We should promote the dignity, equality, freedom, and increased visibility of all sexual, gender, and bodily minorities every day. But June, aka Pride Month, is an especially important time for allies and members of the LGBTQIA+ community to recognize and celebrate the profound influence queer people, both living and passed, have had around the world. This year, NYC’s Pride March was proactively cancelled to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. Unfortunately, this disappointment does not hold a candle to the law just passed that will silently murder members of this community. On June 12th, 2020, new legislation erased civil rights protections for transgender people seeking medical care. In clear violation of the Hippocratic Oath, health care providers are no longer required to provide and cover medically appropriate treatment for transgender patients. In light of this injustice, Relation-Shift curated a comprehensive resource list to help you learn more about this diverse community as well as ways you can support the LGBTQIA+ youth in your life during these difficult times.
Resources for LGBTQ+ youth generally:
🌈 Sortable Resource Library from the Safe School Coalition Read up on school-based violence, dating violence, cyberbullying, and LGBTQ history! Sort by topic, location, and your role (parent, educator, activist, and more!).
🌈 Comprehensive* List of LGBTQ+ Vocabulary Refer to this glossary for specific gender and sexual identity-related words and their meanings to make conversations with youth in your life easier and more comfortable.
🌈 Being an Ally to LGBT People Learn what it means to be an ally and how you can support LGBTQ youth in our community in this straightforward article. Check out Youth Engaged 4 Change’s Blog and Instagram for more information!
🌈 How Educators, Parents, and Family Members Can Support LGBTQ Youth Whatever your role, get some targeted advice about being an ally from Lamba Legal, a national non-profit advancing LGBT youth through impact litigation, education, and public policy work.
🌈 Suggestions for drafting safe school policies for LGBTQ+ youth Learn how you can modify your school’s policy to provide all students protection from harassment and discrimination on the basis of actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity or expression.
Resources for Transgender youth:
🌈 Tips for Allies of Transgender People Read GLADD’s 17 best tips to become a better ally to transgender people in this concise and compelling article.
🌈 Report about the Harsh Realities of Transgender Youth from GLSEN Did you know that more than 2/3rds of transgender students feel unsafe in school because of their sexual orientation and how they expressed gender? Share this harrowing statistic, unfortunately one of many, in this brief to motivate change and help schools transform into inclusive environments where all students can learn safely.
🌈 Fact Sheet for Supporting Transgender Youth in Schools What is gender identity? What does it mean to be transgender or gender nonconforming? How do these identities impact students’ K-12 experience? Learn more from this fact sheet created by the Sylvia Rivera Law Project.
🌈 Report about violence against transgender people of color from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) At this moment, transgender women of color are living in crisis. Over the past several years, more than 150 transgender people have been killed in the US, nearly all of them Black transgender women. Read this report to learn more about this epidemic and what you can do to help right now.
🌈 Freely download and read about the experience of being a mother of a transgender girl in Just Evelyn’s novel, “Mom, I just need to be a girl”