So my senior year if high school the local branch of NBC came to my school to follow around 10 seniors for their senior year...
I dont know how, but somehow I ended up being one of those seniors....
I should have turned and run, I remember talking to my girlfriend at the end of my junior year about it, she was like, your gonna be the gay one... and "I was like no one knows Im gay"... (yea riiiiight...)
For the day of the launch of the project we got to go to NBC studios and check it out, and they took video and pictures of us and it was cool, and then there was a newspaper reported, she was talking to us in like a group of 4, and she was like "SOOOO all these reality TV shows have like a token gay character"... so at this point I am holding my breath... but thinking to myself, im not really out to these people, or am I?
and all these things flash through my head in the .5 of a second it takes this woman to change her position so that she is starring me down and she says "AAAAND that must be you"... and she stairs at me, waiting for me to, i dont even know, do something dyke-y i guess?
I should have run out, and screamed, or told her to fuck off...
but i just said "Im no ones token anything" and that seemed to shut her up...
during the year we got to pick segment topics, and so I thought I would take advantage of my platform, and reach out to other gay students, we did an interview and i talked about coming out... and after that one kid did come up to me and say, i saw your segment, it helped me come out, and that one is enough for me...
but what damage did I do? show that, in the words of my ex "turn into one of those gay people who only cares about gay people"....
I won a scholarship my senior year... for media production, and the anchor that had worked with us was presenting the award, I wasn't there to receive it (I was fighting off brainwashing in Israel) and so he made a little speech about me... and he started off with "and so, the next scholarship goes to Hannah Horwitz, and well first off... SHES GAY..." he went on to say some very nice things... however, that one sentence at the beginning..."
is that all I am to you?
there are many ways in which NBC saved me my senior year... the administration would have loved to squish me, but NBC stood up for me...
Not to endorse NBC as a news source, or ally with coorporate media, but the people I knew there were on top of their shit, and they were good people...
but I still wonder, where does it leave me? Will I just always be that gay kid?
It was a mixed battle, I could hear myself bringing up gay issues in our interviews throughout the year, but as much as i didnt want to be that token, I wanted to speak for my people, and speak to my people, the kids who were in their living rooms on a friday after noon, sad, and watching the news...
so I guess its a double edged sword...
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Names.
So I don't know when it started, but as far back as I can remember the name Hannah never seemed to fit me,
as far back as I can remember I recall my knee-jerk reaction whenever hearing my name,
as far back as I can remember I have always felt like other names fit me better,
I have sought refuge in nicknames, some of my relatives call me magz, derived from my middle name,
My most prominent name was Mouse, given to me by a school friend in the 6th grade, and then stuck at camp,
I remember wanting to change my name everytime I changed schools... but I never found the courage.
High School:
1st day of 9th grade, study hall period:
senior: Whats your name?
me: Hannah
senior: thats such a nice name
me: you can have it...
I think his name was Ricky, I like Ricky better...
Although this happened in 9th grade I can remember feeling like that was my auto response when people complimented my name...
no matter where I went I always heard how pretty my name was, and I always talked about how much I hated it...
When one of my current best friends came out as Bi just before 10th grade I remember hearing the word, and although I probably couldn't put together a definition of the word I immediately knew what it was, and knew that I was one. I had the same reaction when I first heard about genderqueer, it was about 11th grade, and I was watching coming out stories on Logo (the gay channel) and there was a young, female bodied GQ coming out to their mother, immediately I identified with that person, on the TV and that term.
I founded my schools GSA, although we wern't technically a GSA, we were a diversity club. My senior year we were having a discussion about trans issues and immediately the tone of the room switched, I remember my then girlfriend shouting passionately at the room that you could be as butch as you could be but you should never change your gender. She then asked if anybody disagreed with her and I raised my hand, but I was the only one... in an instant I felt very alone, and I stopped talking about my gender. But I never stopped thinking about it...
By the time I entered hampshire I knew that my gender was not clear cut, for the most part I think about it as fluid, or non-identified... at this point I am using FTQ to express my gender, female to queer/questioning... im not FTM, im not female... FTQ
and so we are back to the name... I am using the name Helyx, it fits better, it makes more sense internally, and it doesnt have the same knee-jerk reaction, and so I think its worth a try...
-Helyx
as far back as I can remember I recall my knee-jerk reaction whenever hearing my name,
as far back as I can remember I have always felt like other names fit me better,
I have sought refuge in nicknames, some of my relatives call me magz, derived from my middle name,
My most prominent name was Mouse, given to me by a school friend in the 6th grade, and then stuck at camp,
I remember wanting to change my name everytime I changed schools... but I never found the courage.
High School:
1st day of 9th grade, study hall period:
senior: Whats your name?
me: Hannah
senior: thats such a nice name
me: you can have it...
I think his name was Ricky, I like Ricky better...
Although this happened in 9th grade I can remember feeling like that was my auto response when people complimented my name...
no matter where I went I always heard how pretty my name was, and I always talked about how much I hated it...
When one of my current best friends came out as Bi just before 10th grade I remember hearing the word, and although I probably couldn't put together a definition of the word I immediately knew what it was, and knew that I was one. I had the same reaction when I first heard about genderqueer, it was about 11th grade, and I was watching coming out stories on Logo (the gay channel) and there was a young, female bodied GQ coming out to their mother, immediately I identified with that person, on the TV and that term.
I founded my schools GSA, although we wern't technically a GSA, we were a diversity club. My senior year we were having a discussion about trans issues and immediately the tone of the room switched, I remember my then girlfriend shouting passionately at the room that you could be as butch as you could be but you should never change your gender. She then asked if anybody disagreed with her and I raised my hand, but I was the only one... in an instant I felt very alone, and I stopped talking about my gender. But I never stopped thinking about it...
By the time I entered hampshire I knew that my gender was not clear cut, for the most part I think about it as fluid, or non-identified... at this point I am using FTQ to express my gender, female to queer/questioning... im not FTM, im not female... FTQ
and so we are back to the name... I am using the name Helyx, it fits better, it makes more sense internally, and it doesnt have the same knee-jerk reaction, and so I think its worth a try...
-Helyx
Thursday, January 15, 2009
DvDs of Impacting Girls Influencing Life
Hey there all,
So distribution of a film is quite costly and in order to offset that cost on a personal level I am selling DvDs of Impacting Girls Imfluencing Life for a suggested 5$ donation. The DvDs will also include a wide array of other tools to further the discussion about women, media, gender, youth, and race as well as more work by the artists featured in the documentary and more of my own work. This is a great way to help support me as a video maker and get a great tool for discussing the issues sorrounding women in the media.
So distribution of a film is quite costly and in order to offset that cost on a personal level I am selling DvDs of Impacting Girls Imfluencing Life for a suggested 5$ donation. The DvDs will also include a wide array of other tools to further the discussion about women, media, gender, youth, and race as well as more work by the artists featured in the documentary and more of my own work. This is a great way to help support me as a video maker and get a great tool for discussing the issues sorrounding women in the media.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
My Inspiration...
Enhancing education and empowering youth to make a difference in thier own communities while helping people of developing countries increase thier self reliance through education.
Building With Books Mission Statement
I think that the reason it is so hard for me to separate myself from Building With Books is because BwB does the important job of emphasizing two equally important goals, accountability to local and global community. As a member of Building With Books for 4 years (high school) I never had to separate myself from these two goals. BwB does the crucial job of emphasizing education and community service not only to a global community, but also to a local one. It is easy to look at all of the priveledge embraced and often taken advantage of in the US and think that work in developing countries is more important. Likewise, it is easy to look at the vast inequality, classism, racism, ageism and homophobia and preach that to fix other places we must first fix ourselves. My work with Building With Books emphasized a more wholistic approach. All year we worked in different places in our community, some of the richest and poorest schools in the Philadelphia area came together to bake bread, unpack toy donations, rebuild community centers, repaint the peeling paint in the walls of our own schools, and dance with underpriveledged youth at a holiday party. The work we did within our own community was crucial. Also the impact and importance that BwB gave me, as a youth, growing up in the inner ring suburb of Upper Darby, was life changing. As I rose through the ranks as a leader of the club I gained the empowerment and leadership skills that carry me on to this day. As I continue to do work on a personal, local and global level I realize the importance of the tools I left BwB with.
The trek to Nicaragua also profoundly, but differently changed my life. When we went to that village tucked in the mountains close to the Nicaraguan Hondoran border we met people living in a way radically different from our own. One of the ways to measure class is through the variety of food in a persons diet. We met people who ate beans and rice (gallo pinto) and homemade corn totillas. Not to say that they had never eaten anything else, and believe me our host moms knew how to spice up the food with gourds, avocados, fried bananas and the occasional chicken (but for very special occasions). The people in this small village of maybe 30, with 100 or so living out of the center in the mountains, people lived without electricity, running water (aka showers, bathrooms...) and essentially all of the things that are considered basic nessesities in the US.
My work with them changed me forever because of my fundemental belief in education, and the importance and power of education. The education I recieved through this organization was not only how to lead an activity or plan a fundraiser but also my education lay in the experience of working along side a 10 year old as we dug the foundation to his own school. Through BwB I gained the understanding of my accountability to a global community. And through BwB I gained the understanding of my accountability to my local community.
Building With Books Mission Statement
I think that the reason it is so hard for me to separate myself from Building With Books is because BwB does the important job of emphasizing two equally important goals, accountability to local and global community. As a member of Building With Books for 4 years (high school) I never had to separate myself from these two goals. BwB does the crucial job of emphasizing education and community service not only to a global community, but also to a local one. It is easy to look at all of the priveledge embraced and often taken advantage of in the US and think that work in developing countries is more important. Likewise, it is easy to look at the vast inequality, classism, racism, ageism and homophobia and preach that to fix other places we must first fix ourselves. My work with Building With Books emphasized a more wholistic approach. All year we worked in different places in our community, some of the richest and poorest schools in the Philadelphia area came together to bake bread, unpack toy donations, rebuild community centers, repaint the peeling paint in the walls of our own schools, and dance with underpriveledged youth at a holiday party. The work we did within our own community was crucial. Also the impact and importance that BwB gave me, as a youth, growing up in the inner ring suburb of Upper Darby, was life changing. As I rose through the ranks as a leader of the club I gained the empowerment and leadership skills that carry me on to this day. As I continue to do work on a personal, local and global level I realize the importance of the tools I left BwB with.
The trek to Nicaragua also profoundly, but differently changed my life. When we went to that village tucked in the mountains close to the Nicaraguan Hondoran border we met people living in a way radically different from our own. One of the ways to measure class is through the variety of food in a persons diet. We met people who ate beans and rice (gallo pinto) and homemade corn totillas. Not to say that they had never eaten anything else, and believe me our host moms knew how to spice up the food with gourds, avocados, fried bananas and the occasional chicken (but for very special occasions). The people in this small village of maybe 30, with 100 or so living out of the center in the mountains, people lived without electricity, running water (aka showers, bathrooms...) and essentially all of the things that are considered basic nessesities in the US.
My work with them changed me forever because of my fundemental belief in education, and the importance and power of education. The education I recieved through this organization was not only how to lead an activity or plan a fundraiser but also my education lay in the experience of working along side a 10 year old as we dug the foundation to his own school. Through BwB I gained the understanding of my accountability to a global community. And through BwB I gained the understanding of my accountability to my local community.
Tras el Sueno Mexicano
Chasing the Mexican Dream
So Ill keep this short because it sucks to type on this keyboard, but we were reading and article in class about how alot of Guatemalans living near the mexican border are immigrating to Mexico to work, both illegally and not, underage, alone, whole families, part of a family, a phenomenon that much regflects the wave of movement from Mexico to the US for work. We talked about how it was interesting that the Guatemalans are chasing the Mexican Dream while the Mexicans chase the American dream...
just some thoughts...
So Ill keep this short because it sucks to type on this keyboard, but we were reading and article in class about how alot of Guatemalans living near the mexican border are immigrating to Mexico to work, both illegally and not, underage, alone, whole families, part of a family, a phenomenon that much regflects the wave of movement from Mexico to the US for work. We talked about how it was interesting that the Guatemalans are chasing the Mexican Dream while the Mexicans chase the American dream...
just some thoughts...
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Rural Guatemala, Trek to Nicaragua, can you compare?
So yesterday we went to a water park about an hour out of Xela which involved riding a chicken bus, named for the commonality of live cargo, for a little over an hour out of the high lands and into the warmer costal area of Guatemala. As we rode out of the city, and we passed coffee plantations with a distinct resemblance to the ones we lived in while in Nica, small timid coffee plants protected by the large leaves from neighboring Banana trees. My two experiences in these countries are hard to compare because, for one they are different countries and two they are experiences based on living among completely different classes. In Guate my family has running water, electricity, a wide variety of diet, TV, internet, a digital camera... etc the list resembles the one that I have living in America... The family in Nica had no electricity, or running water, ate beans, rice and totillas for every meal, lived in a three 4 room house and used corn cobs as torches to privide light at night. I know that families like these exsist in both countries, however my isolated experiences in each make it difficult to figure it out. I also know that as a nation I believe Nica is poorer then Guatemala, and there seems to be a recognition of this among the people in each. One of my only real conversations with my host father in Nica was about how Nica was very poor, and when I came to Guatemala on the first night I was talking about my other travels and my host mom said that Nica is very poor.
One thing that was hard to ignore throughout the Guatemalan countryside was the vast disparity in wealth, homes with no electrical or water lines standing 100 feet away from vast fincas (plantations, farms). Clearly more investigation needs to happen on my part, but with little guidence about the lower class in Guatemala or the upper class in Nicaragua, it is hard to figure out.
One thing that was hard to ignore throughout the Guatemalan countryside was the vast disparity in wealth, homes with no electrical or water lines standing 100 feet away from vast fincas (plantations, farms). Clearly more investigation needs to happen on my part, but with little guidence about the lower class in Guatemala or the upper class in Nicaragua, it is hard to figure out.
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