Update!

Here is a quick little update about the work we are doing on our project. Today, we start with more of the writing, our goal is to have all of the first draft of the writing done by this Thursday, so that Nicole can look over it in class on Thursday and add any suggestions she has.

On Sunday, Rubina and I made the drive down to Logan’s hometown to talk with them and their family for awhile. We got to meet her mom, grandmother, her girlfriend, and her brother, which are all important parts of the story, and it went very well. I was so happy with the outcomes and openness from their family in being willing to talk, and we also got a lot of AMAZING multimedia material to use with Logan and their mom arguing for quite a long time. I wrote down some awesome quotes that I can’t wait to use in class today, and I’m so excited for.

I’m really impressed with how this project is coming along, and I can’t wait to finalize and finish it. We just have to really work hard to put in the remaining grunt work. Looking to the future, I hope that we can all continue to carry our own weight for the group and finish off strong, but I can’t say that it is not a worry I have. I do worry that I will be left editing past content alone, and really trying to make this project perfection all by myself. However, my group members have yet to prove me right in that aspect, and I’m hoping they still won’t.

Abdul is working on data, Rubina and I will be writing most of the day in class today, and all in all we have SO MUCH material. Now it’s just deciding what to keep, and what to not use.

Wish us luck, internet world. It’s been a crazy journey so far. We can’t back down now. It’s only just getting really good!

 

Transcending Gender Midterm

Available on the website we have started for the project at:

https://medium.com/@loganslife/transcending-gender-3e01f7097670

 

WHO PAINTED THE ROSE BUSHES RED?

April, 2010: With a black and bubblegum-pink spandex bodysuit fitting tightly to her body, the slender 15 year-old girl with dirty blonde hair in pigtails strode out onto stage. Iridescent light shown down on her face. She was a guard for the Queen of Hearts–a tap-dancing guard with a cardboard tunic signifying her place as the ace of clubs.

It wasn’t a good time to be a guard: the Queen was in a rage. Someone had painted her rose bushes red, and she wanted to know who had done it.

It was a confusing time to be Logan. She didn’t care much for the rose bushes–or the entire performance, really. She just wanted to know who she was. Ever since she had entered middle school she had felt a lingering discomfort. The summer between eighth grade and high school she had made a last-ditch effort and bought really “pretty” clothes–dresses, skirts and the like. She only wore them once. Since then the pressure had been building.

After the set was done, Logan rushed off-stage. She headed to the dressing room, a place that for a while now had meant confusion for her–women throwing clothes off carelessly in the frantic transition between dances was routine for everyone else, but not for Logan. The blur of bodies–including her own–confused her, made things even worse. Now, at this performance, Logan decided. It wasn’t worth it anymore.

She was done pretending like she loved to dance. Done forcing herself into a norm that she didn’t believe in. Done wearing red lipstick. Done looking awkward and having mannerisms that were different from the other girls. Done with feeling so tired of it all.

Tears started to fall with the realization that trying to maintain friendships she had forged through dance at the cost of being herself was too much.

“Mom I don’t want to dance anymore,” she said, ripping off the cardboard and spandex. “I just can’t do it anymore. It’s a waste of my life.”

 And she walked out. Despite the expectations of friends and family, despite her former passion for dance, despite her mother’s connections with other families in the studio. Logan ran out in the middle of the competition, carrying a bag filled with makeup, costume jewelry, sequins and sashes. Objects that had defined her as girl, but didn’t make sense anymore.

The drive home was in a still silence. Her mother had suspected the changes that were going on in Logan’s mind. It still shocked her, though. She hadn’t expected such an abrupt break. Logan started to take off her makeup in the car mirror. She didn’t know how she felt about the person she saw. This person was not who she wanted to be. Through the ever-present confusion there now ran a current of guilt at upsetting her mother.

The person in the mirror had painted her face in a facade for so long, masking confusion with femininity and Maybelline. Logan wiped the rose red blush off of her cheeks and sighed. It was time to try and move forward.

 

ARE YOU GAY?

 A few weeks before Logan walked out of the performance, Logan’s mother Paula took her to Max and Erma’s for dinner. Logan’s baseball team had just finished a game. But the dinner was shattered before it even began, with a single question.

 “Are you gay?”

Logan was floored–and unsure.

 “Well… I don’t know. Yes. Maybe. No. I’m not ready to talk about this.”

 Logan had gone on dates with boys before. And yet she was attracted to girls sometimes. Although her mother had suspected this conclusion, she didn’t take the news well. The food remained untouched and the waiter was afraid to approach their table. Tears and cold food became the icons of a new normal for Logan: the realization that nothing would ever be normal.

 MERRY FUCKING CHRISTMAS

December, 2010: another dinner lying cold on the table. Logan’s mother had told a distant cousin–the loud-mouthed one who hid rumors carefully and then, like a child, blurted them out “on accident”–about Logan being “gay.” At this point, no one knew of Logan’s confusion except her mother and father. At this point, she wasn’t even sure of her own self well enough to say she was anything. And at this point, her loud-mouthed cousin would become the one person to tell Logan’s grandmother, Peggy, about Logan’s identity. Peggy, the one person who could have gone a little while longer without knowing anything, who would be most hurt at not being told by Logan herself.

Peggy didn’t say a word. She just went back to her bedroom in solitude. Logan sat alone at the table.

“Merry fucking Christmas,” she said to herself. She might have been confused as to who she was, but her family seemed willing and ready to categorize and pass judgement on her.

She wasn’t gay. What was she? That remained to be seen, but one thing was certain. Logan, female-born, tap-dancing, gorgeous but awkward girl was no more. “She” was replaced with “they.” And “they” began the journey that would become gender neutrality.

Data:

Based on the National Transgender Discrimination Survey. Ohio (194 respondents)

School:

  • Those who expressed a transgender identity or gender non-conformity while in grades K-12 reported: 86% rate of harassment, 40% rate of physical assault, 14% sexual violence

  • Harassment led to 15% to leave a school in K-12 settings or leave higher education.

    Workplace:

  • 81% reported experiencing harassment or mistreatment on the job

  • 28% lost a job

  • 27% were denied a promotion

  • 46% were not hired

  • 50% experienced an adverse job action, such as being fired, not hired, or denied a promotion

 

MEDIA

Specification and Holistic View

I got the opportunity to be able to get some more insight in class today about the specific details that we are still not so much lacking, but need to see more detailed in the story. We need to be able to clearly focus on a beginning, middle, and end of the different things that lead Logan to be the person that they are today. This involves a lot of history that we still have left unfold, so I think a big part of what we have done this week is work up to how to deal with those gaps in the story.

I’ve always done a lot more work playing around with Medium. I’ve done some re-editing of the videos to see how we want to nail down specific parts and pieces of each of the of the different outlines that we have come up with. Today in class I worked on writing down exactly what we have in regards to contact conceptually, what we still need to know, and what things we do and do not want to use in regards to the writing on to the media. I’ve always started writing some free flow thoughts of ledes and nut graphs that encompass the story as a whole.

I’m excited when I’m in class hearing about what pieces I need because the guidance is really appreciated. Sometimes I feel like I’m drowning in this project and doing it all alone and every time I have the chance to actually work with our project or talk with Nicole I feel less stressed about the tasks that need to be done and the vision that we have for our project in the end.

The issue that we still need to deal with is the idea of the pronouns. I think we decided that for the sake of this project, pronouns will be hard if we want to keep them neutral with the “they” “Them”, and “theirs”. I’m wondering if it might be in our best interest to just explain upfront why we are using “she” and not “they”, and maybe make it a case for diversity and the fact that even in academia or in grammar, we cannot be neutral, because it gets way to confusing to follow the subject along the path of their life.

The three of us have made plans to go to their home on Sunday of this weekend, and I’m really excited about that. I wanted to be able to get the voice of their family, more history, and really be able to fill in those gaps and specifics of the story that we desperately need. At this point, we have a nice handle on their life as is, but we need to be able to see the whole vision. We have generalities, and overall feelings, but descriptions of perfect dates, ages, feelings, and pivotal moments will be able to be captured in this weekend home.

I’m really excited for the prospect of loading things into Medium and making this a holistic picture. This is the kind of writing that I want to succeed at, and so I’m doing my best to constantly decipher the information we have been given so far and try and make myself the best at this as I can be. I know that is more of a personal goal, because I have a big interest in doing this long term, and so I want to take in all of these tools and make this project as perfect as it can be as a precursor for my future, and for the truth of Logan’s story.

Setting the Scene-10/09/14

Logan is sitting on the bench by the Brutus statue when I come in, looking at their phone. As soon as they see me they stand up.

 “The ER gets here now,” they say, and start walking to the exit.

 As we rush to the bus stop and clamber onto the bus Logan starts to speak about an exam in an American Sign Language class that they had mentioned before.

 “I did okay,” they say. “It wasn’t that bad.” Logan is taking 22 credit hours this semester, and yet they say that the course-load isn’t that bad at all. “Mostly because I’m not that good of a student,” they admit, matter-of-factly. The format of the classes Logan takes also helps; they’re Sociology classes and so based on class discussions, which Logan loves. She gets into debates with her classmates and her professors,especially the professor of a gender class she’s taking this semester who she thinks is too rigid and simplistic.

 The bus ride was short, less than five minutes. We get off on E 13th Avenue, cross the street and walk across fractured sidewalks, dilapidated student housing, a parking lot with several overflowing dumpsters—and on to a two story apartment building with warped wooden stairs on the outside. Up ahead is a little courtyard, a dull perfunctory affair encircled by the apartment buildings, with little sunlight and wilting grass. Before the courtyard we turn left into an entrance on the ground floor. After two turns in winding, dimly lit hallways we come to apartment B, which Logan shares with two roommates: one a student at OSU, and the other a man who had been homeless before Logan had offered him a place to stay.

 Mike, the homeless man, has gotten better, Logan says. For the first few weeks of August he stayed at Logan’s home in Chillicothe. There he mostly slept, Logan said, and annoyed Logan’s parents. Then, when Logan moved onto campus, he came with them. Here in Columbus Mike has worked hard to turn his life around. He used to work two jobs, but now works just one, because the job gives him 50 hours a week and for him that is enough.

 “He seems like he’s gonna keep this job,” Logan said. “They give him a lot of hours. He doesn’t really like switching jobs. He likes jobs that are consistent.” He’s started eating more regularly and no longer looks as emaciated as he once did. In the fridge Logan shows me the food he’s stocked up on his shelf (they divided the three shelves of the fridge: one for each occupant). It’s mostly frozen foods, not really healthy but better than before.

Logan says that Mike’s habits seem incredibly ingrained, and she chalks that up to the fact that he’s been homeless or in foster care for his whole life. He’s never had what would be considered a “normal” childhood. When Logan met him—at a shelter in which she was volunteering for the summer—he had just broken up with a boyfriend. When Logan offered to go and help him pick up his belongings from the apartment he and his ex-boyfriend had briefly shared, they came upon the scene of a vindictive ex: all of Mike’s belongings were piled in the hallway outside the apartment: clothes torn up, vases broken, the pile liberally dusted with “cat litter.” Very little was retrievable.

The plan was to have Mike stay in the living room, but Anastasia, Logan’s other roommate, objected. “She didn’t want to have her friends come over and see a homeless man in the living room,” Logan said, with a hint of wry humor and frustration. She said that Anastasia was “really popular” and had her friends over “all the time.” Anastasia, although she agreed to Mike’s coming over, doesn’t really get along with Mike. Logan says that she plans on going back to campus student housing next semester, even though it’s more expensive. Even though she doesn’t begrudge Mike all that she’s given him, she feels crowded and out of place in her apartment. These days she barely spends any time there. She studies on campus as much as she can, and on the weekends she goes home.

Mike ended up staying in Logan’s room. They had a bunk bed, so they took off one of the mattresses and put it in a corner of the room, at the foot of Logan’s bed—Logan says that she hasn’t decided yet, but will most likely let him keep the mattress once he moves out. Near his bed: a pile of change; shoes and sandals tossed together; an Asus netbook he “bought at a pawnshop;” and a book on BDSM (he works at an Adult entertainment store, and according to Logan, they really have to know what they’re selling). Against the wall facing the beds is a small TV and a shelf filled with DVDs. When Mike isn’t working he sits there and watches movies.

In the closet that Mike and Logan split in half, his side is devoid of any hangers, and instead his clothes are piled on boxes. The room has only one lamp, and so when Logan comes in, and Mike is sleeping, Logan tries to avoid turning on the light because it can be too bright at night. It’s an inconvenience, and kind of creepy, too.

And yet Logan doesn’t regret taking Mike in. His time at the shelter was running out when she was leaving, so he would have been left without a place to stay. And more importantly, Logan wanted him to come to Columbus where he’d be more accepted, as a gay man. Once he moves out—in January, if all goes according to plan—he seems like he’ll keep his current job and be positioned to live a better life than the one he lived before he moved in with Logan.

But what if Mike doesn’t keep his job? What if he relapses into the condition he was in at the shelter?

Logan still wouldn’t regret it. “I’d do it again,” she says, as she leans against the bunk bed in her room and looks at the chaos that is Mike’s corner.

Logan1 copy

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Adbul, Rubina, Lindsey

Logan’s Climbing Profile

Climbing With Logan-

It was 4:09:05 pm on Oct. 3, 2014. The ground was matted with old rain that now soaked into the black pavement near the front of the rock climbing building, one of Logan’s favorite places. Logan’s pace had a galloping motion, their chocolate brown boots hitting in hollow sound as they told me why they climb.

“I feel like I can be myself here,” they said, as we entered the frame of the doorway.

Behind the large front doors was a wall of glass at least 20 feet tall, displaying rock climbing walls of burnt orange, light green, dark tan, all speckled with bright neon colored pathways. People of all kinds roamed around; mostly early 20-somethings with long ratty hair and clothes that looked as if they just came from Woodstock. Music on the loud speaker was completely drowned out by the sharp sounds of clipping ropes, and the yells of many to say they were: “Coming down!”. Friends were everywhere, catching each other up on their days while falling in trust on their belays.

Logan said their friend Hope Harrington would be coming at 4:30 pm, and they were excited because she would be taking her test to be certified in belaying today. Logan took their time getting ready, pointing towards the gender neutral bathrooms as another sign of feeling at home, a place where no questions were asked when you needed to use the restroom. They took their forest green shirt off to reveal a black tank top underneath, a chest binding bra under the tank top.

“I wear this binder because it’s safe,” they said. “A lot of trans* people get hurt doing physical exercise in binders that are too tight.”

Logan was on their own for a while, climbing on auto belays with steady agility; not a beginner nor advanced climber. It was obvious by the deliberate placement of their hands and the pumping of their brain veins on the side of their head that these decisions were pre-meditated, planned with a great sense of the future ahead, in this case being the length of the wall above. No wonder they felt so at home here.

Hope Harrington soon made her grand entrance, surprising Logan from behind. She wore hunter green balloon pants and green climbing shoes, and glasses that touched the tip of her cheeks when she smiled. Blue streaks in her blonde hair and an uncannily sharp retort to Logan’s jokes made her stand out even more. They haven’t been friends for years, but they could have been based on their interactions. Teasing, laughter, and connection between the two could make any third party feel instantly alone.

Hope and Logan practiced for her test, going through the “you remember this” and “yeah, like I taught you” banter that denoted a previous time or two in this vast space together. Then with some encouragement from Logan, Hope took her certification test and passed.

“Wait, I actually passed?,” Hope said jokingly to the male certifier as Logan laughed the kind of laugh that sounds like the most warm and loving witch in the world.

Logan’s mom was also present. She came to pick up Logan for the weekend, where they normally go instead of staying at their apartment. Her springy pumpkin-colored hair and teacher’s attire counteracted with Logan’s style, but their laughter shared about Hope’s test was still genuine.

“Logan was just helping Hope with her test,” I said.

“She is something else,” their mom said tellingly, with a sharp bite emphasis on the “is” and “else”.

Rock climbing media:

IMG_8740 IMG_8765 Screen Shot 2014-10-06 at 4.20.42 PM

Journal Check #3

This week has been a lot of focus on media and pushing out constant contact with our source. My role in this has been pretty extensive, and I’m really happy with a lot of the content.

I spent all of Thursday trying to get myself to learn more of the website Medium. I think my group is still unsure on particularly what source we want to use for our final project. We just know what we want to have at the end. So, I spent a lot of time trying to see if I could teach myself how it would be possible to do what we want in the end. I feel a little behind because I haven’t taken Leonardo’s class yet, but I love editing and photography so I am teaching myself these skills in time as well. I feel like my teammates have these skills as well, but may be a little less likely to want to try and apply them. I really want to use this project for my portfolio because I would love to write long form as a career so it is really important to me.

I went on Friday and followed Logan for the whole day. It was a lot of fun. I went to classes, listened to phone conversations, heard a lot of insight, and got some killer footage and quotes and description for our profile that is being shown tomorrow. I loved it. I want to do more projects like this. They are the kind of journalistic style that I absolutely adore.

I spent most of the weekend working on the video footage and the writing piece, because I had all of the observations and had taken the footage with my phone so I had all of that too, plus I know how to work video editing software okay. It makes me anxious because I hope it’s all going to be good, but it feels really good so I’m excited about that.

Making Sense of Senses

Written By: Abdul
Footage Shot By: Rubina
Edited and revised By: Lindsey

Logan spends a lot of time in the MCC. It’s one of the few places in which they feel safe and free to express themself without being judged.

At each and every moment, you can hear movement, voices, music somehow quiet and at the same time maddeningly pervasive—never a silent moment. Doors open and close with a constant stream of clicks, latches opening and closing, handles turning round and swinging back. Near the entrance that looks out on High Street, to the right of the entrance as you approach, is a patch of crimson wall, striking against the grey-white tones that surround it and grace the rest of the Union. Above the wall, in large slate-grey letters, is the name of the room: “The Multicutural Center.”

In the middle of the crimson stretch of wall are two doors, light brown wood patterned with arcs and stretched of slightly darker brown, and three glass panes running down. To the right of the doors is a 32-inch TV with two lights on either side. Announcements cycle through the TV, all of them dealing with events organized by the Multicultural Center. “Social Justice Engagement,” “Open-Doors Anti-Bias Campaign,” “DICE: Diversity, Intercultural & Community Engagement certificate,” and more. There’s a little wooden table and two grey-cushioned chairs underneath the TV. To the left of the door is a plaque hanging off of a grey buckeye leaf; on the plaque is the name of the room, in case you missed the giant letters above the door.
As one enters everything seems to be muted at once. No music, peace and quiet. The floor is carpeted—a coarse, close-cropped affair, muted reds and browns and blues and so on—but after that part of the ground is dark linoleum, segmented. The carpet curves to the right, past a reception desk and toward a single door that is propped open and leads into offices. Directly in front of the main doors is a frosted pane of glass that stretches from the floor to the ceiling. On top of it the folks of the MCC ask, “What’s your story?” On the frosted glass someone replies in expo marker, “Aug. 20th: Cavs vs. Bulls.”

Below the frosted pane is a box for Ebola donations, with an outline of Africa on the side. Beyond it is a seating area with a few sofas and a TV turned to CNN, which is covering the first case of Ebola in the US.

As I enter a student worker—a man in his early 20s, with dreadlocks that reach to his upper back—is talking to a lady in a red outfit—red skirt and red jacket. The lady is bent over a table and cutting up pieces of cloth with a scissors, laughing.

“I bet you’re wondering what I’m doing, right?”

He nods and laughs, too.

She explains that she’s cutting the cloth into circles to put under the potted plants, so that the trays they are on don’t scratch the tables. She asks him to help her and lift up the tray so she can put the circles underneath, and he misunderstands and lifts only the pots themselves, so she has to lift them up herself. She grumbles a bit about it, but good-naturedly. When she’s done she goes into the offices and the student-worker goes to the reception desk and starts tapping away at the keyboard in front of him.
On the left-hand wall a white wall-paper has been put up, with all sorts of terms one would associate with a multicultural center printed on. Words like indigenous, religion, Latino, age, East Asian, transgender, pansexual, interfaith, military, biracial, and more. All the terms surround The Ohio State University, in font larger than the rest.
The floor tasted odd, a mixture of shoes and Lysol….just kidding. Couldn’t taste anything. There was a faint smell of Lysol, though. A janitor walked in while I was there.

Here is the video pertaining to our location and community, ENJOY!

Journal Check #3

Today during class we got a lot of things done, and actually I have gotten a lot of things done for the immersion project as a whole since last week that I am really excited to announce.

I think our team is working well together. When we sat down to record an interview with our source, we immediately took into consideration all of the things that we were specifically really good at. Rubina taped the raw video footage, I asked questioned and did the main pushing towards the interview, and Abdul was a master of picture taking and also asking follow up questions. We each had a hand in the creating of it, so I think that was really interesting. Obviously looking to the future we will have to split up to cover the events of Logan’s life, but that can all be differential and didn’t have to be for the outline and first initial video.

All day today and all day last night I was working on finalizing things for the assignment due today. Personally, I edited mainly by myself, with input from Rubina and Abdul, but it’s kind of a one person job in the main sense. I also did a lot of the initial writing of the story outline, and I’m really proud of both. Rubina and Abdul definitely helped in adding additions, checking with format and style, and also making sure that we had everything that we needed submitted so that we could turn it in as a full thing and we didn’t have any missing holes or gaps in our requirements.

During class time today, specifically, after we turned in the project I worked on dealing with the rest of the footage that we have of Logan so far. I’m cataloging the videos into a folder so we have content and I’m taking notes on the parts of the story that you don’t get to see in just the two minute video. They talked about a lot of really interesting things that will be helpful in writing the actual piece, so I wanted to get those transcribed and written down so that I don’t have to do it all at once when it’s time to piece things together and write. The last thing I did during class time today, was start to play around withe the Medium website and some other learning experiences in regards to the multimedia and visual effects part of the piece that we want to incorporate. It’s really important to me that it looks easy to understand and that the project is appealing and looks professional, because I have a goal to be a writer that does this kind of immersion all of the time, so I want to get that experience and be able to do those things, because that is a really great skill to have no only for this class but for my future.

9/25/14-4:40 pm.

Immersion Outline and Multimedia Preview

“They Are One Person”-(Title Still in Working Process)

Story By: Abdulrahman Al-Ruwaishan, Rubina Kapil, and Lindsey Oates

Logan Hutson is a 19 year old, polyamorous, transgender, college student, with a homeless man they barely know living in their apartment. They have struggled their entire life with fitting into one framework of a certain identity and continue to have to deal with being comfortable within themselves alongside the basic needs of being human. The fundamental element of acceptance and diversity and understanding a person for not only what they identify, but holistically, should be a driving force in our piece.

The story will start with a general history of their life thus far in regards to their identities. We will make up for lost time by reporting through detailed observations and thorough researching of their past life. Then the story will move into the tribulations that they face in their everyday life, including events that happen, adversity they must overcome, and what it means to be seen as a commodity in a world where you just wish to be yourself. We will capture the dreams, emotions, and raw details of subtle aspects not only of human nature, but specific to their identities. Logan has shared with us  a lifelong goal of opening a homeless care shelter and we will be seeing that progress made along their journey this semester. We expect detailed, clearly immersive accounts of their life at this point in time to be the driving force of our piece. We want you to end the piece saying, “not only do I know more about Logan Hutson as a person, but I now understand so much more about myself.” We want to encourage readers to have more compassion for acceptance.

Sources involved in this story are important to understanding the social connections that they hold with other people. Their partner, Amanda, and their friends, are obviously a huge part of the story in regards to their love and explaining how they love. Their family, especially their mom, whether in opposition or in acceptance, are a pivotal moment to the holistic person and their struggle. Their roommates, both homeless and appointed, are a dynamic we plan on attacking. Their professors, professionals, and other people they encounter alongside their daily lives will also play a minor role in our story. We will receive these contact sheets as we go along with Logan. They assure us that access for not only them but to their loved ones won’t be an issue. Logan’s contact is listed below.

We are working the most on developing our story from the end picture through to the beginning. We want it to be clear that our focus is only on one person’s story and perspective, and that although they can be an example for the kind of struggles they face, they cannot be the authority on an entire population. Our ending story will involve a scrolling profile of Logan as a holistic person with interactive pieces like pictures, videos, and quotes, and will therefore also be visually appealing as well. Extra information from additional sources will be provided to explain certain definitions and details that are necessary to understanding, but will be kept in the background so that we see that Logan is the clear focus, and that a larger social rights issue is the backdrop.

Logan Hutson Contact Info-Phone-(740) 703-0819, E-mail-hutson.124@osu.edu

Preview of Multimedia and Personal Interview Overview