Image Source: Myself – taken 2017.

Growing up transgender in the U.S., especially in a small town, brings along with it a whole host of struggles – and Levi Gatza knows this better than most.

Born in a mid-Michigan village called New Lothrop, which has a population of around 560 total, Levi struggled with identity in his small community for much of his youth.

“The town I grew up in was very conservative, working class, and white,” Gatza said. “I was sheltered to the point that I didn’t even know LGBT people existed until I got internet access in high school.”

When he was young, Gatza says he always felt different but didn’t know in what way until he gained access to the internet in his teens. “Online, I started to find people on platforms like YouTube that would talk about their experiences and feelings about being trans that I could relate to. I couldn’t really find anything like that in my school social group.”

Gatza didn’t share his identity with peers or family during his high school years. Out of a very real fear of what could happen in his small, conservative community, he wasn’t able to publicly ‘come out’ until 2019. Many in the LGBT community face this sense of danger, especially in rural communities that may be less accepting. Transgender individuals face especially cruel fear, hatred, and mistrust – also known as transphobia. Explained by Planned Parenthood on their website:

“Transphobia can create both subtle and overt forms of discrimination. For example, people who are transgender (or even just thought to be transgender) may be denied jobs, housing, or health care, just because they’re transgender.“

In a rural, almost completely white and predominantly Catholic community, Levi says transphobia was common – as were other similar ‘viewpoints.’ “If anyone stood out from the norm, word would spread easily to paint that person as weird or creepy, whether it was accurate or not. Everyone in town knew each other so rumors were common, and everyone knew everything about everyone else.” Gatza explained.

Gatza said going away to college at Grand Valley State University in 2017 helped him tremendously in working through his identity and who he was outside of the oppressively small community of New Lothrop.

“As cliché as it is, I think going to college was a big change for me that let me start over and get away from the constraints of my small town,” Gatza said. “My college sadly isn’t that much of a step up from how homogenous New Lothrop is, but it has clubs for people who are LGBT. I also, for the first time in my life, had a professor who was also a trans man.”

Even among people in the LGBT community, though, Gatza says there are misunderstandings and differences. No matter where he goes, he has found the transgender community remains incredibly misunderstood and largely underrepresented. While there is more trans visibility in the United States than ever, there is still a huge issue of widespread transphobia.

Transphobia rears its ugly head in almost every aspect of life for many. Gatza said he was especially worried about eventually getting a job, as there is an enormous amount of discrimination in the workplace.

“I’m afraid I might not be hired somewhere because of my identity,” Gatza said. The process of applying, too, is made more difficult by laws in Michigan and across the country.

“Having my name legally changed would be helpful too, but it’s a really tough process. You also can’t get your legal gender changed in Michigan unless you go through specific surgeries that literally cost hundreds of thousands of dollars – and they’re usually seen as ‘cosmetic,’ so they’re not even covered by insurance.”

Gatza says the process of coming to love and identify with who he is has been a long process, in part due to the community he grew up in and the challenges ahead of him. Most of all, he says, he wants to see less transphobia and more understanding.

“I guess I want others to understand that I don’t really want special treatment or to have focus on me… I can feel how uncomfortable people are when they interact with me. People shouldn’t walk on eggshells or be scared to ask things like pronouns,” Gatza said.

“I would love nothing more than to just be another regular guy.”

Photo Credit: Úrsula Madariaga

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal… you know, when they said ‘all men,’ they weren’t talking about all men.”

Jerrell Davis, a participant in the Seattle Times’ ‘Under Our Skin’ project, acknowledges a very uncomfortable truth. Institutionalized racism is real, heavily prevalent and extremely damaging – yet conversations about race remain scarce and little has been done to solve the problem.

‘Under Our Skin’ examines some of the intricacies of the problem with bringing up the conversation of race in the United States. It features the perspectives of a diverse cast of participants on a handful of terms, including ‘all lives matter,’ ‘white privilege’ and ‘microaggression.’

The term I was drawn to interact with first on the project website was ‘person of color.’ As a student journalist, I have always wondered about this term. I see it frequently used in news pieces from many sources and have used it myself in the past – but recently I have heard backlash against it, so I wanted to see what was said.

The words of the project’s participants both surprised and changed my mind about this term. In the past, I – among, I suspect, a lot of other white journalists and people alike – saw the term as inclusive and a ‘safe’ word to use. As a white journalist, I am hesitant to use terms like ‘African-American’ or even just ‘black’ to describe someone because I don’t know their experience – I’m white.

It feels wrong to try to ‘categorize’ someone, especially when you are writing from a place of privilege like I am. That was why I felt okay using ‘person of color’ in the past – I thought it was inclusive and I had seen it used in an ’empowering’ way by users on Twitter and Tumblr.

‘Under Our Skin’ changed my mind. As the participants explained that the term essentially boxes in all races except white together, I realized how damaging that term actually could be. Why is white considered a default? Boxing every single race on the planet besides white into ‘people of color’ assigns the term sort of a ‘lesser than’ meaning, and I really don’t like that. People in the video mentioned that it simplifies complicated issues into just mass ‘racism,’ and I realized this is true. I decided I don’t want to use this term anymore.

The other terms invoked similar feelings of surprise and a desire to have more conversation about these issues. The discussions of ‘all lives matter’ were particularly interesting to me.

I was already skeptical of those who use ‘all lives matter’ as a response to ‘black lives matter;’ it is a dismissive way of denying cries for help and refusing to talk about racism. The discussion of the phrase in ‘Under Our Skin’ demonstrated the truth of this – and gave me more insight into why it is such a damaging response.

“I can’t believe that anyone who responds to ‘black lives matter’ with ‘all lives matter’ believes that all lives matter. If you truly believed that all lives matter, you’d be protesting with us,” said Jerrell Davis.

That sentence made me realize how important this project is, as well as other movements that acknowledge the difficulty we have talking about race in the United States. There is a fundamental misunderstanding and desire to avoid addressing racial inequality here.

The first step to overcoming this hurdle is learning – and more importantly, listening to voices different than our own.

Photo Credit: Janko Ferlic

With all the ‘terrorism’ shown on the news, you’d think people in the U.S. would have an idea of what they were truly going to war against – but that is far from the truth.

The documentary Constructing the Terrorist Threat delves into this phenomenon. It explores the Trump administration’s 2016 ban on Muslims and the racism and xenophobia that the government – and media – have used to spin countries and religions different from our own into ‘terrorists.’

Terrorism, as we know it, is wildly misunderstood. In the United States, ‘terrorist’ has an instant association with being a person of color – likely ‘Middle Eastern.’ ‘Muslim’ is a dirty word to the white, privileged class of the United States; this word evokes a feeling that whoever it is referring to is the enemy. Despite this, most real terrorism in the U.S. is committed by white males. So how did this racist and blatantly wrong association come into being?

The short answer is, the government. In order to justify constant violent and political intervention in other countries, the United States has carefully constructed the idea of followers of Islam being ‘radicalized others.’ By using a few events to create mass fear and hysteria – 9/11 is a good example – the United States has (unfortunately) successfully crafted a public image of Muslims being militant, radical terrorists.

The government and news media have taught media consumers to fear Muslims ‘out of all proportion to reality,’ as the documentary’s Deepa Kumar says. If U.S. residents do not see Muslim people as humans just like them, then they can easily justify the terrible atrocities the government continues to commit. This is the way the government makes bombing civilians or installing dictators ‘okay;’ their actions are seemingly against violent, U.S.-hating terrorists that want to kill you, not just regular old people trying to go to work and feed their families like you and I.

Muslims are dehumanized and demonized. Their image, as the documentary states, is purposefully twisted to give us a certain perception of them as an entire group. When as a whole their religion is displayed to us as being ‘violent’ or even ‘evil,’ every member is lumped together as if they are not individuals. Not only are Muslim people dehumanized and seen as one giant ‘threat’ to U.S. society – they are also demonized and made to seem truly ‘evil’ with a desire to kill innocent U.S. citizens because they ‘hate America.’

The fact that the U.S. has been toying with countries in the Middle East and surrounding areas for decades, installing regimes and creating problems, is not something the government wants people to bat an eyelash at. If there is a big vague ‘enemy’ that the American people can fear and not understand, then anything is justified and right.

“Our imaginations have been constrained by a system that creates moral panics and focuses our attention on racialized threats” is a particularly thought provoking statement in the documentary on this subject.

The media reports on the news – and any conflict that the U.S. military or government is involved in is news. When the ‘news’ is continuously a person of color that kills white people, it creates a ‘threat’ that people can identify when they turn on the TV or read the newspaper – and it doesn’t matter if people of color actually commit far less terrorist acts than white people. If it is all people see on TV, it is all they know.

This whole idea of terrorism, obviously, is ridiculously wrong, unfair, and racist. It causes needless death, suffering, exploitation, and xenophobia that should never have happened. ‘Muslims’ are not a cult of extremists hell-bent on destroying the United States, just like ‘Christians’ are not a cult of white supremacists dedicated to eradicating people different than them. We are all individuals and no one should have to speak for an entire group just because they look like them or happen to practice the same religion.

I think this image will be ridiculously difficult to alter, given the amount of time the United States has been molding this image of the ‘foreign extremist.’ In order to end the xenophobic treatment of Muslims and dehumanization of individuals, we must see others who are not like us as our equals. This is a monumental task.

The media is what we see, so the media is what we know. I believe the only way to end this idea of the constant ‘terrorist threat’ is to do real, hard-hitting, truly accurate journalism. Years of delving into the real motives of the U.S. government’s militaristic agenda and portrayal of people that aren’t just white men could be a good start.

Until we can turn on the TV or watch the news and see people who don’t look like us or share our religion not being treated as ‘others,’ this problem will persist. Telling the real truth and giving a voice to those branded as ‘others’ is the only way we can begin to turn the tide.