Offensive Seventeen Magazine Article: 'My Boyfriend Turned Out to be a Girl'

Autumn Sandeen has a great blog post at Pam's House Blend about an article in the November issue of Seventeen Magazine, "My Boyfriend Turned Out to be a Girl."

While transphobia obviously is nothing new in the media, it is rather shocking to see such a blantant example in the decision to publish this article without any perspective of what it is like to be a transgender youth. As Autumn points out, via GLSEN's research report on the experiences of trangender students in school, Harsh Realities:

• Two-thirds of transgender students felt unsafe in school because of their sexual orientation (69%) and how they expressed their gender (65%).
• Almost all transgender students had been verbally harassed (e.g., called names or threatened) in the past year at school because of their sexual orientation (89%) and gender expression (87%).
• More than half of all transgender students had been physically harassed (e.g., pushed or shoved) in school in the past year because of their sexual orientation (55%) and gender
  expression (53%).
• More than a quarter of transgender students had been physically assaulted (e.g., punched, kicked or injured with a weapon) in school in the past year because of their sexual orientation (28%) and gender expression (26%).
• Most transgender students (54%) who were victimized in school did not report the events to school authorities. Among those who did report incidents to school personnel, few students (33%) believed that staff addressed the situation effectively.

Seventeen has previously written positively about the Day of Silence and written an article about a former GLSEN national student leader, but after this article it's hard to defend the publication's record on LGBT youth unless they try to make things right and publish a story about the issues and harassment facing transgender youth (with a positive portrayal of a trans youth, of course).

Short of that, even an apology isn't good enough.

A Facebook group has started to encourage a letter writing campaing. Go join and tell your friends.

Queerty also has a good blog post.

Ally Week Tweeting Contest

Cross-posted from blog.glsen.org:

This year, ALLY Week has been awesome. We have read many stories from school wide events to students tabling at lunch, from GSAs wearing all yellow to organizations honoring local allies.

Now we want to continue the outreach online over the next day and a half with our ALLY WEEK Tweeting Contest. Lets see who can tweet the most about Ally Week! Get a point for each tweet you post about Ally Week, it must include #allyweek. The contest will run until midnight PST (3am EST) Friday. Only 5 Winners will get an Ally week T-shirt, wristband, and a copy of Brother Outsider.

Here are the rules!

1. Tweets of only #allyweek will only be accepted once an hour
Ex: dayofsilence: #allyweek #allyweek #allyweek = 1PT

2. Points are for tweets containing #allyweek, not the number of times you mention Ally Week within your tweets.
Ex. dayofsilence: OMG I just got 47 more pledges for Ally Week! Ally Week is so great, I love Ally Week! #allyweek = 1PT

3. Tweets must be ABOUT ally week:
Doesn’t count: dayofsilence: It’s gloomy outside and looks like it might rain, and I’m worried soccer practice will be cancelled #allyweek. = 0PT
Counts: dayofsilence: It’s gloomy outside and looks like it might rain, and I’m worried that our #allyweek activity will be cancelled. = 1PT

4. You can retweet another’s Ally Week post only once.

CONTEST STARTS NOW!!!