Coming Up In October: Greg Scarnici

© 2015 Diversity Rules Magazine.  All Rights Reserved.
www.diversityrulesmagazine.com

Diversity Rules Magazine welcomes Greg Scarnici as its October feature interview.  Greg is a comedic artist and musician, whose music video and commercial parodies have been viewed over 10 million times on YouTube and a host of other sites.   His work has also been featured on MTV, VH1, Fox News and CNN.

Greg just released his first memoir entitled, “I Hope My Mother Doesn’t See This.”  It is “a snapshot of an artist coming to grips with his comedic artistry at a time when gay comedians were not as accepted as they are today.”   “The book is an uncensored and uproariously funny peak at one of comedy’s biggest freaks.”

TV credits include appearances on “30 Rock,” “Online Nation,” "Nick Cannon:  Short Circuitz," "Straight Plan For The Gay Man," and "Saturday Night Live," where he currently works as an Associate Producer.  Other TV writing credits include The Macy's 4th of July Fireworks Spectacular on NBC and the 2014 NBA All-Star Pre-Game Concert in New Orleans.    

Film credits include writing and directing the award-winning indie, "Glam-Trash,” the short films, “Dead End” and “Children Of The Dune,” as well as other shorts that have played at festivals around the country.  He has also directed music videos for Kris Menace, The Kiki Twins, Jipsta, Mike Diamond, Pandora Boxx, Sherry Vine and others.  Complete credit list available on IMDB.

Greg has also written and performed the shows, “Queens,” “The Buddy & Barbara Comedy Hour” (with Drag Sensation, Sherry Vine), “SEX TAPE” and “Must Be The Music” at Joe’s Pub, Ars Nova, The UCB Theater and on Fire Island.

Greg also produces music with Joe Thompson, under the name Undercover.  Their debut album featured the song, “Your Lovin‘ Touch” which was selected to play at Abercrombie and Fitch songs throughout 2012.  Check out streaming songs, mixes and music videos on Undercover’s website HERE.  Or check out the music page above for DJ sets, gigs and more.

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Beware of Junk Debt Collectors

By Tony Guadagnino
© 2015 Diversity Rules Magazine. All Rights Reserved
www.diversityrulesmagazine.com

Tony Guadagnino is a marketing consultant.  Located in New Jersey, his clients are based across the country, focusing on social media to build their presence on the internet.  He studied creative writing in college and is currently working his first novel on the subject of bullying.  He lives with his partner Mark.

I am a person who truly tries to live drama-free; don’t share your drama with me, and I won’t share mine as well.  Gay people have such drama the can drain your entire body of energy.  As I get older, I realize that it’s not healthy to be surrounded by drama, so I try to avoid it, even ended friendships with people whose glass is always half-empty.  Recently, I had to suspend my “No Drama” rule and be supportive to a close friend of mine (to protect her privacy, I’m going to call her Clare).  What happened to her made my own stomach turn. 

Clare and I have been friends for well over a decade.  She had been building a very lucrative career as a Managing Editor for a national magazine.  Sadly, she was laid off on December 21, 2012 (Merry Christmas), and has not been able to find another rewarding job.
During her time of looking for work, Clare ended up defaulting on a credit card, and the account was sent to a collection agency.  Upon their failure to collect, the account was written off by the bank, and the account was sold to a Junk Debt Collector (JDC).  A Junk Debt Collector, generally owned by private law firms, will pay pennies on the dollar (usually 5 cents) for every account they buy, then turn around and sue the person for the full amount of the account.  (Example: one firm will pay $50 for a $1,000 debt, then sue for the full $1,000, plus fees and interest.)  Clare had to go before to court, and the judge awarded the JCP the full requested amount, which included their interest charges and expenses (the judge approved gas/mileage costs to the courthouse).

Clare accepted the outcome, and she was informed that the JDC would be in touch with her for bank information to begin the collection process.  Unfortunately (and this is the devastating part), the judge awarded the JDC to levy her bank account, without informing Clare that they were going back to court the following week.  Clare’s bank account was cleaned out in its entirety, plus, she was charged over $100 as a “processing fee.”  Paperwork from the bank reached Clare two days later, but she was not informed ahead of time. 

While I recognize the reality that Clare should have worked out a payment plan with the credit card company to avoid this mess, and I am not condoning her fearful avoidance to call them, I am also dumbfounded that a JDC gets a court order to levy a person’s bank account.  These cases aren’t criminal; they are a civil matter.  Using her SSN, the JDC did an internal investigation to find her account and serve the bank with papers to levy.  (And we think Big Brother is watching?)   The amount was not very significant, and they weren’t even the original creditors, yet, they made 1900% profit for spending just five cents/dollar.

When she called me in tears after discovering her bank account, I wanted to confront one of these lawyers and ask, “Is this why you went to law school? To sue people who are down on their luck and drain the little money they have?”  Lawyers have a bad reputation, labelled vultures or ambulance chasers.  I am friends with some lawyers who are good people, but these attorneys who exploit situations on people who are trying to survive do not deserve any respect.  I wonder how they sleep every night, knowing they may be ruining a person’s chance of survival. Or, maybe they dream of the incredible amount of profit they just made the company (and the commission that will hit their bank account).  If a JDC were affiliated with a branch of the federal government, I could understand the levy.  But they aren’t. 

Everyone … beware of Junk Debt Collectors.  They will bleed you dry. They are the true vultures!

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My Two Cents

By Jim Koury, Editor/Publisher
© 2015 Diversity Rules Magazine. All Rights Reserved
www.diversityrulesmagazine.com

Welcome to the September issue of Diversity Rules Magazine!  It is hard to believe that fall is fast approaching and the summer will be gone once again until next year!  What a momentous summer it was though with the Supreme Court ruling legalizing same sex marriage throughout the country. It was a long time coming with many legal challenges to overcome but equality and fair treatment prevailed, despite having a somewhat conservative Supreme Court on our hands.

This month’s feature guest interviewee is Ryan Cassata.  I would like to welcome Ryan to Diversity Rules Magazine.  His interview is great and very informative.

At the invitation of George Walsh of Step 3 Entertainment, I first met Ryan in Washington, DC when he performed for a select crowd for a debut of his new CD at the time.  I, along with the rest of those in attendance, were simply in awe of Ryan’s talent, forceful performance and compelling lyrics.  I knew then he would be someone to watch and I was not wrong.  He has become a notable songwriter and singer in his own right and I am sure we will be hearing a lot more of Ryan Cassata in the future.

Along with Ryan’s interview, as usual, there are other great articles that will be sure to pique your interest.  There are columns by our regular writers as well as some new ones!  Enjoy.

I want to also welcome a new advertiser - the Otsego County Office of the Aging.  They may be able to help you with costly Medicare premiums and copays. Check out their ad below:

I hope you enjoy your last vestige of summer and have a great fall.  See you all soon.

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The Amazon Trail

Dykey Dorothy and Friends
By Lee Lynch
© 2015 Diversity Rules Magazine. All Rights Reserved
www.diversityrulesmagazine.com

Her most recent book, An American Queer, a collection of “The Amazon Trail” columns, was presented with the 2015 Golden Crown Literary Society Award in Anthology/Collection Creative Non Fiction. This, and her award-winning fiction, including The Raid, The Swashbuckler, and Beggar of Love, can be found at: 

http://www.boldstrokesbooks.com/Author-Lee-Lynch.html.

Near where I live, closeted lesbians built and installed a bench on a mostly hidden concrete path between grassy sand dunes, out of sight of any casual observer. The bench was created in the mid 1990s to pay respect to members of the group who had died.

These women did not dare to name their dead. Even the full name of their sisterhood—a name that included the word lesbian—was too terrifying to engrave. Yet, I can guarantee that every group member read Rubyfruit Jungle and for the hours they spent with it they were unafraid. Because of such books, they dared to gather. They learned to value, in a way society did not, lesbian lives.
 
Where did this book come from? Was it pulp fiction? Was it some straight guy’s fantasy? No. It was a crossover book before there were lesbian crossover books, a lesbian classic before such a concept existed, and it was written by a radical lesbian feminist who was one of the founders, in 1971, of The Furies Collective of Washington, D.C., and who wrote for that newsletter and for “The Ladder.”

Rubyfruit Jungle helped us to rise from the primordial patriarchal ooze of fear, humiliation and silence. Audre Lorde might have been speaking of this author with her oft quoted words, “Your silence will not protect you.”

This year, I had the honor of presenting the Golden Crown Literary Society (GCLS) Lee Lynch Classic Award to Rita Mae Brown for her 1973 novel Rubyfruit Jungle.

Published initially in 1973 by the early feminist press, Daughters Inc., which was founded by novelists June Arnold and Bertha Harris and by feminist political theorist Charlotte Bunch, this was a novel of its time, a slap in the face of the heterosexist world and a daring gift to lesbians. It, along with Desert of the Heart (1964), and Patience and Sarah (1969), was a voice of lesbian liberation, parting the curtains we hid behind with humor and insight. From it, lesbians learned they might be alone, but they weren’t the only lesbians on earth. Readers felt buoyed, felt human for a few hours or days. It changed lives and, still very much in print, continues to do so to this day.

Author JD Glass, in “AfterEllen,” quoted from Rita Mae Brown’s acceptance speech: “You’re alive—you fight. You keep fighting.” Glass reported that Brown, “...reminded us all to continue to speak our truths, to tell our stories and that if we are ‘defined by our oppression,’ then we are still oppressed.”

The award was presented on a historic night for lesbian fiction. As advocate.com editors wrote, “The Golden Crown Literary Society’s 11th annual literary awards in New Orleans brought together lesbian fiction pioneers Rita Mae Brown, Lee Lynch, and Dorothy Allison, all sharing a stage for the first time.”

Author Karin Kallmaker presented Joan Nestle, in absentia, with the GCLS Trailblazer award, in recognition of her writings including Restricted Country and Persistent Desire and her activism for lesbians. 

Dorothy Allison, best-selling author of Trash, and Bastard Out of Carolina, gave an impassioned and profoundly moving keynote address. She said, of a visit to the original Lesbian Herstory Archives, which originated in Joan Nestle and Deb Edel’s NYC apartment, “Oh children, I wish you could have seen that living room.” Her words brought the audience to tears.

The Golden Crown Literary Society (goldencrown.org),  founded in 2004, is a 501(c)3 non-profit, all-volunteer organization whose mission is education, promotion and recognition of lesbian literature. Known for its well-attended annual conference and its programs, including The Academy (for emerging lesbian writers), the Cate Culpepper Mentoring Program, and its awards—The Goldies—the GCLS brings authors, readers and publishers together for the betterment of lesbian literature.

GCLS is for lesbians and like-minded women. Lesbian members run it, members do the teaching and mentoring, members staple and greet and administer and judge books for the Goldies. It is one of those incredible institutions created out of sore need by a few dykes—writer Lori Lake, publisher Cathy Bryerose and promoter Kathy Smith—with stars in their eyes and ambition for their people. The annual conference draws lesbians from around the world, the U.S. and Canada.

Seeing the other writers and readers is like going to a huge family reunion. There is never enough time to spend with the women we want to see and want to meet. Yet meetups happen without planning and are some of the best experiences. My sweetheart and I bumped into author Catherine Friend the first morning we were there and we took off on the typical NOLA adventure: Cafe du Monde beignets, a trolley ride and the French Market for Loretta’s Pralines.

One evening we happened across Donna McBride, co-founder of Naiad Press, who I hadn’t see in many years. We strolled through the underground mall to the Mississippi River, catching up. Sandy Thornton, organizer of the Jewel Book Club, a large lesbian readers group in Dallas, Texas, invited us to accompany her while she picked up Dorothy Allison at the airport. I’ll always remember a smiling dykey Dorothy slowly descending that escalator. Lesbian royalty.

I could go on and on with my highlights, but would rather make more highlights with lesbian book lovers and writers in Alexandria, Virginia next year.

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Two Worlds

By Kristen MacKenzie
© 2015 Diversity Rules Magazine. All Rights Reserved
www.diversityrulesmagazine.com

Kristen MacKenzie lives on Vashon Island in a quiet cabin where the shelves are filled with herbs for medicine-making, the floor is open for dancing, and the table faces the ocean, waiting for a writer to pick up the pen. Her work has appeared in Brevity, Rawboned Journal, GALA Magazine and Extract(s) Daily Dose of Lit.

On a day when it’s cold and sunny and I’ve been given the gift of free time, it’s an easy choice to take the kayak out and see what I can find. It feels heavy and awkward after having not done this for weeks, lifting the boat and balancing it on my hip down the boat launch. I go slowly on the wet parts, cautious of a fall, not that it’s ever happened. I have every weekend to myself, and not all of them are rainy. Why has it been so long since I’ve done this?

The water isn’t perfectly clear, but I can see down twenty feet or more through a kind of pale green murk that doesn’t obscure as much as give an odd shape to the things below. My arms are sore from working out and I paddle slower than usual. From the quiet that goes along with my easy pace, I hear a strange soft thump from shore. It isn’t the footsteps of a runner, as I expect. I see an enormous bird crouching over something on the sand, coiling its body to pull great ripping bites with such force that its tail feathers come down with a smack each time it tears a piece loose, making the sound that caught my attention. I listen more carefully, and I can hear the flesh-fabric of whatever lies on the sand held by talons separating and tiny bones snapping. I lift the paddle from the water and sit entirely still, watching, feeling invisible until the bird looks up and then returns to its meal, deeming my presence insignificant.

The boat bumps into the first pier, standing free of any structure in groups of three or four tall posts sticking out of the water twenty feet and extending down into the invisible bottoms, wearing lumpy blue coats of mussels and barnacles. I can see down far enough in the pier’s shadow to watch fish nearly a foot long, fat in the middle and narrow on both ends with black-tipped opaque fins. They flap slowly as they move under the boat, as curious of me as I am of them. When my eyes adjust and the surface becomes still, I can see that the pale orange shadow alongside the poles isn’t distorted light; it’s a school of long, skinny fish, sunset-colored, all moving at the same speed and in the same direction. I wonder why the bigger fish aren’t eating them.

Crabs perched on stiletto-heel claws over the mussels, shells deep red like a pomegranate, others draped in algae, sit perfectly still, just like the sea stars further down, splayed across the naked lower lengths of the post where tides never reach. Some of the sea stars are hunched around themselves, legs tucked in, and I watch closely through the green shadow-water, hoping what I’m seeing is the purple flex of an octopus, but it remains still, and the boat drifts further, bumping into the next post.

The visible geometries of a jellyfish, nothing more than a hoopskirt of translucent structure with four golden eyes in its center, moving with a slow, steady pulse through the water, passes under the place where my paddle hangs from the edge of the boat, dripping. I want very much to put my finger into the water and touch the creature that looks like nothing at all, to feel the nothingness of it. But I don’t.

The next group of poles the current carries me to is a confusing inversion of the sky above: clouds below, clouds overhead. Giant frilled anemone stick out unevenly from the poles far down below, visible through the murk because of their brightness. I can see both worlds suddenly, and neither looks entirely real. The sky is green with clouds, the water is blue with clouds, and again I want to put my hand in the water, through both worlds, connect them somehow.   

But I don’t need to.  A living link swims straight for me. The tiny pop of the world below breaking through makes me turn quickly, quietly, and I see the slip of a wet tail glide back under the water’s surface, then whiskers and bubbles on the blue-sky reflection and two otters slide across the space between the poles and my boat. One tosses its head back and chews noisily, oblivious to the laugh I didn’t catch in time, answering with a little grunt when its finished eating whatever it was that needed chewing. Its pal comes back over and the two roll along the surface with bumps and hitches that remind me of the gait of a dachshund puppy running fast.

And then I feel myself starting to clutch all of this, the eagle on the shore, the creatures on the poles, the otters and the sunshine, trying to keep it always. This moment is in my hand, I can feel it, and I’m crushing it instead of letting it float free and land somewhere inside where it won’t just disappear when the rain comes and I’m sitting in my car, stuck in traffic.

I breathe in the present and paddle away from the eagle, resisting the urge to follow the disappearing backs of the otters as they move off in search of more interesting company. 

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If You Could Read My Mind

A PTSD Memoir:  Healing – Part I
By David Elijah-Nahmod
© 2015 Diversity Rules Magazine.  All Rights Reserved
www.diversityrulesmagazine.com

David-Elijah Nahmod is a film critic and reporter in San Francisco. His articles appear regularly in The Bay Area Reporter and SF Weekly. You can also find him on Facebook and Twitter.

David developed Post Traumatic Syndrome Disorder (PTSD) after surviving gay conversion therapy as a child and has found that many in the LGBT community suffer from severe, often untreated emotional disorders due to the extreme anti-gay traumas they endured. This column chronicles his journey.

I was impressed and moved when I first met Rev. Megan Rohrer. Megan is the Pastor at Grace Lutheran Church in San Francisco. Megan, who prefers to use gender neutral pronouns, is the first openly transgender pastor to be installed at a Lutheran congregation--Megan always specifies that Megan is "openly" transgender, as not all trans people are out. It's important, Megan feels, to respect people's privacy.

I covered Megan's installation at Grace Lutheran for Bay Area Reporter, then did a follow-up interview with her for SFGN. Every time I hear Megan's voice, every time we meet, I feel a sense of peace. Megan is a person who's filled with love for the world. Obviously the congregation agrees, as Grace Lutheran's membership has seen a sharp increase since Megan took to the pulpit.

Megan is involved in homeless outreach, having many years experience of working with San Francisco's Night Ministry. Night Ministry's pastors hit the streets of the City during the after-midnight hours in order to offer prayer and counseling to the homeless, and to help people on the streets find shelter and food. One of Megan's personal projects is to help homeless people suffering from vision loss obtain free eyeglasses.

"Be the change you want to see in the world," said Gandhi. Few people I've encountered in my lifetime live up to this philosophy more than Rev. Megan Rohrer.

So naturally I was shocked, in late June, when Megan needed to contact the San Francisco police and ask them to keep an eye on Grace Lutheran. Megan had received threats of violence which came from within the LGBT sphere.

"Someone needs to track this dude down and beat the shit out of them," stated the Tweet which Megan screen-grabbed and posted on her Facebook page. The tweet, from an account called "no name Wiener," is owned by a transgender woman. As this and other threats directed at Megan came in the immediate aftermath of the church shootings in South Carolina, Megan took no chances.

Megan was targeted due to her efforts to get Meagan Taylor, an African American transgender woman, out of jail. Taylor had been arrested at a motel in Des Moines Iowa on false prostitution charges. Megan was raising funds in order to get Taylor released. The people who threatened Megan wanted the money sent to them.

No less than the Transgender Law Center acknowledged Megan's assistance in getting Taylor freed from jail, according to the TLC website.  Which certainly proves that the accusations against Megan were false."

"They were calling Lutheran pastors around the country because I'm 'stealing money from a black woman,'" Megan told me during our meeting at Grace Lutheran this past week.

I asked Megan if the LGBT community was having a mental health crisis due to the almost endless personal attacks which LGBT people and activists seem to be inflicting on each other. I referenced the classic gay play-turned film "The Boys in the Band," in which a gay birthday party becomes a cesspool of gay-on-gay hatemongering.

"If only we didn't hate ourselves quite so very much," said Michael, the play's protagonist.

"All of the people who had done these things to me indicated that they had been treated in a similar fashion," Megan said. "I have deep compassion for their healing process. But their behavior is unacceptable."

Megan admits there are problems in the LGBT community. "Like all things, there are good people in bad organizations, and bad people in good organizations," Megan said. "I try to do the best I can to listen to the ways I need to do better, and to actively work on healing my wounds so that I don't deflect back on others."

Megan acknowledged to have suffered from PTSD symptoms in the aftermath of the ordeal, pointing out that there are around 177 violent church incidents per year.

"I do a lot of gardening," Megan said. "I get nervous when people approach the church. I heal with hot chocolates, laughing with friends, stupid reality TV shows, sacred rituals and rocking babies."

Megan acknowledged that their seems to be a pattern of such behavior in the LGBT community, and that many LGBTs were suffering from PTSD as a result of unhealed traumas brought on by homophobia, inequality and anti-LGBT violence.

We, as LGBT people are the only ones who can heal ourselves. We must decide what kind of a community we want. To that end, Megan and I agreed to organize a community forum on LGBT mental health, tentatively set for February 2016 at Grace Lutheran Church. Our focus will be discussions on the causes of the behavior we're seeing, and ways we can heal ourselves.

Stay tuned to future editions of this column for more details.

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September Feature: Ryan Cassata

“Stay True, Stay You”
© 2015 Diversity Rules Magazine. All Rights Reserved
www.diversityrulesmagazine.com

Diversity Rules Magazine welcomes Ryan Cassata as its September feature interview.  Ryan is a singer-songwriter & transgender motivational speaker who – all by age 21 – successfully cut 9 records, toured the States nationally, performed at some of the world’s biggest Pride Festivals, won Bay Shore High School’s first-ever Harvey Milk Memorial Award, became the youngest keynote speaker for the largest transgender conference in existence, appeared on TV several times, wrote two movie soundtracks, played on the Van’s Warped Tour and starred in and toured with internationally screening documentary “Songs For Alexis.” 

The Long Island-native who is now based in San Francisco, can play many instruments but is most frequently seen performing foot-stomping folk rock with a vocal mic, a harmonica slung around his neck and his beloved Ovation guitar. As a one man show, Cassata never leaves an audience bored.

Ryan Cassata writes very passionate lyrics. His words are positive and inspirational to every generation. Cassata hopes to continue living the dream of spreading this positivity across the country and around the world with efforts to make people smile and catch on to kindness.

Ryan Cassata is doing much more than the average young folk-singer. He demands peace, he demands love, and…he demands REVOLUTION.

Ryan Cassata also recently turned down an offer to appear on AMERICAN IDOL. Ryan explains why in his interview.  He will also give us his perspective on other important topics impacting the transgender community.

JRK:  Can you give Diversity Rules readers an idea of who Ryan Cassata is -- where you are from and all that good basic information?

RC:  I was born December 13th, 1993 on Long Island, NY where I grew up.  I came out as bisexual when I was 12 years old and came out as transgender when I was 14.  I graduated from Bay Shore High School in 2011. I moved to San Francisco in August of 2012.

JRK:  Recently you made news with your rejection of American Idol’s offer to appear on the show.  Can you enlighten readers about the issue and what transpired that led to your decision to decline the show’s offer to appear?

RC:  American Idol first contacted me in 2014. I am not sure how they found me but I’m guessing through my youtube channel since that has the most subscribers out of any of my social media. They got in touch via email through my manager the night before the San Francisco auditions and I figured “hey, I might as well give this a go, I have nothing else going on tomorrow.”

They called me again this June asking me to go on the show, they first told me that they were looking for someone who is transgender to go on idol. They admitted to transgender being a hot topic right now and even told me that all the shows would be calling me. They called me again in July and basically begged me to go on Idol. It took me 9 minutes to tell them that I wasn’t interested at all.

The things that the casting director said on the phone were extremely racist, sexist and transphobic. They admitted that American Idol is a TV show and not a singing show.
 
JRK:  You have been in New York recording your next album in collaboration with Barb Morrison – who, by the way, was a guest feature in Diversity Rules and simply ROCKS!  Can you tell us about the new album?

RC:  The new album is different than anything I have ever done. It contains a wide range of genres from rap to pop to rock with a punk rock edge. A lot of the songs focus on staying true to oneself, standing up for what you believe in, rising up against bullying, rising up against drug and alcohol addiction, and positive change. There are also a couple love songs. I also did two cover songs one is “Round Here” by the Counting Crows and the other is “Man In The Mirror” made famous by Michael Jackson. Working with Barb Morrison and Jonathan Jetter was a privilege. It was such an incredible experience where I was pushed above the limits. My singing voice improved throughout the recording process and so did my songwriting. I wrote a couple of the songs while I was in the studio, which is a totally new experience for me. My drummer Kenny Truhn (from my records The Theme of Humankind, The Rhythm and Soul Sounds) came in on the drums for this record and the chemistry between us was as strong as ever. I’ve already filmed a couple music videos for the record and plan to film more. I can’t wait for the world to hear my new album.

JRK:  Transgender is a term we are hearing a lot more of lately with the recent “coming out” of Caitlyn Jenner as well as other noteworthy news stories over the past month dealing with transgender youth.  There is still a misunderstanding of what the term encompasses.  Can you provide some insight into what you think it means?

RC:  Everyone’s definition of the word transgender is different. For me it means, feeling differently than the gender you were assigned with at birth. Specifically, for me that means transitioning from female assigned at birth to male because I have always felt male. I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding that gender is binary, when it isn’t. Gender is more than just male and female. Also, not all transgender people choose to have surgeries and/or hormones and that’s an important thing to note. Surgeries and/or hormones do not make a transgender person valid, they are already valid.

JRK:  Being gay or lesbian is a traumatic experience for a child in terms of the reactions by peers.  The trauma that a transgender youth must endure has to be much more intense.  What was your experience as a trans youth coming to grips with who you truly were?

RC:  I always had a strong sense of who I was so when I was younger and I knew that coming out was the right thing for me to do. I went through a lot of bullying in middle school and high school. I also was physically assaulted when I was a young teenager. I had to explain to everyone around me what being transgender meant because most people had never even heard of it.

JRK:  What are some of the most important things we can tell our youth generally about their individuality?  What can be done to encourage them to embrace it and be proud of who they are despite a society that sometimes degrades a person’s individuality.

RC:  Every single person is different. However, there are people just like you out there in the world. You are not alone, you are never alone. No matter how you identify, your identity is valid.

JRK:  What was the reaction of family and friends when you actually embarked on your transition?  What did you do to facilitate their processing of what was about to happen in terms of your journey forward?

RC:  My friends were all very supportive and they told me that they had been waiting for me to come out to them for a long time. They weren’t surprised at all when I told them.

My family took a bit longer to come around. My older brother, Vincent and my younger brother, Frank always accepted me. There was some struggle with understanding but they were always willing to learn. My parent took a little bit longer, especially my Dad but now both of my parents support me 100%. My extended family sometimes still struggles but it is much better than it was.

JRK:  What are some of the misconceptions about transgender people that need to be dispelled?  How is that achieved?

RC:  I think the way we educate the world about different types of transgender people and different types of transitioning is to share stories and educate. Awareness is key in educating.

JRK:  What’s coming up next for Ryan Cassata?

RC:  My album will come out sometime this year and then next year the short film that I co-starred in will be coming out. It’s called Beemus: It’ll End In Tears.

JRK:  Do you have any parting thoughts you wish to relay to Diversity Rules readers?

RC:  Stay true, stay you.

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