High schoolers start podcast to center young transgender Vermonters

BURLINGTON — 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 healthcare, 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. 

In the first episode, Botti talked with Ace, lobbyist Meg Larraine Fuerst and Sen. Ruth Hardy, D-Addison, about how youth can advocate for themselves in the Statehouse, an environment they said can be intimidating for kids and marginalized communities. 

Too often, education policy gets rewritten without any input from kids themselves, Ace said in the podcast. Last year, they took part in youth leadership day at the Statehouse, an annual event in which kids testify in front of committees, which allowed them to talk to legislators about their experiences in school. 

In the episode, Ace and Botti celebrated the proposed equal rights amendment to the Vermont Constitution, or PR. 4, which is up for voter approval on Nov. 3. The youth also condemned statements that Sen. Steve Heffernan, R-Addison, made on the Senate floor in May about the proposed amendment.

While senators were discussing a bill with harsher punishments for animal cruelty, Heffernan said, “in these crazy times, what happens if the individual identifies as an animal having intercourse with an animal?” 

Heffernan then said he was concerned that the equal rights amendment to the state constitution would offer protections for people who “identify as a dog” and have sex with dogs. 

In the podcast, Botti called Heffernan’s comments “degrading and transphobic.” 

An hour into the event — and after the podcast mentioned him — Heffernan walked into the room and sat down front and center. Hardy, who sat at an adjacent table, shook her head. 

In an interview after the event, Heffernan said he attended because he was invited by the organizers. He said he wasn’t aware of the comments made about him in the podcast and said he supports the rights of gay and transgender youth.

“My uncle was gay. My cousins are gay. I got a brother-in-law that’s gay. I got trans that I know. It’s like, I accept people for who they are,” Heffernan said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: High schoolers start podcast to center young transgender Vermonters.