LGBTQ youth and public health
[Applause]
thank you everyone for coming
it’s quite a great opportunity to follow
up
president wyatt it’s kind of a big deal
right i’m an undergrad student here so
that was quite the
compliment so today i’m going to be
discussing
the lgbtq youth and public health
so just a little bit about myself i’m a
political science major here at
suu i’m also a bridge student
for the masters in public administration
so i do that for fun
right like i already don’t have a big
workload
i was born and raised in st george utah
and
um i am the youngest out of four girls
and that’s me right there i put an
arrow but yeah at one point i did have
long hair and it’s okay you can laugh
it’s a joke
so here’s a little bit of a timeline of
my coming out so in 2013 i was a
sophomore in high school and i came out
to my father
my stepmother my mom my three older
sisters and
my friends in high school and my high
school itself but i was still
closeted i didn’t tell my extended
family
so in 2016 i was a freshman at schu
and i came out on facebook to all my
family members and i was fully out to
both sides of my family
and now it’s 2020 i just recently got my
associate
of science at suu and i’m out to the
world here i am today
doing this ted talk so before i get
started i kind of just want to go over
some terms i think when people hear
lgbtq they’re like well what does all
that stand for well you have lesbian gay
bisexual transgender and queer
and just a side note for some of the
statistics and data i’ll be going over
it will be we’ll be referring to
transgender as folks who are someone
else whose gender identity
someone whose gender identity differs
from the one that they were assigned to
at birth
and cisgender just means a person whose
gender identity matches the gender they
were assigned at birth so for example
i’m cisgender i identify as a woman and
i was assigned female at birth
so i just want to discuss a little bit
about discrimination especially with
this particular community
it can happen on an individual basis it
can happen on a community basis it can
happen institutionally and it can happen
systematically
so on the right here i have the human
rights campaign there
are definition terms for some of the
trials that we face
and you have homophobia transphobia and
biphobia
also there’s disparities that this
community faces
discrimination mental health housing
instability
health care abuse and suicide
so this summer an amazing survey was
conducted by the trevor project
and it was conducted with about four
thousand youth
as respondents ages 13 to 24 and this
was conducted in the united states this
is the largest survey that’s ever been
conducted to talk about mental health
for lgbtq youth
so it’s very very relevant to my
conversation today
as well as my personal philosophy in
life is that data provides
insight so we’re going to go over some
of the
data that they found with the survey
starting with mental health 40
of lgbtq respondents seriously
considered attempting suicide
in the past 12 months 48 of lgbtq youth
reported engaging in self-harm in the
past 12 months
46 of lgbtq youth report that they
wanted
psychological or emotional counseling
from a mental health professional
that but they were unable to receive it
in the past 12 months now that’s an
important one i want you to remember
that one if you get anything out of this
68 of lgbtq youth report
symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder
so now i’m going to move over to abuse
and discrimination
10 of lgbtq youth reported undergoing
conversion therapy
with 78 reporting that it occurred to
them when they were under 18.
one in three lgbtq youth reported that
they have been physically threatened
or harmed in their lifetime due to their
lgbtq identity
29 of lgbtq youth have experienced
homelessness
they’ve been kicked out or they’ve run
away and 61
of transgender and non-binary youth
report being prevented or discouraged
from using the bathrooms
that correspond with their gender
identity
so that’s more of the national level
right and now i want to scale things
down i want to talk about utah
specifically and scale it down a little
bit here so here
i have the human rights campaign and
their state score index
and it kind of just ranks us with other
the other 50 states to where we stand
with lgbtq rights
with our policies and our statewide laws
so we
scored a building quality of 20 in 2019
which is pretty good
um as you can see from what i’ve listed
here the green is stuff that we do have
protections for in utah
and x is what we don’t so there’s still
a lot of work to be done
for this community
so this is a hard one right suicide um
utah um we’re the fifth highest suicide
rate in the nation from ages 10 to 17.
it’s from the salt lake tribune where i
got that and for
a lot of reasons we obviously don’t have
the demographics to what their
identities were
um death certificates do not display
that information
but i have to ask myself youth are dying
at alarming rates and how many of them
are lgbtq youth there’s a lot of reasons
to why suicide
may be coming to these youth and they it
feels like an option right maybe it’s
stemming from rejection from peers
from family from community and another
thing is a lack of resources and support
utah also has an issue with homelessness
with lgbtq youth
according to the outreach resource
center in salt lake city more than 50
percent of homeless youth they serve
are lgbtq youth so this is happening in
our own state
it’s not just something you see on the
news these are real
people utahns
so you’re probably wondering what’s an
ally what does that mean what does that
mean to someone like myself who is a
part of this community
and i would say that people who are not
lgbtq themselves
and typically an ally would be someone
who is not lgbt
lgbtq but they showed an enormous amount
to advance the cause
for lgbtq equality an ally can show
support
for their friends their co-workers their
classmates their neighbors
their religious folk in their community
and their family members
so how do you be an ally well i would
argue that it takes education
and it never really stops even for
myself i’m still educating myself every
day
when it comes to the transgender
community it takes actively listening
to those folks listening to their
stories listening to their experiences
listening to the disparity they might
experience in our society
third one is advocate this is really a
big one right be a political advocate
stand up for lgbtq rights even if
there’s not a single person
in the audience who is lgbtq stand up
for us even when we’re not in the same
room
and the fourth one is very special it’s
respect and you would think that would
be obvious but
respect is certainly something that
needs to occur between our peers
and everyone and i bring that up because
in this next slide
[Music]
it says that from this data that they
did
what um they say transgender and
non-binary youth
who report having their pronouns
respected there’s that word again
by all or most people in their lives
attempted suicide at half the rate of
those
who did not have their pronouns
respected so respect
equals so much to the lgbtq community
it’s literally livelihood at stake
so what can you do so this is my
personal philosophy of how i view
this really intersectional complex thing
but tolerance towards lgbtq loved ones
isn’t enough
celebration and unconditional love is
the answer if we want to help
bring down these suicide rates and start
being there for our lgbtq family
especially in utah we need to create
shifts in our family
and our communities from rural to urban
because lgbtq folks
they exist not just in the big cities
they also exist in small rural
cedar city as well and i believe that
empathy connects us all
so here’s what i am putting down my
platform of how i feel that we can
combat the disparities that are
happening to our
lgbtq youth i say we invest in social
equity programs affordable health care
and the accessibility that comes with
that mental health therapy services
reproductive health care donate and
volunteer to lgbtq non-profit
organizations
include comprehensive sex education
which is inclusive to those of different
sexualities so that we can prevent stds
and stis and hiv
with our youth promote healthy
relationships
and discuss contraceptives and consent
anti-bullying programs in public school
we need to protect our lgbtq
teachers we need to protect our gsa
clubs if you know what if you don’t know
what gsa means it means k street
alliance which is
pretty much a pride in equality club
essentially like what we have here at
suu
another one is to platform lgbtq voices
and stories so right now
i’m doing that so congrats to our
amazing
crew for having me and a lesbian woman
come speak and platform and tell my
story
being politically active this goes back
to
vote as if your lgbtq
loved ones life depends on it that’s a
huge thing
you gotta you gotta put your money where
your mouth is
and the last one is legal protections
from discrimination it’s time we add
gender identity and sexual orient
sexual orientation to the civil rights
act of 1964 because there’s loopholes
and lgbtq people are experiencing
discrimination because of that
legal loophole and it’s time we changed
that
thank you so much for coming to my ted
talk
and i hope you enjoyed the rest of unity
and in diversity
- thank you
you