It’s called “Transmissions of Truth” — a new podcast created and produced by Vermont high school students “to feature the perspectives of transgender youth,” according to VTDigger.com.
Reports VT Digger:
The voice of Ace, a 15-year-old transgender Vermonter, broadcasted through a large speaker to a room of about 40 people gathered to listen to a group rarely heard from: trans youth.
“In middle school I would be scared to go to school every day. I would be worried something was going to happen to me,” Ace said.
In the first episode of a new podcast started by other high schoolers, Ace described being targeted in school and bullied for being transgender and disabled. “I really just wish people understood that it’s not like something that you could just brush off, it’s not something you could just ignore because it really is unsafe,” they said.
Ace’s voice carried through the room of people gathered Wednesday night to celebrate the first episode’s release at the office of Outright Vermont, an LGBTQ+ youth advocacy organization. The podcast, called “Transmission of Truth,” was created and produced by high schoolers to feature the perspectives of transgender youth.
During a time when trans people have had their health care, protections against discrimination and participation in sports threatened during President Donald Trump’s recent administration, the podcast episode encourages queer youth to be given a say on policies that impact them at the state level.
Before playing the podcast for the room, Dana Kaplan, Outright’s executive director, took the mic.
“Young people need to have the ability to shape their own future,” he said, and trans voices are too often left behind. Letting trans youth share their own stories “feels pretty radical,” he said.
Over half of LGBTQ+ youth age 13-17 have experienced bullying and those who did reported much higher rates of attempting suicide compared to their peers, according to a report from the Trevor Project, a national advocacy group for LGBTQ+ youth. According to the report, 40% of transgender or nonbinary young people have considered attempting suicide in the past year.
The podcast was the brainchild of Rafaela Botti, a homeschooled high school senior who lives in Middlebury. Botti said in an interview that she created the podcast as a response to “a really nasty rhetoric right now surrounding queer and trans youth.”
“We really wanted to destigmatize that and make sure that there was an accessible way for people to learn about the trans community, especially young people here in Vermont,” Botti said.