If anyone wants to read more about Stephen and LGBTQIA youth, here is the NYT article.

The New York Time's

Generation LGBTQIA

By MICHAEL SCHULMAN

Published: January 10, 2013

STEPHEN IRA, a junior at Sarah Lawrence College, uploaded a video last March on We Happy Trans, a site that shares "positive perspectives" on being transgender.

In the breakneck six-and-a-half-minute monologue - hair tousled, sitting in a wood-paneled dorm room - Stephen exuberantly declared himself "a queer, a nerd fighter, a writer, an artist and a guy who needs a haircut," and held forth on everything from his style icons (Truman Capote and "any male-identified person who wears thigh-highs or garters") to his toy zebra.

Because Stephen, who was born Kathlyn, is the 21-year-old child of Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, the video went viral, garnering nearly half a million views. But that was not the only reason for its appeal. With its adrenalized, freewheeling eloquence, the video seemed like a battle cry for a new generation of post-gay gender activists, for whom Stephen represents a rare public face.

Armed with the millennial generation's defining traits - Web savvy, boundless confidence and social networks that extend online and off - Stephen and his peers are forging a political identity all their own, often at odds with mainstream gay culture.

If the gay-rights movement today seems to revolve around same-sex marriage, this generation is seeking something more radical: an upending of gender roles beyond the binary of male/female. The core question isn't whom they love, but who they are - that is, identity as distinct from sexual orientation.

But what to call this movement? Whereas "gay and lesbian" was once used to lump together various sexual minorities - and more recently "L.G.B.T." to include bisexual and transgender - the new vanguard wants a broader, more inclusive abbreviation. "Youth today do not define themselves on the spectrum of L.G.B.T.," said Shane Windmeyer, a founder of Campus Pride, a national student advocacy group based in Charlotte, N.C.

Part of the solution has been to add more letters, and in recent years the post-post-post-gay-rights banner has gotten significantly longer, some might say unwieldy. The emerging rubric is "L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.," which stands for different things, depending on whom you ask.

"Q" can mean "questioning" or "queer," an umbrella term itself, formerly derogatory before it was appropriated by gay activists in the 1990s. "I" is for "intersex," someone whose anatomy is not exclusively male or female. And "A" stands for "ally" (a friend of the cause) or "asexual," characterized by the absence of sexual attraction.

It may be a mouthful, but it's catching on, especially on liberal-arts campuses.

The University of Missouri, Kansas City, for example, has an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Resource Center that, among other things, helps student locate "gender-neutral" restrooms on campus. Vassar College offers an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Discussion Group on Thursday afternoons. Lehigh University will be hosting its second annual L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Intercollegiate Conference next month, followed by a Queer Prom. Amherst College even has an L.G.B.T.Q.Q.I.A.A. center, where every group gets its own letter.

The term is also gaining traction on social media sites like Twitter and Tumblr, where posts tagged with "lgbtqia" suggest a younger, more progressive outlook than posts that are merely labeled "lgbt."

"There's a very different generation of people coming of age, with completely different conceptions of gender and sexuality," said Jack Halberstam (formerly Judith), a transgender professor at the University of Southern California and the author, most recently, of "Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal."

"When you see terms like L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.," Professor Halberstam added, "it's because people are seeing all the things that fall out of the binary, and demanding that a name come into being."

And with a plethora of ever-expanding categories like "genderqueer" and "androgyne" to choose from, each with an online subculture, piecing together a gender identity can be as D.I.Y. as making a Pinterest board.

BUT sometimes L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. is not enough. At the University of Pennsylvania last fall, eight freshmen united in the frustration that no campus group represented them.

Sure, Penn already had some two dozen gay student groups, including Queer People of Color, Lambda Alliance and J-Bagel, which bills itself as the university's "Jewish L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Community." But none focused on gender identity (the closest, Trans Penn, mostly catered to faculty members and graduate students).

Richard Parsons, an 18-year-old transgender male, discovered that when he attended a student mixer called the Gay Affair, sponsored by Penn's L.G.B.T. Center. "I left thoroughly disappointed," said Richard, a garrulous freshman with close-cropped hair, wire-framed glasses and preppy clothes, who added, "This is the L.G.B.T. Center, and it's all gay guys."

Through Facebook, Richard and others started a group called Penn Non-Cis, which is short for "non-cisgender." For those not fluent in gender-studies speak, "cis" means "on the same side as" and "cisgender" denotes someone whose gender identity matches his or her biology, which describes most of the student body. The group seeks to represent everyone else. "This is a freshman uprising," Richard said.

On a brisk Tuesday night in November, about 40 students crowded into the L.G.B.T. Center, a converted 19th-century carriage house, for the group's inaugural open mike. The organizers had lured students by handing out fliers on campus while barking: "Free condoms! Free ChapStick!"

"There's a really vibrant L.G.B.T. scene," Kate Campbell, one of the M.C.'s, began. "However, that mostly encompasses the L.G.B. and not too much of the T. So we're aiming to change that."

Students read poems and diary entries, and sang guitar ballads. Then Britt Gilbert - a punky-looking freshman with a blond bob, chunky glasses and a rock band T-shirt - took the stage. She wanted to talk about the concept of "bi-gender."

"Does anyone want to share what they think it is?"

Silence.

She explained that being bi-gender is like manifesting both masculine and feminine personas, almost as if one had a "detachable penis." "Some days I wake up and think, 'Why am I in this body?' " she said. "Most days I wake up and think, 'What was I thinking yesterday?' 

"Britt's grunginess belies a warm matter-of-factness, at least when describing her journey. As she elaborated afterward, she first heard the term "bi-gender" from Kate, who found it on Tumblr. The two met at freshman orientation and bonded. In high school, Kate identified as "agender" and used the singular pronoun "they"; she now sees her gender as an "amorphous blob."

By contrast, Britt's evolution was more linear. She grew up in suburban Pennsylvania and never took to gender norms. As a child, she worshiped Cher and thought boy bands were icky. Playing video games, she dreaded having to choose male or female avatars.

In middle school, she started calling herself bisexual and dated boys. By 10th grade, she had come out as a lesbian. Her parents thought it was a phase - until she brought home a girlfriend, Ash. But she still wasn't settled.

"While I definitely knew that I liked girls, I didn't know that I was one," Britt said. Sometimes she would leave the house in a dress and feel uncomfortable, as if she were wearing a Halloween costume. Other days, she felt fine. She wasn't "trapped in the wrong body," as the cliché has it - she just didn't know which body she wanted.

When Kate told her about the term "bi-gender," it clicked instantly. "I knew what it was, before I knew what it was," Britt said, adding that it is more fluid than "transgender" but less vague than "genderqueer" - a catchall term for nontraditional gender identities.

At first, the only person she told was Ash, who responded, "It took you this long to figure it out?" For others, the concept was not so easy to grasp. Coming out as a lesbian had been relatively simple, Britt said, "since people know what that is." But when she got to Penn, she was relieved to find a small community of freshmen who had gone through similar awakenings.

Among them was Richard Parsons, the group's most politically lucid member. Raised female, Richard grew up in Orlando, Fla., and realized he was transgender in high school. One summer, he wanted to room with a transgender friend at camp, but his mother objected. "She's like, 'Well, if you say that he's a guy, then I don't want you rooming with a guy,' " he recalled. "We were in a car and I basically blurted out, 'I think I might be a guy, too!' "

After much door-slamming and tears, Richard and his mother reconciled. But when she asked what to call him, he had no idea. He chose "Richard" on a whim, and later added a middle name, Matthew, because it means "gift of God."

By the time he got to Penn, he had been binding his breasts for more than two years and had developed back pain. At the open mike, he told a harrowing story about visiting the university health center for numbness and having a panic attack when he was escorted into a women's changing room.

Nevertheless, he praised the university for offering gender-neutral housing. The college's medical program also covers sexual reassignment surgery, which, he added, "has heavily influenced my decision to probably go under the Penn insurance plan next year."

PENN has not always been so forward-thinking; a decade ago, the L.G.B.T. Center (nestled amid fraternity houses) was barely used. But in 2010, the university began reaching out to applicants whose essays raised gay themes. Last year, the gay newsmagazine The Advocate ranked Penn among the top 10 trans-friendly universities, alongside liberal standbys like New York University.

More and more colleges, mostly in the Northeast, are catering to gender-nonconforming students. According to a survey by Campus Pride, at least 203 campuses now allow transgender students to room with their preferred gender; 49 have a process to change one's name and gender in university records; and 57 cover hormone therapy. In December, the University of Iowa became the first to add a "transgender" checkbox to its college application.

"I wrote about an experience I had with a drag queen as my application essay for all the Ivy Leagues I applied to," said Santiago Cortes, one of the Penn students. "And I got into a few of the Ivy Leagues - Dartmouth, Columbia and Penn. Strangely not Brown.

"But even these measures cannot keep pace with the demands of incoming students, who are challenging the curriculum much as gay activists did in the '80s and '90s. Rather than protest the lack of gay studies classes, they are critiquing existing ones for being too narrow.

Several members of Penn Non-Cis had been complaining among themselves about a writing seminar they were taking called "Beyond 'Will & Grace,' " which examined gay characters on shows like "Ellen," "Glee" and "Modern Family." The professor, Gail Shister, who is a lesbian, had criticized several students for using "L.G.B.T.Q." in their essays, saying it was clunky, and proposed using "queer" instead. Some students found the suggestion offensive, including Britt Gilbert, who described Ms. Shister as "unaccepting of things that she doesn't understand."

Ms. Shister, reached by phone, said the criticism was strictly grammatical. "I am all about economy of expression," she said. "L.G.B.T.Q. doesn't exactly flow off the tongue. So I tell the students, 'Don't put in an acronym with five or six letters.' "

One thing is clear. Ms. Shister, who is 60 and in 1979 became The Philadelphia Inquirer's first female sportswriter, is of a different generation, a fact she acknowledges freely, even gratefully. "Frankly, I'm both proud and envious that these young people are growing up in an age where they're free to love who they want," she said.

If history is any guide, the age gap won't be so easy to overcome. As liberated gay men in the 1970s once baffled their pre-Stonewall forebears, the new gender outlaws, to borrow a phrase from the transgender writer Kate Bornstein, may soon be running ideological circles around their elders.

Still, the alphabet soup of L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. may be difficult to sustain. "In the next 10 or 20 years, the various categories heaped under the umbrella of L.G.B.T. will become quite quotidian," Professor Halberstam said.

Even at the open mike, as students picked at potato chips and pineapple slices, the bounds of identity politics were spilling over and becoming blurry.

At one point, Santiago, a curly-haired freshman from Colombia, stood before the crowd. He and a friend had been pondering the limits of what he calls "L.G.B.T.Q. plus."

"Why do only certain letters get to be in the full acronym?" he asked.

Then he rattled off a list of gender identities, many culled from Wikipedia. "We have our lesbians, our gays," he said, before adding, "bisexual, transsexual, queer, homosexual, asexual." He took a breath and continued. "Pansexual. Omnisexual. Trisexual. Agender. Bi-gender. Third gender. Transgender. Transvestite. Intersexual. Two-spirit. Hijra. Polyamorous."

By now, the list had turned into free verse. He ended: "Undecided. Questioning. Other. Human."

The room burst into applause.

Correction: January 10, 2013, Thursday

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: An earlier version of this article and a picture caption referred incorrectly to a Sarah Lawrence College student who uploaded a video online about being transgender. He says he is Stephen Ira, not Stephen Ira Beatty.

Source NYT

Fair Use

Age gap doesn't really bother me as long as they are both adults. But she wasn't/isn't.

That and everybody should have their heart broken at least once before they consider marriage.

@MilkmanDan One of the examples they used in the book was ice hockey. Unlike your example of the multiplier, in many cases, it is winner takes all. So, in hockey, tryouts are in January. Leagues are typically by age group. So, being the absolute oldest you can be for the group naturally entails an age gap that makes you just a bit stronger, faster, more mature, ect. That edge means you are more likely that someone who is born, say, in July-August. That half a year of aging ends up that most of the oldest players edge out all of the youngest players, even in, given apples and apples of age, those younger players might be better overall players; the "skill" gap, however makes that edge not more so than the age gap, and therefor many will not make the team.

This cycle will continue; so, the younger not only will ALWAYS be younger, but usually miss out on being on the team, not getting the necessarily experience needed if he wanted to make hockey his job. He is, in effect, crowded out of the best training and experience not based only on his skill, but his age. So, he is implicitly left out in the rain. I can't remember the exact number, but some statistically significant (like 70+%) of hockey players are born near the normal tryout date for hockey. It would seem doubtful that this be some genetic inheritance of being born in a time of year more than a man made occurrence of time conditions.

So you could apply a multiplier to that, I guess. It just isn't quite as simple as "I have a bigger multiplier in this one spot". There are many "lucky" factors like time of birth, personality, family life, sociability, and random circumstances beyond your control that have huge effects on the overall outcome of your life. And moreso, beyond your raw ability to make up for that difference. One of the great examples (which the book uses) of life getting in the way is Christopher_Langan. He is the only person to score a perfect result on the IQ test, which has never been done, and such, is touted as the smartest man in the world, ever. However, the conditions of his life, broken home, and various others, resulted in him loosing his scholarship, working in a bar, and a relatively unremarkable life. No one knows his name (except for savy sifters, he's on here) even though he should have every opportunity to make use of his great mind. The point of the book, and I think most people would agree when they consider it, is that talent isn't enough. You have to be in the right place, at the right time, and know the right people to make that talent count for something. That even applies for science, it isn't immune to irrational bouts of favoritism and unreasonable circumstance. Everything has its, as Sun Tzu would call it, rules of heaven and earth.

The books main point is that the best of the best aren't in that spot based on merit alone. They had several other, equally important, factors determining the fate of their empires of awesome. The arc of the messages is that many great people in history have been forgotten, and many of the greats that we know weren't really that great.

Having three 16-year-old wives would close the age gap.

All I can say to this is, if he had not been a man of influence at this period in his life...he would probably be looking at an investigation and probably a court case. More than likely he would have other "questionable" acts that we know nothing about looked at in a different light, the lawyers would spin him into a monster and he would be in prison for 10 years or more. And since his crime was against a minor, he would probably be enjoying the company of other men in prison as we've seen in other videos sifted through here.

If she had brought this forward immediately, when he was 28 or 29...even 30. He would not have the influence he has now to protect himself from at least the stigma of it. And he probably wouldn't have went on to be what he is now. Yet it happens all the time to people just accused of crimes, guilty or not.

All I see a nice double standard, and suspect that the only reason he is getting applause is because everyone else there probably has some criminal secret they hope they bring up like he did and keep their careers/wealth/power. If they can make it happen for him, why not for themselves?

Even if the girl were a day after her 18th birthday and it was completely legal, there would be a stigma any normal person would have from even that bit of info being known with an age gap of 10 years. Her being 15, being that there's a chance that the girl hadn't hit puberty yet since it can happen at 16 or even later, it's not a question of him thinking he was in her age range. Him being 19 or 20 and thinking she's 17-18.

Sad truth is, if it does come to being him being busted....his punishment in the early 80s probably wouldn't have even been a fraction of what it would be now. He has the power of his office now, and he'll probably get cheered for it for awhile and the woman who he paid money to will probably get charged with something.

Can't overlook the fact that he's hidden it for nearly 30 years and is only coming forward because the girl he attempted to sex up is hitting him up for money he can't/won't pay. Same guy who if some schlub off the street admitted the same thing, he'd probably be crucifying him in any opinion the news asked for from him.

Gotta love those double standards.

>> ^Ornthoron:
You want disturbing associations the next time you have sex? How about this one?
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1443#comic


That's not normal?

Oh.

I feel sorry for them too, but not in the way you do. Every one of them on this show realizes that they are doing something horribly wrong, and yet they do it anyway. I feel sorry for them for the punishment they are going to get in the afterlife. It would be better if they had never been born.



>> ^dannym3141:
After watching this show for months, i find that the some (not all) of the peodos i end up just feeling sorry for.
The ones i'm talking about are the cases that look like a 22 year old who just hasn't grown up, as though they just skipped 7 years of their life and never had the teenage years. I can partially identify with feeling like you didn't have those years due to certain aspects of my life stealing those same years from me, and perhaps that's why i just sympathise with them.
Not sympathise as in "poor guy, let him have sex with that 13 year old".. i mean "poor guy, i don't think he realises the age gap". I think someone in that mental position is about as capable of "choosing their own way in life" as a 13 year old is capable of making decisions about who they're about to have sex with, and from there i can almost compare it to two 14 year olds trying it on for the first time.
Then i remember a picture of a "paedophile" i saw when i was a bit younger, he looked like he was about 16 and my immediate reaction to half the story was "how can they call him a paedophile?". Then i found out he was 22 and he'd arrived to pick up the under-age girl from an airport with a pistol and various shackles.
And then, of course, i think "what if that was my daughter?" It all leaves me very confused about this show.
I hope this came across in the right way Never ever would i condone anyone over the legal age of consent having sex with someone under it.
[this isn't about this video really, just a conversation piece]

After watching this show for months, i find that the some (not all) of the peodos i end up just feeling sorry for.

The ones i'm talking about are the cases that look like a 22 year old who just hasn't grown up, as though they just skipped 7 years of their life and never had the teenage years. I can partially identify with feeling like you didn't have those years due to certain aspects of my life stealing those same years from me, and perhaps that's why i just sympathise with them.

Not sympathise as in "poor guy, let him have sex with that 13 year old".. i mean "poor guy, i don't think he realises the age gap". I think someone in that mental position is about as capable of "choosing their own way in life" as a 13 year old is capable of making decisions about who they're about to have sex with, and from there i can almost compare it to two 14 year olds trying it on for the first time.

Then i remember a picture of a "paedophile" i saw when i was a bit younger, he looked like he was about 16 and my immediate reaction to half the story was "how can they call him a paedophile?". Then i found out he was 22 and he'd arrived to pick up the under-age girl from an airport with a pistol and various shackles.

And then, of course, i think "what if that was my daughter?" It all leaves me very confused about this show.

I hope this came across in the right way Never ever would i condone anyone over the legal age of consent having sex with someone under it.

[this isn't about this video really, just a conversation piece]

Tags for this video have been changed from 'alanis, post sketchy relationship, song, age gap, older, younger' to 'alanis, post sketchy relationship, song, age gap, older, younger, Dave Coulier' - edited by doogle

Ah, I'd forgotten about the Vortiguants. Yeah they're all throughout HL2 talking about the 'Free-Man'. Still doesn't explain the age gap. The only reference to it I can remember is Dr Vance saying a throwaway line 'you haven't changed a bit'.
Are you sure it's decades between games? I thought it was only about 4 years?
Maybe I'm going to much into it. I'm sure it'll all be explained in HL3.