this is my boy!
http://www.ashlandwi.com/articles/2009/04/20/news/doc49ecbbb071c21416667630.txtthe link will take you to the first paragraphs and photos, but requires registration for the full article, hence the copy/paste
Transgender teen and his mom lobby for safe schoolsBy KAREN HOLLISH
Staff Writer
Published: Monday, April 20, 2009 2:13 PM CDT
Adrien Arnao was waiting in line to order his fast-food supper when the cashier said she was ready to take the next customer's order.
The man standing next to Arnao, a 15-year-old Washburn High School sophomore with short brown hair and a stocky build, tried to politely let Arnao go ahead.
"He can go —" the man started, then stopped in self-doubt. "They can go," he added, pausing again in uncertainty.
"She can go first," he finished.
For his part, Arnao was crushed.
"I just felt my heart drop to my feet," Arnao recalled. "He had it right, and then just gradually, every time he stopped, I just felt myself getting smaller and smaller."
Although disheartening, this is not an unusual occurrence for Arnao. While anatomically female and raised for the majority of his life as a girl, Arnao now identifies as a transgender male and has lived as a young man for about the last year and a half, he said.
Since he came out as transgender, Arnao and his mother, Amy Arnao, have been campaigning to make schools safer for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth. In late March, they were part of a group of 36 students and adults who represented the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) during four days of networking and lobbying in Washington, D.C.
The group paid for the Arnaos to attend the Safe Schools Advocacy Summit, during which they asked legislators to support the Safe Schools Improvement Act. The legislation would amend the federal Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act so it includes an anti-bullying policy that takes into account categories that are often bullying targets, including sexual orientation and gender identity/expression.
Before heading into the halls of Congress, the GLSEN folks coached Arnao and his peers on how to tell their own stories and put a face on why the amendment is needed. Their accounts included being verbally and physically threatened by their classmates, missing days of school because they felt unsafe, and being kicked out of their homes after revealing their sexual orientation or gender identity to their parents.
For Arnao, the highlight the trip was being part of a small group that met face-to-face with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
"I was terrified," Arnao recalled.
"He's a cabinet member, for God's sake — somebody who talks to Obama every week!" piped in his mom.
"So I walk in, and I'm nervous. I am like shaking," Arnao continued. "I don't know what to expect, and I am like, 'What am I doing here? Why isn't there somebody else with a better story here?'"
Coming out, at home and at schoolBut the small-town story of Arnao is actually quite compelling.
Arnao said that realizing he was transgender was a gradual process. It officially started about two years ago, when Adrien — whose name was then spelled Adrienne — told his mother he thought he was bisexual.
"I just looked at him and said, 'Adrien, I don't care if you're attracted to insects; you're 13 years old; you're too young to be in a relationship with anybody for any reason," his mom recalled.
About three seasons later, Adrien came back again, with a new announcement: This time, he thought he was a lesbian. Again, his mother's response was that that was fine, but he was still too young to be pairing up with anyone, regardless of his or her gender.
But then, several months later, came a harder-to-ignore proclamation.
"He said, 'I need to be a boy,'" Amy Arnao said. "And that was when I said, 'OK, this one's big. This is really big, because it's not just a matter of accepting an expression, it's a matter of real psychological and physical considerations to be made; it will have long-term and lifelong consequences."
Since his announcement, Arnao has been having regular telephone appointments with a Massachusetts gender therapist who, once she deems him ready, can give Arnao the go-ahead to start testosterone hormone replacement therapy. It's a course of action taken by many female-to-male transgender folks who want their body to look more masculine, so their external presentation better matches their internal gender perception.
Arnao said he also hopes down the road to have sex-reassignment surgery — specifically, a double mastectomy — which is a necessary step before he changes his birth certificate to say he's male under Wisconsin law.
Arnao's mother has been supportive throughout all of this, he said, although the reaction to his being transgender has been more mixed at school.
In April of last year, Arnao organized a local Day of Silence, a nationwide event in which participants take a vow of silence to protest the bullying and harassment of LGBT and other marginalized student groups. Arnao said that this year, the event will happen in Washburn on Friday, April 27.
Last year, when a different principal was in place, Arnao said he had a difficult time orchestrating the event. But this year, Principal Peggy Ryan is working to ensure that he and other students are able to express their views, he said. Ryan said the district is not endorsing or opposing the Day of Silence; rather, it is working to ensure free speech rights are observed.
When he walked into school last year, he was met by four large upperclassmen wearing T-shirts with a rainbow — a symbol frequently used by the LGBT movement — over which an "anti" sign was superimposed. About a dozen students wore the shirts, which they said meant they had "no support" for homosexuals.
Besides that backlash, Arnao said it's been an uphill battle to get all of his teachers to consistently use male pronouns when referring to him, although it has been getting better.
He said he's seen some staff members turn the other way when they overhear students using terms like "gay" and "queer" as an insult, and that's one reason he wants the federal Safe Schools law revised, so that teachers will receive training about how to respond to such remarks.
But his most fundamental problem — and one that's significantly contributed to his missing a fair amount of school — is that he's had a hard time finding a reliable and safe place to go to the bathroom, he said.
Principal Ryan said that she is working with Arnao to establish a permanent bathroom Arnao can use.
"I have maintained an open door policy for ALL students, and encourage them to come to me to speak about any and all issues that concern them," Ryan said in an e-mail. "I have encouraged Adrien to bring his concerns to me, and am confident that I have responded to his needs promptly, as I do for all students."
Changing the larger school climate so it's more inclusive, though, is going to take some time, the Arnaos said.
"You know, if this was easy, it wouldn't need doing," Amy Arnao said. "It would already be done."
A growing bond back homeDespite the regular challenges he faces, Arnao said that hearing the stories of other kids in Washington, D.C. made him glad he lives where and with whom he does.
He recalled one student, from a southern city, who was afraid to go into his school's bathroom when he was only 10 years old because he would get physically abused.
"He had to teach himself to go throughout the entire day without using the bathroom," Arnao said.
Another friend, he said, was kicked out onto the streets when she was 12 because of her sexual orientation.
So, Arnao said, he learned that it could be worse.
"We all put up walls, but whether or not it's reinforced, whether or not it's complete and you don't let anybody in, depends on your day-to-day life," he said.
Asked about supportive influences, Arnao said the Alliance group at Northland College has provided a safe space in which he can talk about gender and sexuality issues. And he's looking forward to the upcoming first meeting of Washburn's newly formed chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), which was founded by Messiah Lutheran Church Pastor Nancy Hanson.
Hanson said she loves the organization's mission to end discrimination and secure civil rights, and that she supports its goal of working toward full inclusion LGBT people in their chosen faith communities. She said she easily found people from Bayfield, Cornucopia, Port Wing and Washburn who have a similar interest in "justice for all."
"We met a few times and decided that forming a local PFLAG chapter would be a great way for us to offer support and to become more educated ourselves," she said in a press release.
While Amy Arnao has pledged to support her son throughout his transition, it hasn't always been a completely smooth process back at home, he said.
His older brother, for example, was initially reluctant to accept Adrien's transition from girl to boy.
"He said 'Look, I'm open-minded, and I accept you, but you are always going to be my sister,'" Adrien said.
But over time, his brother's outlook changed.
"One day, after he started getting the male pronouns down, I said, 'Do you see me as your brother, your sister or your sibling?'" Arnao recalled. "He said, 'I see you as my sibling becoming my brother,' and I held onto that high for weeks."
Amy Arnao gave her son some crisp advice for how to handle well-meaning but misled strangers, such as the man at the fast-food restaurant, who mistake Arnao for a girl.
"All you have to say is, 'My momma calls me son,'" she said.
