[Image description: A tumblr text-post, edited to obscure the majority of the post using stripes in the colours of the trans pride flag. The remaining text reads, “trans men are worthy.”]
Stand up against “Don’t Say Gay” laws that several states within the USA are trying to push through- they’re insidious.
It’s way beyond LGBTQ erasure. It’s more than than isolating LGBTQ students, teachers, and other members of society and putting them at risk of discrimination, violence, suicide, and disenfranchisement to the fringes of society. “Don’t Say Gay” laws are designed not to protect children from “inappropriate material”, they’re actually a direct effort to prevent the educational process necessary to change society to end discrimination and violence, particularly Transgender discrimination. Only education at a young age can achieve this goal.
Eliminating LGBTQ history and other educational programs and content stops this process dead in its tracks at a key critical moment in our history. It’s an effort to stop Transgender rights from happening.
STAND UP AGAINST “DON’T SAY GAY”! Our future and survival are depending upon it! And this goes way beyond the United States: as one of the most influential countries on the planet, we’re setting global precident too. 
Oh oh ohhh this is so not cool. I can’t believe they’re going there. A jaw droppingly LGBTQ hate and racist kind of not cool.
Florida governor DeSantis is directly targeting Disney World for being conspicuously LGBTQ equality supportive, and throwing the weight of his office to take them down for it… and more than that, if you read his written statement to his supporters, it’s racist too.
YOU NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON IN FLORIDA… read it here:
The “Don’t Say Gay” laws that DeSantis is fighting dirty for are laws aimed at making it illegal to even mention the existence of LGBTQ people in schools, including giving guidance, protection from bullying, and emotional support to LGBTQ children, and erasing all LGBTQ history from being taught or discussed in schools. Beyond safe sex and inclusiveness- Pride and Stonewall civil rights history? It would be illegal to discuss. The very local Pulse massacre? Illegal history too. “Help- I’m gay and my dad is beating me…” pleas from children to teachers or guidance counselors? Illegal too.
Update on the situation with my access to the steroid inhaler I need to live…
After a lot of unbelievable screw ups, transmasc discrimination, melodramatic cisgender fragility, manipulative corporate head games, and stonewalling & gaslighting to cover their asses, I finally got the telehealth provider app people to prescribe a 3 month supply of my steroid asthma inhaler… after having to beg and plead the manufacturer on my own to bend the rules to allow me to get renewed into their subsidized prescription program, because the telehealth provider refused to fax in my prescription and the renewal forms to them. The meds are super expensive, and I can’t afford them any other way.
It was a battle after I qualified too, because the telehealth people at first refused to write my prescription, saying they already did, then they sent an Albuterol rescue inhaler script instead of the right prescription to the steroid inhaler manufacturer (who doesn’t even make Albuterol), and when I complained, they said that I was never on the steroid inhaler at all, and lying about it (though there’s a year of records of it with the manufacturer). After much verbal abuse and head games to try to drive me off, I got them to straighten it out. The manufacturer had to rush expedite my prescription to get it to me in time. (The telehealth app people also pulled other related gaslighting and discrimination crap that’s too traumatic to discuss further here)
I’m now stuck searching for a new telehealth provider app. I’d be a fool to risk my life and emotional trauma to go through that crap again… and the reason why I’m using telehealth app services at all is because of violent anti transmasc discrimination locally. I still don’t have access to emergency or local health care because I’m Transmasc in a Deep South state.
…and I wouldn’t even need any of this shit if my bigoted landlord would enforce the posted anti smoke (and p0t) laws in the building where I live. I’d still be running marathons, not bed bound, trying to find a lawyer willing to represent a Transmasc person’s civil rights.
I’ve been pursuing reporting in-house to them the discrimination that I’ve experienced, for them to address it, and receiving intense hostility and discrimination from both their state and international levels when I’ve attempted to do so. It’s shocking.
At this point, I keep getting manipulative doublespeak, down speaking, and hostile denials of court admissible documented evidence of everything…trying to make me go away.
I’m continuing to pursue it, because it’s anti-Transmasc, LGBTQ discriminatory, and corruption. If they don’t get their shit straightened out, I’ve informed them that I’ll take it to the press- they’ve been under major press investigations radar for a few years now for shady business practices (retaining listings of business safety “A” ratings, though the businesses had lost against customers in court and found at fault, solely because the BBB is getting their pockets lined by the businesss via membership dues). It’s very likely that the press would have interest in what evidence I have to present.
My autistic ass is wondering if truscum realize medicalization and gatekeeping are the first two stops on the “How do we make people like this stop existing?” train.
nope, that’s actually incorrect!
medicalization allows for transsexual individuals to undergo transition specific surgeries and go on hormones without it being considered as cosmetic. if the transsexual condition was demedicalized, insurance would no longer cover it, which would mean many transsexual people would not be able to get the procedures they need in order to live a happier life. the goal of medicalization isn’t to make sure that trans people stop existing, it’s actually the exact opposite. only dysphoric people should be transitioning. people without dysphoria will of course feel uncomfortable in their transitioning bodies, because they were content with the bodies of their biolgical sex. i’ve heard stories of non dysphoric trans people (or cis people) lying to medical professionals in order to obtain hormones, and later regretting it. medicalization is one of the only ways we can prevent transition regret.
Context: Being transgender was demedicalized in 2013. I began hormone treatment in 2016. It was not considered cosmetic, and in fact it cost me zero dollars at the point of access to get my HRT prescription - because it was covered by insurance as a necessary medical procedure to treat my dysphoria.
Further context: Literally nowhere in the OP did anybody say anything about who should or should not transition, or about dysphoria.
Still further context: I am autistic. I have actually witnessed the straight line from “This is a Psychological Disorder” to “We are the only ones who can properly tell who has this condition and how to treat it (and we’ll use that to conveniently delegitimize anyone who disagrees with us)” to “What exactly causes this condition?” to “How do we make people like this stop existing?”
And to top it all off, you are literally telling me stories of how medicalization failed… as an argument for medicalization.
Now that you have at least some understanding of what’s going on here, would you like to try lecturing someone who has actually been through the gates about how they work again? Or would you perhaps like to try something less embarrassing?
That also presents an extraordinary burden on trans people to solve the problem of inaccessible healthcare, having the condition pathologised in order to oblige insurers to cover it, rather than actually improving the accessibility of healthcare. At the very least this should be argued as a flawed, pragmatic solution to the immediate problem—“no, being trans is not a medical condition, but there is immediate benefit to us having it recognised as one, despite the long term harm.”
Also, ‘cosmetic’ does not mean ‘insignificant’.
The funny thing is, “flawed, pragmatic solution to the immediate problem” is exactly where this entire line of argument came from.
Gather ‘round, kids, it’s time for a queer history lesson.
So first off: Remember seeing this image in trans history posts?
That’s Christine Jorgensen. She was a pioneer in trans rights and in transition, and deserves respect for that. See, she transitioned beginning in 1949 - not exactly an easy time for queer people of any description.
From what I can gather, it appears that she always intended to be an activist about this - she spent several years preparing a documentary she intended to bring to the US. And, sure enough, news about her spread, and by 1952 articles like these were circulating.
Two years later, she would have her vaginoplasty under a doctor by the name of Harry Benjamin.
Dr. Benjamin, too, was a huge pioneer for trans rights. The treatment regimen of hormones and surgery that we know today? He developed part of it, and formalized it as a single course of treatment.
But.
But Dr. Benjamin was also a cishet man, and an authority figure. And that meant that he was phenomenally bad at knowing what trans people need or… anything about women.
You know how trans folks occasionally joke about how The System wants you to be a 1950s housewife?
That’s because “1950s housewife” is literally the template.
As a result, there were very stringent conditions on what you had to look like to be considered a True Transsexual. You had to be socially transitioned, effectively passing, not getting enough relief from hormones, wanting surgery now, and if you weren’t Straighty McStraight that counted against you very strongly.
(Oh, as an aside, this cishet man who was considered one of the greatest authorities on human sexuality? Specifically classed asexual people as not “true and full-fledged transsexuals.”)
And a key point of Harry Benjamin’s model? The “true and full-fledged transsexual” feels nothing but revulsion for her body and an immediate desire for surgery.
Now obviously this model leaves a lot of trans people (particularly trans men, who Dr. Benjamin did not work with) out in the cold. But some of us could look like we fit, if we worked hard at it.
So trans women lied. We lied our asses off to literally anybody who looked too cis or het to trust with the truth. We said everything they wanted to hear, we shared tips about which lines worked with each other… fuck, we still do this. Meanwhile, among ourselves, we were playing around with the boundaries of gender, forming connections, developing terminology… if only hyperdysphoric feminine white het trans women were going to be considered “true transsexuals,” then screw it, the rest of us were transgender.
However, what the medical community saw? Was a whole lot of trans women smiling and nodding and going “Yep, you sure do understand us perfectly, Mr. Doctor Man!” So of course this theory continued basically unchallenged for a long-ass time.
In the meantime, North American trans history basically has a generation-long gap, populated by the occasional cis doctor writing about us. You can thank Janice Raymond for that one - her work was instrumental in getting trans health care classified as cosmetic, and thus dropped by insurers.
Fast forward to 2005. Raymond’s work was finally undone less than a decade ago, but… all that gatekeeping around turning trans women into 1950s housewives? It’s had all this time going unchallenged. By now, it’s just institutional knowledge that That’s What Trans Women Are Like.
So of course, we lie our asses off again. And we use this wonderful new Internet thing to help each other lie our asses off. Which means that, eventually, two groups of people find out about it and double down hard on screwing us.
The first is doctors, who see an opportunity to build stronger gates, and thus stronger positions of authority and respect.
The second is trans women who actually are described by Dr. Benjamin’s theory. There’s a ton of social capital and easing of transition available if you just vocally buy into oppression.
And of course, since this is the first either group was hearing about it, it looked like a sudden explosion of “fake” trans people lying their way into medical treatment that these poor women desperately needed.
And thus, Harry Benjamin Syndrome was born. Its proponents actively and violently distanced themselves from the rest of us (I’ve actually seen HBSers say things like “I have a medical condition, I’m not a fucking queer.”) and worked their asses off to strengthen the gates, on the theory that they could have their treatment quicker and easier and be taken more seriously if they just got all the “fakers” out.
Over the last 13 years, we’ve made a lot more progress in trans visibility and rights - but the HBS movement has over sixty years of institutional inertia behind it, as well as a shrinking-but-still-active core of vocal proponents. And HBSers aren’t just useful patsies for cis doctors, either. There’s another group that benefits strongly from painting the vast majority of trans women as predatory fakers who are just trying to shove their way into spaces they don’t belong.
TERFs, of course. The same group who have been using tumblr as a controlled environment to figure out exactly how to pass their ideology to people without getting caught.
And that, kiddos, is how you get regurgitated Harry Benjamin Syndrome bullshit on tumblr, spewed by someone who’s too young to even remember what HBS was, in this the year 5778.
We are horrified by the Trump administration’s treatment of trans and gender nonconforming people. Please reach out to your trans friends and family this week.
oh hey, stealth and closeted trans people! i keep forgetting to mention this and idk if everyone already knows but there’s this free app called transtracks (android + iOS) that acts as your standard transition tracking app (medical transition, social transition, surgical transition, whatever you’re tracking) except it has a stealth mode!
just change your passwords settings to “train tracks”…
… and voila! the app has become for train schedules.
this is what the new decoy password screen pulls up:
it isn’t exactly safe for me to be out IRL so i’ve been using this app for a while now! it’s mostly helpful for my peace of mind and in case somebody needs to use my phone because i’m out to my family- but anybody living at home who isnt out or who has nosey/transphobic parents- maybe give it a shot!
Today, the day the Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional for a state to deny same-sex couples marriage licenses, kind of sucked for me.
First, let me say that I’m excited about marriage equality. I believe marriage inequality was one of the most severe ways that discrimination was codified into the laws of our nation; it was a United States government-approved message that same-sex relationships were marked as illegitimate or at least less legitimate than ‘opposite’-sex pairings. I also believe bans on same-sex marriage violated the Constitution. I believe this ruling was just. And I am thrilled and moved when I think about my friends who understandably feel like their relationships finally got the validation they deserve today. I am thrilled and moved when I think about the fact that no child will again grow up in the United States thinking that marriage, the validation that comes from a marriage license, and the rights that are awarded as part of being married are off limits to them simply because of whom they love or might love in the future. I think about those of us who did grow up believing that, the people who only in their wildest dreams believed they would someday have access to this institution that (like it or not) is fundamental to our society’s understanding of family – they got that today. Their wildest dreams came true. I am so happy about that. And, full disclosure: as a transgender person, I have a horse in this race, too. Regardless of the assigned sex of my spouse, before today, marriage was a complicated thing for me as no governmental office could really straighten out whether my future marriage would have been “same-sex” or not. And I do plan on getting married and am excited about that part of my future. Let me be clear: I am very happy about this ruling.
And I didn’t want today to suck. I accepted a wonderful friend’s invitation to watch the SCOTUS blog’s live updates and celebrate should they decide for marriage equality. I toasted with champagne and I texted friends – I was glad this was the decision. I was moved and excited for all the reasons I describe above. And I tried to really connect with that – I watched videos of people in my state of Kentucky get marriage licenses that mere hours prior had been prohibited to them. I read statements and listened to speeches praising the decision. I clicked “like” on all the statuses celebrating the ruling. I even had friends get engaged. I also clicked “like” on all the pride-themed facebook photos of my friends (especially my straight and cisgender identified friends). I repeatedly told myself how remarkable it was that I was witnessing this outpouring of mainstream support for same-sex relationships.
I wanted so badly to be purely exuberant. I wanted to lose myself in the celebration of this decision. I wanted to be able to look back in a year or a decade and say “on the day the Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality, I couldn’t contain my happiness.” I wanted to join friends for drinks and take instagram pictures with big smiles. I wanted to hug my friends for whom this was really personally meaningful and toast to them. And for the record, I’m mostly really really glad that lots of people were able to do all this. But I couldn’t. I spent most of my day in bed.
I kept thinking about how just yesterday, my partner and I were at a close friend’s house helping him gather his suit so that he could attend the funeral of a veteran and trans woman who took her own life this week. I thought about the people who cared about her pressing their suits and slipping on their black shoes. I thought about this scene of a group of people mourning the deeply felt loss of a trans woman while the streets outside filled with confetti and rainbow flags and celebration of marriage rights. This image kept returning to my mind and I became increasingly pained by the hashtag #lovewins. Love just didn’t feel like it was winning yet to me.
In 1973, Ursula Le Guin wrote a short piece titled “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.” It describes an amazing, exciting, energetic, and beautiful summer festival in the utopian city of Omelas, where people are truly joyous and successful.
“A boundless and generous contentment, a magnanimous triumph felt not against some outer enemy but in communion with the finest and fairest in the souls of all men everywhere and the splendor of the world’s summer; this is what swells the hearts of the people of Omelas, and the victory they celebrate is that of life.”
This utopia, however, is contingent upon the imprisonment and suffering of a child, who is locked in a basement. LeGuin describes the town’s awareness of the child’s existence and the absolute rule that not even kind word be spoken to it. She writes that the townspeople of Omelas are often disgusted or angered by this, but ultimately they accept the child’s suffering and ignore it in order to allow for the success and happiness of Omelas.
In many ways, the atmosphere of Omelas that Le Guin describes sounds like the amped-up, utopian version of celebrations happening today. I think it is easy to draw the analogy that like Omelas and its willful ignorance of a suffering child, much of the celebration happening today is contingent upon ignoring the continued suffering that marriage equality cannot change. Plenty of people have written (in more eloquent and informed ways than I can) about this suffering, which sadly extends even beyond the aforementioned epidemic of trans suicide to the violence against trans women of color, to the lack of anti-discrimination clauses that include gender identity (and yes even sexual orientation in some states), to systems that continue to leave no room for non-binary gender identities and expressions, to systems that continue to oppress and further marginalize low income communities and people of color, etc.
Maybe I struggled to fully lose myself in celebration of the marriage equality ruling, because it felt too much like Omelas. That’s what I felt like I was watching play out when the trans woman of color and immigrant who staged a protest during President Obama’s speech at the White House pride gala was laughed at, mocked, dismissed, and called a “heckler” by the crowd of mostly white cisgender gay men who just wanted to celebrate the (albeit exciting and awesome) LGBTQ victories of the past year without having to think about the groups of people they aren’t fighting for.
I think I also believe a few painful things to be true: 1) no victory for trans people or another more marginalized sector of the “LGBTQ” population will ever be celebrated this loudly; 2) the ‘swift change’ that is so exciting regarding public support for same-sex marriage came from hard work and visibility that was possible because there was a lot of financial investment in this fight – because unlike the other issues facing my community, being denied marriage rights is something that actually affects people with privilege; 3) there is a huge risk that support of the LGBTQ orgs who need to continue to fight for the causes listed above (and so many more) will lessen as the rallying cry of marriage equality can no longer be utilized; 4) many of the people celebrating today are part of the social currents and systems that continue to oppress members of the LGBTQ community that are not white, cisgender, typical in gender expression, upper SES, and male.
I don’t fancy myself very radical – I am not really challenging the institution of marriage, and I think marriage equality is important, and I am truly happy and proud that our country has achieved it.
But I couldn’t celebrate it today. Not the way other people were, and not the way I honestly wanted to. I’m glad for people who could. I think a lot of people are very aware of all of the pain and concerns I described and pretty successfully shut that off for a day in order to enjoy a big victory. And that’s appropriate. I’m glad they could.
Bathroom bills aren’t about safety; they’re about transphobia. They’re absurd and hateful - contact your state representatives and tell them to vote NO.
Trans and LGBT groups are celebrating new U.S. Department of Education guidelines, which state for the first time that Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination at schools and colleges that receive federal funds, applies to transgender people.
From the DOE’s Office of Civil Rights:
A school should investigate and resolve allegations of sexual violence regarding LGBT students using the same procedures and standards that it uses in all complaints involving sexual violence. The fact that incidents of sexual violence may be accompanied by anti-gay comments or be partly based on a student’s actual or perceived sexual orientation does not relieve a school of its obligation under Title IX to investigate and remedy those instances of sexual violence.
The Associated Press has a good piece looking at Barack Obama's unprecedented — and surprisingly wholehearted — support of transgender rights. As reporter Lisa Leff points out, Obama is the first president to:
say “transgender” in a speech
name transgender political appointees
prohibit job bias against transgender government workers
invite transgender children to participate in the annual Easter egg roll at the White House
The Obama administration has made it easier for transgender people to:
seek access to public school restrooms and sports programs (under Title IX, the 1972 law that bans gender discrimination in education)
obtain health insurance under the Affordable Care Act (by applying the non-discrimination provision of the ACA to investigate federally funded health plans and care providers discriminate on the basis of gender and gender identity).
receive treatment at Veteran’s Administration facilities
obtain sex-reassignment surgery under federal government–contracted health plans and Medicare
update their passports
Meanwhile, in his first term, Obama signed the first federal civil rights protections for transgender people in U.S. history (in the form of the Matthew Shepard Act, a bill banning hate crimes).
“[Obama] has been the best president for transgender rights, and nobody else is in second place,” Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality.
Even more remarkable is how little fanfare (and push back) these advances have drawn. In some cases — for example, Obama’s recently announced plans to sign an executive order banning federal contractors from discriminating against employees on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity — policies haven’t been singled out as trans-friendly because they benefit the entire LGBT community. But as Leff notes, the muted roll-outs also reflect a concerted strategy.
[T]ransgender rights groups and the administration have agreed on a low-key approach, both to skirt resistance and to send the message that changes are not a big deal, said Barbra Siperstein, who in 2009 became the first transgender person elected to the Democratic National Committee.
“It’s quiet by design, because the louder you are in Washington, the more the drama,” said Siperstein, who helped organize the first meeting between White House aides and transgender rights advocates without the participation of gay rights leaders.
Meanwhile, religious conservatives have been powerless to stop the changes because they result from executive orders rather than legislation. But the Traditional Values Coalition’s Andrea Lafferty suggests that opponents of transgender rights will make their voices heard in the midterm elections.
“There are other people who are concerned about these things, definitely. I think America is just overwhelmed right now…. Everybody is going to have to take a step back, and that step back is going to be this November.”
Although this is a festive occasion, it is also a date to protest against the harshness and the violence that our trans sisters and brothers face everyday
Bobby completed her matric and later on even got a teaching degree. She has been working with an NGO for quite sometime now and is one of the many people striving to find a decent job. She doesn’t want to sing or dance, she actually despises doing that. But that’s a source of income for her so she has little choice left.
She works day and night to fend for herself. Goes all the way to chaanga maanga, gets clothes which she sells by going door to door. She finds one way or another to earn. This is just amongst the many things she has done in the past years.
Bobby expressed her grief about people not seeing them as anything more. Going to the mosque, some would say “masjid ko tou baksh dou” not for once thinking that they might actually be there to pray just like any of us. We have left them no choice but to sing and dance to earn. Why does this have to be their identity when they can be so much more?
She has worked under a doctors supervision and learnt how to pass a catheter, how to put an I.V and provides this service around the neighbourhood in case of an emergency for which she gets paid.
Her brother having shunned her, she had little choice left but to leave the house and make a little one of her own. One room and one bath.
After we were done talking, she gave me her number and insisted that I contact her if I find any job that she can do. I Cant help but think how different her life would be had she been given the same opportunities as any of us.
This election season has been on fire since the beginning. With so many large personalities and explosive debates, it can be hard to keep up sometimes. Many hard-hitting issues have been covered since the race for the presidency started, but we still haven’t heard much on LGBT issues.
We did some digging, and here are some of the top statements some of this year’s most notable presidential hopefuls have made on LGBT issues throughout the years. You’ll find that some candidates have evolved while others…not so much.
Guess who finally got hired as a pharmacy technician?! Sorry about the lack of posts I’ve been really busy with work especially with the covid-19 virus the pharmacy is understaffed. I’ve been super happy, but also a little sad for my friends who’s surgeries have been put on hold due to everything. Stay strong everyone!!
I don’t want to show any links (mostly because most of them misgenders the victims and saying shit like “he (the MTF trans woman) lied about his gender”) and I don’t really want to go into any details I don’t think is necessary. Basically the “trans panic defense” is being used again for people who murders trans people.
The “trans panic defense” is a bullshit excuse for murdering trans people. It’s basically like saying that it’s “self-defense against the trans people if the trans person didn’t say that they’re trans because the cis person wouldn’t have consented if they knew.” (Even if the trans person in question had bottom surgery.)
And with all of the anti-trans bills passing (”child genital inspection” in Ohio, “don’t say gay” in Florida, etc) they may actually be able to get away with murder using that excuse.
This is truly disgusting. We are going into “genocide” for LGBT+ people, especially trans people. Be extra careful if you’re LGBT+.
Miss Major is a veteran of the Stonewall Rebellion and a survivor of Attica State Prison, a former sex worker, an elder, and a community leader and human rights activist. She is simply “Mama” to many in her community. If history is held within us, embodied in our loves and losses, then Miss Major is a living library, a resource for generations to come to more fully understand the rich heritage of the Queer Rights movement that is so often whitewashed and rendered invisible.
Miss Major’s personal story and activism for transgender civil rights intersects LGBT struggles for justice and equality from the 1960s to today. At the center of her activism is her fierce advocacy for her girls, trans women of color who have survived police brutality and incarceration in men’s jails and prisons. Miss Major is currently the executive director of the San Francisco-based Transgender GenderVariant Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP), advocating for trans women of color in and outside of prison.
Text for today’s post was taken from the website for MAJOR! - a documentary exploring the life and campaigns of Miss Major Griffin-Gracy.
