SpeakOUT Blog

By Richie McNamara

During the summer of 2020, Kay Mangan had just moved back to their hometown in Everett, Massachusetts. “It was the beginning of the pandemic, and I was reflecting on my high school experience in the closet. And when I came back to Everett after graduating (college), I felt eyes on me now that I was visibly queer.” 

Kay, who uses they/them pronouns, could not recollect a single instance when the City of Everett acknowledged “LGBTQ anything.” Kay’s father, Michael Mangan, has previously served on Everett City Council and is currently on the School Committee representing Ward 4. Kay grew up very aware of Everett’s priorities and knew that LGBTQ+ rights and protections were not on the city’s radar. Realizing there was a lack of resources in Everett is what pushed Kay to make a change, so they joined forces with co-founder Dom Washington, who has an extensive background in community organizing, to propose ELYSARC to the city.

Kay and Dom sent a proposal for the youth center to the city, which included details like utilizing an unoccupied space in a former public school building. After months of waiting, the city reached out to tell them they had a space, and they opened their doors on June 1, 2021. Since they got that call, Dom explained that the ball moved quickly, which felt “surreal, exciting, and overwhelming.”

ELYSARC stands for Everett LGBTQ+ Youth Space and Resource Center and is for queer youth to have a space to hang out and be themselves. They offer gender-affirming products and resources, as well as provide connections to resources with STI testing, food, and healthcare in their space in the Old Pope John High School.

ELYSARC also has vocational and volunteer opportunities for LGBTQ+ youth, as they currently have an intern helping them out for college credit. They’ve also hired LGBTQ+ youth artists to paint a mural. The organization has joined forces with Everett Public Schools to assess the needs of LGBTQ+ students and to create professional development opportunities and resources.

ELYSARC has faced some backlash from a small handful of locals, as heightened visibility can lead to more outward hate. However, for Dom and Kay, the Everett Public School system has been truly supportive of their organization in the face of hate.

Kay and Dom cited Queer Prom as their most proud moment relating to ELYSARC. “A lot of us have weird feelings about prom, and high school in general,” says Kay. “We wanted to reclaim authenticity with this event.” The droves of support this event received made it apparent how necessary a Queer Prom was in Everett. Not only did people want to see the event happen, but they also wanted to attend and volunteer. 

To put on their biggest event, ELYSARC collaborated with YouForward (a Lawrence nonprofit promoting self-discovery and well-being in young adults through shared experiences and resources), and Lowell’s YouthQuake (an access center serving young adults in need of mental health support). Queer Prom at ELYSARC included a live ballroom performance from the House of Escada who has been featured on the first season of HBO’s Legendary. 

Currently, ELYSARC is focusing on providing mutual aid in the form of gender-affirming products, and professional development workshops with Everett Public Schools. You can find them on Instagram @elysarc_ and linktr.ee/Elysarc for other ways to show support!

Richie McNamara graduated from UMass Amherst with a BA in Communication and a published thesis project titled Beyond Our Boundaries, which looks at how face-to-face, personal narrative storytelling can create social change. Currently, Richie works in social media marketing for a local general contractor. Interests include reality television, pop culture, content creation, and cross country running.

SpeakOUT Boston was deeply saddened and angered to see the vandalism perpetrated upon the construction site for The Pryde in Hyde Park last week. Hate speech against the LGBTQ+ community, including specific threats of violence, can never be tolerated, and its seriousness can never be minimized.

SpeakOUT joins all those in the Hyde Park and greater Boston communities who have condemned this attack and who have expressed solidarity with LGBTQ Senior Housing, Inc., the nonprofit organization building this much-needed LGBTQ+-friendly residence and community center.

We call upon Boston’s Mayor Wu and the Boston Police Department to stick to their pledges for a full investigation into this threat to public safety and the civil rights of LGBTQ+ citizens, and thank them for their swift initial response. We are heartened to see the LGBTQ+ community, the Hyde Park neighborhood, and the larger Boston community rallying around The Pryde and its eventual residents and will do our part to continue that support in the weeks, months, and years to come.  

If you have time, please contact your state representatives today and urge them to vote for Amendment #665, Pryde for All that will support LGBTQ-friendly senior housing in Massachusetts. The vote may take place as early as today, so please act now.  You can find your legislators here. 

SpeakOUT is hosting its Spring Speaker Training on Saturday, April 9th at Suffolk University in Boston. This is the first in-person training since the pandemic, so it will be exciting to spend time together in LGBTQ+ community space. Two of SpeakOUT’s trainers share their memories of how they found SpeakOUT and what the experience of being a speaker has brought to their lives. To find out more about the training or to register, visit the SpeakOUT website.

SpeakOUT’s Impact on My Life

When I signed up for the SpeakOUT training in 2018, I did it to satisfy a development goal for my job. I wanted to learn to be comfortable speaking in front of groups and the thought of taking the internal workshop with co-workers terrified me. Frankly, the thought of speaking in front of anyone made me sick to my stomach. A friend had shared the SpeakOUT registration on his Facebook page and it seemed like a safe space to do what my manager wanted me to do.

What I didn’t expect was the impact SpeakOUT would have on my life. By sharing my story, I’ve been able to unpack memories that were painful and buried deep, almost forgotten. I’ve been able to process the emotions that come with those memories in a productive way, and hopefully have helped other people understand a little more about the LGBTQ+ community with each engagement. I’ve become a better person, a better partner, and a better advocate. I’ve met incredible people with unique stories, many who have become close friends. Without SpeakOUT, my life would be missing something. I’m thankful to be able to give back to SpeakOUT by helping the next group of speakers learn to share their stories by now being a trainer.

My Story Found a Voice

Just when the world thought that the 2020 pandemic could get the best of me after experiencing loss of a job that I treated as a vocation, loss of residency to a country I once called home and loss of a father who loved me unconditionally for four decades – I found new hope, meaning and redemption instead after I stumbled upon SpeakOUT.

As a new immigrant, married gay man and POC planting new roots in Massachusetts, I was in search of an outlet that would bring me peace as I started anew in an overwhelmingly intersectional life. Being an LGBTQIA+ and AAPI advocate juxtaposed with my passion for communication (writing, public speaking, and social media) was an envisioned path, yet I didn’t have an organized platform and structured approach to bring the self-imposed mission to fruition. After Googling ‘LGBTQ advocacy Boston’ I found one of the sparks of light at the end of the tunnel.

I joined SpeakOUT by sending a bold unsolicited email to its super warm, friendly and welcoming Executive Director, Ellyn Ruthstrom. Next thing I know, I’m attending one of their online Speaker Trainings where I eventually found how my unique coming out story as a gay man could be purposeful. While I knew how to share my authentic life anecdotes, the course was very powerful as it reminded me where to source my core, inspiration and rallying call. As a seasoned corporate speaker, the training also liberated me to unlearn ‘too formal’ habits that overshadow the beauty, sincerity and vulnerability of raw stories that come straight from the heart. The constructive feedback and motivation from the small groups also helped define improvement areas while keeping me empowered in my own narrative.

Today, not only am I an active speaker but also an engaged volunteer for the Training Team, SpeakOUT in Color (the BIPOC social group of the organization), and a new Board Member. Indeed, from a simple training to finding an outlet, my work-in-progress story unfolds as it finds its true voice to make this world a bit better for the folks in the generations to come.      

As SpeakOUT heads towards 2022—our 50th anniversary year!—we are excited to highlight the work that has kept our organization going for half a century.

• Fifty years of LGBTQ+ community members participating in peer-led trainings to learn how to create and share an effective story to raise awareness about LGBTQ+ lives.

• Fifty years of SpeakOUT members sharing personal stories in public and private schools, colleges, businesses, faith communities, public libraries, community organizations, and more.

• Fifty years of helping to create safer and more inclusive spaces for LGBTQ+ people throughout the region—SpeakOUT speakers have traveled to all the New England states to share their stories.

• Fifty years of SpeakOUT speakers building understanding about sexual orientation, gender identity, coming-out experiences, workplace discrimination, bisexuality, marriage equality, transgender rights, queer youth, nonbinary identities, and everything else that is included in the richness and complexities of LGBTQ+ lives.

Think about all the things that have changed for the LGBTQ+ community in 50 years! SpeakOUT has proven the power personal storytelling has to open minds and change attitudes. We know our work with diverse audiences has helped raise awareness about the lives of LGBTQ+ people and created change in communities.

The Challenge

We all know how difficult and strange 2020 and 2021 have been. A lot of sacrifice. A lot of loss. A lot of changes within our worklife, personal life, and social interactions.

SpeakOUT, too, has adapted to the realities of the COVID era, and we spent 2021 primarily in online environments with our clients. With continued violence against LGBTQ+ people and legislative challenges that threaten our rights, SpeakOUT believes that our personal approach to discussing LGBTQ+ lives is still making a difference!

To cope within the changing climate—and as an organization that thrives on personal interactions with our audiences—we have learned how to leverage technology to bring that same sense of connection to our online engagements.

50K for 50 Years

Starting with this end-of-year appeal, SpeakOUT is launching a 50K for 50 Years campaign to provide sustainability and growth for the organization in 2022 and beyond!

This is a large goal for a small grassroots organization like SpeakOUT, and we are asking our supporters and sponsors to help us expand our program beyond Boston with this campaign. LGBTQ+ inclusive spaces are essential in our schools, in our workplaces, and in our communities and we want to do our part in creating more of those spaces—wherever they may be!

Your Contribution

We want to end 2021 strong in order to step into our anniversary year with renewed momentum to support our goals that will carry us past the COVID context. This past June, we had the most successful Pride Month ever and spoke to online audiences in the Boston area as well as corporate audiences across the U.S. and internationally.

With your support, we will continue to expand our work through the online approach beyond the Greater Boston area.

Make your tax-deductible donation today by making an online donation at bit.ly/2021SpeakOUTChallenge. You can make a one-time gift or become a monthly or quarterly donor!

Ellyn Ruthstrom

Executive Director

By Tai Tran

I recently sat on an online SpeakOUT panel in a high school health class. Between the students in the classroom with the teacher and the other students on zoom we had a small audience. Even in a pandemic, our teachers and students are continuing their education and meaningful work together. I shared my story about how I taught middle school math and science in California for the past two years and had made it a point to be an openly out queer educator. We live in a world that stigmatizes and erases queer identities in the institution of education; I was not going to recreate that in my classroom. I always introduce myself as “Mx. Tran, not Mr., not Ms., and I’m happily independent, so not Mrs. either.” After sharing our stories, a young male student asked me, “Mx. Tran, you say you identify as nonbinary, but the pronouns on your zoom say she and her, what does that mean?” 

I thanked the young man for his question and quickly added, “Good question!” Afterall, young people nowadays need more encouragement than ever. And to ask questions is a sign of intelligence, or so I tell my own students. We had only reached the halfway point of the panel  and even if we had more time it would not have been enough to explain the intricacies of gender and sexuality to the students. Why do I subscribe to a binary pronoun when I claim nonbinary as well? Are the two mutually exclusive? Should I, perhaps more accurately, use they/them as pronouns instead? Or hir? Or ze? 

For me, these were of course questions I asked myself long ago. And ones that I continue to ask myself. But in the moment, I replied “It just feels more me. More like me. Don’t get me wrong, I have tried he, him, his pronouns. I have tried and used them for years and I certainly know those are not what I want to be referred to as when I am talked about.” And trans/nonbinary people are definitely talked about, especially so when we are not in the room. I didn’t need a whole seminar to tell these young bright minds that there is no one way to be nonbinary. Just like there is no one way to be a good person. I told my story about when I started to experiment with other pronouns I found out this was the pronoun for me. When my trusted friends and colleagues started calling me by she and her pronouns I felt seen and respected. I felt seen the way I wanted to be seen and respected. The way I see myself; not the way the world said I should be. 

Whether principals, districts, lawmakers, or governments are willing to admit it or not, we live in a world that scripts out the life of our youth before they are even born. To be a “boy” or to be a “girl” means something. We all have an inkling, large or small, of what it means. Yet, what would it mean to be nonbinary? I am grateful that I am alive to continue exploring what it means to me. I am grateful to be involved with an organization that lets students hear the stories behind the statistics of people who are so different from them, who are likely very different from their family as well. And I am also grateful for that student’s question. 

Tai recently finished her service with Teach For America in Richmond, California as part of the 2018 corps, teaching middle school math and science. She is a bright, bold, and brave queer educator who goes by Mx. Tran in the classroom. Her passions include dismantling the anti-queer patriarchy in the institution of education, empowering students with comprehensive sex ed, and being the change she has always wanted to see in the world.