 "Photo: Mike Lavers - Staff Photographer")
"Jane" is a 15-year-old freshman at Portsmouth High School. She is an honors student and enjoys painting, drawing, photography and drama when she is not in class.
On the outside she may appear to be like most teen-agers who like to go shopping for clothes at the mall or hang out with friends after school. Yet for "Jane," the fact she identifies as transgender has caused her ridicule and harassment at the hands of many of her classmates and peers.
"It's hard to get up in the morning and have nothing to look forward to during the day," she said as she described her school as having a "poisonous atmosphere." "I've become an item at my school [because] everyone is looking at me."
"Jane" was one of five young people from the Portsmouth-based Seacoast Outright and its counterpart in Portland, Maine who presented a workshop at the second annual New Hampshire Transgender Resources for Education and Empowerment (TREE) summit held this past weekend at the MUB.
More than 70 people from UNH and from around the state gathered for the three- day conference, which featured more than 20 workshops discussing a variety of topics, including coming out as transgender to family members, being transgender in the workforce and cosmetic issues such as hair removal.
One person who presented a workshop was Capt. Paul Dean of the UNH Police Department. He talked about how he feels police officers don't know how to treat transgender people during traffic stops and other interactions.
He also said he thinks many of his colleagues in the police department don't have the right information about transgender people and the issues he says they face every day.
"Law enforcement is not providing tools to law enforcement people to do the job," Dean said as he talked about things the police can do to better understand transgender people. "Police officers can't afford to have prejudices [because] we're here for everybody."
This thought was shared by Peter Welch, a health and wellness educator who served as one of the co-chairs of the summit. He said he feels transgender people have a lot to contribute to society.
"TREE is a perfect metaphor to describe about what I know about the transgender community," he said as he discussed the summit's theme: Building Bridges and Forging Communities. "They stand tall and plant deep roots."
A sense of community is something that motivated Joelle Ruby Ryan, a former student in the English and women's studies departments who is now working on her doctorate at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, to establish New Hampshire TREE last year. She said she feels this year's summit accomplished the goals she had in mind when she created the organization.
"I want to make the transgender community in New Hampshire more connected to the Boston and [the] gay, lesbian and bisexual community [in the state]," she said as she discussed the summit, which also included a screening of her documentaries "A Transgendered Path" and "TransAmazon: A Gender Queer Journey." "This can be accomplished with raising more awareness and having people more connected."
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