Daughter - Ryan Cassata - a Playlist by musicto

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I read the news today. Oh boy!

About a lucky man who made the gr…

Actually, the news was about a father, arrested for killing his transgender son!

Just stop and think about that! Dad… intentionally… kills own son!

The thought of it is totally mind-blowing. In India, I think it was. But the thing that really gets me, is that underpinning this extreme behaviour there’s a massive global phenomenon; a real visceral hatred of people who don’t quite fit into some arbitrarily, yet widely held perception of what being normal is meant to be. Sure, the murder of your own offspring may be true tip-of-the-iceberg madness; yet assault, bullying, harassment, are all daily-fare for the LGBTQ community. Sadly, the human animal is a godless thing, with an evil brutality festering just below its flesh.

Anyway, that news item… horrific as it was, it did remind me that I’ve wanted to write something about Ryan Cassata for quite a while now, but I’ve always felt a little overawed. Out of my depth.

Ryan Cassata – singer, musician, actor, visual artist, motivational speaker, transgender activist. Originally from Long Island, New York, now domiciled in California. This is definitely a more positive place to live. I feel that the LGBTQ community is treated much better here… I feel much safer here. That’s a terrible denunciation of modern civilised society, isn’t it? Having to move away from your home, just to feel a little safer.

I always knew I was a boy…I had no words for it, but I had a sense of feeling masculine.

The dawning realisation that you’ve been born into the wrong gender must feel like some kind of violation of your soul! Yet, if you manage to navigate a pathway through all of the hate and confusion, then the really important things are surely brought into extreme focus. You only have to see how Ryan’s lived his life so far, to see how true this might be.

Songs about parents will always be deeply personal, one imagines. Mike and the Mechanics ‘In The Living Years’ comes immediately to mind. However, they must take on some cosmic extra-dimension when transgender issues are involved. This one’s got a real poignancy about it that your run-of-the-mill pop song very rarely has. There’s patently been a bottomless well of teenage emotion and anguish invested in its creation. Ultimately, it’s a triumph of the highly personal, transformed into the universal. Salvation in three minutes seven seconds! An anthem for the unloved?

This is who I am – for anyone that cares.

Daughter is a sublimely perfect pop song! It has avoided the pitfall of ‘trying too hard’ to get its message across, and in doing so it gets its message across incredibly well. The initial release was widely covered, including by such stalwarts as Billboard Magazine and The Huffington Post, but it was probably the response from the LGBTQ community itself that was most rewarding for Ryan.

“I honestly thought that I was going to get a lot of hate from inside the trans masculine community for the lyrical content of the song, but that didn’t happen. I think it was because so many people expressed how much they related, and how much they understood the lyrics in their own way.

People have told me that they were able to ‘come out’ to their parents because they finally had the words to express themselves. Others said they’d never fully related to a song until they heard Daughter. Some played the song to their parents, and now their parents totally get them. This is why I wanted to put this song out there. I wrote it for my dad, but I realised that it could possibly help other people too. And it has!”

Here’s another little tip-of-the-iceberg… just a few of the hundreds of comments that Ryan gets on his youtube videos…

Ryan, you saved me!
It makes me sad that there’s so much hate…
Thank you so much for this, Ryan!
I love how confident and cool you are. I hope someday I can be like that too. Just thanks so much.
I need to stop watching this in classes. I keep crying my eyes out.
I love you, Ryan, you are my idol. I love you so much. I love how you make me not ashamed to tell people my story, of being a trans, or take shit from anyone who thinks I’m a freak.
I’m bisexual, and my friends don’t really respect that. When I came out they said I was joking and I went with the joke. I tried committing suicide but stopped myself.
I still haven’t learned to accept myself for who I am.
I love this so much… You have to love your children no matter what. All they want is to be loved and have support… Isn’t that what all of us want?
You are my inspiration and the reason I will soon be coming out.
Ryan, you inspire me so much to do anything I want to.
Every time I go back to this song, I’m brought to tears.
You literally inspire people whether they are gay/straight/transgender.
I’m so glad there are people in this world like you… I can’t get you out of my head.
Having you out there to tell this to people is just amazing. Thank you so much
I’ve just recently started coming out at transgender and its people like you who give me hope.
I have tried to kill myself because of bullying, but I didn’t succeed and I’m happy I didn’t because now I can stand up for others and show them they aren’t alone because you showed me I’m not alone.

Whenever I get bullied and I get super depressed for being lesbian, I listen to this song and it makes me feel better.

I look up to you as a human and hope one day I can make even half the difference you are making in this world today.

I’m a fifteen-year-old FTM transgender and, being that I’m young, am having problems with classmates and my family. This has helped so much. “Thank you” is honestly all I can say. Thank you.