An uneasy Thanksgiving

Sara Stone sits in the second-floor lounge of the Kimmel Center, immersed in "The Norton Anthology for British Literature." Sporting a black bandana and cut-off jeans, her blood-red heels kicked off onto the floor, the CAS junior looks like the epitome of the edgy, heady literature buff.

Stone will not be heading home for Thanksgiving this week. Her family resides in Carthage, Mo., nearly 1,000 miles west, but it's not the distance that's keeping her away. Since her parents divorced when she was 16, Stone has lived a nomadic life of homelessness. What's more, her queer sexuality and flirtation with the possibility of gender reassignment make her an uneasy (and often unwelcome) visitor within her family.

"Just being there, everybody gets really stressed out," said Stone, a transfer student. "It's just easier if I'm not around."

Since her parents' divorce, Stone said she has slept on a night-to-night basis. She spent the past summer living in a car with her girlfriend Chloe, a pre-operative male-to-female transgender woman, as they took a road trip from Missouri up the California coast.

"We drove the entire length of California," Stone said. "We were kind of living off the kindness of strangers."

Stone's story is not unusual. According to a 2007 report from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Coalition for the Homeless, between 20 and 40 percent of homeless youths like Stone identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or questioning.

The report also says that LGBT youths are more likely to resort to prostitution, or survival sex, than heterosexual homeless youths.

"I've never been so desperate as to actually be pushed to do it [prostitution], but I have considered it," Stone said. "It's the most degrading thing to find yourself in the situation where you're thinking, 'One blow job, one blow job and I could pay my phone bill.' "

The same 2007 report indicated that 26 percent of LGBT youths were thrown out of their homes after coming out. But Stone said her identity is not what caused her homelessness. She never formally came out to her family — financial incapability to live collectively after the divorce caused them all to disperse. Instead, an unspoken understanding about her unconventional life kept her from returning, she said.

"One of the hardest things about going home is, my sister got married at 19 and had a kid, and my brother married at 17 and had a kid," Stone said. "Domesticity is so strong with them and their sense of normal, and it really doesn't fit my lifestyle at all. Each family member knows a certain amount, but it's something we don't talk about."

LSP freshman Victoria Coram, a New Jersey native, has seen scenarios similar to Stone's play out here in the Tri-State area.

"I had a friend in high school who came out to his parents, and he couldn't live with them anymore," Coram said. "It's kind of more shocking when it happens here — because people think it's more accepting — but I think intolerance is everywhere."

Celiany Rivera-Velazquez, program administrator at NYU's Office of LGBT Student Services, said homophobia is an issue nationwide.

"I think homophobia is widespread across the country, so it's hard for me to regionalize it," Rivera-Velazquez said. "Homophobia is very prevalent in families."

NYU's large LGBT community can lead to ignorance about experiences like Stone's, according to CAS sophomore JJ Bishop-Boros, who is vice president of the NYU LGBT activist organization Queer Union.

"I think NYU and Greenwich Village cloud our vision of reality," Bishop-Boros said. "There are literally thousands of LGBT homeless youth in New York City, and many NYU students are unaware."

Stone said she feels less isolated here within NYU's LGBT community, but there are still difficulties she must face, particularly in light of her and her girlfriend Chloe's gender expressions.

"Trying to be a part of a march for gay marriage is really difficult, because you meet with so much opposition," Stone said. "But trying to survive day to day, it's really about the friends you have. If you're not really hell-bent on fitting into society, it's OK."

Despite past obstacles, Stone is ambitious about her future. She hopes to write for a socialist or politically radical publication after college. As for the present, Stone will be spending her Thanksgiving with her girlfriend in Green Bay, Wis. Regardless of her struggles, she said she values the experiences she has had.

"It's been really challenging, but I feel like I know myself better than I would've if it had been easy," Stone said. "Having to fight for my identity makes me appreciate it a lot more."

Hannah Winsten is a staff writer.