This is about those suicides--so please don't read it, if it's going to make it harder for you to get through your day in one piece. In fact, if that's you, you should stop reading now, and maybe go have a look at the It Gets Better Project, instead (http://www.youtube.com/user/itgetsbetterproject)--or call the Trevor Project (www.trevorproject.org, or 1-866-4U-TREVOR)--or even get in touch with S. Bear Bergman, happy 36-y-o transman with a family (I'm not posting that info here, but you can find it where he did, on Twitter).

It's just: these are things I have difficulty voicing publicly, without getting the are-you-saying-white-gay-cis-men-and-boys-killing-themselves-isn't-horrible death stare. And because it needs saying: of course, it's horrible.

It's just that it's also horrible when women and trans people and people of color are murdered, or harassed into suicide--who's talking about Aiyisha Hassan? Victoria White? It's that I spent two hours at Wichita's Coming Out Day--the two hours before the candle-light vigil, and then I left, because I was thinking too hard about the closeted friend, smart, cynical, transmasculine, of color, an advocate for everyone except herself, who shot herself less than a year ago; who I miss endlessly, daily; who would never have qualified for this kind of media coverage. Who, in fact, didn't.

It's that any memorial where we name our dead leaves out the countless unnamed ones who were too scared, or young, or inarticulate to name themselves, or whose parents covered it up, or whose deaths were misconstrued as accidents, or who were simply not white-cis-affluent-attractive-able-bodied-educated enough to merit a mention.

I made it to Campus Pride! Faculty and Pride Leader Orientation is go:

The State Department will allow transpeople to change our sex as listed on passports without surgery--relevant documentation on their website and some expansion on that information by the National Center for Transgender Equality at http://www.transequality.org/Issues/federal_documents.html#passport_gender. One important point made on the NCTE website that wasn't readily apparent from the State Department announcement: aside from an optional fee to expedite processing, this change can be made free of charge.

(...as my current legal name would look rather strange next to an "M" on a passport, I'm probably still waiting a bit.)