Handing Out Stars
Hello everyone! My name is Mel, and you can find me at my main Tumblr, handingoutstars (formerly spectrumnaut). I’m a queer, genderqueer person dating a fantastic trans guy.
I was a religious studies for three years. I studied Koine Greek (the original language of the New Testament) and took classes to become a pastor. I focused in youth ministry and was a volunteer youth minister.
My path changed, and I transferred, and I am now a social work student. I want to work primarily with the LGBTQ population, especially providing mental health services. I want to be a diversity trainer/consultant and write on diversity. I specifically want to help train professionals: school faculty/staff, mental and medical health providers, etc. on working with diverse populations, particularly trans* people. I am enjoy politics, policy, and lobbying.
I am very interested in the topics of privilege and oppression, the complicity between them, as well as socially constructed categories.
I enjoy lobbying for queer rights, women’s rights, and abortion/sex education legislation - I lobbied to pass the School Violence Prevention Act (a North Carolina law that included sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression in anti-bullying policies in public schools) as well as the Healthy Youth Act (which provides comprehensive sex-ed, with information from Planned Parenthood, across the state of North Carolina).
I also volunteer at a local clinic in Charlotte, NC each Saturday morning as a clinic defender. The clinic has recently gotten a lot of national coverage, because a local organization, Operation Save America, targets the clinic each Saturday with harassment. They have also made “Wanted” posters with the address of the doctors, and because of that, the leader, Flip Benham, was found guilty, in November 2010, of stalking. That said, I am directly involved with countering abortion clinic violence and monitoring the group’s activities.
I would love your questions about anything I mentioned above or anything else! I also know I don’t know everything, so correct me if I’m wrong or tell me about new things - I love to learn.
Love, Mel
