Outright supports an array of peer support groups, workshops, and events in sites around the state, such as in Burlington, Montpelier, and Brattleboro. The agency reaches out to schools to educate and help create a safe and supportive environment for all students regardless of their perceived or actual gender and sexual identity. It also hosts annual major events for queer youth and the general gay and lesbian communities, such as the Queer and Allied Youth Summit, a Vermont-wide queer and allied youth gathering, which includes a Youth Pride March, Queer Prom, and SleepOUT.

Outright Vermont executive director Dana Kaplan pointed out that the agency coordinates a network of over 75 gender and sexuality clubs in schools statewide. Kaplan also noted Outright Vermont anticipates working with over 2,100 youth in 2018, as well as working with over 3,000 parents, caregivers, advocates, and caregivers.

Located at 241 N. Winooski Avenue, Burlington, the Outright office is open Monday–Friday, 9 a.m.–5 p.m. The Youth Space is open Friday, 2–7 p.m.

Green Mountain Crossroads

Shifting to the southern part of the state, Green Mountain Crossroads in Brattleboro has been advocating for the LGBQT community since 2012. The organization began as a response to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reducing funding to rural AIDS/HIV organizations.

“Previous LGBTQ community work was cut due to the CDC defunding rural programs, and founders of Green Mountain Crossroads saw a hole in support for LGBTQ people in southern Vermont coming as a result of this change,” said Executive Director HB Lozito. “Green Mountain Crossroads was founded to fill this hole. Since our founding, we have expanded programming from what was largely social support to political organizing and movement-building activities.”

“All services we provide are open to trans people,” Lozito added. “Specifically, for trans folk, we offer on a monthly basis referrals to competent caregivers, a monthly trans book group, and a social support group, Trans Fem Chill Club.” Lozito noted that the organization has trans people on its staff.

The agency partners with Outright Vermont on a Friday Night Group for queer and trans youth. During the year, Green Mountain Crossroads offers annual events, such as Earth Gay, Pride Family Picnic, Trans Day of Resistance, and letter writing to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people serving sentences in prison. Touching on its small town and rural roots, the organization holds an Out in the Open Summit for Rural & Small Town LGBTQ Folks.

Lozito said that starting in 2014 and stretching into 2015, the organization’s mission, vision, values, and programming got overhauled. “We [wanted] to have a specific focus on building power of rural LGBTQ people,” Lozito said.

Lozito noted Green Mountain Crossroads goals are ambitious. It involves creating communities in rural areas and small towns throughout the northeast where LGBTQ people can have visibility, knowledge, and power. “We’re building a multi-issue, social issue, social justice movement of rural LGBTQ people who are thriving, engaged members of all communities,” Lozito said

Lozito grew up as a queer and trans person in rural Maine. Lozito tried city life and found it lacking. Longing to return to a more bucolic way of life, Lozito wanted to settle in a smaller community.

“I feel an incredible amount of joy to be able to do this work,” Lozito said. “To be seen as my whole self, to have many parts of my experience and identity understood by those around me who live both in a rural space and know the happy parts of that as well as the hard parts and share some parts of my LGBTQ life and community as well. It’s very special to have both of those huge parts of my life understood and reflected in my community. On a personal level, this work is hugely important. Our community is wonderfully full.”

Lozito underscored the organization’s outreach to individuals living in a rural setting is focused on breaking through barriers. Isolation is a big challenge for individuals, Lozito said, noting a trans person may be the only one working and living in a community.

“The only time [individuals] who share their part of their experience is during one of our monthly groups,” Lozito said. “As long as there have been humans, there have been LGBTQ people. As long as there have been LGBTQ people, we’ve been living in rural areas and in small towns.”

Lozito bats away false notions that LGBTQ people can only thrive in urban settings and are more likely to live in those settings: “As we know, as rural LGBTQ people, that isn’t wholly true. We’re everywhere, and therefore, LGBTQ organizing needs to happen in all of our communities, rural and urban alike.”

Pride Center of Vermont

Located on South Champlain Street in Burlington, the Pride Center of Vermont is billed on its website as New England’s most comprehensive community center working to advance the health and safety for LGBTQ Vermonters and build community. Started nearly 20 years ago by Vermont undergraduate students, the organization was first known as the RU12? Community Center. Initially all volunteer, that changed in 2002 when the organization hired its first executive director.

Sixteen year later, the center now boasts seven core programs, a wide range of social groups, successful events, and a history it calls “proud” for fighting for LGBTQ rights in the nation. It’s also known as a magnet for LGBTQ people from around the state. Above all, the center’s programs and services work to meet the socioeconomic needs of the LGBTQ community in Vermont.

The drop-in resource center spaces house a huge lending library and cyber center, plus space for social events. The aim is to build a community center where information can be accessed by all members of the organization. An archive helps to preserve LGBTQ history.

The center has a nine-member staff that includes an interim executive director, health and wellness coordinators, a safe space program director and coordinator, a trans programs coordinator, a direct services advocate, and a developmental director. The center is overseen by a board of directors who have a broad range of experiences. Many board members relocated to Vermont for a variety of reasons, including joining partners already here in the state. The center’s board members range from poets and state employees, to chefs, small business owners, and public-school educators.

The center has a wide array of resources for clients, ranging from HIV testing and prevention, a HIV positive support group, and a Vermont Diversity Health Project—a directory of LGBQT-friendly health-care providers. Its transgender resources include a social support group, a Trans Resource Guide, and a Name Change Guide.

Among its many other wide-ranging programs are a group for individuals 40 years and older, a program for families, a tobacco cessation program, and LifePLUS, which gives HIV positive individuals a safe, confidential space to share experiences and advice on living with the virus. The support group allows people to talk openly about isolation and the many facets of living with HIV, such as dating, safe sex, and dealing with stress and financial matters.

The center also holds a GLAM program. Known as the leading event for gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals in the state, its goal, through a weekly group gathering every Wednesday at the South Champlain Street location, is for “guys who like guys, and their friends.”

GLAM is part of a national MPowerment Project, known as a first-of-its-kind HIV prevention program that targets and addresses the needs of young gay and bisexual men. Additionally, the MPowerment Project is the first proven HIV prevention intervention for young gay or bisexual men to have success in reducing risky sexual behavior. GLAM has a social media presence and has events ranging from themed parties, game nights, hiking adventures, sex talks, and dance classes.

The center also has a family program for those both with and without children. Social and educational events take place regularly. Its goals are to create community while sharing strategies and resources. Center hours are Monday–Thursday, 10 a.m.– 6p.m., and Friday, 10 a.m.– 2p.m.

 

Basic Terminology

The following terms and definitions were adapted from Outright Vermont. For a more thorough explanation of these terms and additional terms, please go to www.outrightvt.org/terms-definitions.

AFAB and AMAB: Acronyms meaning “assigned female/male at birth” (also designated female/male at birth or female/male assigned at birth).

Bigender: Refers to those who identify as two genders. Can also identify as multigender (identifying as two or more genders).

Binary: Used as an adjective to describe the genders female/male or woman/man.

Bisexuality: An umbrella term for people who experience sexual and/or emotional attraction to more than one gender (pansexual, fluid, omnisexual, queer, etc).

Boi: A term used within the queer communities to refer to sexual orientation and/or gender presentation among people assigned female at birth. Often designates queer women who present with masculinity (although, this depends on location and usage).

Butch: An identity or presentation that leans toward masculinity. Butch can be an adjective (she’s a butch woman), a verb (he went home to “butch up”), or a noun (they identify as a butch).

Cisgender: Adjective denoting or relating to a person whose sense of personal identity and gender corresponds with their birth sex. Derived from the Latin word cis, meaning “on the same side.”

Cissexism: Systemic prejudice in the favor of cisgender people.

Cissimilation: The expectation for trans people, especially trans women, to assimilate to cisgender standards of appearance and performance.

Demisexuality: People who feel sexual attraction, but as a secondary characteristic that only appears after a strong emotional connection has already been established.

Dyadic: Not Intersex

Femme: An identity or presentation that leans towards femininity.

Gender dysphoria: Anxiety and/or discomfort regarding one’s sex assigned at birth.

Gender expression/presentation: The physical manifestation of one’s gender identity through clothing, hairstyle, voice, body shape, etc. (typically referred to as masculine or feminine).

Gender fluid: A changing or “fluid” gender identity.

Gender identity: One’s internal sense of being male, female, neither of these, both, or other gender(s).

Genderqueer: An identity commonly used by people who do not identify within the gender binary. Those who identify as genderqueer may identify as neither male nor female, may see themselves as outside of or in between the binary gender boxes, or may simply feel restricted by gender labels.

Heteronormative, heteronormativity: These terms refer to the assumption that heterosexuality is the norm, which plays out in interpersonal interactions and society and furthers the marginalization of queer people.

Intersex: Describing a person with a less common combination of hormones, chromosomes, and anatomy that are used to assign sex at birth. There are many examples such as Klinefelter syndrome, androgen insensitivity syndrome, and congenital adrenal hyperplasia.

LGBTQQIAPP: A collection of queer identities short for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, pansexual, polysexual (sometimes abbreviated to LGBT or LGBTQ+). Sometimes this acronym is replaced with “queer.”  

Monosexual, multisexual, nonmonosexual: Umbrella terms for orientations directed toward one gender (monosexual) or multiple genders (multisexual/nonmonosexual).

Nonbinary: Preferred umbrella term for all genders other than female/male or woman/man, used as an adjective. Many nonbinary people identify as trans and not all transpeople identify as nonbinary.

Pansexual: Capable of being attracted to many genders. Sometimes the term omnisexual is used in the same manner.

Passing, blending, assimilating: Being perceived by others as a particular identity/gender or cis regardless how the individual in question identifies, e.g. passing as straight, passing as a woman, passing as a youth.

Queer: General term for gender and sexual minorities who are not cisgender and/or heterosexual. There is a lot of overlap between queer and trans identities, but not all queer people are trans and not all trans people are queer.

Sexual orientation: A person’s enduring physical, romantic, emotional, and/or other form of attraction to others. Gender identity and sexual orientation are not the same.

Transgender, trans: An umbrella term for people whose gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth. The term transgender is not indicative of sexual orientation, hormonal makeup, physical anatomy, or how one is perceived in daily life.

Transition: A person’s process of developing and assuming a gender expression to match their gender identity.

Transmisogyny: Originally coined by the author Julia Serano, this term designates the intersectionality of transphobia and misogyny and how they are often experienced as a form of oppression by trans women.

Transphobia: Irrational fear, discomfort, distrust, or disdain directed toward trans people or trans concepts. This word is used similarly to homophobia.

Transsexual: A depreciated term (often considered pejorative) similar to transgender in that it indicates a difference between one’s gender identity and sex assigned at birth, with implications of hormonal/surgical transition from one binary gender (male or female) to the other.