Stand Up & Fight Back

We recently had a similar situation in my area…some ignorant ‘Christian Mom’ and her posse went to a local school board meeting and did the exact same thing, but she included any member or supporter of the LGBTQ+ community in her defamatory rant. Thankfully, the board members took the time to carefully evaluate her comments and asked the right questions:

The answers are always ‘online’, ‘no’, and, if it’s more than just a blank stare, a word salad of bad and grooming etc.

The board pointed out that parents had the ability to restrict what books their children were allowed to read within the school library system, and that was that. No banning allowed.

But they keep trying, and the next step is to get someone with similar ‘values’ on the school board. And THAT is why it’s so important to pay attention to your local elections and VOTE.

These fucks are the weeds and you, friends, need to make sure you they have no place to grow.

THANKS for the addition to this post @maeve-curry-writes.  

As I've been saying, when you see the existence of queer people as inherently adult content, you see someone telling a child about the existence of queer people as grooming. Even just "Billy has two dads" becomes the equivalent of a bukake gangbang.

They don't teach queer sex ed in schools. (They barely teach hetero sex ed anymore, but they do teach the basics.) My parents had nothing to tell me on the subject. The couple queer teachers I had were too terrified of being outed to be proper mentors. I learned about sex from library books and the internet. It was a lifeline. I consumed every bit of information I could find.

That's why I'm just so fucking livid about censoring sex in libraries and on the internet. It was always hurt more queers than cishets. It will leave younger generations with fewer resources to know themselves, to love themselves, and to love others healthily and safely.

They dress is up as being anti-sex (which also fucking sucks) rather than anti-gay, but the two are one and the same. You cannot be anti-sex without being anti-gay. They're the same beast.

hey tumblr go eat shit you gormless little sex hating bitch

A big part of the reason I am terrified by anti-adult-content censorship is that for a lot of people, queer people are inherently adult just by existing. Erasing adult content then erases queer people significantly. We're seeing it not just on the internet, but libraries, too. It's overwhelmingly queer stuff getting flagged. They're trying to erase us completely.

You should come to this show I'm gonna be in, if you're in Chicago on Friday. (tickets) It's gonna be a blast!

Psst, I'm back to doing burlesque.

hey if you have a pet or pets you need to reblog this rn and tell me in the tags what their names are. bonus points for including what kind of animal.

fuck of a lot of you named your pets Loki

Egg, Scrambles the Death Dealer, and Oz. We are thinking of retroactively renaming the last one Huevoz just to keep the theme.

The thing is that authors who are anti the internet archive and I are never going to agree because I simply don't think piracy is bad or wrong

Authors do deserve to be paid for our work absolutely and unequivocally but 9 times out of 10 someone reading a poorly scanned pdf of your book that they found online is not why you aren't receiving a real paycheck. Publishing houses, printers, and agents scamming you and not paying you what you deserve is why you aren't receiving a real paycheck.

And The Internet Archive refusing to archive anything published in the last 5 years specifically is meant to aid authors since that's the period during which our books make the most money. So at this point any author who claims they're anti The Internet Archive because "they're stealing profits from authors" eiter doesn't actually know anything about TIA/how libraries work OR they have put their want for profit above everything else which is like fine whatever but tbh you probably should have chosen a different profession.

Internet Archive is the only way I can read some of my own old work anymore, since publishers went under and computers crashed.

July 4th Original Art ***GIVEAWAY***

The prize: the original art pictured above, approx 6"x8" acrylic on wood and collage, varnished with Mod Podge.

For every $20 you donate to an abortion fund that isn't Planned Parenthood*, you will receive 1 ticket. Email me your receipt at ro@rosalarian.com to enter. On July 11th, I'll draw one random winner and send this to them. Again: Send money directly to the abortion funds of your choice, and then email me. Attaching any transphobic rhetoric, including but not limited to language insinuating that this is only a women's rights issue, will result in disqualification. You must be 18 to enter.

*Why not PP? They're the first thing people think of for abortion rights, and they have a lot of donations right now. A lot of their money goes toward lobbying, which is not a bad thing, but I want to focus on funds that directly give money to people to help them get abortions. Here's a handy dandy list of abortion funds across the nation. This link will split your donate between 93 funds across the country.

---

About the art:

I bought a bunch of Playboys from 1970-1980, intending to make cheeky, sexy collages. Then, I started reading the articles. It's astounding how many of them could be written today. Talking about censorship, gun control, the horrors of the Christian right wing, gay rights, and of course, abortion. All of the words I used were from the pages of these magazines, and there were so many to choose from, they couldn't all fit. Articles, editorials, letters to the editor, all writing about abortion as a logical option in a just society.

Fifty years later, and we're now less sexually liberated than the subjects of these magazines, because they had their abortion rights back then. We made progress, but we didn't secure it, and so we went backwards. We're facing not only a loss of abortion rights; this is sending ripples through every other civil rights movement, and increased censorship is attempting to keep us from even talking about it. These are scary times for everybody, regardless of if you do or don't have a uterus.

By using decades-old magazines, I am highlighting how old this issue is, and how many years back we have been set, and yet, how relatively recent Roe was. The models in these pages are still alive, barely older than my mother, and have seen their rights come and go at the whim of a dangerous right wing that was warned about in the articles between pictures of perky breasts and ads for record players. By using p o r n -ography, I am highlighting how fear of sexuality is used to further a fascist agenda, and by allowing censorship of sex, we set the stage for the fascists to get what they want.

---

If you liked this, please consider subscribing to my patreon. You get up to 3 pages of smut every week, and you help out a disabled trans artist who can't work a regular job. Don't want to commit to a recurring pledge? Tip me on ko-fi.

This first thing I thought when I woke up from surgery was I am so hungry and I need ramen right now! but the second thing I thought was Oh my god, I'm safe.

I was safe.

I thought about having kids someday, but the thought was always divorced from the concept of having to grow them in my body. Whenever I thought about it, I would either start screaming or my mind would shut down. My worst nightmares featured discovering I was pregnant, and realizing I would have to keep it, and go through childbirth. I was terrified.

I got the surgery, and realized I was safe, and I never had those nightmares ever again. It was like finding out I was bulletproof.

Later, I looked at the broken condom, and I didn't see my life flash before my eyes. I didn't see my hopes and dreams turn to ash as I pivoted all my energy into a child I didn't want. I didn't see a possibility of starvation or homelessness because my already modest income went to a child I couldn't afford. I didn't see my disabled body becoming further disabled, or killed, by a pregnancy that I didn't want.

Read more between the pages commentary: https://www.patreon.com/posts/68216364 (free post, no paywall)

This post was flagged as "adult content" but I successfully (and very quickly) got my appeal approved.

To whatever conservative fuckhead who reported this as inappropriate, it didn't work, and it's still here, and I'm going to keep posting it forever so I can help people obtain the medical care they need. I hope poison ivy fills your yard, and may all your pets forevermore be maliciously incontinent.

to my fellow usamericans….in light of the supreme court overturning roe v wade, well known organizations like planned parenthood dont need your money right now - they have plenty - if you’re going to donate, donate to your local or state abortion funds

the national network of abortion funds allows you to split your donation between 91 abortion funds in the united states -  it lists every fund your donation goes to and allows you to customize the amount you give to each fund

This first thing I thought when I woke up from surgery was I am so hungry and I need ramen right now! but the second thing I thought was Oh my god, I'm safe.

I was safe.

I thought about having kids someday, but the thought was always divorced from the concept of having to grow them in my body. Whenever I thought about it, I would either start screaming or my mind would shut down. My worst nightmares featured discovering I was pregnant, and realizing I would have to keep it, and go through childbirth. I was terrified.

I got the surgery, and realized I was safe, and I never had those nightmares ever again. It was like finding out I was bulletproof.

Later, I looked at the broken condom, and I didn't see my life flash before my eyes. I didn't see my hopes and dreams turn to ash as I pivoted all my energy into a child I didn't want. I didn't see a possibility of starvation or homelessness because my already modest income went to a child I couldn't afford. I didn't see my disabled body becoming further disabled, or killed, by a pregnancy that I didn't want.

Read more between the pages commentary: https://www.patreon.com/posts/68216364 (free post, no paywall)

ok this is great, but the way this is worded is really really misinformed. REMOVING YOUR UTERUS DOES NOT AFFECT HORMONES. this is a super common misconception, but incorrect to the point of being dangerous if people don't actually understand how their body works. the uterus is the baby sack (which has nothing to do with hormone production), and the ovaries are what dictate your hormonal state. you can remove the uterus without removing the ovaries, which is extremely common and was the type of hysterectomy that i got.

i got mine done for several reasons, but obtained it through trans care because gender was one of them. i was not on any gender-affirming hormones, so had zero hormone changes after! hystos are also done laparoscopically, in a nearly identical process to a bilateral salp. however, you don't get periods! i think people don't realize that thats an option, including presumably OP because they mentioned that specifically. i havent thought about my period in years, it fucking rules.

many people, including doctors, will specifically not mention that this is an option. the cultural association with the uterus as a sign of a woman's fertility or some bullshit can trigger a weird response in relation to hystos, often people immediately yelling about how dangerous it is (not moreso than any other major surgery). many horror stories are from people who had them after traumatic births, or who got them prior to the current method; they used to be done similar to a c-section, which required long recovery periods.

if you want to look into a bilateral salp like OP then of course feel free, it can be a good option for some people! but i think it would benefit so many people to realize that periods aren't a curse to bear their whole lives if they don't want it. i have several friends who have gotten them, and recovery was crazy easy; i was walking that day, stopped taking tylenol almost immediately, and went back to kickboxing a week later. it was absolutely the best thing i've ever done, and i wish everyone luck with whatever choices they make <3

#I've only done a brief trawl of .gov medical resources but all this seems to check out #(I'm trying to be better about verifying these sorts of things before reblogging them

Y'all, I did so much research when I first made this comic, and I continue to do research. Granted, things are changing very fast right now, but so far, it still holds up. Good on you for fact checking, though!

Also, per the other comment above, a "total/ radical hysterectomy" typically removes the ovaries as well, which will affect your hormone production. Partial hysterotomy will typically leave the ovaries intact, yes. A lot of how I wrote the comic was trying to meet people where they were, knowledge-wise, and for so many people, they've been led to believe that the only surgical option is a radical and total hysterectomy, and that would be accompanied by a lifetime of HRT, which is daunting, and often requires more medical "necessity" for approval. I only had 5 pages in which to pack a lot of information, so some explanations got truncated.

Other options for getting rid of periods, which I talk about in my commentary link, are the various forms of endometrial/uterine ablations, in which the uterus is cauterized, which prevents the uterine lining from being able to form, thus preventing periods, but pregnancy is still possible, and very dangerous when it does happen. I would suggest pairing these two procedures if you want to eliminate pregnancy and periods without a hysterectomy.

Something else I'd like to bring up, while we're here, is that trans people have so much knowledge about how to squeeze healthcare out of people determined to tell us we don't need it. Regardless of our fertility status, we are invaluable to the cause of bodily autonomy, and fighting for trans rights always improves healthcare for cis people. TERFS allied themselves with Evangelicals to take us down, and they only made the Evangelicals more powerful, and I do believe they are a significant factor in why Roe was struck down, amidst all this "trans panic."