Newspapers / University of North Carolina … / Oct. 17, 2017, edition 1 / Page 14
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MICKEY CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11 talk to her about that because she already had a very limited view on what being transgender is, much less on a vague transgender spec trum. So that conversation was a lot more slow and it was a lot more of her asking a lot of questions.” Cassandra said the adjustment was easier for her than her mother, but she still struggled a bit when it came to using different pronouns. Mickey still has trouble getting their boss to use the right pronouns and had to hght to be called the right name. They said they were lucky in high school to not have to deal with these things. “The town that I lived in was very unforgiving for sure,” Mickey said. “I was lucky that at the time I very much fit into the female binary that people wanted me to so I didn’t re ally have a lot of problems.” Despite not having problems as a non-binary individual in high school, Mickey said they are now hyper aware of issues in the queer community, especially under Trump. Even with outspoken ac tivists and more of an awareness of the queer community, Mickey said they are still critical of what is be ing shown in popular culture. “There’s a lot that people don’t really talk about when it comes to queer culture. Even with the ex posure that we have now it’s kind GILLEHE CONTINUED FROM PAGE 10 found the number of species in the river decreased since the last group of researchers gathered data. The rare species of fish in the ‘80s and ‘90s were close to extinction in 2015. He and his team put more than 40 temperature data loggers in the river and used the data to create a math ematical model. Researchers com pared the current river temperature now to historical river temperatures using the data collected. During his time in Nepal, Gil lette worked with local fisheries to of cosmetic,” Mickey said. “A lot of the gay culture that is exposed is handsome white gay men danc ing in clubs or famous people who don’t fit the bill of what’s going on.” Mickey criticizes this perception of queer culture because it under mines the terrible things happening to the queer community not just in Trump’s America, but globally. Mickey said they do not see enough media coverage of these things. They pointed out that there are currently active concentration camps in Chechnya, Russia round ing up gay men and torturing and killing them. Mickey said they have seen little to no coverage of these events in mainstream news. According to the Human Rights Campaign, their organization be came aware of these atrocities as increase breeding among fish spe cies. Gillette said his team injected hormones into the heads of fish to increase breeding. “What we did was extract the pi tuitary gland from the heads of the fish harvested for eating, then you grind them up in a mortar and pes tle, mix them with distilled water, then you suck it up in a syringe and inject it into the fish’s muscle,” Gil lette said. The team went out and injected the fish with the hormones around 4 a.m. When they went to check on the fish a few hours later, the fish early as April via news reports and urged Secretary of State Rex Til- lerson to condemn what was hap pening. As of June, Tillerson has remained silent on the issue. Mickey also said they have no ticed an increase in transgender people being murdered in cold blood. The HRC backs up this claim, reporting there were 22 transgender people killed in the U.S. in 2016 and 2017 has already seen 20 deaths, the most recent be ing Derricka Banner, who was shot to death on Sept. 12 in Charlotte. “Trump’s rhetoric has shaken the queer community,” Mickey said. “We live under a president now where that kind of anti-queer rhetoric is fine. Before that kind of homophobia and bigotry in general toward queer communities was — it’s not to say it didn’t happen, it definitely did — but we were living under a president who stood by us.” Ashley Moraguez, UNCA assis tant professor of political science, said while Trump is generally a wildcard on LGBTQ+ issues, he often referred to the issue of same sex marriage as “fine.” Moraguez said the recent ban on transgender people serving in the military paints a different picture of Trump. “Trump first announced the pol icy in a tweet and it received a lot of popular criticism as well as crit had bred. Gillette was shocked at the results, not expecting the treat ment would be a success. One of Gillette’s more memora ble moments was when he carried a bag of baby fish from a fishery to a village. With the plastic bag of fish on his back, Gillette got on his bike and headed toward the village. On the way to drop off the fish, Gillette had to carry his bike across a riv er. In the time he spent in the vil lage, rain caused the river level to rise past the depth safe for wading across again. icism from leaders of the armed forces,” Moraguez said. “While Trump is commander in chief and has the power to direct the armed forces, the pushback he’s been get ting from military leaders is tell ing.” For Mickey, this ban is more per sonal. They said they have friends in the military who are transgender and they do not know what will happen now, particularly in terms of school. Mickey said their friends had planned to serve their country after graduating high school and use their benefits to go to college. Now, no one knows if they will ac tually be able to do this or not. Mickey said while they are cau tious to believe anything Trump says and believe he instigates a lot of hate in the country, they will continue to fight for the queer com munity. “Everybody has the mentality of, ‘Oh, they legalized gay marriage, the fight is over, the fight is won,’ but it’s not. It’s not,” Mickey said. “There’s always something to be done and I think being part of that and being an activist for it is trying to make sure those things do get done so that the queer youths that are coming up now will have it eas ier than we had it and we have it easier than people in the ‘90s had it. It’s just about ever moving for ward.” During his time in Nepal, Gillette said he was able to pick up on the culture and language of the area. He learned to work and function in their culture as he would in his culture. People in the town offered Gil lette food, water and shelter until he was able to safely cross the river. “They offered to make me dinner, these were people who did not have much from a material aspect at all,” Gillette said. “These people were totally willing to share their food, their home and everything with me.”
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