Portfolio #5: Community Experience

In order to experience more of my community I attended a PFLAG meeting in which we watched a documentary called Lady Valor which tells the store of Kristin Beck a transgender former military seal. And after watching the documentary we listened to a panel of community members discuss the story and give insights to its content. I found this experience very interesting and eye opening to me because the LGBTQ community is one that I do not know a lot about and it is one that I have found myself uncomfortable being around (which I know is a personal prejudice and discrimination, I am working on it). But one of the things that I found disruptive about this experience was that during the panel discussion something along the lines of people have judged the transgenders with out getting to know them or their circumstances was said. And that made me very uncomfortable because I realized that I am guilty of this and it means that I am in the wrong. And to accept this idea I am required to change and to seek to learn more about this community but to do so from a blank slate perspective. And from watching the documentary I came to realize from a more first hand observance the struggles of transgenders and the way that they are rejected or mistreated by society. They are real people with real feelings and too often I think society tries to spin things in a way that makes us forget that. And that means that I need to be more careful about how I treat people and I need to treat everyone as important and valuable as a person. It made me realize that in order to consider a wider view of humanity we have to look without ourselves and we have to try to get to know people and see things from their perspectives. And that is a huge risk because it means that we must give up our personal comfort in order to really help others and often that is going to mean that we lose some of our cultural capital for awhile which is something that no one wants to do. It also means that we should try to use our privilege to make a difference and to help this minority groups in our communities be heard. All of these things are risks to us and they are things that we do not necessarily want to do but in order to find equality and to help our community come together they are things that are going to be necessary to do. So I think my biggest take away from this assignment was it is important to be aware of your community and the problems and struggles that they face and then to get involved. We cannot just be bystanders in our community, especially if we are seeking for equality.