” says Venn-Brown. “I got him and his parents to write a letter, Brian met with him.”
Later, it emerged that Houston had issued a directive to all Hillsong staff to never refer anyone to these programs.
“I’ve talked with people who are major religious leaders in Australia. It’s been a journey of ten years for some of them,” Venn-Brown says. “I’ve seen progress, but not where I would want it to be. In every human rights movement, it’s taken decades to shift. If you’re not in it for the long haul, it’s not going to work.”
"If people want to be so small-minded as to think that you have to be straight to get into heaven then I think they’re going to get a big shock when they do get to heaven"
ABBI has also pushed for the outlawing of conversion therapy in Australia. Although Venn-Brown describes the movement these days as “irrelevant” and “inconsequential”, he says a legislative approach would send a decisive message to individuals, to churches and to society that conversion therapy is a relic of the past.
However, politicians involved in LGBT law reform say a legal approach to ending conversion therapy is complex.
“There’s not much that can be done to target these organisations specifically at a federal level, other than continuing to tighten anti-discrimination legislation and look at the applicability of consumer law,” Greens senator Robert Simms tells BuzzFeed News.
If providing the therapy was considered a breach of the Sex Discrimination Act, it’s likely that the religious exemptions in the Sex Discrimination Act would protect conversion therapy providers. Under Australian consumer law, the religious and not-for-profit aspects of most conversion therapy programs would mean they are not considered “commercial in nature”. While such laws could be tweaked, says Simms, it’s unlikely they could be used as a mechanism to eradicate the therapy altogether.
Graham Perrett, a co-chair of the Parliamentary Friends of LGBTI People Working Group, says a federal law banning conversion therapy may be unconstitutional.
“In terms of section 51 on the powers of the parliament, I can’t see any head of power that would give the federal parliament any capacity to make gay conversion therapy illegal in Australia,” he says.
There are some legal avenues under state and territory law as well, with acts in all jurisdictions outlawing advertising of health services that are deceptive or misleading. It could also be possible to lodge a complaint with the Australian Psychological Society that their code of ethics has been breached.
However, there is no black and white policy solution to immediately ending conversion therapy.
“It’s all just prejudice welded onto quackery packaged by a religious organisation,” says Perrett.
“I think education is the best antidote.”
Sebastien Bozon / AFP / Getty Images
De Joodt’s conversion journey reached a fork in 2005. His conversion counsellor at the time, CEO of Liberty Incorporated Paul Wegner, told him “I can help you suppress your sexual desires, but I can’t help you change your sexual orientation”.
“I was like, ‘Well, what’s the point?” says De Joodt. “If you take a ball and try to push it in a bucket of water and let go, it’s going to eventually pop up.”
He came out, lost “a lot of people”, and left his Pentecostal church. He went to the LGBT-friendly Metropolitan Catholic Church for a few years, and then stopped that, too. But God is still in his life.
“I have days where I feel like a Christian, and there are other days where I feel like I hate God,” he says.
“I think I’ve resolved my sexuality with my faith. If people want to be so small-minded as to think that you have to be straight to get into heaven then I think they’re going to get a big shock when they do get to heaven.”
A pause, and then: “I think God is bigger than the box you put God into.”
It’s because of this new understanding of faith, says De Joodt, that he doesn’t relapse into wanting to be straight again. “I’ve come to a point where I believe I need to be honest before myself, and before my God.”
“There’s a famous saying, isn’t there?” He thinks aloud. “Change what you can change and leave the rest to God? Or something like that. Accept the things you can’t change?”
A quick Google search later, it becomes apparent De Joodt was trying to recall the words of the Serenity Prayer, brought into popular culture by its widespread use in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change / The courage to change the things I can / And the wisdom to know the difference.
It took years of anguish, but finally, De Joodt has been granted that serenity. He knows the difference, too.
“If God wanted just another heterosexual, God could have created one, but instead God created me fabulous,” he says.
“My sexual orientation is something I cannot change.”
A spokesperson for Liberty Christian Ministries declined a request to be interviewed for this piece. Requests sent to Liberty Incorporated and Triumphant Ministries Toowoomba were not responded to.
