Two weeks in the past, 29-year-old Rebecca Blankenship raised her proper hand and positioned her left on the non-public Jewish research Bible held by one among her kids as she was sworn in as a member of the Berea Impartial College District’s board of schooling.
She ran for the place final November as a write-in candidate as a result of nobody else signed up for the job and she or he felt the function wanted to be stuffed. Her kids of hers and so many others within the city 40 miles south of Lexington want good educations, in spite of everything.
“I like my group, and I am glad that they’d confidence in me to do that,” she instructed The Courier Journal.
Her success within the election, when her fellow voters elected her as a substitute of one other write-in candidate, additionally made historical past in her residence state: Blankenship is the primary overtly transgender individual ever elected to public workplace in Kentucky.
That reality attracted fairly a little bit of consideration. She was on TV in a bunch of states and noticed posts folks made celebrating her election of her go viral on TikTok, with lots of of 1000’s of views. Mates from highschool she hadn’t talked to in a decade reached out to say they’d seen posts about her on social media.
“I knew that folks within the LGBT group would care rather a lot about that − would need to see new potentialities open to themselves − and that meant rather a lot to me,” Blankenship stated, including that it was thrilling to find her election additionally made individuals who aren’t LGBT really feel “impressed concerning the new horizons and potentialities.”
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“I simply needed that to be one thing that folks may think about themselves doing,” she instructed The Courier Journal. “As a result of after I was a baby, that was the furthest factor that you’d think about for a trans individual. And I needed folks to have the ability to have hope for themselves, for many issues.”
Blankenship grew up within the Western Kentucky metropolis of Benton, the place she graduated from Marshall County Excessive College. Then she headed to Lexington to check at Transylvania College.
She got here out as transgender in late 2012, when she was 19 years previous, and left faculty to spend time getting a way of who she was and what her values have been “aside from the masks I used to be attempting to put on for thus a few years.”
She was the primary overtly trans individual at her college, she stated. This was earlier than trans actress Laverne Cox broke out within the hit present “Orange is the New Black” in 2013 and earlier than Olympic champion and actuality TV star Caitlyn Jenner got here out as a trans girl in 2015, each of which elevated visibility for trans folks.
“It is an extremely advanced course of,” Blankenship stated of popping out. “I had no thought what to do. I didn’t know any trans folks in any respect.”
She went via an intense interval of private reflection after she got here out, and she or he learn broadly and journaled rather a lot over the subsequent a number of years whereas working totally different jobs. It was like she was growing a brand new capability for introspection she beforehand had lacked or blocked from growing.
“It is a technique of, for the primary time, acknowledging who you might be at a deeper degree somewhat than attempting to associate with the stuff you’re alleged to associate with to really feel comfy or really feel protected,” she stated. “And that’s the type of factor that fully transforms an individual for his or her whole life.”
She additionally discovered her method to restoration from the drug and alcohol habit she had skilled for years, which began within the early days of her faculty profession.
She has been sober since March 2016.
“Everyone has their very own attitudes and beliefs about restoration, I believe. Mine is that the calls for of private development are all type of interrelated,” she stated. “I really feel like the event of my introspective capacities, that was enabled by my popping out, in flip facilitated me turning into sober. It was like as soon as I had dedicated to turning into this new individual, then I needed to make selections about what sort of individual that might be.”
Blankenship returned to Transylvania College in 2017 and graduated in 2019 − the identical yr she married her spouse, Sasha, throughout a rally for long-sought civil rights protections for LGBT Kentuckians that the Equity Marketing campaign held contained in the Kentucky Capitol.
After commencement, she spent a yr or so working in Oregon at a housing authority and acquired concerned in labor organizing earlier than she returned to the commonwealth and settled together with her spouse and kids in Berea.
She’d realized her love of lobbying and marketing campaign work whereas dwelling out west and pursued that again residence within the Bluegrass State.
She quickly turned the primary overtly trans individual elected by delegates to the Kentucky Democratic Get together’s management − particularly, the State Central Government Committee − and started working for Ban Conversion Remedy Kentucky, a nonpartisan, grassroots group that’s advocating for a statewide ban on a scientifically discredited observe generally referred to as “conversion remedy.”
“Conversion remedy” goals to alter an individual’s sexual orientation or their gender id, and such efforts contain substantial dangers of hurt for folks subjected to it.
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Blankenship is devoted to the reason for banning “conversion remedy,” and stated her dedication is deeply knowledgeable by her spouse’s experiences as a survivor of that observe, which she was subjected to as a younger grownup.
“I believe a lot of the issues that I’ve carried out in Kentucky public life have very clearly been about making a greater commonwealth for my youngsters to develop up in and the subsequent technology of LGBT folks to stay in,” she stated. “All my work is simply type of for that.”
As 2023 will get rolling, Blankenship and the Ban Conversion Remedy Kentucky group will likely be talking with state attorneys about their proposed ban on “conversion remedy” and about different laws that might have an effect on LGBT folks if enacted.
She’s particularly wanting ahead to her new job on Berea’s college board.
Beginning out, she has three predominant objectives:
- To assist efforts to get academics the pay raises and assist they deserve, and to assist guarantee they’re proven respect for the valued work they do;
- To enhance communication and transparency with college students’ dad and mom and faculties’ workers regarding obtainable assets, upcoming occasions and different issues;
- To push for concrete actions that may assist give Berea’s college students entry to vocational schooling alternatives which can be high-quality and nearer to residence.
“I’ve rather a lot to study, however I’m fortunate to be part of a extremely skilled college board whose members have had kids, and in some instances grandchildren, on this college system,” she stated. “I really feel very supported and excited to serve my group.”
Attain reporter Morgan Watkins at mwatkins@courierjournal.com. Observe her on Twitter: @morganwatkins26.