When Adrianna King was turned out of her home, she went north in search of acceptance.
A transsexual woman with a shy smile, King, 21, moved to Lakeview earlier this year in hopes that gay-friendly Boystown would offer a haven safe from the harassment and abuse she suffered in her South Side neighborhood.
But Boystown wasn't always safe, and it wasn't always friendly.
King, born a male and in transition to becoming a woman, said she was turned away from Lakeview homeless shelters because management feared she'd be harassed by other boarders. She said she spent the summer sleeping in parks, abandoned buildings, "L" trains and on the lakefront. When nowhere felt safe, King walked all night through Lakeview's streets, waiting until the Center on Halsted opened so she could crash on its couches.
"Every morning I'd come to work, and she'd be outside in the rain," said Tiffany Traylor, a clinical case manager at the center, which serves the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
Homeless youth have congregated in Lakeview for decades, but the past three or four years have seen an influx of transgender youth from throughout the city who come for social services or to find a welcoming community, said Heather Bradley, youth outreach coordinator for the Night Ministry, a nondenominational nonprofit that serves vulnerable kids and adults.
"They're younger, they're people of color, and there are lots and lots of trans kids," Bradley said. "Young, transgender women of color are kind of the face of youth homelessness these days."
Though the number of transgender people hasn't necessarily grown, more are coming out at a younger age and flocking to Lakeview because that's where the action is and where they feel safe, said Modesto Valle, executive director of the Center on Halsted.
Largely neglected and misunderstood by the general population as well as some in the LGBT community they're supposed to be a part of, transgender people--an umbrella term for anyone who does not conform to his or her born gender role, including but not limited to transsexuals like King who seek to live as the opposite sex--are at high risk of poverty, discrimination, joblessness, suicide, hate violence and estrangement from family and other support networks.
There are no statistics on the size of the transgender community in Chicago; rough estimates published in a report this year by the LGBT Movement Advancement Project puts the national transgender population at between .25 percent and 1 percent of the U.S. population.
The transgender homeless are among the throngs of youth--gay, straight, homeless and not homeless--who regularly gather on Lakeview street corners, sparking tension in the neighborhood. Some Lakeview residents and business owners worry that loitering, noise and prostitution are damaging the quality of life, while others believe the swarms of young people may be attracting criminals who hide in their midst to commit robberies and assaults.
Meetings to address the strained relationship have been ongoing for years, though some business owners recently have felt the conflict boil over. Scott Jannush, owner of Borderline Music on Broadway, said a group of youths caused such a disruption during a recording artist's signing at his shop earlier this month that a scuffle ensued. He had to escort them out and file a police report.
Jannush said the centers that cater to youth should impart more skills and counseling rather than just provide a place for kids to hang out.
"They've opened the doors to the neighborhood, and now they're destroying the neighborhood," Jannush said.
The Center on Halsted's Valle said people found to be disrespecting the neighborhood are warned and ultimately barred from the Center, which does provide jobs and skills training. But Valle said the kids who frequent Boystown shouldn't all be lumped together.
The youth, for their part, say they're often the targets of crime--and transgender people, in particular, are vulnerable, as they're more visually different and their mainstream acceptance lags far behind that of gays and lesbians.
"We see a lot of verbal and physical violence against trans youth," said Gabriel Ervin, a youth resource advocate at the Broadway Youth Center. "It's still OK to be outright transphobic."
King is doing all she can to beat the odds.
On Oct. 1, King moved into a small Lakeview studio with the assistance of Stable Futures, a transitional housing program of Heartland Human Care Services that helps single homeless people move toward stability. The program pays up to $600 in monthly rent for up to a year.
Though Lakeview has its challenges, King, who said she's known since age 5 that she didn't belong in her little boy's body, said it's far more comfortable and tolerant than Woodlawn, where she grew up. Still, she said she wakes up most days feeling anxious.
"I worry, 'How are people going to view me? What do I have to offer?'" said King, who each day heads to the Center on Halsted to see friends and talk to her case manager about jobs. Finding a job is one of the greatest challenges--and a reason so many transgender people are homeless.
King's driver's license still bears her birth name: Allen King. She worries about which name to put on her applications, and how she's going to explain why she doesn't look like an Allen. King for now is looking for retail jobs, and hopes to pursue a social work degree, but she dreams of working in entertainment.
"I'd like to be a role model," King said, "and represent another type of beauty." aelejalderuiz@tribune.com
TransAmerica
There's a saying in the transgender community that the "T" in LGBT is silent.
That has started to change, as transgender leaders raise their voices and gay organizations and legislation strive to be more inclusive. The federal hate crimes bill that President Obama recently signed into law and the closely watched Employment Non-Discrimination Act now before Congress both cover gender identity as well as sexual orientation.
Still, transgender people remain on the fringe. And while they are the most vulnerable of the LGBT community, they also are the most understudied.
In what they're calling the first comprehensive national effort to document discrimination against transgender people, the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force launched a six-month survey of 6,450 transgender people.
The preliminary findings, released this month, found that among transgender people:
- 97 percent said they experienced harassment or mistreatment at work.
- 47 percent said they were fired, denied a promotion or not hired because of their transgender identity.
- 26 percent said they lost their jobs because they are transgender.
- 19 percent said they had been or are homeless.
- 15 percent live on $10,000 per year or less (7 percent of the general population in the 2007 American Community Survey does).
- 13 percent said they are unemployed.
For the young, gender is fluid
When Kate Sosin was a little girl, she decided climbing trees was more fun than playing with dolls, so she declared herself a boy and told everyone her name was Patrick. Now 24 and living in Edgewater, Sosin says she doesn't feel like a man, but she doesn't fit the traditional female mold either. Sosin identifies as "gender queer," a relatively new term under the transgender umbrella that describes people who don't strictly identify with traditional male or female gender roles.
"The younger trans community is not necessarily interested in the binary of male and female that was forced on the older generation," said Sosin, who wears short hair, eyeliner, a sweater vest and tie, and explains that she prefers to be addressed with "she/her" pronouns.
Whereas the stereotypical image of a transgender person is that of a transsexual--a person whose gender identity differs from the sex with which he or she was born--there are many more layers than that.
There are drag queens and kings, who perform as the opposite sex to entertain others. There are cross-dressers, who dress as the opposite sex for their own enjoyment but without the intention of living that way full time. There's intersex, which refers to people born with reproductive systems not associated with either male or female. And there's gender queer, which Sosin describes as any gender variance that doesn't fall under the other categories.
What the different layers have in common is that it's often a struggle to look so visibly different from what society expects.
"The trans community is still fighting to just live and exist every day," said Sosin, co-founder of the blog genderqueerchicago.blogspot.com. "It's a battle to be able to go to the grocery store, or get a coffee, or walk in the park."
For many young trans people, gender is fluid.
Michael Williams, 29, said that several years ago he started taking hormones to transform his male-born body into that of a woman, but stopped because he felt he still identified somewhat as a man. He said he now splits his time between presenting as a man and as a woman, when he goes by Nomi Michaels.
"I still look like Ice Cube right now, but when I'm Nomi, I look like Queen Latifah," said Williams, who was concealing hormone-induced breasts and hips under several layers of clothing. "I'm lucky that I can go back and forth."
Gabriel Ervin, youth resource advocate at the Broadway Youth Center, said many of the transgender youth who come to the center are experimenting or questioning, and go by terms like "gender fabulous."
Ervin, who prefers to go by the gender-neutral pronouns "they/them," said challenging one's gender creates strong, resilient members of society.
"It's taking what somebody tells you you are when you are born and saying, `No, this is what I am,'" Ervin said. "That's powerful."
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