Being part of the LGBTQ+ community has a lot of struggles especially with gender. No matter who you are everyone should accept you but some people don’t accept people from the LGBTQ+ community whether it’s because of religious reasons, stereotypes, or something else.

When your transgender or genderqueer it’s even hard to relate to people or to feel like you belong. Having a transgender or genderqueer friend who is either going through a similar thing or has been through a similar thing really helps will everything whether you need advice, someone to talk to, or just someone who understands you. I want all transgender and genderqueer people to be able to have someone to talk to or have someone to vent to and to express themselves openly to even if they both don’t have the exact same story. Everyone is looking for someone to share and it’s hard for people especially kids to find these people who we have things in common with.

For straight people even if they accept the community they won’t understand (not trying to throw shade at straight people because it’s not their fault that they don’t understand and have a hard time connecting to people and the fact that they support the community is amazing) because they’ve never actually felt like how we have and haven’t experienced anything that has to do with our lives relating to that.

There are states like Texas and Florida who are trying to take away safe spaces for trans kids or Supreme Court Justices like Amy Coney Barrett who wants to take away gay marriage. This is all lowering the confidence of young LGBTQ+ kids. In July of 2020 there was an article by NBC where they surveyed 40,000 LGBTQ+ teens which said that 68% of those teens had anxiety disorder symptoms and 55% had depressive disorder symptoms. 48% of the 40,000 participated in self harm and 40% of the teens actually considered suicide. 15% of those teens are survivors of suicide attempts. This means 6,000 of the teens that were surveyed went through with suicide but survived. So many young teens and youth are so much less confident because someone told them that being who they are is wrong. Those kids and teens can’t control how they feel or who they are. Only 20% of transgender and non-binary teens feel respected by their community. The rest feel that people don’t respect them. Everyone should feel like they belong and nobody should be judging them.

I’m asking you to sign this petition because I want all transgender and genderqueer youth to have a group of people just like them to connect and somewhere where they can express themselves freely in schools or somewhere like a community center. They can be themselves and understand that it’s ok to express themselves. Everyone should have a safe place to go no matter what your gender, race, sexuality or anything else that people can’t control.

Help save transgender and genderqueer youth by signing below!