Dressing Authentically

As of June 2023, the Human Rights Campaign has tracked over 535 anti-LGBTQ+ bills moving through state legislatures across the country. Collectively, these bills threaten to remove access to gender-affirming care for 44% of transgender youth, which many health experts fear will negatively impact the lives of this vulnerable population.

“When who you are doesn’t align with who the world says you should be, it ruins your mental health, it makes you think you don’t belong, and it can make you feel that you’re unworthy to be breathing,” says Annissa Crow MA ’24.

As a graduate student specializing in LGBTQ+ counseling and a Student Inclusion Educator (SIE) at the Rainbow Resource Center (RRC), Crow felt inspired to act.

This year, she debuted a new event series called “Thrift-T”—SCU’s first clothing drive series specifically for transgender and gender non-conforming students. In the wake of these hateful bills, Crow explains, access to clothing that aligns with your gender can be “life-saving.”

Though Thrift-T was inspired by other campus clothing drives, she felt that it offered something bigger. “It created a place for people to just come in and feel welcome and safe, like an extension of the RRC.”

“I was never alone in that room”

When Crow joined her graduate program in 2020, she entered a campus reckoning with a nationwide mental health crisis worsened by a pandemic.

“It was a really dark time, and knowing that the LGBTQ+ community faces suicidality on a regular basis, and having dealt with that myself in the past, I wanted to look for a campus job that helped prepare me as a therapist to serve the communities I hope to serve in the future—specifically, the queer and BIPOC community.”

From there, she found a sense of purpose working as an SIE at the Rainbow Resource Center. She took on a range of projects, including running the Office for Multicultural Learning and RRC podcast “Word on the Street” and leading a weekly event series called “Queer Craft Corner,” which was her way to “disguise” art therapy.

“Whether it was Queer Craft Corner or my office hours, I was never alone in that room. Through my work, I got to practice kindness, empathy, and attunement. It meant a lot to know that I made a difference in somebody’s day.”

Crow, who uses both “she” and “they” pronouns, credits the RRC for giving her a safe place to explore her own gender identity.

“The biggest thing about working at the RRC was that I got to live in my authenticity and find people who love and care about me for who I am. If I didn't have that space, I would still be deeply depressed, and I don't know if I would have wanted to continue school. This space really was my home for the past two years.”

Changing a person’s world

When Crow came up with the idea of the Thrift-T event, she was intentional about every aspect of the event.

She held the thrift at campus venues close to gender-neutral bathrooms, organized clothes according to size rather than gender, and brought shopping bags from home so that the event was as sustainable as possible. She also made sure that in addition to making all the clothing and accessories free, she also had local community resources listed in a slideshow.

Luckily, the work paid off.

“Ten minutes before the first event had started, there were a dozen people already lined up,” Crow says. “And throughout the event, students were FaceTiming each other saying ‘You need to get down here. There’s so much cute stuff and cool resources.’”

Thrift-T was held three times during the spring quarter, and each time, more than 100 students attended, which was the largest turnout Crow can remember from any RRC event she led. But for her, it wasn’t about the numbers—it was about impact.

“At the second Thrift-T event, a gender-expansive student came up to me, teary-eyed and thanked me,” she recalls. “They said that it was the first time they could wear clothes that made them feel like the gender they were, and while they couldn’t take the clothes home, they expressed gratitude because at least for the last couple of months, they were able to live in their gender authentically.”

Crow tears up just remembering this encounter. “I’ve always had the goal to change the world, and even if it’s just one person’s world, it means so much because this is the kind of support I needed once, and now I can be there for somebody else.”

Care where it’s needed most

After two years of serving as an SIE at the RRC, Crow is returning home to Visalia, California to complete her final year of clinic hours there. While she is sad to say goodbye to the RRC, she feels a sense of purpose in bringing her LGBTQ+ advocacy home to the Central Valley where she feels it’s needed desperately. Her dream? To take what she’s learned at SCU and open the region’s first gender clinic.

But before she departs, she has a simple message for the next generation of LGBTQ+ students at SCU—look for those welcoming spaces, because they are waiting for you.

“You are represented on this campus, and you make this campus as beautiful as it is.”