What does Title IX do for trans students when our basic needs aren’t being met? Will officials actually follow the policy? These are the first questions I had when CalMatters asked to interview me about the recent trans-inclusive changes in federal Title IX regulation. Policy shouldn’t be used as shorthand for long-term structural change. It’s a positive step, sure, but it’s only one small part of making anti-trans discourse unacceptable. It’s most important we strive toward a culture of uplifting trans people, trans voices, and trans thought. Read the full article here.
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
In happier news, I'm going to start making trans myth-busting videos.
There is an epidemic of transgender violence. Especially women of color getting attacked and murdered.
Now is not the time to talk positively. Giving into anger is the only sane response right now.
NEW PHILOSOPHY TUBE JUST DROPPED
This is the one baybeee. This is the big one, the one about trans healthcare, the big kahuna, the forbidden episode I’d never do, the one where I drag Br*tish institutions and make a bunch of references to a famous novel - you know me!
Enjoy, and also - I never normally ask but, SHARE THIS ONE AROUND LADS
Abi XXx
they/them
the tape is off! let the scar treatment begin.
[image description: a photo of op from the waist up against a dark background. op is a slim 20s white person with long wavy brown hair. they wear pointed elf ears and hold a swept hilt rapier before them. their bare chest has scars from top surgery incisions. end image description.]
Rare photos from trans history: Olympic runner and Zdeněk Koubek styles Cinda Glenn’s hair, 1936. Koubek was one of the first trans men to gain international fame after he transitioned in 1935.
this is inspiring weirdly complex emotions in me. like, it’s the fucking 1930s. I can hear the mid-atlantic newsreel voice. the fact that it plays coy with why he knows so much about women’s hairstyles, but like, as a funny surprise, not as shock and horror. the fact that it never deadnames him or uses incorrect pronouns. the fact that he looks like Mickey Rooney. idk it’s just making me feel feelings.
Turns out the thing that’s a recent trend isn’t trans people coming out, but rampant transphobia. Not sure whether it started with the 1950s or only when the boomers became the most prominent cultural voice, but in any case the late 20th-century Western obsession with maintaining the gender binary seems to be an aberration both historically and across cultures. The conservative boomers are just mad that their fad is dying out with them and they’re getting called out for their shittyness on the way out.
As someone who’s found thousands of these articles, it’s much more complicated than it being simply better or worse 100 years ago. Many newspapers treated trans people wonderfully 100 years ago. Others were quite conservative and would call for our arrest for simply existing. Some would praise trans figures for their outspokenness and accomplishments. Most articles fell somewhere in between. Reports about medically transitioning people generally considered them “medical curiosities” at worst and “brave” at best.
What does the queer community need most of all right now?
- We need more writers writing positive stories about queer and trans people
- We need gender-affirming care and its public promotion
- We need mandatory sex education and mental health education in the public syllabus
- We need to stop apologizing just for existing
- We need to start talking about queer and trans people of Africa, Asia, China, Russia, Middle East
- We need an accurate description of queer sex in the adult movie industry
- We need to ban capital punishment for being homosexual
- We need to promote puberty blockers and social transition for trans kids.
- We need to be more active in politics and join more protests
do y'all even know how much i hate being an “elder queer” at 40? a whole goddamn generation before me was wiped out by a plague that politicians deemed not their problem bc it was killing the “right” people. like. this was OPENLY STATED. i spent a large chunk of my childhood going to funerals. nevermind the fact that killing queer people for being queer wasn’t codified into law as a hate crime until i was a junior in high school.
i should NOT be an elder queer, i should be middle at most. i am a middle aged queer. most of the elder queers died.
when i was growing up i didn’t go to pride parades, i went to pride marches. because that’s 100% what they were in the 80s and 90s.
from the absolute bottom of my heart, LEARN OUR FUCKING HISTORY. a generation was nearly wiped out so you young queers could be here. don’t let that have been in vain, please.
Spain has one of the highest acceptance rates of all gender and sexual minorities, and their rate of acceptance for trans rights and issues are at a staggering 87%, in 2016.