Posted inGay Teen

The Semicolon Project is Awesome – Here’s Why

A semicolon represents a time where you could finish a sentence, but you choose to just add a little more. It’s become not just a cliché, but an empowering battle cry for people dealing with depression and thoughts of suicide. It’s always unfortunate to hear about someone thinking about such a tragic topic, but it definitely happens more than you might think. In the LGBT community, many teens struggle with body image, fitting in, and trying to be accepted. When you have a stable support circle willing to take care of you, then this is pretty easy. But when you struggle to find people that love and care for you, it can be hard to even get out of bed in the morning. Some people lose their battle with depression, choosing to end their lives in order to stop the pain completely. It’s a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but when that temporary problem is all you can think of, it takes over your life.

semicolon-project

The Semicolon Project is about drawing a permanent or temporary semicolon somewhere that you can see it. It’s a reminder to yourself that while you could choose to end your life, it’s so amazing that you choose to keep going.

Posted inGay Teen

3 Ways Caitlin Jenner’s Story Reveals How Much We Have to Do

Think that the fight for our rights is over just because Caitlin Jenner has a docu-series on TV right now? That couldn’t be any farther from the truth. The reality is that we have to keep speaking up. While we admire Ms. Jenner’s boldness, the truth is that there are still thousands upon thousands of people that are still silently suffering. After all, not everyone has the money to go through facial reconstruction and body shaping to finally look the way on the outside that they feel on the inside. They feel female on the inside, but they can’t express that because surgery costs too much. Hormones are expensive. Things are super difficult for them, and there’s no guarantee that they’ll have the support of their family. Many transgendered teens are still threatened with eviction if their status were discovered by their parents.

Here are three key points that show we have a lot of work to do.

1. Lack of Counseling for Transgendered Teens

Counseling is still a major issue in terms of helping transpeople, especially transgendered teenagers. This is a very hectic and complicated time of life, because many relationships depend on the teen having a positive state of mind. The connections we make as teens can really open doors for us, but if you’re spending all of your time worrying about what others are thinking about you it’s hard to get anything done.

Posted inGay Teen

The Hard Truth About Returning Home For the Holidays as an LGBT Youth

Growing up is hard for any child, but making the transition from teenager to young adult as an LGBT youth is even harder. The level of discrimination that’s allowed is absolutely ridiculous. Just when you believe that you have things under control, someone else comes in to stereotype and degrade you. But thankfully, things have gotten better for many LGBT people. We’re on TV, in newspapers, represented in the sciences, and just about anywhere else that we want to be. Hollywood has realized that unflattering portrayals of LGBT people aren’t acceptable, and that’s really improved the image of this community tremendously.

Yet there’s one part of life that hasn’t seemed to change all that much, and that would be the families that we moved away from in order to pursue work or school. When you return home for the holidays, you may have found things have changed.

For example, if you have a significant other, they may not be welcome at the house. Before you take the time to book travel accommodations, you need to have a serious talk with your family. They need to meet the people that matter in your life, but you also need to realize that you can’t force them to change. If you encourage them to open their minds a little bit, you’ll go further than condemning them for being homophobes or transphobes.