The Joys of Being a Media Spokesperson.

Over the holiday week, someone who I will not name gave an interview to a reporter and she said some rather mean things about the trans-community. She expressed her view that we were “All men in Dresses” and that Barney Frank and the HRC was justified in pushing the non-inclusive ENDA. All this was from a person who just nine months earlier was extolling the virtues of the inclusive ENDA and how she found the open support of the trans-community. What changed in nine months?

I feel that it sounds like depression has set in; she is facing the reality of not having a job, not being able to support her family and not having any of her family or friends for support. Sitting at home day after day waiting for a job offer to come in and never hearing one reply and going from a high six figure salary down to unemployment insurance, you just have to be asking yourself, did I do right thing? I feel that she is lashing out at everyone and everything; that she is wallowing in self-doubt and questioning her judgment.

Depression is a many-headed Hydra beast that this community knows all too well. I think everyone in our community has felt it bite; I know I have many, many times. But I am not in the national news and what I say does not get plastered all over CNN, Fox and the other news organization. When you have the national media thrush at you, what ever you say defines the community for better or worst. I think she should have known better, and keep her mouth shut; even I know that when I speak to a reporter I must guard my words.

I wish she kept her mouth shut, but I am not going to crucify her. She became a national celebrity over night. How many of us could take the spotlight as she has done and still come out of the meat grinder whole?