Goals, Dreams and Concerns of the New Generation

Here we present members of our younger generations, from Millennials to Generation Z, in their own words.

San Francisco Bay Times: Where do you see yourself a few years from now? What would be your ideal career?

Jay Lykens: In a few years I’d love to be even more immersed in LGBTQ research. I’d like to move the medical and psychological field forward when it comes to transgender and gender­queer health. So that would probably be a career in the research or pub­lic health field. Within the next five years I’d like to get more experience heading research projects, and hope­fully make my way to UC Berkeley’s social psychology PhD program.

Samukezi Ngubane: I see myself continuing with my grassroots activ­ism. My goal has always been to work with marginalized communities that are often invisibilized. In South Af­rica, I based most of my work in rural areas, attempting to create awareness of, and advocacy for, issues affecting rural communities. I believe that ru­ral spaces require more activist atten­tion. Not to generalize, but I found that in such communities, conversa­tions about gender and sexuality are often taboo. People are also not aware of their sexual and reproductive rights, or their basic rights to health care, water, and shelter. My ideal career is just starting these conver­sations with the rural communities, engaging in dialogues, sensitization workshops, and awareness programs.

Nicolette Gulickson: Once I com­plete the Sexuality Studies Graduate Program at San Francisco State Uni­versity, I intend to work for an organi­zation that advocates for and provides resources to transgender communi­ties. My ideal career would situate me to make a tangible, positive impact on the life chances of trans people in my community and beyond.

Enkhmaa Enkhbold: Geograph­ically, I see myself in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. I hope to work in aca­demia, particularly in the Global South. I am interested in researching Human Rights issues, International Relations, with particular attention to the influence of institutions and or­ganizations such as The United Na­tion, World Bank, and Peace Corps, etc. in relation to their impact on re­producing global inequalities. Also, I hope to work towards change in pa­triarchal structures in Mongolia by particularly addressing the represen­tation of women in politics, sexist lan­guage/proverbs that promote gender inequality (so naturalized) and repre­sentation of LGBTQI communities.

Miglio: Ideally, I will continue on in school to get a Master’s Degree. My ideal career would be working in­side a queer space that feels safe and productive probably doing work in­side queer communities and/or envi­ronmental justice inside queer com­munities. I identify as transgendered so it would be great to remain in the transgender community and help do necessary reparative work there.

Lexus Killingsworth: I would like to be close to finishing a PhD pro­gram a few years from now! My ideal career would involve studying visual representations of queer black wom­en, especially pornography. I would also love to study anime and manga.

Jillian Salazar: My ideal career would involve working with activists, academics, and researchers to eradi­cate racism, sexism, ableism and state violence. A few years from now I see myself working for a non-profit that serves those affected by domestic and sexual violence.

San Francisco Bay Times: What are you doing now to prepare for that ideal career?

Jay Lykens: Right now I’m working at a great organization called YTH in Oakland, and doing my best to move forward some projects related to transgender health care access. I’m also working with Dr. Allen LeBlanc over at SFSU on his study, Project AFFIRM, focusing on transgender identity development and resilience. Overall I think I’m preparing by pur­suing research studies that really fo­cus on the positive aspects of what it means to identify in the transgender spectrum.

Samukezi Ngubane: Besides en­gaging with academic texts and learning constructive ways in which praxis can be effective, I volunteer at Magnet, a clinic that offers health care services for gay, bisexual and transgender men. I am also working on traditional dance scripts based on theories that I am learning from my program such as intersectionality, theories of difference, and disidenti­fication. I am writing these scripts in isiXhosa (my home language) and I hope to use their performance as part of grassroots awareness building.

Nicolette Gulickson: To be the best ally that I can be and to gain the knowledge necessary to not only com­plete my thesis research, but also to equip me with the skills I will need once I join the workforce. I am vol­unteering at the Transgender Law Center (TLC) in Oakland. My work there has given me insight into the discrimination and bureaucratic ne­gotiations faced by trans people on a daily basis. It has motivated me to conduct thesis research on the effica­cy of state-level protective legislation. I also attend community events and demonstrations to stay abreast of the issues the community is facing as well as to keep me connected to the com­munity I work to serve.

Enkhmaa Enkhbold: I have been doing quite a lot, actually. Education is a vital aspect of my ideal career. I am a senior student of Women and Gender Studies (WGS) at SFSU. The fact that the WGS program at SFSU was originally designed by Angela Davis makes me feel that I am going in the right direction in my ideal ca­reer. Davis is a scholar and activist; one of my favorite works is her book, Are Prisons Obsolete?

Practical work is vital to my ideal ca­reer; I have been volunteering and interning all around the Bay Area. With genuine modesty, I list the NGOs that I’ve been associated with: Optional Recovery Center, Asian Pa­cific Islander Legal Outreach, Bay Area Legal Aid, Project Homeless, Asian Women’s Shelter, Refugee and Human Rights Clinic at UC Hasting, Mongolian Women’s Association, and the Mongolian Student Associa­tion at Laney College.

This summer, I had an opportunity to volunteer in three different NGOs in Ulaanbaatar for three months: National Center Against Violence, LGBT Center, and the Young Wom­en’s Club. Although short, my experi­ences with these NGOs were rich, as was that of living as a local in Ulaan­baatar, because I left Mongolia when I was sixteen years old. All of my experiences with these NGOs have a profound affect on me as an individu­al. Also, they have helped me to grow and identify my strength and areas where I need to improve. Of course, I have not volunteered for these organi­zations just for personal gains; I stood with their mission and vision.

Currently, I have been thinking about doing ethnographic research in the Mongolian community, hoping to contribute to creating an archive for the next generations of Mongolian Americans.

Miglio: In order to prepare for my ideal career, I am looking to ap­ply for a Master’s Degree as well as looking into internships and job op­portunities that could prepare me for a career in my desired field.

Lexus Killingsworth: I am in the beginning stages of writing a thesis that discusses visual representations of queer black women in the films The Color Purple and Daughters of the Dust. This has allowed me to read numer­ous sources on the subject. Outside of academia, however, I just enjoy con­suming anything with representations of queer black women. I currently love How to Get Away With Murder.

Jillian Salazar: I am enrolled in a M.A. program is Sexuality Studies and reading everything I can get my hands on about different approaches to trauma and sexual violence. I am also applying to be a rape crisis coun­selor at a local non-profit.

San Francisco Bay Times: Do you think that your chances for future success are better in the Bay Area, or do you plan to leave this region, or perhaps even the U.S., to pursue your goals?

Jay Lykens: I think overall that my chances are much better in the Bay Area. I grew up in the South, so the relative progressiveness here allows me to pursue a lot of opportunities I didn’t have. I still think a lot of work needs to be done here, but the queer community is so close knit, and I think this lets us have strength in numbers when it comes to making real change.

Samukezi Ngubane: My chances of turning my dreams into reality are not in the U.S. Though I admire the Bay Area, its diversity and “freedom” (if I can put it like that), the people I want to work with are not here; the change that I am aspiring for is not here; and most definitely the issues that I want to engage with are not here. Not to say there are no issues here, but I feel I am needed back in South Africa more than I am needed here.

Nicolette Gulickson: While San Francisco is a hub for trans folks, there are many resources already available to trans communities here. My imme­diate plans for the future include mov­ing to Minneapolis, after graduation, for both personal and professional reasons. There is a large trans com­munity in Minneapolis, and the local government appears to be directly fo­cusing on improving the lives of trans Minneapolitans as well as focusing on combating racial inequality. For example, just this year, the mayor of Minneapolis hired a Black trans man as a senior policy aide and advisor. I would like to be a part of this effort.

Enkhmaa Enkhbold: My plan is to leave, although I love the Bay Area. Let’s face it: it is ridiculously ex­pensive. I can only wait tables for so many hours of the week while being a student. To succeed, it is a neces­sity for me. Vocational choice is a life choice, so I heard somewhere! Plus, part of my ideal career goal is to work in Mongolia. I want to continue my education there and live as a local. It has been almost fourteen years since I left the country. I’ve changed and the country has changed!

I believe that diverse experiences keep me on my toes and help me make crit­ical analysis of coexisting. They also keep my values and beliefs at hand to be challenged. I plan to go all the way to PhD. For me, it is a necessity. (Don’t ask me why! Okay, you can ask me why! Because I want to make my parents proud! Little humor!) But with all seriousness, I identify with the Global South, aka “the third world,” so I feel like in order to enter the glob­al Academic World, a PhD is a must, and I hope and plan to make my ca­reer somewhere in the Global South.

Miglio: I would love to leave the U.S., but finically, that is not an op­tion right now. Ideally I will work in the Bay Area until I can leave the U.S. because that is a goal I have.

Lexus Killingsworth: I do feel as though my chances are better here. While I plan to move away for a PhD program, I would definitely like to be back in the Bay Area soon after. If I am going to make a career out of studying pornography, the Bay Area feels like the best place to do so.

Jillian Salazar: The Bay Area would be an amazing place to further my career. However, if I felt that my skills could be used in a region with fewer resources for those affected by sexual violence, then I would consid­er relocating. I’ve often felt that my work may bring me back to the Cen­tral Valley of California where I grew up because I witnessed a severe lack of services for survivors of sexual vio­lence when I lived there.

San Francisco Bay Times: What are some of your biggest con­cerns now about meeting your education and career goals?

Jay Lykens: I think it’s rough being a graduate student and working full time. My biggest concerns are jug­gling my finances with my future edu­cational goals. If I could be a fulltime student and dedicate all of my free time to my studies I would, but that’s unrealistic with how expensive it is to live here in the Bay Area.

Samukezi Ngubane: I guess my biggest concern is to be the best that I can be, and to meet my own expecta­tions, both personally and academi­cally. I am not concerned with the work I want to do. I will do whatever it takes to reach out to the communities I want to work with, even if it means I start these conversations alone with no funding.

Nicolette Gulickson: My main ed­ucational concern lies in the applica­bility and practicality of the Sexuality Studies Master’s Program. As such, I will be incorporating my work at TLC with my program coursework through SFSU’s community service learning program next Spring. This allows me to receive credit for my vol­unteer work with TLC and provides practical experience working with an organization that mirrors my career goals. Additionally, I have made con­nections through my program that will help me to find work in Minne­apolis when the need arises.

Enkhmaa Enkhbold: Money, Money, Money!!! Educational institu­tions are capitalist entities in the ma­jority of the world. I’ve always been a student and an employee. For me, there is no escape, and it is quite ev­ident that it will continue to be the case. I have no means of independent financial support, so to be a student means to be an employee, regardless of where I end up in the world. Yes, there are grants and scholarships, but when you are a fulltime student and working, it’s not easy to earn A’s in all your classes. Plus, if the language is not your first language, it makes it even harder. But somehow I’ve always managed.

Miglio: The biggest concerns I have about meeting educational and career goals would have to do with money and safety. It is expensive to stay in school, and I don’t know how long I can maintain that. I was in community college for ten years while I worked retail jobs and survived in the Bay Area. I’m 30 years old and am graduating this year. School is just not sustainable all the time for me, but I’m going to push for a Master’s De­gree because I believe it will help me live a life that is more stable.

I also really hope to work in a space that feels safe to me as I continue with my career. As a queer individual, I want to go into a work space where my gender pronouns are respected and I can feel comfortable in the bathroom and so on. It’s hard to find that kind of atmosphere, and without a college degree that was impossible.

Lexus Killingsworth: My biggest concern is money. I do currently live in the Bay Area. Do I even need to say more? However, another big con­cern is whether I’ll be taken seriously because I want to study pornography and anime and manga.

Jillian Salazar: Trying to balance work and school while living in one of the most expensive cities in the world is a constant concern. If my job were in jeopardy because of school, I would have to choose my job over school to continue to live in the Bay Area. But my studies have become the driving factor in my love of San Francisco, so it would really be a lose-lose situation.

San Francisco Bay Times: Do you believe that job prospects for students such as yourself are better or worse than they were a decade or so ago?

Jay Lykens: I think they’re undoubt­edly better, especially with some of the non-discrimination acts that have been passed. But it’s still difficult to determine if you’re safe in certain ar­eas, especially when it comes to the workplace. I always struggle with de­ciding to “come out” or not to em­ployers and colleagues. But in regards to the past decade and where I used to live in the South, my job prospects are much better.

Samukezi Ngubane: I think things are slowly changing. From my expe­rience, I have been given chances to work in organizations where I might not have had experience in their field, but they saw my potential and/or they believed I was someone that they could invest in, so they gave me a chance. I have been given platforms to learn, to make mistakes, and even­tually to excel. Things are changing, slowly, but something is moving.

Nicolette Gulickson: Trans vis­ibility in popular culture and political discourse is at its apex, so job pros­pects for a student like me, who is fo­cused on contributing to the move­ment, are sure to be plentiful. Ten years ago, the needs of trans folks were not even on the radar of legis­lators in the U.S. Now, there are so many more trans advocacy organiza­tions, increased trans activism, and policy discussions happening all over the country. There is still much work to be done; I have no doubt that my skills and passion will find a home within the trans movement.

Enkhmaa Enkhbold: For students like me (those whose career goals are similar to mine) I believe that job prospects are getting better be­cause I think that the academic world has been advanced since the World Wide Web became available to the public in 1990. I believe that before 1990, access to the academic world was limited for those in non-western contexts. There were limited spaces to discuss and critique the dominant mainstream ideologies and imbal­ance of knowledge production. I feel that in this era, the space is expanded dramatically, which has tremendous effect. However, there is much to do and my hope is to take part in it.

Miglio: I believe that the rift be­tween wealthy and the poor is getting larger and thus affecting the job mar­ket in drastic ways that are only get­ting worse. The options for good pay­ing jobs, even inside non-profits where I might find community or safety, are slim. There are tons of opportunities on Craigslist to work with youth in inner cities and such, but all the jobs start at $13.00 an hour. I could apply for a job at FedEx and make twice that amount as a starting wage. The reason I am pursuing a Master’s De­gree is so that I can have a skill that guarantees a living wage—but who knows if that will work? I have little faith in the job market, which means I have to work twice or three times as hard to develop a good resume. Even then, I could still end up not using my degree. That’s a reality I have to live with.

Lexus Killingsworth: Both. Bet­ter because it feels like people in the U.S. are becoming more aware of the importance of visual representa­tions and the need for the further de­velopment of that type of scholarship. Worse because it seems as though jobs want candidates to have travelled to the moon, cured cancer and have been President for two consecutive terms before they even think about consid­ering you! It’s hard to apply for jobs when you feel as though you’ll never be qualified enough, even if you just graduated with a degree in that field.

Jillian Salazar: I believe job pros­pects for students are much worse than they were a decade ago. The only advice parents and mentors give students nowadays is to stay in school for as long as they can, take out stu­dent loans, figure out a job when the economy is better, and not to worry about paying back the loans later.

San Francisco Bay Times: What do you think makes your gen­eration unique, and how do you hope it will make its mark on history?

Jay Lykens: My generation is ex­tremely connected by social media and other technology. It’s easy for me to see what’s going on in other parts of the country and the world, and I feel like we can all make a bigger differ­ence than ever before. It’s also really easy to spread the word about social movements and get more people in­volved. I think this generation has the greatest potential to really kick-start change from the ground up.

Samukezi Ngubane: Hmmm, unique? I guess technology makes our generation unique. In a sense that ac­tivism now happens online: job op­portunities, networking, and cam­paigns now have a platform online that they previously didn’t have. Look at all of the hashtag anti-prejudice, discrimination and awareness cam­paigns that started online. It is just amazing how our generation is en­gaging with technology.

Nicolette Gulickson: As I said above, acceptance of the LGBT community has advanced so much in recent years. I’d like to think that my generation would be the one to break the silence on the social justice issues our society has ignored for so long with regards to trans people. I hope that my generation will end the stigma surrounding membership in the LGBT community. I’ve read con­flicting research about whether or not millennials are truly more progres­sive than our predecessors, but I think the shift in cultural attitudes towards the LGBT community speaks for it­self.

Enkhmaa Enkhbold: Uniqueness is definitely the advancement in tech­nology. I hope our generation will make its mark on history as the be­ginning of a transnational paradigm. In my Utopia, I hope that our genera­tion will be marked as a generation that is disloyal to civilization. This would be awesome. But it is only my Utopia.

Miglio: I’m not sure if I quali­fy as “this generation.” Like I said, I’m thirty years old so I’m a different generation. I think that the youth of this generation will have to join their parents and grandparents to rise up against the environmental injustices that are occurring and reclaim this planet from corporate destruction. I don’t think there is any choice left. I think the mark that the “youth” will make is finding solidarity within their peers and other generations in order to fight racism, white supremacy, clas­sism, homophobia, water shortages and climate change. There is always such a push for “a different or upcom­ing generation” when so much of that idea is constructed and created. Pow­er lies within human solidarity that values all generations together—not separate and not hierarchal. If there is anything that makes “this genera­tion unique,” I would say it’s the short amount of time this generation has to reject capitalism and take action to save a planet that is not yet dead.

Lexus Killingsworth: My genera­tion feels really connected to technol­ogy. I feel as though we have really ex­celled in taking this new technology and expanding it in order to help others.

Jillian Salazar: My generation is unique in the sense that we’ve been coddled more than prior generations. Most folks may see this negatively, but in a way it makes this generation less willing to put up with things that prior generations would have accepted as “just the way things are.” I think this generation expects the world to bend over backward for them, and if that means expecting the world to become more equal and less hateful, then I see that as a positive thing.

Jay Lykens is a graduate student from the SFSU M.A. in Sexuality Studies program.

M. Miglio is a senior who is graduating with a B.A. in Women and Gender Studies at SFSU.

Samukezi Ngubane is an SFSU Fulbright Scholar from South Africa who is pursuing an M.A. in Women and Gender Studies.

Enkhmaa Enkhbold is a senior who is graduating with a B.A. in Women and Gender Studies at SFSU, with a Minor in Counseling.

Nicolette Gulickson is an M.A. candidate in Sexuality Studies at SFSU.

Lexus Killingsworth is an M.A. candidate in Sexuality Studies at SFSU.

Jillian Salazar is an M.A. candidate in Sexuality Studies at SFSU.