Bachelor/Bachelorette Auction at Franky B's this Saturday

This Saturday, April 30th, PFY is holding a Bachelor/Bachelorette Auction at Franky B's Roadhouse Bar & Grill in Bellmore.

There will be four gay bachelors and four gay bachelorette's, each with exciting date packages including Trapeze school lessons, Broadway shows and roller derby tickets.

Doors open at 8:00pm, the auction starts promptly at 10:30pm, and the door is only $10. All proceeds will be dedicated to sustaining our homophobia and LGBT bullying education in Long Island schools. This event is strictly for 21 and over.

Addressing the Treatment of LGBT Students: A DASA Forum

Last Thursday, April 14th, Nassau BOCES sponsored a special forum for school administrators on the subject of the NYS Dignity for All Students Act (DASA). The featured speakers were Pride for Youth's very own Director Pete Carney and Long Island Crisis Center Associate Executive Director Andy Peters.

Twenty administrators--representing fifteen districts from Oceanside to Shirley--attended. The main purpose was to familiarize school officials with new regulations to render school environments free of discrimination, harassment and bullying. Fought for by LGBT student advocates, DASA is the state's first safe schools legislation to include "sexual orientation" and "gender identity or expression" in a list of protected categories, along with race, gender, religion and many others.

As such, it is the first law that requires schools to have policies and practices that specifically address discrimination and harassment against LGBT students.

Pete and Andy's presentation covered an overview of DASA, legal aspects of anti-LGBT harassment, the prevalence of bullying and best practices for protecting students. The presentation was interspersed with profiles of gay students who were victims of bullying and committed suicide over the past year, including Tyler Clementi and Seth Walsh.

For more information on this topic, contact PCarney@longislandcrisiscenter.org.

My Experience on TLC's What Not To Wear

by Jill Estes, Community Educator

When I was nominated for TLC’s show What Not To Wear, I was at first quite a bit offended. But after the experience I am grateful to have been part of it. The show aired last Tuesday, March 22nd. For a one-hour show, there was an incredible amount of work that went on behind the scenes.
The week of filming and shopping was long, exhausting and fun. That week made me realize a lot of things about myself that I wouldn’t have looked at if I weren’t forced to.

When I first arrived I thought this would be a great opportunity to have some time away from my busy schedule and relax. I immediately realized that was not the case. I also had the assumption that this was solely about my clothing and style. This too was not the case. The week of filming and shopping was a long and tiring one, but an experience I am lucky to have. I can’t count the amount of interviews, the amount of taxi’s I took, or the amount of stores I shopped in.

One major challenge on the show was to find clothing that was “work appropriate” but still felt like me. The show’s hosts, Stacy London and Clinton Kelly, brought up a very valid point. When I dressed for work I did my best to hide my tattoos. Being that one main focus of the work I do is spreading the message to be true to yourself, and that nobody needs to conform to society’s mold, I was acting hypocritical for many years by covering myself up so much when I went out into the community. We agreed to find a happy medium.

The biggest challenge was finding clothes that didn’t make me feel uncomfortable in my own skin. My gender identity was a major conflict with many of the outfits they made me try on. I fall under the transgender umbrella as a gender bender who loves appearing androgynous. Although I am quite comfortable identifying as female, I do not feel comfortable in over feminized clothing. Every time they would put me in ruffles or floral prints I would shriek. During the countless interviews I was consistently asked why I didn’t feel comfortable in most women’s clothing. And I consistently answered that “I felt like I was dressing in drag”. Luckily, by the end of the week, I was able to find a wardrobe that met that happy medium and was true to my androgynous nature.

This experience made me take a long hard look at my inner workings. Here I am, a 29 year old confident woman doing valuable work in the community, yet I was hiding myself. I was forced to examine why this is. The outcome revealed that rather than hiding my body art when dressing for work, or feeling uncomfortable in over feminized clothing, I could find a wardrobe that works with my “permanent accessories” and keeps true to my personality.

The show didn’t air until about two months after the filming. I spent that two months growing worried as to how the producers would portray me, and enjoying my new wardrobe and hair cut, of course. They had so much footage of me that they could make me look like anybody they wanted. When I finally saw the show I was relieved to see that the producers really let the audience know who I am.

Being on TLC’s What Not To Wear was a life changing experience for me. Not too often in life am I forced to look deep inside for answers. By taking this deep look, I found some weaknesses that I could work on, and much new strength that I never knew I had. Over all I am very happy with the outcome of this major life transformation. I also must admit that shopping, which I used to despise, I now love and can’t seem to get enough of!

The Vagina Monologues

by Becca Harrington, Social Work Intern

In 1998, on Valentine’s Day, Eve Ensler and a group of women started V-Day as a non-profit organization to empower women and stop the violence that so many of them endure. Now, every year during February, March, and April, Eve Ensler gives the rights of her play, the Vagina Monologues, to groups all over the world to perform, in an effort to raise money that will benefit local agencies fighting to stop the violence against women.

On March 13th, Long Islander Laura Ruhl pulled together a cast of amazing women to honor and be a voice for all women who have faced violence simply because of their sexual anatomy. Proceeds were split up between five agencies on the Island: Pride for Youth, F.E.G.S. Positive Space, Thursday’s Child, Auntie M’s Helping Hands, and the Anti-Violence Project of Long Island.

When Laura came to Pride for Youth and explained her vision, I was ready to join the ranks. It was an honor and a privilege to work with a group of wonderful women and spread the funny, horrible, tragic, intellectual, and insightful stories of women from all over the world who are violence survivors.

For me, participating in the Vagina Monologues was about standing in solidarity with straight women, lesbian women, bisexual women, transwomen – all women – and expressing the pain that we have endured for thousands of years. It was also greatly empowering to speak frankly about the vagina, stripping away the shame and guilt that women are often forced to carry.

You might be asking what does this all have to do with the LGBT community? Well, the shame, guilt, and violence that women experience are also what many LGBT people experience. LGBT youth are sexually harassed, assaulted, taunted, and bullied daily at school, in the media, and even on the internet. LGBT people, in general, are surrounded by a society that promotes a heterosexual agenda in which being LGBT is something that happens to you and needs to be fixed. It is not that far from the idea that women are less valuable than any man and she is only capable of doing and being what is deemed appropriate. LGBT people and female-bodied individuals both live a society in which they can count on being a victim more than they can count being safe.

I want to thank Laura Ruhl for allowing me to be part of her production and for generously donating some of the proceeds to Pride for Youth.

Tune in to TLC's What Not To Wear Tonight!!

Tonight is the big night! Be sure to check out the brand new episode of What Not to Wear at 9pm on TLC, featuring PFY’s very own Community Educator, Jill Estes, getting a fabulous makeover. Filming took place in this past December and January and PFY was used as a location! Be sure to keep an eye out for some “cameos” from some other PFY staff, alumni and participants. Congratulations Jill on this exciting opportunity!