Jaime

Hate in our schools. I’ve known Jaime for over 5 year. We met early in our transitions and became friends. We hung out together and shared many personal issues. We would often talk late into the night crying and laughing together. Jaime has the sweetest son named Dan. He was 13 when I first met him, just year older than my youngest daughter. Jaime has full time custody of Dan. Dan calls Jaime “Mom” and is very polite. He was dealing well with his mother transition but was experiencing harassment at school from his fellow classmates. He was often taunted, excused of being gay and sometimes physically accosted. Jaime had talk with the school teachers and administrators but to no avail. This is typical of the school systems response to protecting gay or allegedly gay youth. It is next to impossible for a student to transition in high school due to the abuse suffered from other classmates and lack of protection afforded by school administrators. Dan was not transgender or gay, yet he was attacked never the less. This is also not unusual. 30% of gay hate crimes are perpetrated against people who do not identify gay. Late one night I got a call from Jaime. She was in the hospital sitting next to her son. Dan was attacked by his classmates after school and hospitalized as the result of his injuries. Jaime was in tears as she related what happened. There was overwhelming sorrow and frustration at not being able to prevent it. Her sadness was fueled by unreasonable guilt that her son was attacked rather than herself. She was angry at the school administration for not taking action. All these emotions came tumbling out as she spoke with me. Dan has fully recovered physically but he will always have the memory. To know that you are in an unsafe environment and can’t get help from the administrators. For the compete information see the Contra Costa Times article For Jaime's Gwen web site see here. Gwen Araujo suffered taunting from her classmates. It was a contributing factor to her changing to independent studies. Fortunately she took action before something like what happened to Dan occurred. Unfortunately, it is typically the case for most transgendered students that they don’t feel safe attending school.

Jaime holding Safe schools for trans youth sign.