11:06pm February 1, 2012

➸ Via Unicorn Booty: "A desperate plea from an 11-year-old transgender girl in Germany has lit up the interwebs today. Her father, backed by an anti-gay organization, intends to commit her to a mental institution in the impossible hope of changing her gender identity through internationally denounced quack medicine." Click through to sign a Change.org petition.

dammitjean:

SIGNAL BOOST. Please sign this, folks.

Signal boost signal boost signal boost signal boost.

Definitely sign this. Because it’s horribly wrong. But then hope for a world where every 11-year-old facing involuntary commitment, can raise this degree of international fuss. Because it wouldn’t be better if it was because she had a psychiatric diagnosis that wasn’t about being LGBT.

I still remember the sting of what happened at the LGBT community center when I casually mentioned being in mental institutions. Someone did this incredibly loud gasping noise and said “Because you were a LESBIAN?!?!?!!” The entire room tensed up. When I informed them that I was locked up for being crazy and autistic, the tension went away. I think someone might have even said “That’s okay then.” No, actually, it wasn’t okay for any of us. That was my first of many clues that the LGBT community would never be “home” for me or other disabled people the way it was for others.

Every time I see an outcry over this happening because someone is trans, or gay, or even just “misdiagnosed”, I think “Good, great, but where’s the outcry when it happens to people still designated as crazy, or DD, or physically disabled, or old, when we get put in our various institutions?”

I don’t want to take away from what’s happening to this one girl. I just want it to not happen to the rest of us either.

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