THIS IS A REBLOG FROM http://lilacturtl.tumblr.com/
This is the “kid gender expert” Sheryl Rindel
The one peddling her wares in this irresponsible article.
Degree from North Texas University
Interests:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1052833159&sk=favorites
“I love reading the Bible.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I have a hunch about why she wants to transify “nonconformist” kids. To stop them from being gay, mayhaps? Let us do some further research.
She also “likes” Sonrise Church of Hillsboro, Oregon, which Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed a complaint against in 1998 for for intervening in partisan politics by distributing Christian Coalition voter guides two days before an election. Specifically: Sonrise Church, Hillsboro, Oregon: During services, a church elder advised congregants to pick up Christian Coalition voter guides, which were stacked in an adjoining wing.
Her husband, Carl, has liked this on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/joycemeyerministries
There’s another clue for ya.
Sheryl also liked this:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/His-Perfect-Portions/150761394941911?sk=info
That’s an evangelical Christian diet plan, peeps.
And this missionary group:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sunset-International-Bible-Institute/105709249909?sk=info
This is the Rindels’ church:
You can look around the website but to those uninitiated in conservative nondenominational BS I can give you a little sneak preview: you wouldn’t want to go there if you’re gay.
The “elders” are all male and that’s not a coincedence:
http://www.isonrise.com/elders
In a conservative Calvinist church, women are expected to submit and follow, not lead.
I s’ppose a woman who wanted to lead and preach might need some ~gender nonconformity counseling~
They buy in 100%, they are fellowship group leaders. They wouldn’t be allowed to do that if they didn’t buy in all the way:
https://sonrisechurch.infellowship.com/GroupSearch/ShowGroup/391676
Here’s the website of the company she works for. Prepare yourself for some serious stats distortion, junk science, and manipulative used car salesman rhetoric:
http://www.transactiveonline.org/index.php
Transgender(‘trans’ or TG for short) is a widely used ‘umbrella’ term describing children and youth who do not relate to, experience or express their gender identity in a way that corresponds either to social or cultural gender stereotypes, their physical anatomy or assigned birth sex.
Shit a bunch of us just got grandfathered into the “umbrella.”
It starts young:
A peer group for children ages
4-9 meeting weekly at the TransActive office in SE Portland.Following curriculum adapted by TransActive staff for gender nonconforming children and youth, Butterflies provides a fun environment in which kids can:
- Identify personal strengths and feelings
- Increase coping skills and self-confidence
- Share experiences of being gender nonconforming with others
- Find healthy ways to make sense of their experiences and feelings
- Provide a safe place to express feelings with others who share their experience
- Encourage kids to develop friendships and support networks with each other
How about this?
“In a Bind” is a service of TransActive Education & Advocacy. We collect pre-owned chest binders from guys who don’t need them anymore and donate them to trans-masculine youth in need.
So I poked around and GUESS WHAT? You will be STUNNED to learn that there is NO MENTION AT ALL OF THE POSSIBILITY OF LIL GENDER NONCONFORMISTS BEING LESBIAN, BI, ORGAY.
Well maybe YOU are stunned, but I sure as fuck ain’t, after learning about Rindel’s other affiliations.
None of their resource lists point to anything for les/bi/gay teens or anything. Nada.
Quelle surprise. The “Trans kids” movement is a fundamentalist Calvinist-funded campaign to eliminate young gays and lesbians.
PLEASE REBLOG AND EXPOSE THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN.
You think I just don't understand, but I don't believe you. 
Oh… YOU got this one FUCKING GOOD!!!!
Outfuckingstanding!!!!!
**brava**brava**brava**
Reblogging.
Not me; http://lilacturtl.tumblr.com/
Follow her awesome blog, she found this. Great stuff.
Will DO!!
Hello again.
Yes, Bug, the Transies are coming to get you. All thirty thousand of us, against eight million lesbians and 150 million women who might need their consciousness raised a bit. Tremble in your shoes! Honestly, have you seen the hatred on blogs and the media against the acceptance of trans kids? Or, indeed, against transitioning adults?
Um, you Transies and your rampant individualism *again*! You think I am worried about *me* – how narcissistic projecting of you.
And *again,* no concern from a Transie about the religious ties of a paid staffer at an organizer that’s supposed to help youth, with barely a mention that *you might just be gay, kiddo.*
Clare, tell me, are *you* gay?
I’m queer whichever way I swing. All right, I am lesbian. Whether you accept that or not. Do you want references? I have pretended to be male, and had relationships with straight women, and expressed myself female and had relationships with people who call themselves lesbian.
How could you be worried about you? You are another person who looks at parents accepting their children are trans, and screaming, But what if he’s not? You are damaging him!! Just like the Evangelicals (most of them) scream.
I am not in favour of religious lies.
Oh yes, I must be screaming to read someone else’s research, find it interesting and worth attention, and reblog it.
You don’t believe religious lies. Sure you do – you believe in gender identity.
Instead of joining us in condemning homophobia, you make this about *me,* because you assume that my activism around gender identity is about me personally, and that I am “scared” of trans people. What a maroon. You guys are boring me.
No, I _experience_ gender identity. And- I condemn homophobia. Loudly and clearly. I just do not make the acceptance of trans kids about homophobia. It really isn’t.
I am interested, and this is not an attack. What is the motivation of your activism around gender identity?
This post was about the suspicious ties of the paid staffer of an organizer that deals with gay/trans/questioning youth, and you decided to make it about me. So, no, I don’t see your condemnation of homophobia. I see defensiveness.
I am a feminist.
Just in case anyone affiliated with or reading this blog would like some facts regarding TransActive and the mostly volunteer staff that work there, you could always contact me directly with your questions. Might that not be a more direct way of having your questions answered than indulging in inflammatory assumptions about people and organizations?
You have done not only Ms. Rindel a great injustice with your assumptions about her, but you have done the same to an organization that has provided and continues to provide a great deal of service, support and advocacy to families of transgender and gender nonconforming (regardless of past, present or future sexual orientation) children and youth.
We do not discuss LGBQ youth specifically on our website because we do not specifically provide services based on sexual orientation. There are already many organizations (though there can always be more) that serve youth based on their sexual orientation. There are virtually NO organizations serving kids based on gender nonconformity.
If you want real information, then please contact me directly.
Sincerely,
Jenn Burleton
Executive Director
TransActive Education & Advocacy
How should people contact you, Jenn? Also, please explain Rindel’s affiliations and the lack of gay-affirming content on your website.
People may contact me directly at: jenn@transactiveonline.org
I do not need to “explain” Ms. Rindel’s “affiliations” to you or anyone else. She is a Christian. She belongs to a church. She works within that church in various ways to help others. She is, in my opinion, one of the most caring and competent people I’ve ever known.
If you or someone else has issues with the church she attends, that is one thing. As an atheist, I have issues with MANY churches and with the concept of organized religion itself. That doesn’t mean I attack individuals who practice that faith based on my assumption that they ALL must be homophobes and monsters.
Perhaps some of them are working from within to CHANGE their faith institution to be more open and supportive of LGBTQ people? Perhaps some of them lead fellowship groups within the church that are based on promoting both higher self-esteem and self-love to LGBTQ people who attend the church? Perhaps, some of them have started a fellowship within the church specifically to support gender nonconforming people? Perhaps they’ve even presented to their entire congregation about the need to do this, at the risk of alienating others within the church?
While I am an atheist, I do not assume that every Christian or Muslim hates gays.
The assertion that TransActive must be a ‘Calvinist, fundamentalist, anti-gay Christian organization’ simply because we do not overtly demonstrate support for LGBQ folks came as quite a surprise to me… the lesbian, atheist, feminist Founder and Executive Director of the organization. I’m certain it would come as quite a surprise to the many gay, lesbian and queer youth who receive services of various kinds from TransActive… none of which are based in any way on changing their sexual orientation.
If you’d like to see just how “not anti-gay” I am, check out this video:
http://www.transactiveonline.org/media/media.php
If you had done your homework (in an objective manner) before launching your attack on Ms. Rindel and TransActive, you would have seen the absurdity in your reckless assertions.
I’m sure those assertions come as a profound shock to Basic Rights Oregon, one of the leading LGBTQ legislative advocacy organizations in nation. They are not only a strong ally to TransActive, I was honored to be the recipient of their 2010 “Equality Champion Award”. I have also been recognized by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force as one of “90 Women Leading the Way to Equality”.
I share those two items above not to pat myself on the back, but to reinforce the absurdity of the conclusions you jumped to and the damage that may come to our staff member, our organization and families of trans and gender nonconforming children and youth as a result of your actions.
Jumping to conclusions based on things you do NOT see on our website is both reckless and harmful.
We don’t have a “Obama 2012” graphic on our website- does that make us Republican? Tea Party? Racist?
We don’t have a “Support A Woman’s Right to Choose” headline on our website- does that make us fundamentalist pro-lifers? Abortion clinic bombers? Woman haters?
Since we work with many families of younger children (under age 10) on helping them and their community accept and affirm children’s gender identity/gender expression as it is, not as they wish it would be, we do not choose to confuse that conversation with pointless speculation about what the child’s eventual sexual or affectional orientation might be. We tell parents that, regardless of the child’s gender expression and identity, they may turn out to be lesbian, gay, queer, bisexual, poly or any other variation you can imagine.
In the future, asking questions first, before engaging in speculative character assassination that may well prove harmful not only to the individual you attacked but to children, youth and families seeking a support network might be a better way to go.
I sincerely encourage you to issue an apology on your blog to Ms. Rindel for the baseless insinuations you made about her AND her husband and that you are as forthright in taking responsibility for your recklessness.
All are, again, welcome to contact me directly. I will do my best to respond to every (respectful and borderline sane) email.
Sincerely,
Jenn Burleton
Executive Director
TransActive Education & Advocacy
jenn@transactiveonline.org
Actually, you *do* need to explain, given that your organization *does not* on its website seem to have any services for gender nonconforming youth who are “just gay” and your paid staffer has dubious ties. Gay people have good, historical reason to be suspicious of religion. As you are not a gay person, you might not be aware of this.
Mainstream GLBT organizations do not represent the best interests of lesbians or females when they support overbroad gender identity protections that – intentionally or not – weaken legal protections based on sex. Sex matters to females.
I also passed on your comment to the Tumblr blogger who uncovered the information about your paid staffer. An apology will not be forthcoming.
From the blogger who reported on your organization: http://lilacturtl.tumblr.com/post/23813874266/for-lilac-turtle-lilac-turtle-replies
Also from the blogger who reported on your organization:
Oh BARF.
I will NOT be apologizing, Burleton. This is a load of manipulative BS, but I am hardly surprised to find that manipulative BS is your modus operandi.
Maybe this ploy would have worked on a guilty secular liberal, but if you’d done YOUR homework, you would see that I, too, am a Christian, so I am not buying this line you are selling, not for one blessed minute.
I am sympathetic to the idea of “changing from within.” I think it is possible in some institutions. There are liberal pockets even within the Catholic Church, and there is something to be said for the slow change from within the mainstream that can sometimes occur in such a setting. But if my parish were to start handing out Christian Coalition voter’s guides, as Ms. Rindel’s church has done, I would leave. Why? Because it’s not only horrifically distasteful to me as a feminist, and personally menacing to me as a bisexual woman, it is AGAINST THE LAW. In fact, Ms. Rindel’s church was called to account to the IRS for this irregularity.
This is not simply a church that has a somewhat socially conservative theology. It is a church that is POLITICALLY ACTIVE in excess of what US law allows a religious non-profit. And demographically, it is NOT like the US Roman Catholic Church—where the laity in the majority are in favor of equal rights for gays and other socially progressive stances—but is comprised of people who are not just a bit on the GOP side of the aisle, but who are INCREDIBLY conservative, with a special focus on being against equality for gays and lesbians.
Do I need to explain the Christian Coalition to you? They make Pope Benedict look like Harvey Milk by comparison. But of course you know this. You know exactly what is going on, but you want what you want and you don’t care who or what you have to get in bed with to accomplish it. And you will try to manipulate me into shutting up but you know what—I am smiling at the thought of how loud I have gotten when people like you have tried to shut me up in the past. You will not silence me that easily. I am NOT a nice girl.
I did not assert Transactive to be a Christian fundamentalist group. I asserted Ms. Rindel’s church to be such, and the movement to trans-ify gay and lesbian kids to be a movement that receives much of its fuel from such organizations. The other part of the picture, of course, is organizations like yours that have all the “right” liberal credentials (HRC, bla bla bla) but are in fact serving a profoundly socially regressive and reactionary agenda.
Tell me, Burleton, how many trucks can a girl have before she’s “trans”? How much can she hate dresses and mini-skirts and want to marry a woman when she grows up? How do you tell the difference between hating the way girls are treated and hating being a girl? Where’s the line? And why, pray tell, does the line keep moving? Moving closer and closer so that little girls have less room to just be kids, humans, non-gender-specific-individuals, than they have since the 1950s?
Doesn’t it give you a little pause to think about chemically castrating (that’s what Lupron is—it’s what they give to sex offenders) little gender nonconformists? Of course not. You are obsessed, so you project your obsession onto kids around you. Conservative parents freak out at their little gay boy or lesbian girl and want you to work some kind of magic to “fix” them (but they live in Portland, so they know reparative therapy is profoundly uncool) and voila, you can play God and make it so. How wonderful.
How terrifying. You are as reactionary and terrifying as Pat Robertson (see: CHRISTIAN COALTION) and you are NOT my ally. You are, in fact, my sworn enemy as I strive to raise confident girls in a society that wants to push them into the tiniest of boxes and punish them when they complain about being cramped.
I won’t shut up. I will call them as I see them. And you are a person with severe tunnel vision in cahoots with a conservative megachurch zombie therapist and you are cutting kids down to fit in a prison, and it is very scary indeed.
I’m sorry I have to say this, but this gender nonconforming thing is BS, or at least it’s BS when people make a big stink about it and make support groups, facebook pages and blog about their gender confused child, and here’s why. These parents just want everyone to marvel at how they are wonderful, supportive parents because they wont make their child conform to societies ideals of gender, and you only hear about the males who are gender nonconformists, you never hear about the girls who love to play with barbies, go fishing, dig around in the dirt playing with machbox cars, like I did when I was a kid because that’s boring and no parents get a pat on the back for raising a “tomboy” but any parent who lets their boy be a ballerina is automatically parent of the century! It’s just another way for some parents to inflate their egos. I say just let kids be kids, let kids play with other kids, and stop trying to stick arbitrary labels on them!
I would also like to add that gender confusion and gender nonconformity are real, and I have no problem with that at all. I just get sick of these uppity parents who think they are better than everyone else for having a “gender nonconformist” child.
the phrase ‘non-gender conforming children’ makes me want to poke a stick in my eye. wtaf? this is cuckoo land. or land of the outright regressive as fuck. i am non gender conforming – yay me! yay most of us for challenging these bullshit stereotypes and living in our own skins not bowing to some bs code of coduct dictated to us by advertisers. big fucking deal.
i long for a world where every child is non gender conforming. christ i must have missed the bit on gender conformation as an essential stage when i was studying child development.
how can it not be relevant that someone being entrusted, and paid, to work with vulnerable children is a member of a homophobic fundamentalist group with a habit of breaking the law?