Jack Thompson This is Me

Education

 View all 10 references Web References

1. 1. skafian.com

   skafian.com/2007/04/ - [Cached]

   Published on: 4/1/2007   Last Visited: 7/12/2007

   Jack Thompson
   ...
   I think part of the reason I, and many other people loathe Jack Thompson so much is that as a lawyer he should be saying the things he says objectively and without hurling childish insults at people. In his latest lawsuit again Kotaku there was this section in his complaint.
   
   Thompson awoke at 5 am on Saturday, April 21, to read an e-mail from someone in Marin County, just east of San Francisco. This e-mailer wanted Thompson to know that he would be shooting to kill 20-30 people on the campus of UC-Berkeley. Thompson immediately called the campus police at Berkeley, and they responded with greater acumen that the negligent folks at Virginia Tech..
   ...
   85. One Internet idiot sent Thompson the following e-mail message just this day, out of the blue, which helps underscore the sociopathy of typical Kotaku knuckleheads: "I didn't personally know the boy behind the Marin County incident, but I did know him from community forums, and what he did was stupid, yet, it is the only way to fight all of your suits against videogames. How else do you want us to fight back? I am a violent game enthusiast. I enjoy watching limbs fly, blood squirt, and so on."
   
   78. This was followed with other posts that Thompson should be struck with a baseball bat, shot in the face by an irate gamer, castrated and his testicles stuffed down his throat, and the exercise of other basic "constitutional" rights to advocate violence against an individual…………………………………â
   €¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦Not! [definately a mature, well educated person filing this complaint]

2. 2. CHRONICLE PROFILE / Jack Thompson / Teen's journey to transgender identity / Berkeley student, born a girl, now sees himself as boy named Jack

   www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article - [Cached]

   Last Visited: 11/4/2002

   Jack Thompson
   ...
   Berkeley student, born a girl, now sees himself as boy named Jack Kelly St. John, Chronicle Staff Writer Monday, November 4, 2002
   
   Click to View Click to View Click to View
   ...
   Jack Thompson wears baggy cargo pants and steel-toed sneakers. He's a slender 16-year-old with a shaved head, tawny-colored skin and a swath of disarmingly cute freckles across his nose.
   
   ...
   Jack wore a dress to his second-grade birthday party and still has a collection of teddy bears in his room, which, with its pink trim, makes him wince.
   
   There's the nagging struggle of his little sister and others calling him she. And a persistent fear that cruel insults -- or even the kind of violence that has taken the lives of other transgender teens -- could be right around the corner.
   
   Jack, a 16-year-old Berkeley High School student, is biologically a girl but identifies as a boy. Five months ago, Jack told his family and friends that he wanted to stop using his given name, Devin.
   
   He told them he considers himself a he, and asked stop calling him by female pronouns.
   
   "You wouldn't call a regular guy a she, because it's not who he identifies as," he said. "I just want people to see me as any other guy."
   
   Jack is among a small but growing group of teens who are living openly as transgendered in the Bay Area. Their exact numbers are unknown, but "we do know they are coming out more," said Wiggsy Sivertsen, director of counseling services at San Jose State University and an activist who works on behalf of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.
   
   "Sadly," Sivertsen said, "what we also know is that as a result of this, the consequences have been quite severe."
   
   In many respects, Jack is one of the lucky ones. Born and raised in famously tolerant Berkeley, he has a supportive family, community and school. But one doesn't have to go far, even in the Bay Area, to find examples of transgender teens who have been killed for expressing what they believe is their true identity.
   
   ...
   "Living in Berkeley, going to Berkeley High, having liberal parents who are mixed race, (Jack) is very blessed to be living in the setting she is in to be who she is."
   
   MORE THAN JUST A PHASE
   
   Since grade school, Jack has struggled with many of the same identity issues and intolerance that Araujo faced, from cruelty at school to well- meaning adults who think he's just going through a phase he will grow out of.
   
   It has been a process of self-discovery that involved coming out twice -- first as a lesbian and ultimately as transgender. Through it all, his parents have worked hard to be understanding, though they are the first to admit it hasn't been easy.
   ...
   Jack "has guts and I take my hat off to her, but now I'm really scared," said Jack's mother, Corinne Thompson.
   ...
   The worst hate incident Jack endured was in eighth grade, he recalled, when he was once followed home by a group of older boys snickering words like "dyke" and "lesbian" behind his back. They pelted him with rocks, and he escaped by running home.
   
   "I didn't want to cry," Jack said. "So I went home and lay on my bed and cried there."
   
   Jack was born in 1986, the first daughter to Scott and Corinne Thompson, and he has lived in the same tidy Berkeley home his entire life.
   
   He has always been different.
   
   ...
   In sixth grade, Jack began coming out to himself, acknowledging that he was attracted to girls and not boys.
   
   In seventh grade, while attending Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley, Jack was talking to a friend who asked him to tell his deepest secret. He sighed, took a deep breath and said that he had a crush on a girl at school.
   
   He was outed as a lesbian.
   
   "After a week, everybody knew," Jack said. "A lot of friends I'd had for so long stopped talking to me."
   
   In the aftermath, Jack stopped attending school. His parents, who hadn't heard about the schoolyard outing, got him into counseling and helped him return to school.
   
   A few months later, on Easter weekend, he blurted out to them that he was a lesbian.
   
   "The night they found out, her mom stayed in her room crying all night, and her dad went out drinking," said a close family friend, Lark Ashford.
   
   But after the initial reluctance, Jack's parents were supportive of their child. They helped Jack when he was battling deep depression, and then encouraged Jack when, as an eighth-grader, he helped found a Gay Straight Alliance club at King Middle School, one of the first such clubs at a middle school in the country.
   
   ...
   When Jack was a freshman at Berkeley High, he met a man named Lawrence at a social function. Lawrence seemed outwardly to just be a "short, cute gay guy" but Jack soon learned that Lawrence had been born a woman and underwent hormone treatments and gender reassignment surgery.
   
   "I didn't even realize you could do that. It just clicked. The whole cartoon bulb popped above my head," Jack said. "When I came out as a lesbian, I had felt better, but there was something missing. The outwards of me wasn't how I felt on the inside."
   
   GENDER REASSIGNMENT OPTION
   
   Jack did some research and decided that when he turns 18, he wants to begin taking male hormones that will deepen his voice and allow him to bulk up and start to grow facial hair. Ultimately, he hopes to have gender reassignment surgery.
   
   He also decided to take a new name. His given name, Devin, can be a boy's name, but it doesn't feel right because it was given to him as a girl, he said.
   
   So he settled on Jack.
   
   "It's strong. It's singular," he said. "Jack sticks. Jack feels good."
   
   But he waited until five months ago to tell his parents and family friends that he was transgender. He broached the subject with his father first, armed with a stack of papers explaining transgenderism.
   
   "He was just quiet. He looked away," Jack recalled. "Then he said, 'As long as you're not hurting yourself or anyone else, I'm OK.' He said, 'It will be hard to think of you as my little boy, not my little girl.' "
   
   "You love your kids.
   ...
   A month later, Jack told his mother. Her first words?
   
   "She said, 'Oh Lord, give me strength. Oh Lord,' " he recalled. "She said, 'I had my baby girl, and I'm happy with my baby girl.' "
   
   Corinne Thompson said she had just gotten used to the idea that her child was a lesbian when Jack came out to her as transgendered.
   
   "It's kind of blowing my mind. Being gay is one thing, that's fine, but this is something completely different, and I'm trying to deal with it," she said.
   ...
   "My mom's really great," Jack said. "I could have gone through so much worse than I already went through."
   
   Jack, who always has turned to humor to deal with his problems, has started performing as a stand-up comic. His routine has incorporated his experience as a transgender youth, and at one point during a recent performance he riffed, "I've lost so much thought of my own gender that I don't even know what's what anymore."
   
   Jack gradually introduced the idea that he wanted to change his name and be addressed as a boy rather than a girl. While his close friends and girlfriend Ellessa have complied, some of his friends and most of his family slip up. Or like little sister Danielle, they simply refuse to give in.
   
   On a recent afternoon, Jack sat in his bedroom next to his 11-year-old sister, who was not shy about crinkling up her nose and saying what she thinks about Jack.
   
   Boys, said Danielle, don't have teddy bears in their rooms like Jack does. Boys, she said, don't wear dresses to their second-grade birthday parties, like Jack did.
   
   "She's my sister," said Danielle, with a sigh of exasperation. "When I was born, she was my sister, and she's going to be my sister until I die."
   
   Jack, who passed his high school equivalency exam and is taking independent study courses at Berkeley High, plans to enroll in a community college next semester and ultimately transfer to a four-year college and study sociology and biology.
   
   In another sign of progress, Jack's father has recently started referring to him as "my son" ins

3. 3. Skafian.com

   www.skafian.com/ - [Cached]

   Last Visited: 7/12/2007

   Jack Thompson
   ...
   I think part of the reason I, and many other people loathe Jack Thompson so much is that as a lawyer he should be saying the things he says objectively and without hurling childish insults at people. In his latest lawsuit again Kotaku there was this section in his complaint.
   
   Thompson awoke at 5 am on Saturday, April 21, to read an e-mail from someone in Marin County, just east of San Francisco. This e-mailer wanted Thompson to know that he would be shooting to kill 20-30 people on the campus of UC-Berkeley. Thompson immediately called the campus police at Berkeley, and they responded with greater acumen that the negligent folks at Virginia Tech..
   ...
   85. One Internet idiot sent Thompson the following e-mail message just this day, out of the blue, which helps underscore the sociopathy of typical Kotaku knuckleheads: "I didn't personally know the boy behind the Marin County incident, but I did know him from community forums, and what he did was stupid, yet, it is the only way to fight all of your suits against videogames. How else do you want us to fight back? I am a violent game enthusiast. I enjoy watching limbs fly, blood squirt, and so on."
   
   78. This was followed with other posts that Thompson should be struck with a baseball bat, shot in the face by an irate gamer, castrated and his testicles stuffed down his throat, and the exercise of other basic "constitutional" rights to advocate violence against an individual…………………………………â
   €¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦Not! [definately a mature, well educated person filing this complaint]