Transportation & Shelter Discrimination

Denver , Colorado USA 80205

It was a very cold january day the 5, 2011 a new year had just began and I was helping my partner at the time who was pregnant get to the hospital. She choose to have her delivery at St joseph’s hospital here off twentieth ave in the heart of Downtown Denver. We had no car so we waited at the bus stop . I had hopes of co parenting her soon to be born Daughter. when the bus arrived that would take up warmly to the hospital we noticed the doors would not open. WE were not welcomed as is usual here downtown Denver. instead the bus driver a african american man shouted no fucking Faggots are allowed on my bus!. WE were shocked we needed this ride to seek medical attention. I felt awful and that my status as a Transgender woman who recently had been living full time thanks the support i found in my pregnant partner Chasta Hart was the source for this conflict. this was just the beginning of what would be a day that should be the very best in any parents life turning into a nightmare. we reported the driver to the Bus company RTD and walked up to the colfax bus line to get near the hospital instead of taking our intended route. This was not the end of what would be a family splitting endeavor of adressingthe labor my then girlfriend was enduring.

The hospital also asked who i was as a birth partner and had awkward questions. Was i the baby’s birth father?. which felt more like is this pregnancy your doing? along with many other strange questions the result of which was my getting to stay with my partner for the pregnancy. Little did we know we were both being thrown out of the shelter where we had been living Samaritan house because my partner had received a prepaid cell phone from the baby daddy they counted as unreported income. We did not know it yet but we were now once again made homeless and considered indigent. a social worker was called. the RN in charge of Her Daughters birth was my highschool sweethearts mother. they had gone to nursing school to deliver babies. She recognized me immediately and never documented or talked to anyone about the conflict of being in charge of our delivery. Upon the birth of my partner Chasta marie Hart’s Daughter questions were brought up in the delivery room about gender and sex as if my Being non binary and a transgender woman affected the sex of Chastas new born daughter. It was inappropriate and there was not a damn thing i knew of i could do about it. When the team was making us a going home plan they took away Chasta hart’s daughter and sent in a social worker in to our recovery room. They informed us that we were once again homeless because leaving our beds for the Delivery was decided as us abandoning our belongings and spots at samaritan house. We were not able to be placed anywhere else because of discriminatory emergency housing policy so instead the birthing center alerted child protective services and deemed us negligent and took custody of Chasta hart’s new born Daughter who we had named Alice Mckenzie Hart. The social worker literally asked us where people like us go when we are facing homelessness and decided failure was a viable option. I Even tried to leverage my facing heart surgery the following week as a reason we needed emergency housing eligibility. the State and all charity organizations had failed us. MY family support system was left out in the cold and on the streets of Denver. january , 5 2011. we would go on to fight for custody only to lose Alice M. HArt to the system permanently.

https://www.stage32.com/profile/542294

This is Matisse Victoria Raven-hart

This is my public blog about my intersex condition what i know so far and an account of my difficulties with a Binary social justice and human services system. the good the bad and the ugly.

I grew up here in Denver , Colorado. And i haven’t made it very far from where i was born so far. I am fed up and beyond frustrated with the system that lies about its mission to not discriminate and that provides little to no resources and assistance to intersex people.

i am writing here to let people see how invisible and forgotten a broken system can be.

• I hope reading this sheds light of the lack of direction and i’m here to express how difficult navigation of the services is for people like me.
• I hope to blaze a trail for others that they may find a source of acknowledgment and not be overlooked by Denver human services any more.

I am happy to share my misery and obstacles that stand in the way to accessing a reasonable standard of living here in my community. this is not a blog for the light hearted and easily offended. I have examples of hate and bigotry and I do not wish to share them but i feel it is my responsibility to open the eyes of Denver city services.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• I believe that the world needs to know how poorly Transgender and intersex people are treated in our so called society.
• i intend to write about fitting in and exclusion and its effect on my daily quality of life.
• I hope to hear from one Colorado , and the Center on colfax, and the transgender center of the Rockies , as well as Denver health Medical hospital, and Denver human services as well as my representatives and leaders on city council whom i have reached out too only to find dumb faces and deaf ears.l
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished? I intend to share my transition experiences the good the bad and the very very UGLY.

I am not very experienced in this except for keeping disorganized notes and journals. I try to memorize most of my experiences and I value the use of spoken work to pass down my legacy.

Fortunately for me I have experience talking to people on stage and in person. I talk to my therapists alot. I fear that i am getting nowhere. This is a blog about healing and finding help in a city that forgets its most vulnerable people. I will do my best to be factual and add my notes and accounts honestly and as accurately as i can. i will talk about implicit bias and How often the system meant to be supporting individuals like myself who are disabled and have fought hard to survive tragedy after trauma and tragedy to survive fear and fight to keep reaching out. It is depressing and upsetting when you find nothing. You find lies and misinformation and more and more steps and the results seem disappointing and only leave your needs unmeet.

I am not going to lie i get lots of help. the problems are that none of these agencies and teams and organizations work together. they never look at you overall and work on solving any problems. they just put bandaids on the needs that are not enough. they don’t have plans and they don;t recognize you and what you are trying to accomplish. They must have a gist and see you are trying to find a way out of struggling but the same system that provides any safety net just notes that you are falling behind and they realize they are not providing a path to prosperity or undeniable hope. it is enough to make anyone want to give up. But you can’t you have to keep waiting for things to change for an opportunity to change your life to present it self. this blog is about hope and perseverance.

Denver Emergency management System 911 discriminates .

last night i was having a panic attack and medical discomfort. I Decided better to reach out not knowing my condition and knowing i have some chronic health issues .

The call started off fine but with in seconds of telling the operator at 911 im in distress and would like medical help and my location and address the awkward and inappropriate question was asked.

Why do this?

• to improve emergency and urgent care for other Gender non conforming and non binary people and patients.
• to bring awareness to an injustice and question what is protected medical information and why does title nine and the no fear act not protect patients and persons who do not identify as Male or Female.

the 911 operator informed me that its standard operating procedure and asked me are you a male or a female. I was very dismayed and upset. I went silent. I do nto have a gender marker. or sex marker . I have no sex listed any longer on my birth certificate. I feel i am both and neither. I know this is a transcripted and recorded call. this is part of what i was calling for and about. I was having a mental health and physical crisis. The responders apparently don’t have the tools or procedures to handle this kind of Medical emergency. .

i understand their usual cis gender call operators can’t understand how this is not a medical question.

• I am blogging publicly about this problem because I feel the world needs to read and know how this affects me.
• I am hopeful that hospital administration and nurses doctors and training staff read this as well as first responders.
• It is my belief that they feel the pandemic emergency trumps my legal rights to anonymity because they claim gender is a medical fact that wholy affects their decisions and navigates their medical actions. I feel intimidated and like this is an irrelevant and loaded question that leaves me vulnerable to mal

I disagree with their assertion and if i had answered them my answer would be that i indeed have no sex markers or Gender marker.

I did not know how to handle this situation so I decided to hang up. I ignored their return call and I left my apartment because i do not understand how the bias of belief in a binary gender marker medical identification marker affects me and my healthcare other than negatively.

I talked to a mental health crisis provider today about last nights event. I called them at 6:25 in the morning AM. I am fearful about the repercussions of abandoning my call for help last night will result in. I also can

t get my head around why and what i was being asked. I don;t know if i fully understand the question. AM i being asked my biological assignment? my sex at birth designation? My gender identity that does not match my assigned sex at birth? or am i being asked as a courtesy to identify my gender identity ? I hate this question and it is one i have struggled with being asked all my life. Even though i have a valid answer about my government id. gender marker. I am all to aware that Government and medical institutions conflate sex and gender as being the same thing which I know they are not. I am provided no comfort or affirmation that my information will be received with any support or verification. I have even experienced being told i failed to fully identify and verify my identity at the pharmacy before. This is what i experience because My sex and gender identity does not conform with the Systems of Binary sex identification.

my service dog Krona a.k.a. how I cope and survive the Bigotry and Hate Speech.

This section is dedicated to my lifeline and my hero my service Dog Krona

Krona is a very very very, Good boy. He is five years old turning Six Feb 13 2021. He rescued me in February of 2019. His parents were a shi-tzu and a poodle. I adopted him from a local Aurora Colorado family who could not take care of his special needs any longer they had misinterpreted his playfulness as Dog aggression. anyone can see Aggression is only an outlet a mistreated dog expressed.

i grew up loving all breeds of dogs and find them a point of rescue for the trauma and abuse i have experienced as consequences of living my truth and finding the courage to be authentic in my Sex and gender expression even with my abusive birth family who i came out too fully and lost all contact with in 2009.

• changed my name in 2012 seven years before i adopted my Emotional support animal and service dog Krona.
• yes he was named a year before the Corona 19 virus plagued the earth. No Relation.

I love my special boy so much. I am happy to write about him here and share stories of how a dog who is a boy is helping me with my medical transition from a spout to a spigot.

I want to document my and Kronas special relationship so others can see how gender and sex don’t hold confines of species abilities to cope with the quagmires of sex and Gender.

• who knows maybe i will learn something more about myself.
• gender identity and how it affects dog ownership.
• I would like to connect with fans and neighbors and local people who may know myself and my dog Krona.
• I hope to share with anyone who will listen the special relationship and role dogs have in coping with a world that was not made for people like me with differences of sex development.

I am open to questions and feedback from anyone who would read this. I would like to write about what my viewing audience wants to know about what it is like to grow up not being able to answer the question are you male or female. I hope to being insite and maybe even change a few hearts and minds about what a gender variant non conforming non Binary person is all about. just remember the topics are only about gender and sex . Only questions about genitals will be deemed inappropriate and likely go dismissed. I do not know what it is like to have original plumbing or to live a cis gender human experience.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.

Denver recorces links

• Legal resource for housing issues
  • I know of this agency (Landlord Tenant Disputes (coloradoaffordablelegal.com)) that offers low-cost services, but I haven’t had an opportunity to call them and get more information from them.
  • I’ll be out of the office tomorrow but I can reach out to them on Wednesday if you would like.
• Food support
  • Food Pantry – Metro Caring – Offers a Fresh Nutritious Food Market for hungry families and individuals located in the Denver Metro Area. Metro Caring provides a week’s supply of food and toiletries when available. Shoppers must be able to pick up food. Upon availability, The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) will be distributed to those who meet TEFAP’s public assistance or income requirements.
• Assistance with dog training
  • The Dumb Friends League offers behavioral help for pets (Pet Behavior Help Denver | Pet Behavior Class | Denver Dumb Friends League : Dumb Friends League (ddfl.org))
• Updates on your criminal case, potential CVC information
  • I unfortunately cannot help too much with this case, as it is not – from my recollection – connected to a sexual assault, and therefore falls outside of my scope.
  • I would recommend speaking to the DA’s office if you haven’t already about your case and connecting with a victim advocate through them. They may be able to offer assistance in filling out a CVC application, which could provide financial assistance for therapy services. You can also inquire with them about COVA funding, which has funding that is available for more assistance than what CVC covers.
  • Another thing I wanted to bring to your attention is the potential for signing up for VINE notifications. VINE is a website/application that basically notifies you of changes in the status of individuals who are incarcerated. I remember when we spoke that you mentioned wanting to be informed of the individual’s sentence period. (Colorado VINE – Get Connected. Stay Protected (colorado-vine.com))
• Transportation
• Establishing medical care and emergency contact
  • These last 2 are unfortunately points in service that I may not be equipped to assist with. Based on your needs, you may be better served connecting with a DHS social worker (I know you said you haven’t had the best experience with DHS in the past, but they have a lot more resources than I do.)