4 ▼ January 10, 1998 ▼ just out
66
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6594055
Mentorship project
will continue
To the Editor:
I am writing in response to your article regard
ing Multnomah County’s intention to cut funding
for the PRIDE Mentorship Project [“Are you my
mentor?” Just Out, Dec. 5, 1997]. The article
seems to have given your readers the wrong
impression, namely that the possibility of con
necting queer youth with a caring and responsible
adult in a healthy and safe way is no longer
available.
Despite the significant strides made by queer
and trans adults in our society today, the fact
remains that many queer and questioning youth
continue to grow up in a hostile homophobic and
ageist environment. As queer and trans adults, we
have been working passionately to develop, fos
ter and celebrate a culture of our own, but it seems
that in the process we have inadvertently failed to
provide opportunities for a dialogue between
young people and “the rest of us.” It is our
responsibility to demonstrate that queer-positive
adults do exist and do care about the greater
interest of queer, trans and questioning youth. It
should be our obligation to invest in the futures of
these talented and resilient young people.
The fact that Multnomah County committed
to developing and maintaining the PRIDE
Mentorship Project for one and a half years holds
promise. In fact, the committed volunteers com
prising the PRIDE Mentorship Project have spent
a great deal of time and energy living up to that
promise. The mere presence of the 11 volunteers
who have actually passed through the compre
hensive application and screening process sends
a strong message to queer, trans and questioning
youth. These volunteers are ready to spend some
quality, non-judgmental and safe time with youth
in hopesof buffering the damage our homophobic
culture has inflicted on them.
If there is one point that has been made clear
by the program thus far, it is that this process of
outreach, assessment and matching of youth with
a compatible mentor is not an easy one. It is
imperative that the critics of this model under
stand that we are working with young adults who
have been dealing with complex issues most of
their lives. A great deal of time and energy goes
into making a quality match. The program’s five
successful matches speak to the importance of
investing this time.
With or without the county’s support, Phoenix
Rising's board of directors intends to continue the
PRIDE Mentorship Project and to send the mes
sage to queer, trans and questioning youth that
caring and responsible adults are out there.
Brandt Rigby, Coordinator
PRIDE Mentorship Project
The Surgeon General
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Liar, liar
To the Editor:
With the publication of Mary Ann Stover’s
review of Daphne Scholinski’s book The Last
Time I Wore a Dress [“Gender Hostage,” Dec. 19,
1997] Just Out has removed my last doubts as to
whether Renée LaChance understands the mean
ing of the term “journalistic integrity.”
Gender identity disorder is the diagnosis a
transsexual must have in order to receive sex
reassignment surgery in the United States—but
the word “transsexual” doesn’t appear even once
in the full page of unsubstantiated claims malign
ing our diagnosis. Instead, individuals with this
life-threatening disorder are characterized merely
as adults “who want to change gender.”
What’s the matter, Just Out— afraid your read
ers might catch on to the absurdity of gay and
lesbian youth supposedly being labeled with the
diagnosis for transsexualism?
For more than five years the National Center
for Lesbian Rights has waged a campaign to
eradicate medical recognition of transsexualism,
masking its goal by claiming—à la Lon Mabon
and the Oregon Citizens Alliance—to be con
cerned for children. And like the OCA, the NCLR
and its allies have shown themselves willing to
stoop to calumny and deceit to effect their goal.
Where are the “tens of thousands of kids” that
Scholinski and Stover and Just Out claim are
institutionalized with GID? Solely in Scholinski’s
imagination, where they reside with her other lies.
Stover’s review reports that “In [Scholinski’s]
years of being incarcerated, she says, nobody ever
asked her if she were gay.”
Oh, really? Then why almost exactly halfway
through her book does Scholinski go on for page
after page about how she wrote in her journal that
she liked girls and then was grilled by a psychia
trist about whether she liked girls or was attracted
to boys?
The more Scholinski opens her mouth the
more she becomes entangled in her web of de
ceit—but instead of bothering with anything re
motely resembling investigative journalism, Just
Out is content to parrot her lies.
I n the 1970s lesbian-fem inist theologian J anice
Raymond claimed that medical recognition and
treatment of transsexualism posed a threat to the
continued existence of women, and wrote, “I
contend that the problem of transsexualism would
best be served by morally mandating it out of
existence.”
Raymond’s hate-mongering was seized upon
by lesbian feminists across the United States to
justify their discrimination against male-to-fe-
male transsexuals. It’s the ’90s now, and even
lesbian-feminists can’t help but have noticed the
half billion or so more women living on Earth, so
now the excuse for targeting the diagnosis for
transsexualism is a rehash of Mabon’s “Child
Protection Act” campaign.
The transsexual struggle to obtain sex-reas
signment services through the Oregon Health
Plan has been repeatedly reported by the Orego
nian, Willamette Week and Portland television
stations—and not a word in Just Out.
What’s the matter, Renée? Are you too incom
petent to report the news, or are you just another
bigot willing to repeat lies in order to do away
with medical recognition of transsexualism?
Margaret Deirdre O’Hartigan
Portland
Let the dialogue begin
To the Editor:
As a transsexual who was a victim of psychi
atric assault as a teenager, I applaud Daphne
Scholinski for her courageous work on this issue.
Let us hope that her book is a fatal blow to the hate
rhetoric of those who say that this kind of abuse
either doesn’t happen or is just well-deserved
“treatment” that only happens for the benefit of
the victims.
Let us also hope that it encourages dialogue
and collaboration between queer, transgender,
transsexual and psychiatric-survivor activists, so
we can all work together to put a stop to psychi
atric abuse of youth as well as the institutionalized
exploitation of transsexuals by the psychiatric
industry.
The present state of affairs for transsexuals is
a double bind. Insurance companies refuse to pay
for even medically necessary surgery, as if it were
merely cosmetic/elective. Even though several
major court decisions in the ’70s mandated that
Medicare pay for sex-reassignment surgery, ev
ery state was somehow able to amend its Medi
care statutes to specifically exclude SRS.
At the same time, we’re forced to undergo
psychotherapy to be “approved” for hormones,
surgery and legal status as our new gender, as if
transsexualism were a “mental illness." Obvi
ously the motivating force behind this exploita
tion and neglect is money. It is not likely that
changing or eliminating the label of gender iden-