trans gay men. you are not making it up. you are not “fetishing gay men”. you are not “a silly little girl”. you are allowed to love men. you are not dirty or lying or tricking anyone. it’s okay to love men. you are gay, and i love you.
to the trans community: you are not a burden. you are strong. you are loved. you are so brave. you are beautiful. we’re here for you, and we love you. <3
there is no medical component to a trans kid transitioning
if a little trans boy comes out to his parents & is like 4 all youd do for his transition is cut his hair, buy a new wardrobe, & switch pronouns & possibly change names
no one is gonna put a little 4 year old on testosterone OR puberty blockers until theyre actually about to start puberty & then they give them a few years to really decide if they want to start hormones
a trans kid existing isnt “child abuse.” child abuse is refusing to let your kid live their lives as they truly are & forcing them to present as a gender they arent
radfems who interact with this post will be blocked & your argument will not be read or even considered. i do not care about the opinion of a transphobe & my original post still stands.
a few years ago a kid in my preschool class transitioned socially and the only consequence was that as soon as her best friend discovered that changing your name is allowed she wanted to change hers to Detective
So stay with me here, but fun ballet fact: part of the reason you’re supposed to start ballet young is so you stretch and hold your joint in certain ways regularly enough that your body grows different. You know how men who do ballet look only sort of muscular but then like lift a whole ass person? Their muscles are trained to lie flat like that for flexibility, they don’t bulk up. Girl in your class who always stands in turnout? It’s likely not just habit, her joints probably sit like that now.
I started ballet when I was six and stopped after three years. I then took a break for three years, and came back and did jazz ballet (which has most of the same body mods but without turnout) and tap for another couple of years. And every physio who works on my body looks at my feet, hips and calves and goes “oh you danced”. I was never even flexible enough to do the splits, but you best believe I stand in turnout. I never went en pointe, but I’m 95% sure tap is the reason my feet have random spasms if I don’t take to them with a tennis ball once a week.
When I said I wanted to be a dancer at six years old, adults took that to mean I’d want certain permanent alterations to my body. Unlike with young trans kids, no one was looking to make sure I fully understood what I was getting into. And unlike with young trans kids, these changes were not reversible when I changed my mind. There wasn’t even a way to delay things to buy time (like puberty blockers), it was all or nothing. If I wanted to be a professional dancer, my normal ass joints were a ticking timebomb.
So like ~cis opinion~, but I really don’t have a lot of time for people getting feral about trans kids socially transitioning or going on blockers or even (when they’re old enough for it be relevant) hrt. Me “identifying” as a dancer at six years old was more physically impactful and less informed than if a six year old changed their name and grew their hair, but you don’t see any of the adults in my life getting accused of child abuse.
I had so much fun filling this request for @hptransfest thank you!
Prompt:Trans boy or nonbinary Harry Potter has long hair. Likes: lightning scar that branches down his face like natural lightning, Indian!Harry
This piece is inspired by Naveen Bhat, a nonbinary artist, actor, and filmmaker based in California.
Naveen has a truly incredible story that has recently been made into a documentary film called Escaping Arga. In 2015, Naveen’s mother took them to Agra, India for a two-week vacation. During the second week, she told them that they were going to stay in Agra indefinitely to “fix” Naveen’s queerness. The documentary chronicles their experience of being illegally detained in India, battling their parents in and out of court, and seeking support from the Indian Supreme Court.
In addition to wanting to elevate their story, I thought they would make an adorable Harry, so I reached out to them before I finished the illustration. They were very nice and gave me permission to use them as a muse!
Here’s a quote from an interview with Naveen: “I would say please be safe. If possible, try to find friends that will love and accept you regardless of your gender identity and sexual orientation. If there is one thing I learnt from my experiences, it is that there are always multitudes of people who will love and support you. I had many people I didn’t even know coming to me with words of support online and in person. There is a great pressure that cisgender heterosexual people put on us to ‘come out of the closet’ and announce who we truly are, but they do not understand that our safety and security are at stake when we do come out. We need systemic change and we can’t do it alone. We need an active approach to allyship. ‘Ally’ is not a noun. It’s not an adjective. ‘Ally’ is a verb, and we must constantly work to dismantle systems of oppression and do everything we can to prevent another act of violence[…]. As queer people, we see ourselves getting killed and/or being devastated constantly. It’s in our movies, our TV shows, in books and on the news. Everywhere we turn, we see representations of ourselves being miserable. We are in pain. We are suffering. This needs to end now.”
Today (3/31/21) is Trans Day of Visibility. With that, we at Beloved want to celebrate trans lives, especially trans youth and trans people of faith. We want you to know: no matter your gender, how much you’ve transitioned, how much you want to transition, your sexuality, your romantic orientation, how much you pass, your pronouns: you are loved and valued, you are seen and wanted, you are BeLoved.
As of 2/25/21, the Equality Act was passed in the House of Representatives. It will be headed to the Senate soon where it will be voted on. If you are unaware of what the Equality Act is, it is an act proposed that will allow for protections and equal opportunities for LGBTQ+ people throughout America.
Hello Beloved! A mix of good and bad LGBTQ+ political news has surfaced.
The Bad News: The week of the attack on the Capitol, Trump rolled back protections in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that allows for any social-service provider that receives federal funding to discriminate based on sexual orientation or gender identity. This impacts LGBTQ+ lives in ways from adoption and foster care to HIV and AIDS services. Source.
The Good News: On Day One of his presidency, Joe Biden signed an executive order that ensures that all anti-discrimination laws, from workplace to housing and education, also include sexual orientation and gender identity. This comes after, in June 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that the 1964 Civil Rights Act also protects people based on gender identity and sexual orientation in the workplace. Source.
Change is an uphill battle, but it is coming. Have hope, Beloved
Rachel Levine (she/her), Pennsylvania’s secretary of health, is nominated by President-Elect Joe Biden (he/him) to be the assistant secretary of health. This will make Levine the “first openly transgender federal official to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.” In 2020, Levine has been handling the coronavirus in her home state of Pennsylvania. Although she has experienced transphobia in previous years, this last year has seen an increase in transphobia as her enforcement of masks and lockdowns angered individuals.
There is an island off the coast of Australia named “The Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands.” This island was named and claimed as a protest by a group of LGBTQ+ Activists in 2004 until it was disbanded in 2017.
1: GENDER IS A COMPLEX THING. Essentially gender is our internal relationship to societal concepts of masculinity and femininity.
2. GENDER EXPRESSION is the behavior attributes and symbols that indicate and perform one’s gender(s).
3. PART OF IT HAS TO DO WITH how you feel, part of it is how people see you, part of it has to do with expectations based on biological sex. Frankly, no definition of gender really gets all of what it is or isn’t.
4. MANY PEOPLE IDENTIFY WITHIN the binary of man or woman, many have a fluid experience within the spectrum, and still many identify outside the spectrum of these two options altogether.
5. CISGENDER PEOPLE identify with the gender society prescribes them at birth based on external sex characteristics.
TRANSGENDER PEOPLE internally align with gender(s) other than those assigned at birth.
Even Biological Sex Is NOT A Binary
The terms “MALE” AND “FEMALE” are used to categorize the anatomical differences in our bodies, but everything we attribute to biological sex— chromosomes, horomones, sex-linked genes, and genitalia— all exist on a complex spectrum. We are taught that XX chromosomes means female and XY chromosomes means male, but someone with XX chromosomes can be born with a penis and someone with XY chromosomes could be born with a vagina. Other chromosomal combinations exist (including X, XXY, XXX), and many people are born with varying degrees of both ovaries and testicles. This diversity has come to be generalized as “intersex” (neither male nor female). Tragically, doctors in many parts of the world perform irreversible surgeries to assign a binary sex to children whose bodies don’t match traditional understandings of male and female anatomy.
Who you are sexually or romantically attracted to is separate from your gender. Many people confuse the two.
“When I first came out as a lesbian in college, my friends assumed I must feel like a man on the inside because they couldn’t imagine two women loving each other.” “Growing up, everyone assumed I was gay because of my personality and how I dressed, but that was because they didn’t have the language for gender diversity. To them, everything queer had to be gay.”
Brief History of Gender Diversity
While most of the western world is only just waking up to the diversity and complexity of gender, many cultures around the world and throughout time have recognized transgender and gender nonconforming people, often giving them spiritual reverence.
Ancient Egyptians identified three genders, man, sekhet, and woman, as early as early as 2000 BCE. Other cultures acknowledge three, four, and even more genders.
THE MODERN EMPHASIS ON GENDER as a rigid binary is primarily the consequence of European colonialism: a Christianity of patriarchy and cis-normativity allowed European colonists to call other cultures primitive and justify violence against them along with other forms of theft and control.
The Importance of Pronouns and Names
There’s so many options for pronouns: he, she, they, ze, or even just using a person’s name, and more. THE WORDS WE USE TO GENDER PEOPLE MATTER.
Calling a transgender person by their birth name, or a previous name associated with an identity that is not authentic to them can be harmful. Often times trans people choose a name that aligns more with their identity. Their previous name is sometimes called their “dead name.” DON’T DEAD NAME PEOPLE.
Using a person’s chosen name and proper pronouns can REDUCE THEIR RISK OF SUICIDE BY 30%.
FUN FACT: the singular ‘they’ has been used as a gender neutral pronoun in English for many hundreds of years!
God is Not a Man
God is infinitely more complex than can be contained within human vocabulary and thoughts (see Isaiah 55:8-9).
THIS INCLUDES GENDER. God’s fullness includes woman, man, non-binary, and being outside of gender. The gender-diverse nature of God is reflected throughout scripture. In addition to masculine terms, God is repeatedly described as a nursing, protective, and comforting Mother who has born us from Her womb (Hosea 11:3-4; Deuteronomy 32:11-18; Isaiah 42:14, 49:15, 66:13; Psalm 131:2; Matthew 23:37; etc). Even Genesis 1:27 says all of humankind was made in God’s image (not just cisgender men).
In the Beginning
The Bible says that in the beginning, God created day and night, land and sea, birds and fish. But have you ever seen a sunset, or a beach, or a penguin? Well, trans and non-binary people are kind of like that. A BEAUTIFUL ARRAY OF DIVERSITY.
So, God created male and female, and we are no less beautiful, diverse, and wild than a sunset or a beach or a penguin. God created people with genders beyond male and female in the same way God created realities in between, outside of, and beyond these others. Trans and non-binary and agender and intersex: God created us. –Adapted from a message from trans pastor Asher O’Callaghan
Elliot Page (he/they), known for their roles in The Umbrella Academy, Juno, Inception, and more, has come out as trans!
In a post to instagram andTwitter, Elliot detailed how they are confident enough to finally come out as themselves. In their coming out post, he also mentions how despite their confidence in coming out, they are still fragile. That the coming out process is not over and they are still sensitive to everything.
Elliot also focuses in on how the trans community is hit time and time again with discrimination and prejudice. He wants to be another person standing for change within the community and will do everything they can to do that.
As with everyone’s coming out, trans or otherwise, celebrity or otherwise, we must respect Elliot as they navigate themselves and the path they take. We have nothing but love for Elliot as they take these new steps to become his full self.
We celebrate Elliot’s coming out with happy hearts, but we also hear their anger and disappointment for the treatment of trans folx.
Take time today to remember all the lives lost due to transphobic acts of harassment and violence. 350+ people just this year have died due to physical violence against trans people and countless commit suicide every year. Our siblings are losing lives to hate but we will not let them be forgotten.
Take care of yourselves today as you grieve and ache. Give yourself the grace to feel. Spread love to your trans siblings, today and every day.
Happy Trans Awareness Week! Today (11/13/20) through 11/20/20 is Trans Awareness Week!
Be trans with pride! Whether you’re in the closet or out; binary trans or nonbinary; pre-transition or post-transition; you want to transition or you don’t; queer or straight; YOU ARE VALID
Today is Veteran’s Day. This holiday, as many other pro-military holidays in the U.S., is usually seen as a day that our oppressors, especially those in the church, celebrate. However, Veteran’s Day is also a day for the oppressed as many of the oppressed, people of color, women, queer folk, and trans folk, have served in the military. Remember ALL that have served. For ALL have sacrificed.
Mental Health is a huge issue for veterans as many struggle with PTSD, Anxiety, Depression, and many end up committing suicide. If you are a veteran struggling with mental health or in a crisis, you can reach out for help here.
If there are any veterans in your life, reach out to them. Every day, but especially today, especially in today’s society.
it’s truly wild to me how every time trans issues are being discussed in the mainstream media here comes the terfs with their bs ideologies that sound exactly like the crap old sexist white politicians spill and yet these rADicAL feminists don’t see the irony?
how are you going to sound exactly like ron desantis and not for a single second consider that maybe you’re on the wrong here?
ID: “This Pride remember to respect all trans people : Trans women who don’t shave with a drawing of a woman whit a yellow and pink beard, trans men who don’t bind, masculine trans women and feminine trans men with a drawing of a trans woman with short pink hair wearing a yellow baseball T-shirt holding hands with a trans man with a yellow crop top and short curly blue hair, fat trans people with the drawing of a fat trans woman with short white hair, dark skin and a pink cropped top, disabled trans people with a drawing of a wheelchair and a walking cane in the color of the trans flag, neurodivergent trans people with the symbol of the autistic community, trans people who are sex worker with a drawing of blue bra and pink underwear, poor trans people who can’t afford transition, trans people who aren’t out yet with a drawing of a closed door, trans people who don’t plan on transitioning, black trans people with a black fist holding a trans flag, and any trans people who isn’t white with multiple hands of different skin tones, muslim trans people with a drawing of someone wearing a hijab in the color of the trans flag, jewish trans people with a drawing of someone wearing a white shirt and a kippah in the color of the trans flag, non binary people even those who don’t identify as trans with the non binary flag, those whose identity you might not understand with the genderfluid flag, the agender flag, the demi gender flag and the genderqueer flag, trans people who don’t pass and don’t want to with a drawing of a trans woman with a beard and dark skin raising her fist, every pronouns with dialog box in which are different sets of pronouns, trans people of every identity with the gay flag, the lesbian flag, the ace flag, the bi flag, the pan flag and the aro flag, every trans person is beautiful and deserving of so much love so don’t forget the T.” End ID
P.S. : can someone tell me if I did the image description right cuz I have no idea
the thing that strikes me about this latest wave of anti-trans hate and legislation in the U.S. is that it feels like it’s *kind of* about trans people but really about a fear fundamental to all conservatives that a day will one day come when they will no longer be able to completely control their children
american conservatism is a death cult. trump made this incredibly obvious but it’s been trending that way for a while. it is spiteful, bigoted, cruel, morally bankrupt, and all evidence in support of it has either been fabricated, forged, deceptively edited, or disproven. being conservative goes against a fundamental human desire to be kind to those around you and I think on some level conservatives know this, and thus, they know that the only reason children would subscribe to these values is if they are indoctrinated into them with cult-like single-mindedness
Conservatives have been pushing for homeschooling for decades, they’ve been raising concerns about teaching evolution in schools since the early 20th century, they’ve made wedge issues out of sex ed, history textbooks, and now gay and trans teachers. They want a world in which children are taught to be conservative from birth and any attempt to teach them anything else is a literal crime. They want this because they know, deep down inside, that most children would not agree with them unless they were literally brainwashed into it.
also worth pointing out that most child abuse (sexual or otherwise) takes place within a “traditional” family structure or a “traditional” religious institution and I have to wonder if people who want to abuse kids have a fundamental investment in preserving strict hierarchies in which adult men have unquestioned authority over children
Like I’m not saying *every* conservative is like this but perhpas their emphasis on “groomers” is a wee bit of projection
Anyway abolish the family trans rights are human rights institute fully automated luxury gay space communism now
This tweet sums it up pretty well:
This is another big reason why most conservatives bitch about higher education; a lot of younger people (myself included) undo their conservative upbringing brainwashing after being exposed to new ideas, meeting new and diverse people, and getting a higher-quality education when they attend college.
This is also, of course, why conservative lawmakers constantly seek to undermine public education and make it shittier so the kids who go through it are more ignorant. An educated and well-informed populace is the GOP’s worst nightmare.
like, agreed in general but also the roots of this movement are white supremacy. that’s the beginning and end of this shit.
when and why did the homeschooling and private school push begin? after brown versus board and public schools were desegregated.
why did the conservative backlash (which we’ve been riding for forty plus years) begin? because of the civil rights act, which threatened to end the white supremacy status quo and “unfairly take from whites” to give to poc.
why are conservatives trying to cripple the federal government? because the federal government is committed (however poorly implemented and imperfectly) to protect minorities and is seen as blocking white men from taking/stealing what they want when they want to.
you cannot fight them without naming what they actually are committed to at the end of the day, which is, again WHITE SUPREMACY.
TERFs really out here thinking that male privilege comes from like. The overwhelming aura of the penis and being told not to wear skirts as a kid, and not the fact that manhood is an in-group that trans women are absolutely stricken from.
Male privilege comes from men in power treating me with respect and, well, privilege. And sweetie, that’s not something that happens once they catch the scent of tranny on me. I am not going to be hired before a cis woman. I am not going to be allowed to talk over men, god forbid cis women. I am not going to get a “boys will be boys” if I hurt someone, because the minute I challenged my own manhood I turned in that “boy” card.
Maybe I do act “manly” sometimes. Let’s assume that for argument. The fact is, even if I did that, I do not have patriarchy backing me up; I’m just a not-man not-woman that no one will defend if I step out of line.
Funny thing about this post is a couple of TERFs got their hands on it and apparently the best argument they can come up with is “You fucking moron, work discrimination and sexual harassment isn’t sexism, REAL sexism is seat belts and doorknob heights.”
To be clear, I am certain that they don’t actually believe that sexual harassment doesn’t matter but doorknob heights do, they’re just consciously trying to define feminism in such a way as to exclude trans women which results in them focusing on either stuff that has specifically to do with vaginas (which to be clear our society has a ton of issues to do with ppl with vaginas, but that’s only one facet of feminism) or grasping at straws to assign the highest importance to skeletal structure.
One of them in the notes even slipped up and blamed office thermometers on “xy skeletal structures” which is like. First of all that skeletal structure is associated with testosterone during puberty, second of all bone structure??? You genuinely believe it has to do with bone structure and not hormones and body fat distribution? They don’t, of course, but they know that’s something that trans women have in common with cis women so their ideology of “you can’t change biology” requires that they pretend it doesnt exist.
It’s just so clear as to be comical that TERFs define what feminist issues they do and do not care about by whether or not they can be used to draw a line between them and trans women.
* The people who got upset by it, I guess they didn’t listen all the way until the end. Because I didn’t have a problem with trans people. I really didn’t.
* But I do now!! (Cue uproarious laughter)
* And there was such a backlash. I mean, an uproar. And now I can’t tell jokes about transgender people ever again. And I won’t…ON TV
* If I were to tell my producers “hey, I identify as Chinese”
* And then I came in [offensive Ching Chong impression] and the one Chinese guy there was like, this isn’t right.
* Or what if I were sent to prison. And I’d say, no, man. I’m a woman. I identify as a woman. Im going to woman’s prison. And guess the first thing I’d do when I got in there??
* “Yeah, you bitches better do my laundry or I’m gonna…”
* To a disabled girl in the front row:
* So does that dog actually help with anything or just keep you company?
* Do you think if you put a little peanut butter down there he’d…yeah, I bet he would. He’d help you out. You ever put a little peanut butter down there? You ever done that?
* Can he pick stuff up? Like, can he up pick beer bottles? He can? I’ll give you 700 dollars for that dog. Right now.
* Later, to 2 girls in the audience: hey, you girls? Boys? Does it even matter anymore?
This transcript does not include jokes comparing Ukraine to Vietnam, jokes about Russia’s ineffectiveness (like he wants them to succeed??) or John Mulaney’s post-set comments about Dave being one of his best friends.
Tl;dr: I was forced to see Dave Chapelle. His jokes included comparing transgender people to racists and rapists. He also encouraged a disabled person in the audience to force her service dog to perform oral sex on her.
Please reblog this if you can, for evidence of his continued transphobia. I’d really hate my Chapelle nightmare to be for nothing.
What the entire FUCK?
Let’s unpack this a little, though, specifically the ableist shit. Because I can already hear the apologists screaming, “he was just joking! He didn’t REALLY mean she should force her service dog to perform oral sex!”
And hey, that may be true, that probably wasn’t his intention, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t problematic. So, I mean, the baseline here is that he’s punching down, which is bad enough without being a starting point. Then you think about it for three more seconds and it’s clear that he just can’t look at a woman without sexualizing her. There’s the ableism of trivializing both her disability and her mobility aid. And the throwaway comment about buying the dog because it can pick up beer bottles is the icing on the cake – flaunting his wealth and joking about using it to take away accessibility tools from disabled people in order to be lazy, which low-key feeds into biases that disabled people face regularly about how if they just tried harder and weren’t so lazy, they wouldn’t be disabled. Obviously this woman had a service dog because she needed one. That’s how service dogs work. And, ngl, I’m also judging him for looking at this intelligent, loyal fuzzy friend that has been trained to support the needs of someone who struggles with certain tasks, and seeing it primarily as a tool he can exploit for his own whims.
This whole set sounds like a hot mess, and there’s a whole essay worth of a post about the transphobic shit in it, but targeting a disabled person just hit a nerve for me. Especially because the front row is often where some of the disabled seating is in a lot of venues, which doesn’t mean that the people who need those seats are willing to open themselves up as targets for comedians – especially when they didn’t sign up to see an opener who wasn’t on the bill.
