On Leaving Rochester, and the Gay Alliance

My biggest regret over leaving Rochester is leaving the Gay Alliance, and my biggest regret regarding the Gay Alliance is that I didn’t get involved sooner than I did.

So many of you have told me how much I have given, but from where I’m sitting, what little I may have given pales in comparison to what I have gained. It is those gains I would like to address.

When Stacey and I first arrived in Rochester, the Trans community was fractured and fragmented. Indeed, for the longest time, we couldn’t find out if one even existed at all. All the results we found via Google were dead ends; the head of the Gay students organization at MCC had graduated, and the organization was dead in the water. The one Trans “community” meeting we did find consisted of a bitter woman boasting of all the lawsuits she had filed over perceived slights she had experienced.

Our previous community of Everett, Washington, may not have been the most progressive, but it did have the Washington Gender Alliance, a Trans-support group that met every Wednesday night. It quickly became our family-of-choice, and I have nothing but fond memories of our friends there.

It took me a long time to summon the courage to even visit the Gay Alliance, much less volunteer my services. But Bill DeStevens soon put me at ease, and before long everyone else had welcomed me like a long-lost friend.

I can honestly say that the Gay Alliance on more than one occasion was all that stood between me and acting on my thoughts of suicide.

Which is why it pained me when Jeannie Gainsburg told me the other day that people were saying: “We are often called ‘trans unfriendly’ and it breaks my heart.”

My reply to her was this:

“Anyone who says GAGV is Trans unfriendly doesn’t know the first thing about us! I was more accepted by GAGV than by a couple of the local Trans groups.”

Trans-unfriendly? With Trans folk as volunteers and paid staff? I just don’t see it. In the two years I’ve been active in the GAGV, I have been accepted for who I am. And the one or two times I was accidentally misgendered, the person apologized immediately, and never again made that mistake.

The Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley is, in Rochester, my family-of-choice, and always will be.

With true affection and love,

Robyn Jane Sheppard