#if you are a gay trans person on hrt in america you have a trans man to thank for your access to hrt

[cuntvonkrolock]

reminder that trans men also fought for your rights and refusal to acknowledge this is tantamount to denying historical fact

#if you are a gay trans person on hrt in america you have a trans man to thank for your access to hrt #his name was lou sullivan and he was a hero #don't forget him

[cookie-waffle]

Conservatives: Facts don’t care about feelings!

facts conservatives ignore because they hurt their feelings:

- The fact that scientific studies on transgender people and their brains supports their validity.

-The fact that biology proves that sex is a spectrum (human knowledge of biology does not end in your 8th grade science class, I’m sorry)

-The fact that homosexuality is extremely common in the natural world. Humans are far from the only species known to experience same-sex attraction.

-The fact that several decades of scientific researched has proven without any doubt that yelling at and hitting children traumatizes them and negatively impacts their development.

- The fact that the most conservative states in america that often ban sex ed from schools have the highest rates of childhood pregnancy in America.

- The fact that intersex people are just as common as redheads and are often negatively effected by transphobia

-The fact that no ethical doctor with more than two brain cells would let a prepubescent child take HRT.

- The fact that pink used to be for boys, but it was changed to blue because Hitler labeled gay holocaust victims with pink triangles. The idea that “blue=boy and pink=girl” is inherently rooted in violent homophobia.

- The fact that statistics show that gender affirming care can increases quality of life for trans people immensely

- The fact that their words and actions have a real world impact that causes tragedies like what happened to Nex Benedict.

-The fact that you can debunk most (if not literally all) republican conspiracy theories with basic research (they just choose to believe it face value because it aligns with their personal feelings)

- The fact that minorities exist in real life, and that it’s actually LESS realistic for every work of fiction to have mostly white, straight, cis people in it. Diversity, when implemented correctly, adds realism to a story. And if you find that “distracting” then you might have some personal biases you need to work through.

- The fact that assuming kids are born with completely man-made gender norms like “Trucks are for boys and unicorn are for girls” hardwired into their brains is absurd and has no real scientific evidence supporting it.

- The fact that many archeological discoveries suggest that prehistoric women were a lot more active in hunting and fighting than was previously assumed.

-The fact that clothing is just an object and that dresses, high heels, and makeup were originally designed for men to wear.

-The fact that drug addiction is classified as a mental illness and should be treated, not punished with years of imprisonment.

-The fact that androgynous men are often considered to be extremely attractive by women.

-The fact that language is an entirely human-made construct that evolves and changes constantly, pronouns included.

-The fact that climate change is a real thing holy shit. You are actively destroying the future for your grandchildren by not believing it exists.

- The fact that many dinosaurs did have feathers, it actually looked cool as fuck, and that if you actually think that an animal is “woke” for having a skin covering you don’t like you might need to have your brain studied by scientists so they can find out what causes “Giant Crybaby Dipshit Disease” (GCDD)

[eli-being-silly]

obligatory intro post.

hello! i'm the scary trans socialist facebook warned you about (if you're a terf i'll bite you)

ME

name - eli

age - 16

pronouns - he/him (kind of apathetic though)

nationality - live in australia, scottish culturally

religion - agnostic ex christian, though i intend to convert to judaism once i'm 18

FANDOMS

like everything. bbc ghosts, sherlock, hell followed with us, the spirit bares its teeth, pjo, magnus chase, the kane chronicles, the magnus archives, malevolent, hozier, will wood, camp here and there, archive 81, the penumbra podcast, it, i am not okay with this, the secret history, the atlas six, if we were villains, etc. i like so many things i can't keep track of them.

DNI

i don't have any strict dnis. this is the internet, i'm posting on it, the general majority of the earth has access to the internet, so i can't expect that no one i don't like will see my posts.

that being said, the block button is my best friend, and please don't let my blog be a place for hateful bullshit.

DISABILITY

this might not be relevant for a lot of blogs, but i do post about disability on here, so i thought i should do a quick summary. i have hEDS, affiliated chronic joint pain, fibromyalgia, localised muscle dystrophy, autism spectrum disorder, and chronic fatigue syndrome, among other things.

AHH. THE FORSAKEN PART: POLITICS

i am a leftist punk. i indiscriminately hate fascism, capitalism, and bigotry, and any and all byproducts.

trans people are facing a genocide in many places throughout the world.

respectability politics is bullshit. if you can support a white skinny cis gay man, but as soon as you see a black fat trans lesbian, or a trans person who doesn't want hrt, or someone who is kinky or a furry, or someone who uses neopronouns, or disabled queer people, or cishet ace men, or people who call themselves faggots or transvestites or transsexuals, your allyship is irrelevant.

palestine must be freed. israel is a fascist, colonialist theocracy. that being said, jewish people have a right to self determination, and i'm fucking sick of people using the ongoing situation to justify antisemitism. hamas is evil, the idf is just as evil but much more dangerous because every major political power sponsors it.

(tl;dr) i hate netanyahu, i also often hate people who hate israel because they think that israel is jewish. they're antisemitic, not decolonialist. just like how decolonisation doesn't mean we have to push every white person out of america, israeli people should not be forced off that land

political and religious zionism are different and people's actual thoughts can't be expressed over a tumblr post, you need three hours, a pot of tea, and two armchairs to properly understand someone's beliefs.

if you're confused, i'm very very happy to talk with you in dms, even if you just want to make some casual conversation :) i love making friends

[m2f-transgender]

This one has an added bonus if you are a 'targeted individual' especially by israeli intel trying to prevent feminization....when they aim at your head, it will absorb into the skin faster.

If you're familiar with the effects of hrt then you will be able to determine what is an effect and what is 'high tech' remote hypnosis.

In tandem with primatene: (? just admiring 2 lesbians in a porno ?)

though I do not recommend it unless you know what you are doing. It could have serious side effects. The primatene will make your penis shrink up massively. It's not a great option or alternative to hrt. You can't take it on a daily routine to the maximum because your supply will run out and you can only buy 1 box per 30 days. They also took the guefensein out in the new formula. That combo guaranteed if taken for 2-3 doses erections were not possible.

(The gay boner ferries at israeli intel) (Personally I think there are too many congressman and too many foreign spies sticking their big noses into our panties. Some of which may be bribes by british family of consolidating debt etc. Those who seem to have forgotten the seperation of church and state. That's not to mention that one congressional source of trans criticism met with the imperial klans of america and received campaign funding by them.)

[transstudiesarchive]

Madi Lou (and trans+ artists, too!)

Playing off the idea of "T4T" (trans seeking trans, typically associated with the terms found on the app Grindr) I wanted to compile a playlist of trans/nonbinary/gender non-conforming artists that are present in a variety of genres and gender expressions/presentations/labels.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/52OZ896qRkAM2oqUwbtd5P?si=OQpd8kqSRnGGKcWe6XLcSw

"Maker - Acoustic” by Anjimile

Anjimile is a “queer and trans songmaker/lover boy with a heart of gold” based in Boston, MA

"Emasculate" by Dorian Electra

Dorian Electra is a gender-fluid pop musician who likes to become a “genderless clown” in their extravagant makeup and campy aesthetics.

"800 db cloud" by 100 gecs (Laura Les)

Laura Les, part of the duo 100 gecs, is a trans woman previously known under her project Osno1 (I felt it personally prevalent to include her song “How to Dress as Human” but could only find the link through Youtube)

"Heartbreaker" by Ah-Mer-Ah-Su

In her 2018 album STAR, Ah-Mer-Ah-Su wanted to tell the story of her black trans identity--a story typically connected to struggle and coping with extreme opposition from society at large. “For me, this album simply means that I’m a black girl with something to say. I have a story, and I’ll tell it through my music.” (billboard, August 2018)

"HRT" by Girls Rituals

Devi McCallion has worked in a number of projects centered under her label blacksquares. Her trans identity is touched on in such projects as Cats Millionaire/Mom, blackdresses, and Girls Rituals.

"Trans Femme Bonding" by Tami T

Originally starting her glittery electronica sound under the name Tami Tamaki, Tami T describes many aspects around the love for/between trans femmes // “So fucking brave, so fucking femme”

"Nonbinary" by Arca

Alejandra Ghersi, better known by her stagename Arca, came out as nonbinary and goes by she/her and it/its pronouns. 

"Bitch Pudding" by KC Ortiz

Rising in the Chicago hip-hop scene, KC Ortiz wants to be known that she is no different than any other rapper. “I cringe when headlines say ‘Trans Rapper.’ That ain’t me...The only times that even crosses my mind really is when I think about because I’m trans I gotta be dope.” (Art Music Fashion Life, June 2020)

"Faceshopping" by SOPHIE

Sophie Xeon made her breakthrough in Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides, becoming a known name after producing for artists like Charli XCX. She is very reclusive and has a smaller public image, contrary to her Louis Vuitton Spring/Summer 2020 appearance. (I have also discussed her imagery/lyricism of this song in 5th Avenue’s podcast--you should give it a listen to hear about other great queer artists!)

"Unkillable" by Katie Dey

“I was born inside this body and I’m stuck there/I’m a storm inside a rotting false construction” (Transition from “solipsisting” into “stuck” on Katie Dey’s debut album Asdfasdf)

"I'm Not 'Supposed' to Be Anything" by She/Her/hers

Emma Grrrl (and the occasional appearance of her friends) describes herself as sad grrrl pop-punk. “When I hear that a trans teenager shared one of my songs with their parents and it helped them to understand their experience, I just can’t imagine anything more validating or fulfilling than that.” (arena, June 2018)

"Gotta Gimme Your Love" by Sateen

Sateen is the band formally made up of the lesbian power couple Miss Sateen and Exquisite. Originally famous and sensationalized as a “hetero drag couple,” Exquisite came out as a trans woman and shifted the projection of their music and relationship into making disco for a new generation.

"TRANSylvania" by Kim Petras

Known famously on German television for medically transitioning in her teens, Kim Petras’ assertation in her identity as a trans woman gave her much of the internet presence and platform to successfully kick off a music career. “I hate the idea of using my identity as a tool...It made me the person I am and that’s a big part of me, but I think music is about your feelings and your fantasies and it goes deeper than your gender or your sexuality.” (billboard, 2018)

"Breakdown" by Torraine Futurum

Making waves in the fashion industry before walking in New York Fashion Week, Torraine Futurum says she aims to “do whatever the fuck I want to do on this Earth -- and it’s going to be excellent.” (them., 2018)

"I Am America" by Shea Diamond

“I knew at a very young age I loved to sing. My voice was effeminate and I remember feeling afraid to sing in the church choir...Desperate to find the financial means to transition to my true gender, I committed a crime in 1999 and was sentenced to 10 years in a men’s prison. I was afraid that I could possibly die in a prison system designed to ensure correctional jobs over human lives...I began writing ‘I Am Her’ as a statement to a world that said I shouldn’t exist.” (TEDxKC, 2018)

"Body and Soul" by teddy<3

Teddy Geiger has known many lives in popular culture from teen idol, romantic lead, to sought after producer. “I didn’t know anyone who was trans...I had very little connection to that, so it wasn’t really until maybe three years ago I started actually painting my nails and going out. Nobody cared if I was femme.” (Rolling Stone, 2018)

"Genderqueer Love Song" by Schmekel

“Schmekel means little penis is Yiddish, and is a play on the fact that all four members were born female but ow identify themselves on the masculine side of the gender spectrum. It’s an appropriate name for a band that started as a laugh.” (New York Times, 2011)

"Queer Kidz" by Ashby and the Occeanns

Ashlynn Barker is a trans/nonbinary musician based out of Chicago. They write songs about trans issues, queer identity, mental health, and video games.

"Cis Girls" by Dyke Drama

Sadie Switchblade of the band G.L.O.S.S. (Girls Living Outside Society’s Shit) came out with this “transparent” side project. “It’s pretty transparent...The songs are either about trans girl problems or dykey lesbionic friendships.” (Pitchfork, 2016)

"Femme Bitch Top" by Tribe 8

“When the trans-dyke neofeminist rabble-rousers known as Tribe 8 make music, not even heaven is safe.” (SF Gate, 2006) The San Francisco LGBT Film Festival entry “Rise Above” is a rock-documentary anomaly I highly recommend taking the time to watch.

"They / Them / Theirs" by Worriers

“You’ve got a word for one, So there’s a word for all. // The smallest things have become Which side are you on? // What if I don’t want something that applies to me? // What if there’s no better word than just not saying anything, anything?” The trio of gender-neutral pronouns

"Gender Nightmare" by Art Projects

“That’s not my face on the license picture // You call my name as it is on paper // As it will still be // When they write me up a eulopy” (Genius Lyrics analysis you want to click in on)

"Male Gynecology" by Shoplifting

A revival of riot-grrrl manifestas, the album Body Stories “brims over with precisely the kind of heartfelt, politically-charged fervor that’s far more likely to save rock. (Pop Matters, 2006)

"Third Gender" by Good Asian Drivers

“Sometimes my gender is chilling out inbetween, but most of the time my gender is FUCK YOU mind your own business!” → Please please please listen to the lyrics of this song, this is a wonderfully politically charged bop carried with heart and bass and punk spit.

"True Trans Soul Rebel" by Against Me!

Laura Les came out with her release of the album Transgender Dysphoria Blues and furthered this message in Against Me!’s album Shape Shift with Me. She was one of the first trans people I saw openly continue to pursue a passion despite previously having works “pre-transition” out in the world.

"If I Were You" by Claud

“Sometimes it’s more important to write from a perspective different from your own in order to touch on important things. People always tell me that I’m brutally honest and I think it’s because I don’t hold back on anything...it’s refreshing to hear something said that you want to say yourself, but just couldn’t.” (Popsugar., 2019)

"If You Knew This Was About You, You'd Deny It" by Wargo

A trans woman solo-acoustic based out of Virginia, Wargo’s sound is directly influenced by the punk scene of the east coast. She likes to call her style “Appalachian Power Pop.”

"I DONT TRUST U ANYMORE" by Left at London

Coming to a place of internet recognition through such vines as “hahaha I do that” Nat Puff’s indie pop project Left at Londed (shorted as /@/) dives into the heart of “what it means to navigate the current political world as a queer person, while still remaining accessible to the general public.” (“About” on /@/ website)

"Body Was Made" by Ezra Furman

“My body was made this particular way // There’s really nothing any old patrician can say // You social police can just get out of my face // My body was made” (Body Was Made music video is a quirky and fun stylistic retelling of these lyrics) Ezra Furman identifies as trans and bisexual and uses he/him and she/her pronouns.

"Complicated" by The Cliks

Lucas Silveira shared that the band’s name derived from two ideas; using The like iconic bands The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and Cliks as a portmanteau of the slang terms clit and dicks. (In The Life interview, 2009)

"Upper West Side" by King Princess

“Although [Mikaela Mullaney Straus] identifies as a genderqueer lesbian, King Princess doesn’t necessarily want her music to be placed in the ‘queer pop’ box.” (MTV, 2019) Who isn’t bored of the heteronormative narrative?

"Make Me Feel" by Janelle Monáe

“I consider myself to be a free-ass motherfucker. I want young girls, young boys, non-binary, gay, straight, queer, queer people who are having a hard time dealing with their sexuality, dealing with feeling ostracized or bullied for just being their unique selves, to know that I see you.” (NewNowNext, February 2020)

"body cast" by Dua Saleh

A Sudanese refugee, Dua Saleh nurtured their love for poetry in the beginnings of their Minneapolis music career. They came out as nonbinary while in their second year at Augsburg University but have said “I always been on gay shit.” (them., May 2020)

"Mercury" by CJ Run

“With a deep understanding of pop sensibility, and enough hooks to last a lifetime, CJ Run’s music is the inner monologue of a black queer 20 something in the 21st century.” (Propelr)

"Dancing With Stranger" by Sam Smith

“When I saw the word non-binary, genderqueer, and I read into it, and I heard these people speaking, I was like, ‘Fuck, that is me.’” (Vanity Fair, March 2019)

"SkindeepSkyhighHeartwide" by Lawrence Rothman

Lawrence Rothman is a gender fluid artist, musician, and producer. Looking into their Google Image results yields the visual evidence of the nine personas Rothman refers to as “alters, each one offering a different lens for their creative use.” (NPR, November 2018)

"Extended Vacation" by Ryan Cassata

Ryan Cassata is the first openly transgender musician to perform at Warped, winning the Ernie Ball Battle of The Bands contest twice (both in 2013 and 2015*). He has spoken out about American Idol attempting to exploit openly transgender people to pander to a broader audience banking on new forms of media “diversity”. *I saw him in Mountain View, California in 2015 and you have no idea how happy a newly out genderqueer 16 year old was to stand on stage behind a proud trans man singing on a bumping stage.

"Let My Baby Stay" by Amandla Stenberg

This entire article is great in explaining why Amandla’s openness on their pronouns outside of this website might have harmed them for the future of their career.

"Dolla in My Titty (Part 1)" by Peppermint

Best known as the 2017 runner up on the ninth season of RuPaul’s Drag Race, Peppermint made her musical debut in Head Over Heels becoming Broadway’s first out trans woman to play a lead roll.

"Gender Bronoun" by Human Kitten

“What is unstable And what is real // This is a question that i ask myself on a daily basis // Are my emotions genuine Or are they just the result of my neural passages sending my chemicals back and forth” → “Caught i’m between two completely separate identites Who Can’t agree on anything // And i can’t even decide on which one’s me”

"Wow in the Now" by Honeybird

Honeybird is a musician and composer based in Bologna, Italy. Their mission is to listen to intersectional LGBTQ+ community voices and transform the daily struggle into songs.

"I Don't Love You Anymore" by ANHONI

“My closest friends and family use feminine pronouns for me. I have mot mandated the press do one thing or another...I think words are important. To call a person by their chosen gender is to honor their spirit, their life and contributions. ‘He’ is an invisible pronoun for me, it negates me.’” (Flavorwire, November 2014)

"Robert Frost" by Mal Blum

“Now I’m looking at the ground because I don’t want you to leave // I know it’s co-dependent But I think it’s kind of sweet // Out of every person in this city I could ever meet // Leaving feels like losing But I’m learning what I need”

"Dysphoria" by Saint Wellesley

“Binding my chest and biting my tongue Wearing boxers never fixed anyone” → “And this is the last time I’ll allow my ribs to be swollen // And I’ll grow out my hair And pretend I don’t care And maybe my ribs are broken” → “Dysphoria’s a bitch I wanna kick her in a ditch // It’s not fair to wanna itch All of the places that don’t fit”

[jackmfvegas777]

What Being Trans Is Like; A Guide For Allies

Hello, let me introduce myself. My name is Atom Yorke. I am a 16-year-old transgender and pansexual man, and you should probably get some popcorn ready because I've got a lot to say.

I'll split this up into categories so you can go page by page.

DEFINITION Now to begin this, if you're not sure what transgender means, transgender people are people whose brain does not match their body in gender. For example, I am a man. However I was born in a body most would call "female". I am a transgender man. This may be a radically new concept for some of you, but the truth is that we've been around since the dawn of humanity. Our history has been heavily modified and erased. In fact, any history that's not white, christian, heterosexual & cisgender has been shoved down to the darkest confines of information, where people have to look to find it. The truth is even ancient cultures have records of trans people, of nonbinary people, and of other LGBTQ concepts. This was one of the things they most heavily tried to erase during the ruthless colonization of Christianity.

You may be surprised to learn that yes, you yourself have met a trans person! Chances are you've met a lot of them, actually.

The reason why we're never seen is because until a little ways back, we would be imprisoned, killed or worse just for being out.   Now that we finally have a voice, we're speaking loud. But still, some trans people do not wish to be that way, and they will stay quiet their whole lives and blend in with the rest of society. Because of many people living in hiding, surveys are skewed and we have no real way to quantify just how many transgender people there are in the world. But there are a lot. And we matter, just like you.

MISCONCEPTIONS First off, there are a LOT, and I mean A LOT of misconceptions about transgender people. And it's not an accident. The lack of information and the stereotypes that have been given have been due to not only ignorance, but intentional covering up of the truth of who we are, and blatant propaganda against us. Many people think trans people are "out to get them" like they're some kind of "cross-dressing predators looking to peep in on the other gender". I can assure you, we are nothing of the sort. This falsehood would be laughable, if it didn't hurt so many people. Nearly 60% of trans people in America are outright TERRIFIED to go to the bathroom, (or go anywhere, really) due to them being harassed, assaulted, and worse inside. We are the ones being attacked in bathrooms, not you. We are the ones being attacked out in the streets, not you. We are not predators, we are quite literally the prey for the real predators. And this has to change. And the way it changes is through spread of information, and actual facts.

A trans woman is a woman. She is not a "man in a dress". A trans man is a man. He is not a "woman in disguise". A trans person is a person. They are not "confused".

There have been multiple scientific studies done on transgender people's brains, and they have revealed, every time, that your brain will match your gender, even if your genitalia does not. The reason for this is due to how you develop in the womb. In utero, the brains form one way, and the genitalia develops another way. Most of the time they match, creating what is known as a cisgender person, aka a person who is not trans.   Occasionally, the brain will develop in one gender and the sexual organs will develop in a different way due to an influx of different hormones during pregnancy, causing a trans person to be born.

To restate that; A trans person's brain matches their gender, not their genitalia. It has been scientifically proven. To argue that trans people "do not exist", are "confused", are "pretending" or anything else of the sort is foolish, and a rejection of science and reason altogether.

TERMINOLOGY Also, before you say "Well, if they existed forever, where are all these new terms coming from and why are we only now seeing trans people?" The reason being is you have seen trans people. You haven't seen these words because they are helpful labels we have only created recently for concepts that are ancient. The reason for all this new influx in trans activity is due to the internet and the spread of its information, which causes so many people to feel much safer and begin to come out. Now, let's take a look at the vocabulary of trans people, so you have an easier time understanding the lingo!

LGBTQ - Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer. Refers to the community. FTM - Female to Male. A trans man. MTF - Male to Female. A trans woman. T - Testosterone E - Estrogen HRT - Hormone Replacement Therapy. The medical procedure of hormone replacement to look more like your actual gender. Binder - A form of undergarment that is like a very tight sports bra that binds the chest of trans men & sometimes nonbinary people so they can appear flat-chested. Packer - A fake penis (or sometimes a rolled up sock, etc.) used to make trans men look like they have a bulge. Tucking - A technique trans women use to make them look like they have no bulge. Top surgery - Surgery on your chest to correct it to your gender. Bottom surgery - Surgery on your genitalia to correct them to your gender. Coming out of the closet - Telling the world and everyone openly that you are LGBTQ, or in this case transgender. Stealth - A term referring to trans people who go completely "undercover", and keep the fact that they're trans hidden so they can just enjoy a normal life. Gender dysphoria - A feeling of heartwrenching, guttwisting wrongness in a trans person's soul when someone calls them by the gender they are not, or sometimes when reminded of their body. Gender euphoria - A feeling of either complete contentedness, or giddy joyful excitement when their gender is affirmed.

HOW IT FEELS; A WATERED DOWN VERSION Now that we got all that out of the way, I wrote a short summary of what it feels like to be trans, from my perspective.

Imagine you're in the womb. It's a clean slate, nothing but peace. Then from the moment you're born, you're immediately categorized by your sexual organs and colour-coded. "It's a girl!" They say. They wrap you in a pink blanket. Your whole life you're told to be a girl, and so that's what you are. It was the first thing someone decided that you are. But the whole time you live in this fake life you feel... empty. Every time you use the girl's bathroom, there's a gnawing part of you that says you shouldn't be there. When kids around you are playing on a bouncy slide, playing a game of boys vs. girls, you always feel like you belong on the other side, for some nagging reason. Your grandmother keeps buying you skirts, bras, dresses, because you ask for them. You think that's what it takes for you to feel normal. You never wear them. "Maybe I'm not girly enough." So you try to be even more of what you are not. And every time, you feel this pit, this twisting gnawing void that aches and only aches more as you grow older. You don't know what it is. It gets worse every time someone says the word "She". "Girl." "Have a nice day, ladies." You tear through your room, looking for anything that doesn't look like the dresses your grandmother buys you. You cry and cry like you've never cried before, and you don't know why you're crying. What is it that's wrong with me? And after a while you decide you want your hair cut. Maybe that's what it is. Then you think, "Maybe it's because I eat a lot. Girls are supposed to be self-conscious of their weight, right?" So you blame your weight. Until you realize that's not the issue at all. Because one day you wake up. It hits you. And you put the pieces together. I'm not what they forced me to be all my life. There was a reason I was always uncomfortable. I'm not a girl... That was an option? That was even an option? I'm not forced to stay in this cell? There's actually NOT something wrong with me?

All I felt was profound relief at first, but soon enough the relief turned to paralyzing fear. This was the beginning, and also the end of my life, and I was only thirteen. But some people don't find out until they're adults, sometimes even until they're in their old age. It doesn't make anyone any less who they are. But man, does it uproot your whole life to fix things. If you realize at a young age it's easier because then you don't have as much paperwork to deal with, but you still no matter what have to deal with it, and people make it as hard as they possibly can for you, because of petty ignorance. I've had multiple cases of people straight-up refusing to give me my legal documents back (such as my insurance card which I need for my literally life-saving medication) because of ignorance or malicious transphobia. I had to actually argue with people to put my insurance card through, something that was common sense, that I had all the legal documentation for, that could be typed in at the push of a button, and costs nothing for them. But they had "never came across this situation before" so they argued with me for a good while about doing it until they finally gave in.

I've had cases of family members, family friends turning on me and calling me "tranny", a "confused girl", I've been told that there was "no masculinity in my eyes" when they looked at me. I was yelled at, screamed at in front of family and friends that I would never be a man. I've been insulted in front of people, I've been ridiculed and humiliated. But I will stand tall. You know why? Because it is A MILLION times better dealing with all this than dealing with not being who I truly am. I'm myself, and if anyone's got a problem with that, they can take it up with me.

The sad truth is, if you're trans, you unfortunately are going to experience horrible, horrible things like this. It's an inescapable reality. But that does not mean it's without hope. Every person can be educated, even if it may not seem so at first. Don't give up hope, because there is so much more beauty than you're seeing right now, and wouldn't you like to get to see it?

If you're an ally, you're here to make sure this feeling they have happens less. So, here is how to treat a trans person, written from the perspective of a trans person.

HOW TO HELP TRANSGENDER PEOPLE (from the perspective of a trans person)

1. Treat them with basic human respect. Aka refer to them how they want to be referred, you know, by their ACTUAL name and pronouns, not the ones you're clinging to desperately. You may think "What's the big deal?" about being misgendered, because as a cis person you've never been forced to live in a body that's not your own. You have ZERO frame of reference for how a trans person feels, or experiences their life, and so the very least you could do, even if you may not understand, is treat them with basic human decency. It literally costs you nothing to just be a civil human being.

2. Ask questions! (to a point. Don't be creepy or disrespectful.) If you are concerned you are not treating a trans person completely right due to not knowing, or you have something you're curious about, or you just don't understand us at all--ask! Please ask! We love it when you consider our needs, it makes us feel more appreciated. And asking questions opens important communication pathways, that lead to higher understanding, empathy, and acceptance of each other, which can only lead to higher growth for everyone involved. However, if you start getting really nosy about it by asking us weird questions when you barely know us like "Have you had the surgery yet? What do your genitalia look like?" Or the much dreaded "What's your original name?" Then you know you've gone too far. I mean, come on, you wouldn't ask a regular person that question, so why would you ask us?!

3. Speak up for them when they have no voice. This is probably by far the most huge thing you can do for a transgender person. A minor example; If they're in a very uncomfortable situation, like say for example they are getting misgendered by the cashier over and over at the grocery store and you can see they're too nervous to correct them, or even if they have corrected them themselves multiple times but the person will not give them that basic respect, the best thing you can do in that moment is step in and correct them for them.  I've had someone do it for me, and it makes me feel euphoric that someone actually stood up for me. Just back us up when we need back up, cause we very rarely have that support. A lot of trans people have no support whatsoever. Any support you can show a transgender person will help them exponentially more than you know. Some allies will post LGBTQ positive things on their social media pages, meanwhile some others take this to extremes by becoming huge supporters of LGBTQ communities, and standing up and giving a voice everywhere for them through words, art, many different forms of media, pride parades & riots.

4. Physical Support If you are very close to a trans person yourself, such as one of your children, your spouse, etc. or even if you just want to go above and beyond by supporting trans people everywhere, giving a roof over their heads, a warm meal, and some kind words would change people's lives. Consider donating to a charity (a charity you research before donating into, a lot of them are fake and will collect the money) that goes towards help for transgender people, or LGBTQ people in general! We really need it, especially in the days of He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named as our president.

5. Don't out them if they're not ready! This goes for all LGBTQ people, but please, if someone is closeted due to safety reasons or even just because they're not ready, do not under any circumstance out them for who they are. This could potentially throw them into massive danger, or it could just throw a massive wrench into their lives in some way. Please ask first.

6. Give positive, gender-affirming actions toward them! I absolutely LOVE IT when people do this. I have a friend who not only does bro-fistbumps with me, the two-pat hug thing, highfives me, but also always uses gender-affirming language such as calling me "man", "dude", "bro", etc. and it just always makes me feel so good to be around him! It creates a pleasant, safe space for us to be ourselves when you treat us for who we are, and it honestly makes us more happy than you know. So next time you see a really fabulous trans woman, tell her she looks lovely and classy today! When you see a trans man on top of his game, mention that he's handsome. And mention the things you know they feel insecure about in a positive way! It gives us majour gender euphoria. I know I've always been so ashamed of my round baby face due to it being the main reason I don't pass, but my friends on a call once had started all ooh-ing and ah-ing about how nice my cheekbones and jawline were and all that day I was ecstatic! A simple compliment that you might not even remember giving could change someone's life. And that goes for all people, not just trans people.

Now, you might have heard a lot of negative things that happened to me because of my being transgender, but I'm here to tell you there is so much hope. Cut forward to 2019. I've been out and proud for three years, and by God, I am so, SO SO much happier than I was. I am proud to say I was lucky, I have an amazing support system in my mom, dad, siblings & grandmother that have helped me so much through this. I'm about to start T soon, and I am so unbelievably excited. The person who had yelled at me in front of family members? They are now supportive, and make an effort around me. The person who called me a tranny? They apologized profusely and learnt from that experience.

So to fellow trans people out there--Things do get better. And they get better soon. You just have to hold out for a little while longer.

And for the allies who want to do better by trans and LGBTQ people everywhere, thank you. Thank you for showing your support, and thank you for your willingness to learn about those different from you. That shows extreme emotional maturity. On behalf of all LGBTQ people, thank you.

- Atom T. L. Yorke

Atom T. L. Yorke is a visual artist, cosplayer, writer, musician, and comedian that has also dedicated his life to helping LGBTQ people in need, especially the transgender community.

#lgbtqa #lgbtq #lgbt #saga #sexualityandgenderacceptance #transgender #trans #ftm #ftm trans #ftm transgender #trans man #trans guy #trans boy #trans male #lesbian #gay #bisexual #queer #transman #transguy #transboy #article #lgbtarticle #lgbt article

[sun-dog-montana]

Pride Raptor wants you all to have a fun and safe Pride Month!

If you still need some Pride wear, or if you want to express your Pride with stickers, tote bags, etc. please check out my Redbubble shop!  

My shop started as a creative outlet for my travel inspiration. My primary/seasonal job takes me all over North America, and as a sticker fanatic, I wanted to create stickers to honor some of the most beautiful, but a bit less iconic states. I felt really bad that while some states and provinces get a ton of love and cool bumper art, many were left behind. 

From state flags in basic shape states, grew a showcase of regional cultures, landmarks, and of course Pride designs! There’s even a bit of photography on there now and some nature designs. I add more every month as time allows, so stay tuned! I’m hoping soon I’ll have some time to add more Pride flags, but in the meantime there are lots of rainbows!

~ Now for the sob story ~ 

Life ain’t easy for a gay trans man with orthopedic issues, who’s small business  works primarily for non-profits. This last year has had a weird duality to it. On the one hand I am absolutely joyful as my HRT has slowly sculpted me into more and more of a man shaped person. HRT has also had the odd effect that it has seriously decreased my anxiety, so I’m a better friend, a more confident speaker, and don’t mind going out quite as much as I used to. My art has taken off, and I’m absolutely humbled and overcome with so much squishy love every time someone buys a piece. But....

Trying to get medical things done in these dystopian times is hard. Bad genetics and a life full of labor-intensive jobs has left me with ongoing orthopedic problems. I’m currently recovering from surgery, and it’s still unclear if I will be able to return to my primary job on the road this fall. Unable to walk far, stand for long, or focus long enough to have a traditional job, has been challenging. I’m schrodinger’s disability - both too disabled to work but not disabled enough to get benefits. Of all of the skills I can fall back on, at least art has worked best with my physical situation, and has allowed a meager income. 

But even if I make a full recovery (fingers crossed) it is unknown if my non-profits will get the government grants needed to hire me. Trump’s administration is famously anti education, but for my clients - non-profit educational programs that encourage self sufficiency, leadership, and environmental stewardship? Yeah....lets say the GOP are not too interested in funding that.

All that is to say, you can rest easy knowing purchases in my shop not only help a trans guy just trying to run a small business and make ends meet, but also help offset the cost of promoting educational programs that spit in the face of the GOP! 

Thank you for shopping and sharing, and Happy Pride!

~Julian

#lgbt #trans photographer #trans adventurer #trans artist #trans explorer #trans small business owner #nonprofit #lgbtqia #lbgt+ #lesbian #gay #trans #transgender #bisexual #bi #pan #pansexual #nonbinary #enby #trans man #aexual #ace #aromantic #pride #pride month #june #rainbow #pride flag #equality #not my president

[transalligator]

My beef with some conservative trans people

Some of them are incredibly privileged and don't realize how their political beliefs fuck over other trans people (who are disproportionately poor compared to the general population). See: Caitlyn Jenner. Some of them are just edgy as fuck and are conservative to be contrary and different because they hate ""sjws"".

I don't want to call them assholes but I want them to have a wake-up call and to take a look at what conservative politicians actually want for trans people, and for them to ask themselves if they actually agree with what conservative policy makers want. Note that this post is America-centric.

Do you want to go back to having to pay for your hrt and surgeries 100% out of pocket? Insurance has covered transition only in recent years. We cannot allow our community to forget how it was in the past, when countless trans people saved all of their paycheck except essential expenses for years on end, sold all their belongings, were forced into sex work, and went into debt just to have the medical treatment they needed? I can't imagine why a trans person would vote for this to happen again.

Do you want to be banned from being a foster parent and from adopting children? Do you want changing the sex on your birth certificate, your legal sex with social security, or the gender marker on your driver's license, to become more difficult or even illegal? Do you want a federal "bathroom bill" which will hurt all non cis-passing trans people and also trans kids/teens in school?

Other conservative policies will hurt trans people too. Gay marriage being repealed will also mean some trans people can't get married. Planned Parenthood being defunded will mean no access to hrt for poor trans people who can't afford therapy/non sliding scale clinics (that's probably the service they would stop providing first if they lost federal funding), and possibly no affordable access to STD testing and birth control. The Ryan White HIV/AIDS program being defunded will mean many trans people could die, because we're more likely to have HIV or AIDS than cis people.

All of these things are potentially possible. You voting for progressive politicians is what prevents them from happening.

I know y'all wanna be edgy but think about the fact that some politicians would really like us to be dead, or don't care if we die.

#transgender #ftm #mtf #transmedicalist #truscum #not tagging that because i think all truscum are conservative #i actually know a lot of fellow lefist truscum! #i just want this post to get more visibility

[carnifcrous]

could you give me a rundown on what being gender critical is? i get the basics i think but if you don’t mind explaining your views?

oh boy anon i’ll sure try!! idk if im the best person to talk about it tbh and ive confused a lot of people trying to explain my views before ahfjkfh but ill try REALLY hard to keep my adhd ass in check lmfao. if theres anything i said thats confusing & you need cleared up feel free to @ me againi dont know how long gender critical has existed as a concept, but i wouldnt be surprised if it was developed as a reaction to a certain VERY vocal part of the trans movement/trans rights activists

(so when you talk to people (trans ppl) about gender i think people usually break it down into several a few categories: gender identity, gender roles, and gender expression. i think most trans people are aware of & separate their sex from their gender identity, the identity being something innately part of every person, the roles generally speaking the bullshit that society expects & should be rejected, and gender expression really just being the traditional “feminine” or “masculine” behaviors/dress you use regardless of your innate identity.in trans circles/lgbt (merch, lol) sites i’ve seen the phrase passed around “gender is a social construct.” i think trans people who do/used to say that meant it kind of like that since gender was created by societies so it doesn’t matter how you identify/why not expand the understanding of gender (ergo, non-binary genders getting popularized). i think this fell out of popularity because it was transppls attempt to validate ourselves and conservatives cant wrap their mind around social constructs are/the distinction between sex and gender and so it wasnt really working out lmfaobut now there’s been some scientific studies getting popularized that have Suggested the existences of male & female brains and that trans ppl have the brain of their identified gender, therefore the disconnect between their brain and their body manifests as gender dysphoria. (i think the transmed community has especially taken to this idea esp because of kalvin garrah discovering these studies & now kind of preaching them as facts & science. with this comes him, his friends, and all the transmed ppl who stan him ryan and london saying that Gender Isnt Socially Constructed)then theres the posts circling around here saying Transwomen Are Women/Real Women + when the women’s march happened in america after trump got elected, i saw quite a few things on facebook where ppl were saying that all the talk of vaginas and shit were transphobic and trans-exclusionary and they should keep in mind that not all women have vaginas, etc etcthen u have what i believe (or at least hope) are outliers in the trans community being dug up (usually transwomen) who say........ The Most ridiculous shit imo. like saying theyre more of a woman than ciswomen (i’ll use cis strictly to mean not-trans in the context of this post), transwomen claiming theyre having a period, and just in general perpetuating “cotton ceiling” stuff like lesbians just needing to get over their transphobia to be with a pre-op transwoman. (again i would like to reiterate i DO NOT believe this is what the majority of transpeople believe, its just a vocal minority thats gotten attention from receipt blogs IMO.))**sorry that this post is already becoming an essay and if its derailing from the question, but this is what i think gender critical stuff is meant to react toso kind of in opposition to mainstream ideas of what gender is, i think radfems/gender critical people dont really break down gender into the different things like identity, roles and expression. from my understanding, gender was socially constructed based on sex stereotypes. i think we can all agree that stereotypes are Bad, so why should we identify with some set stereotypes?

the gender critical beliefs is that there’s not right or wrong way to be male or female (male and female in this post meaning to strictly refer to biological sex). gender is holding us back by continuing to subscribe to sex stereotypes and is counterproductive to building a society where people are free to express themselves however they like. (a lot of gender critical ppl equate gender identity with personality, and while i think this can sometimes be the case w nondysphoric people & mogai genders, it isn’t always and usually isnt, because as i mentioned before, a lot of ppl know enough to say that gender expression is something independent of gender identity.)as for my personal take on it & how it plays a part of my life (apologies that this is going to get super anecdotal):this all is related to my own transition. since questioning being trans, i fluctuated between different non-binary identities. i didnt think i was Trans Enough to call myself a transmale because i didnt want to kill myself over not having a penis (or even trans enough to call myself trans at all lol), so i thought i needed to stay as being nb. then i realized they/them pronouns did...... nothing for me. the whole time i had she/they/he or they/he in a profile i was always secretly hoping someone would just call me he lol.

but i felt like i was an insult to REAL transmen. it took me a while to realize that i didnt care too much about the specifics, i just needed to do what made me happy. that happiness was being read as male & using he/him pronouns.

but even then id still struggle. id have moments of thinking that i was just copying my best friend (who had a similar nb -> binary transmale path as me), or that i didnt even feel like a boy, that i was STILL faking being trans, that i should feel more of x y & z, that id made a mistake with starting testosterone, etc. reading radfem/gender critical stuff used to trigger the fuck out of me lmfao.i think what i eventually realized for myself and the sentiment other gender critical transppl share is that i was setting up an expectation/standard for myself that was impossible to attain. with mainstream gender theory, a cisman and i share our gender identity, our gender is the same (”cis” as its used to “identifying with your biological sex”). the thing is though, in terms of sex/gender, theres nothing i find that i have comparable to a male. i dont act like a “man” because im not one, im a TRANSman. ive lived most of my life so far as female and being socialized that way has been significant to me. i relate a lot to women and its always felt wrong to me how suddenly because im transitioning it felt to me like i was expected to revoke my right to speak on feminism/womens experiences. way before i discovered gender critical things i was pissed off at people trying to be “allies” to transpeople saying shit like “all men are trash transmen are real men so theyre trash too uwu!” like. fuck that. and fuck you for insinuating i would EVER treat a woman the way that men do.

like i know there are transmen (and just transppl in general, for that matter), who try to overcompensate with misogyny/misogynistic ideas because they think itll help them pass better but fuck

anyway. im proud of being a natal female and being socialized that way. being trans isnt exactly a party but im glad i could get the insight i have into the treatment of women and so forth. and the thing is, this isnt a contradiction to me being trans at all. once i let go of whether or not i was “male enough” of “valid” as a boy, i could once again just focus on the very concrete evidence in my life: i was EXTREMELY dysphoric about my chest. i’ve been on hrt for almost two years now and ive had top surgery. my dysphoria is almost non-existent since ive had surgery. i dont mind & even get excited about all the changes coming from being on testosterone. (dont like that i cant sing like i used to and that i’ll probably end up balding at least by my 50s if my dads head is any indication, but cismen have this problem too so whatever)

also ive never felt quite right when i was calling myself gay (exclusively attracted to men). i share some issues that gay men might, i Can be affected by homophobia because i Do pass as male, but its still not 100% the same experience and i think that distinction is importantmy concerns & how being gender critical is important to me:

me coming out as trans was a process over time. using the usual trans rhetoric, i was having difficulties explaining myself to people. specifically im thinking about my mom. when i said i was uncomfortable with being seen as a girl, she said she was uncomfortable too. she liked dressing more like a boy. some other shit she said too that i dont remember, but my basic takeaway: cispeople, particularly ciswomen, arent necessarily enthusiastically identifying with their correlated gender to their sex, because..... no reasonable person likes gender roles.

and i get worried about people like my mom who might be encouraged to identify as nonbinary just because theyre gender non-conforming. the identity itself wouldnt be much of a problem except that it seems to me like its being pretty normalized for nonbinary people to just kind of....... experiment with medical transitioning to try to achieve some Ideal androgynous form that would be.... Very difficult to achieve. i worry about people not thinking medical transitioning is a big deal and just kind of.... disregarding all the potential health consequences, how powerful testosterone is as a hormone, and so on. with the permanent changes that come people THEN end up experiencing dysphoria and life is.... really pretty difficult for detransitioned women from what i can tell, and a lot of people talk about how theres been a spike of people detransitioning lately.

i think part of the problem is 1. transmed/truscum people harassing & bullying nondysphoric trans-identified people, so they feel the need to medically transition to Prove Themselves and 2. just in general the aforementioned idea that everyone has a gender identity. i think itd be very uncommon for people to “identify” as cis, and so you get this whole mess of people thinking they need an androgynous body to match their androgynous identity......... etc.

bonus: my mom crying on her birthday because she said she didnt think shed be able to ever see me as a guy. “nonbinary, maybe, but you dont act like a boy.” problem solved, i dont act like a guy, i act like a transguy!!

also again, need to reiterate that i cant relate to men. i can never Become Male, not with our current technology. i was not socialized as male and thats okay!! its okay because im just doing what i need to in order to be comfortable with my body and myself. i dont need to worry about my dating pool seeing me as a Real Man because they can see me fully as the transman i am and my relationship with being a natal woman and just, shit like that. ive gotten a lot more comfortable with even being called she when it does happen (by accident by family members). its not a swear word to me and ive let go of a lot of expectations i thought i had to meet with being uncomfortable talking about my female organs and my past as living as a woman etc etc. im not trying to Be anything anymore. im just trying to live as myself

some of my issues with the gender critical community just as a disclaimer:

i have a lot honestly and im not going to be able to name them all off the top of my head

makes sense that it would be, but i think the community is rampant with transphobia in the sense of flattening transpeople to the “transcult” stereotype where they just..... dont seem to think of us as individuals. they think we’re all genderists getting triggered by misgendering & demanding our pronouns. they think all of us are “delusional” about our natal sex. they think we’re all gender conforming. they dont take dysphoria seriously in general, ESPECIALLY males experiencing dysphoria (i get that your feminism doesnt have to be concerned with “men” but come on). misgendering is just disrespectful to me (idgaf about rapists, whatever use whatever pronouns you feel the need for those people.)

just in general some people dont get that trans people can still exist in a post-gender world? and you can still be critical of gender while respecting people’s pronouns? by their very nature i think the transmed, radfem, and especially gender critical communities are attractive to bullies so you have those flocking to it, and thats an issue but... yeah.

this answer has gone on long enough and im really sorry anon im sure you didnt sign up to read a 13 page essay. i just got lost in my thoughts and felt like i had a lot of explaining to do. i think my feelings are both simple and complicated so idk if i even really answered your questions, i hope i did..., ;;

#sorry in advance guys i literally never proofread #and i had family come over in the middle of me typing this so i lost my train of thought midway #i dont know where to put this but some last thoughts #the transpeople who insist they have nothing to do with their natal sex make us look like a fucking joke #like thats so easily exploitable by transphobic conservatives #and im tired of them having that leverage because theyre fucking idiots and dont deserve any sort of intellectual upperhand #gender theory has a lot of holes in it i think and its way too easy to poke at right now #also i think even more important than transmen its important for transwomen to acknowledge they arent the same as ciswomen #i know dysphorias a bitch i know it sucks i know it hurts #im trying not to let my privilege let me forget because i DO have a lot of privilege #but when we're talking about females as an oppressed social class #you dont neatly fit in & share that same experience #doesnt mean you dont have problems/face oppression! but its most likely because youre trans #not because of your identity #also my take on gender critical theory is that it just..... fits for me #i had that whole section about why its important to me #but i also dont really care that much about ppl still subscribing to gender theory #like you do you boo i just think it can be harmful sometimes #anyway #long post #radfem #gender critical #discourse #pine speaks

[lord-wellesbrook-ix]

The Problem with Modern Politics by Me, an unqualified, out of touch late millennial/early gen Z Brit.

Advance warning this is gonna be a long post, essay is below the break for those who care to read.

Ok, good, welcome! So yes, time for some personal details, because apparently such things are crucially important now to what one has to say. I’m 19, I’m white~jewish (ethnically, not religiously. And I list both because the distinction is...spurious at best imo), with some limited asian heritage (grandfather is Burmese, you’d not know it to look at me though). I’m bisexual, with a loving trans boyfriend, tragically kept away from me by that most perfidious of enemies, the atlantic ocean. I used to think I was trans, and started hrt, before deciding against it. I don’t know what my gender identity really is at this point, but I use he/him, and was assigned male at birth. Oh and despite my immediate family having some significant prestige (my dad is a VERY specialised doctor, only 8 people in the country can do what he does), because Britain and NHS, I’m also poor enough that I qualify for financial assistance through uni, and all that other fun stuff, so assign me whatever class you want, but I’ve never really had access to money or the like. All of these factors will undoubtedly somehow colour what my thoughts are.

So! Let’s tackle this on two fronts - My beef with the modern left, my beef with the modern right, and my beef with all the current “alternatives”. The Left   Why do you make me hate you so?  I want to be able to side with you. Economically, we’re almost perfectly aligned. Fuck big corporations, they abuse their workers, and are broadly detrimental to societal progress by merit of the power they wield. The state should use the money of the wealthiest, to help uplift the poorest, bringing everyone as close to a comfortable range of wealth and living standards as is feasible. Wealth taxes I’m against, if only because I look at things like FIRE with some measure of hope, because I find it infeasible that I’ll be able to work a “proper job” my entire life, and equally infeasible that the state will support me before I’m in my 70s. Unsurprisingly I’m all for trans and lgbt rights, and their advancement is imperative. Likewise racial and ethnic discrimination needs to be combatted (though I have a caveat insofar as how), and linguistic minority rights are ESPECIALLY important (not to out myself as Welsh...). Minimum wages, yes, and higher! Benefits should be more generous and more accessible! All of this! And yet. And, yet. I can never stand with any significant left wing party. Because of how they behave on other fronts. The general solution to racial discrimination seems to be mandates, and quotas, which are just...not a great idea? Because they’ll only work insofar as they are maintained, and at that point you’re not solving it, you’re just leaning on people to make it LOOK like the problem is solved. Instead perhaps, a better system would be something akin to a more continental system. Pictures are banned on CVs, as are any obvious racial or sex or gender markers. Further anonymising most processes, to further make any people making significant choices unable to determine race, sex or gender of the people they’re choosing about, allows for a truly blind process. The same, incidentally, should apply to class distinctions (personal story there to follow, because there class mandates have stabbed me personally).

Moreover, however, both left and right these days seems to be based on these vicious and disgusting ideas of guilt and hatred, only changing who receives them. The modern left want me to hate myself, and hate my country. My skin means that I am somehow inherently advantaged, and thereby everything bad that happens to me is fine, my country has committed sins long before anyone alive today was born, and thereby any bad thing that befalls it is right and good. I am guilty of the crime of...being born a certain way, in a certain place, to certain people, and because of that, because of my privilege, I must apparently have the road of life made that much harder to walk for me. I must be told throughout education that this country is evil, that “Britain” and the “British” are evil, with no consideration for the fact that, well, that’s me. Telling someone that they’re evil as they’re growing up is uhhhh, not exactly a good thing. I believe in this nation that reared me. Moreover I believe in its values, I believe in Britain, and I believe every person should have the right to believe in their country. People as a whole aren’t fundamentally evil. And whilst yes every country has sins, great or small, and Britain’s past leans closer to great, that doesn’t give people the right to try and engender a sort of national self-loathing in the population for it. I won’t venture into America (because America breaks my whole everyone should be proud of their country thing, because a lot of areas should frankly be made independent from the US). And as a part of my...I don’t want to use the terms patriotism or nationalism because both have been massively tainted by groups trying to claim them for years now, but as a part of these beliefs, I stand with the British monarchy. Hell, I actually argue they should be allowed slightly greater freedoms. That they should be allowed to speak out when they are slandered (naming no self-entitled actresses), and equally, that they should be allowed to have some limited vocalisation of other political opinions. We let celebrities do it today, and they influence elections far more than the crown could ever hope to. And let’s look at things that Chucky boy, our next king unless they do something VERY silly and skip him, has gotten into trouble for speaking about: Not wanting brutalist modern architecture, which has actually been proven to make for housing that doesn’t last as long, and negatively impacts mental health. And Being an environmentalist.

And

Wanting this country to treat the mentally ill better. Ah...such controversial, evil points, made by a despotic tyrant princ-oh wait no they’re just valid things. I don’t want them to be given the power to ENFORCE their ideas, that way lies absolutism, which runs against the ideas of a constitutional monarchy. But let them speak, there are people who speak freely with greater sway and influence than they could ever have, and far less accountability. 

The Right

Oh boy, oh boy. Economically villainous. I despise nearly every economic ideal they stand for. They hurt the poor to help the rich, and just like the left, screw those in the middle. All I can credit them for on that front is that they don’t have as much of a tendency to support ugly, cheap mass housing, but only because they instead support no housing. 

Socially...ugh. I look at the modern right as a two headed beast there. There are those like those on the left, who hate Britain, but instead of just hating us and wanting some vague utopia, they hate us and want us to become a corporate hellhole like america, which is arguably worse. 

Then there’s the others. Those who take my ideals and corrupt them. Racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, rinse and repeat, and yes I know this is the hazard inherent in enjoying tradition and one’s nation anywhere, but can those traditions not be adapted? Anglicanism is already christianity minus any spine or sense of self, let it allow gays and trans people and all of that. Also uh yeah, don’t be racist. I don’t really know how to phrase that in any other way because...it’s not hard. Just don’t be racist. Treat people as people, not as their race. Do not treat me any different for being a jew, or having an asian grandfather, do not treat someone differently for being a person of colour, do not treat someone different for the circumstances of their birth, quite simply put.  Alternatives

So, the non mainstream (LIBLABCON) parties? Let’s see.... UKIP/Reform - Ah racism, fuck off. Plaid - Ah, vote to...leave the country I love? And to be run from Cardiff by people like Drakeford, or Woods, or really any of the major players in modern welsh politics? No.  Any flavour of communist - Last I checked they all want me to hate myself, so nah. Greens - Cool. You still want me to hate myself, and have really dumb economic ideas, but you’re a one issue party and I support that issue, so tentatively the lesser of all the evils.  Idk why I had this rant, I am just very upset. There is no voice for people like me, and it seems there never will be. And I’m nowhere near rich enough to start a party to become that voice. 

[gheckoe]

JAMES’S CURATED QUALITY FANFICTION PRIMER

for @rev0lutions-of-ruin, who tumblr does not like letting me tag

foolish bird avoids ao3 for years and misses out on the Good Shit, but it will be okay! she has THIS now. ft. DUMB LONG-WINDED CAPTAIN AMERICA MOVIE EXPLANATIONS, because i don’t think you would watch those movies willingly.

lots of selection - pick and choose, but if you don’t read “out of the dead land” i will be very sad. just treat this as really weird queer genre fiction and you’ll be alright. fics with pornographic content are marked as such, but said content is easy to skip as long as you can pick up on the warning signs.

we’re gonna start with the funny stuff.

nanananana BAT-DAD! (no ships, just bruce being a dad. safe for work and hilarious,)

who needs therapy when you have microsoft excel.

tim drake (robin 3) is a transgender teenage disaster. and bruce wayne is just generally a disaster. (same series.)

okay, now let’s get kind of sad. but not TOO sad.

nananananananana BATMAN (and superman)

this one made watching batman vs. superman worth it. not quite. but kind of. it’s fantastic.

i forget what happens in this one but i know i enjoyed it!

snk? why this, james. why this.

bad show, i know, but. formative experience. i figured out i was trans by projecting my feelings onto jean kirchstein. (not sure how, that’s just what happened.)

this one is stupidly fucking huge, in first person, and still isn’t finished.

included by virtue of some weird nostalgia. it’s half a million words long. try the first few chapters; i can’t guarantee anything that happens. don’t fucking judge me.

boring, punch me in the feelings already. more angst!

STEVEBUCKY

i don’t think you’ve watched the captain america movies, so i will explain them.

the saddest, gayest shit you will ever see. will fuck with your heart, ideally! but (as per always), skip the porn. this fandom is really big on it. UGH.

BUT it’s based off of movie adaptations of comic books, so the backstory is... ridiculous. i will summarize it for you. (tumblr ate this so here goes again)

THE DYNAMIC/history/massive goddamn ship manifesto

two guys, sitting in the great depression, two feet apart because it’s not socially acceptable to be gay

steve: tiny, blonde, always mad and big on SOCIAL JUSTICE. gets into fights for SOCIAL JUSTICE, despite growing up in the great depression when SOCIAL JUSTICE was not a commonly-known phrase or a common thing. he’s a bit of a shit, and he gets into shit. with his scrawny lil fists. he has all sorts of chronic illnesses but somehow manages to survive in a time with shitty medicine, and grow up to get into MORE shit. likes art, but is (partially?) colorblind

also he’s VERY HEAVILY coded as trans.

bucky: taller, brown hair, very popular but secretly a bit of a nerd (loves scifi, and is good at math). likes dancing, girls, and getting steve out of situations that he’s clearly over his head in and talking shit about it after. a bit of a charmer, etcetera.

there are some good fics from this era (”pre-war”) but idk where they are in my bookmarks. will update later.

so wait, what happens?

bucky gets steve out of dumb situations (like fighting a guy for talking during a movie) for pretty much all of their life. childhood friends until after high school-ish.

BUT, bucky is either drafted into the us army (it’s wwii now) or enlists, and steve is left alone in brooklyn, new york, to get into shit, without anyone to bail him out or prevent him from getting into MORE shit. so he finally manages to lie his scrawny, ill ass into the army, and (as one does) volunteers to get experimented on by the american government.

wait, what the fuck

comic books, okay. don’t @ me.

steve manages not to die! he finds a really pretty, badass lady to bisexually fawn over in the army (peggy carter is a fucking miracle), the experiments are a success and he ends up BIG and cured of all his ailments and with superfast metabolism (no alcohol) and superfast healing. he’s made it! (he basically just got really fast, unrealistic HRT hahaha)

... except the army can’t replicate the embiggening process they did with steve because the scientist that did it got killed, and steve is made into a glorified prettyman mascot to sell war bonds, instead of going to punch nazis, which he would be better at. he is a terrible mascot.

meanwhile, bucky has a shitty goddamn time in the european theatre. it’s terrible. he gets kidnapped by the EVIL SCIENCE NAZIS and put in a freaky camp and experimented on, poor guy.

you said you ship them, right? they’ve barely interacted so far, man. what the fuck.

alright alright i’m getting to it

steve the dancing monkey (in his words) is doing a Morale-Raising tour in europe for the troops and they hate it and he hates it. he discovers that... oh shit... bucky and his regiment (?) have been kidnapped by HYDRA! (the science nazis.)

naturally, he of little training MUST go save bucky, because the people that actually know how to save people know that it would be pointless to try. but steve “dumb shit” rogers will do it his own damn self. don’t @ him either. it’s the 1940s so he doesn’t have a phone.

steve will walk to austria, if he has to!... but he actually just gets a plane ride there, from peggy carter the badass and some other guy who’s not that relevant right now.

he KICKS NAZI ASS, SAVES THE PRISONERS, and MAKES MEANINGFUL EYE CONTACT WITH BUCKY ONCE HE FINDS HIM IN THE EVIL SCIENCE NAZI EXPERIMENTATION ROOM. bucky’s so out of it that he barely even tries to question why his old friend is suddenly hot  TALL.

steve and the lads walk back from austria, and he is a Bona Fide War Hero and not just a mascot. he has the stylish grime and everything. on the way, he realizes that the lads are pretty cool, and assembles a Diverse Crack Squad of Guys That Really Wanna Kill Nazis from the cool guys he just met. upon return to wherever they were earlier, steve is made a REAL CAPTAIN now, and his Diverse Crack Squad is at liberty to... go kill nazis.

bucky tags along. he is very handsome and talented at math, so he is a SNIPER and saves steve’s dumb ass (from getting shot by nazis, instead of getting punched in the face) like he used to. the Diverse Crack Squad gears up to take down THE WORST OF THE SCIENCE NAZIS, on a train in the mountains! they can change the course of COMIC BOOK WWII!

you said it was tragic. show me the tragic.

the TRAIN INFILTRATION does not go as planned, and bucky is knocked from the train and falls to his cold, painful, (presumably) death. steve can’t watch.

they catch a REALLY BAD SCIENCE NAZI, but it is a very hollow victory. steve goes and tries to get drunk in a blown-up bar where he hung out with bucky and they were really queer together.

the OTHER really bad science nazi now has a plan to BLOW UP COMIC BOOK NEW YORK! steven will NOT allow this to happen.

he’s also kind of given up on life. he has a flair for the dramatic, and also the ambiguously suicidal.

not that being ambiguously suicidal adds to the Dramatic Romance of this. it doesn’t, and that would be creepy. the point is that steve rogers has a LOT of issues, including the ones that science can’t cure.

this SPECIFIC PLANE is headed towards new york, full of explosives. steve manages to get aboard the plane... and doesn’t even try to escape. he crashes it into the water in the atlantic ocean, saying goodbye to peggy on the radio as it hits. he is also presumed dead. it’s... basically a suicide attempt.

flash forward seventy-some years.

wait, wasn’t he in the avengers?

steve rogers is found inside the frozen plane encased in ice in the ocean. he’s revived (super healing, woop) and... doesn’t say anything, because he’s really not up to expressing feelings.

he has a TERRIBLE time. all of his friends are dead or old and went about their lives without him, and he’s alone in a confusing new world. (but the food is better, vaccines are good, and no polio.) he’s not fantastic at making new friends, because, as shown by him and bucky’s entire relationship, he’s a bit of a sad introvert and just picks one person and... holds on.

blah blah avengers one blah blah, new team and fighting BAD THINGS. but steve is too angsty to make friends. he joins the new security organization that peggy founded, SHIELD, without really inspecting it that well because... he didn’t plan to be alive past flying the plane into the ice, much less in the 21st century. he doesn’t know what he’d do otherwise.

idk that sounds a little slow

he has DEPRESSION. it is a little slow. but it’ll pick up! (not emotionally.) now it’s very anti-establishment action flick. enter CAPTAIN AMERICA (2): THE WINTER SOLDIER.

steve makes a friend. actually, two! sam and natasha are wonderful, and they have some things in common. but steve obtains friendship while realizing that SHIELD is corrupt to the core and actually infiltrated by HYDRA, so he and his new friends have to... burn it to the ground. he “died” (or tried to) to stop HYDRA, and it’s still here and worse then ever. things feel pointless.

to make it worse, he’s fighting this creepily effective impersonal masked assassin on a bridge and oh fuck, oh fuck it’s bucky and didn’t he die years and years ago and his arm is METAL what happened to him, and he’s pretending not to recognize steve.

HYDRA is planning to eliminate sources of resistance for their new world order via shooting them from the air, so steve has to take one specific FLYING DEATHMACHINE down. he does, and brainwashed HYDRA bucky, the winter soldier, is there to stop him.

steve makes an appeal to emotions. “bucky stop you can’t do this”

bucky is confused, but he’s been programmed to do this.

steve tells his coworkers to JUST SHOOT THE DEATHMACHINE DOWN ALREADY, because he’s... given up again. he’s very talented at equating heroism with self-sacrifice/suicide. but he disables the DEATH part of the DEATHMACHINE without it getting shot down.

bucky has been trapped underneath a beam, but steve’s with bucky till the end of the line, even if bucky is brainwashed and lacking memories. steve drops his shield in the water and falls.

it’s another attempt to die. stop that, steve. go to therapy.

bucky doesn’t remember who he is, but he jumps after him. steve is very injured from his fight with bucky, and wouldn’t have survived the fall, but bucky drags him to shore and... leaves.

steve wakes up in the hospital with his new friend sam. they’re going to track bucky down, even if it takes forever.

ISN’T THAT FUCKED UP? isn’t that sad? it’s terrible. now, fics. most of them are after ca:tws, because that’s when the ship got popular. a lot of them center around Finding Bucky and Getting To Know Him Again.

there’s a lot of sappy sad let’s-teach-bucky-how-to-be-a-person-again-and-get-steve-to-be-less-sad but i like the ones that are like sad action movies, or sad queer movies, and less like sad romance movies. my bookmarks are a mess, so here’s the best stuff i could dredge up.

out of the dead land: this one kills me every single time. there’s something terribly cinematic about it. but, as fandom is wont to do, there’s porn near the end. skip that part. ew. it’s an introspective scifi action epic, with just enough identity issues to make you want to cry! READ IT, IT’S IMPORTANT.

this: alternate universe, sans steve “dying.” epistolary. sad, as far as i can remember. (i’d rec the rest of this series but i think it’s best if you read this one first?)

courtroom/media fic. what if the winter soldier got arrested after the movie? (cap fandom does this kind of fake-media thing very well. i just reread it. it’s still good.)

this one isn’t exactly groundbreaking, but it’s a different take on the fandom’s typical post-winter soldier bucky interpretation. quite short, 100% safe for work.

in this one, steve successfully gets drunk, makes some friends, and gains some coping skills. good for dark humour. there’s porn somewhere but i’m sure it’s easily skippable, otherwise i wouldn’t have bookmarked it. not 100% the best thing every but it’s pretty fun.

if you aren’t team s/b all the way then we can’t be friends, but here’s some other marvel stuff i guess

lesbians, ballet, feelings? it’s a rarepair but it’s pretty lovely. au, no background knowledge required. basically a beautiful indie film that’s kind of oscar-bait. you will like this one, i think. there’s probably porn somewhere.

trans black widow. (that chapter only, not sure what the rest is). not very well-written and i have terrible memory but i’m 75% sure it made me cry.

ENJOY! or try to. don’t feel obligated to. but please at least TRY out of the dead land, it is groundbreaking.

#teya #personap #fandom

[secretgamergirl]

A Random Roundup of Surprisingly Positive Trans Portrayals

Over the last half a year or so, I’ve run across a number of bits of media I’ve come across which blindsided me with trans characters that rang pretty true. Every time, I was tempted to sit down and write a proper review, but other things were going on, so I’m just going to sit down and bite the bullet with a collection of relatively quick takes.

So let’s start off with Swiss Army Man. It’s an indie film, but it caught on a bit with wider audiences thanks to, well, the titular character being the magical farting corpse of Daniel Radcliffe. Odds are you’ve at least heard of it, but at least no one I’ve talked to about it had any idea there was anything trans-related in there, so you might be thinking I’m reading into it. Quite the opposite. The main character is, with absolutely no ambiguity about it, a closeted trans woman, and the entire plot of the movie is directly about her coming to terms with that, learning to accept herself, and stop worrying about everyone judging her so she can transition already (which she’s heavily implied to do just after the credits roll. A lot of this is subtext, but plenty of it is just plain text. I mean, halfway through the movie she starts dressing as a particular woman she sees as a rolemodel and getting lost in very girly fantasies, and these are specifically presented as her only really happy memories in a later life-flashing-before-her-eyes sort of scene. I’d really recommend watching the whole thing yourself, since hey, it’s a funny uplifting heartfelt movie (if requiring a trigger warning on suicidal imagery) but here’s someone else’s spoiler filled, inconsistently gendering explanation of a good chunk of the trans imagery.

Somehow though, all this gets lost on a huge chunk of the audience. Including most professional reviewers, even ones for LGBTQIA-focused media outlets. I read one shortly after watching it which stubbornly insisted it was trying to convey that the main character was a gay man through a bizarre metaphor that didn’t work. I’m tempted to call that one willful ignorance, but it IS to be fair one of those movies that plays around with an unreliable narrator and an odd mix of grounded reality, obvious fantasy, and supernatural elements that are hard to fit in either of those boxes. As someone who takes in a lot of that sort of thing, my personal takeaway is that while the main character is just imagining the corpse talking as an imaginary friend to cope with her suicidal loneliness, it does seem to be, within the observable reality of the movie, a legitimately magical corpse full of hyper-compressed Gyo gas. And a metaphor about shame. The main character being trans though is completely unambiguous and clear through every possible prism.

I do find it interesting though that on the commentary track, the pair of writer-directors responsible for it fail to directly refer to the main character’s womanhood, mostly just talking about her loneliness, and how relatable it is. So, blatant as the nature of the movie is, this may be a case of closeted trans women creating a story about a closeted trans woman without even realizing it.

Next we have a Korean film I stumbled across on Netflix with the unfortunate title of Man on High Heels, which I have to assume is trying to riff on Man on Fire or something similar. It’s about a tough martial arts action figure sort of cop who ignores procedure and beats confessions out of crime lords, who’s even more respected in the underworld for being such a stone cold badass than by the police force who has a pretty easy job accordingly. Who is, again, a closeted trans woman. This one I went into expecting to cringe a bit at a weird exploitation action comedy, but it plays the premise completely straight. When the movie starts, she’s been walking that knife edge for a while of starting HRT, buying a new wardrobe, and practicing with makeup, while still very much in the closet, and the main thrust of the drama is her trying to scrape up enough cash for The Surgery while trying to preserve her tough macho action legacy, and generally fumbling, with fellow cops thinking she has a drug problem and mobster fans thinking she’s gone crooked. Lot of emotional gut-punches too with flashbacks, falling out, and not exactly a happy ending. It doesn’t have the same inner monologue as Swiss Army Man, but it still feels fairly authentic in terms of the emotional turmoil she’s going through. And of course it gets some basic facts about medical transition wrong. Still, not what I expected.

Turning to TV, somehow I ended up marathoning through the entirety of Sons of Anarchy on a whim. Now, I cannot actually recommend that anyone ever watch Sons of Anarchy. Frankly it’s a poorly written show which spends more time than not completely rudderless, constantly forces people to act completely out of character to spur on new plot arcs, and stumbles hard every time it tries to say anything about women, race, politics, or morality.

Some time in the 5th season, a random filler episode has the core cast hiring a trans prostitute to stage explicit photos with someone they’ve knocked out in order to blackmail him, resulting in a very forced exploitative scene. It certainly doesn’t help that the trans woman in question is named Venus, and played by Walter Goggins (not that I approve of cis men playing any of the characters I’m listing here, but Goggins is the most overtly masculine actor in the mix, and playing the only character on this list who is out as trans and well past first transitioning). That episode left a particularly bad taste in my mouth, and I’m curious if there was some backlash to it at the time, because in the next season, Venus returns, as a minor recurring character who gets fleshed out and made significantly more sympathetic. She gets a tragic and cliched backstory full of sexual abuse of course, but she’s at least in the running for the single most morally centered character in the series, gets a lot of sympathetic dialog, and sticking up for her in various ways becomes a way to signify someone is, for the time being at least, on the path of righteousness.

What really amazes me though is the last season. The entire final season of Sons of Anarchy is frankly a train wreck. Season 6 ends with the incredibly pointless and poorly motivated murders of its most sympathetic major characters (including the main audience surrogate) to stir up conflict, and as a result season 7 is just a ridiculous exercise in body stacking. Almost every character ends up either dead or at a complete loss of what to do with themselves, and there are really only two characters who can be said to really get a happy ending. Tig, one of the more consistent characters, who can largely be described as the Designated Weirdo in the core cast, ends up spending the last season dating Venus, and their last scene implies that him falling in love with her breaks him of his weird self-destructive performative freakiness, and they get to live happily ever after. Everything else about the final season, and really the show at large, I rolled my eyes at, but hey, pleasant surprise there!

Meanwhile, turning to Japanese children’s television from a few years back, there’s Kamen Rider W. Like every Kamen Rider series, it’s a self-contained superhero show with lots of quirkiness and rubber-suit action sequences. The main gimmick the W alludes to is that the hero of this particular show is really two people. When it’s time to throw on the suit and jump into action, one of the two protagonists passes out, the other getting a split consciousness (and then of course late in the series when they get their ultimate powerup, they full on merge into a single body instead). One of these characters is Shotaro, a dorky wannabe hard boiled detective. The other is something of a mysterious MacGuffin character named Phillip, who has quite a lot going on, but most significantly for this article’s purposes, this is Phillip:

Broadcasting standards in Japan are a bit further behind the times than they are in America, so you can’t ever full on come out and state that a character is gay or trans. The best you can manage is to just barely provide plausible deniability while implying the ever loving hell out of it. And so we have Phillip, who is about as blatantly not-a-man as you can really get away with, visually. Whether the idea is to subtley portray a trans woman, or to portray the only non-binary human character I can recall ever seeing in anything is a tough call, but the hair clips and some variation on this non-quite-a-dress are present on Phillip in every single episode other than the one where a contrived sting has Phillip throwing on a dress and a wig to really pull of a Lovely Magician’s Assistant look... and trying to find a screenshot of that by searching for “Kamen Rider Phillip Dress” just gave me a variation on the standard Phillip Outfit on a female manikin at a cosplay shop.

Anyway, Phillip is great. Aside from being Very Clearly Trans, Phillip Very Clearly Has Autism (sensitively and realistically portrayed), but neither of these is ever commented on by anyone in the show. Instead, everyone is constantly talking about how Phillip is so unambiguously the more powerful, intelligent, and competent of the two, and constantly suggesting Shotaro is dead weight. It’s fantastic. Oh and the two are also as unambiguously in a romantic relationship with each other as broadcasting standards will allow. There is blatant queer-baiting between male leads in every Kamen Rider show, but I mean, they have a love theme, their ultimate weapon/armor is rainbow themed, and the lyrics to the show’s opening are all about the ultimate union of body and soul between two partners.

Incidentally, Kamen Rider Wizard from 2 years later does make a more overt effort of trans representation with a minor character, but fairs far worse with it, and the following year’s Kamen Rider Gaim has... this character, but I’m trying to focus on surprisingly good representation, and neither of them exactly qualify.

Finally, the tragically obscure 7th Dragon III Code VFD for the 3DS, along with making literally the entire cast of NPCs and PCs explicitly bisexual features as a prominent NPC a game designer/time machine designer who shortly before the game begins switched over to being called Julietta and dressing like this:

I haven’t found the time to finish it, but misgendering localization aside, yeah this is totally in keeping with my general composite image of my fellow trans game devs, and she’s great so far.

[actual-corpse]

Lol... If I keep educating my parents the way that I do I'm going to end up kicking myself out of the closet against my own wishes....

(Trigger Warning... It gets a bit homophobic and transphobic beyond this point... There's also a tasteless joke about the California Wildfires in there... For flavor)

I was talking about how the American Government ruined the forests (this is a whole other rant post y'all) and as a joke I said that God was punishing California by burning it (again, as a tasteless joke... I have to keep up the illusion that I believe in God and mentioning stuff like that usually works). Well, my step dad chimed in and said, "yeah... cause all the fa***ts that live there " and I rolled my eyes and sighed then I said, "man, I bet he's so homophobic because he's trying so hard to hide that he's secretly gay" (you know... To piss him off and to hopefully show him how ignorant he is [don't ask how the process works]) and my mom said, "that's probably what happened to him in Texas..." and we went on for a minute speculating what actually happened in Texas (step dad went to do a job in Texas and came back very different) and then she said, "or maybe, he slept with someone he thought was a woman, who actually turned out to be a man." And then she went on to talk about this show she watched where a trans woman (who couldn't afford HRT) slept with a handful of people and then got invited to a party and the guys who invited her got suspicious and one thing led to another and the poor woman was murdered, all the while my mom was misgendering the woman and I corrected her by explaining how being trans worked... She corrected herself and started to call the woman by her proper pronouns (my mom at one point called the trans woman 'it'... I again corrected her and explained how that still wasn't right) while my step dad continued the phobic shit... well, I eventually explained a few things about the trans process and accidentally let it slip that I knew how to go through changing all your stuff in the UK but I didn't know how to do it in America yet (meaning that I had done research [and I still don't understand America]... Like, unless you have a vested interest, you don't look that stuff up you know)... Luckily it was time for me to go tutor so I was free from explaining anything any further...

One of these days I'm gonna slip up... Between ordering pronoun and pride flag pins and binders online... I'm pushing my luck... Maybe I want to get caught... I've never been the kind of person to talk about what I'm doing or how I'm feeling... I just do what I want and explain myself later (that's how I started college... I had already applied and got accepted before even talking to my mom about quitting my shit factory job and going back to school)...

#text post #vent

[1gayteam]

Homelessness among LGBT youth

Hey guys! Erin here for my second post. If you couldn’t already tell by the title this one is going to be about the harsh reality of homelessness trending in the LGBT community. 

In America today about 1.6 million youth are said to be homeless each year and about 40% of them identify as lesbian, gay, bi-sexual or transgender.

This percentage is shockingly high because just 1 young person experiencing what it’s like to be without a home is inexcusable and sad.

This rising trend is scary because once they are kicked out of their homes they are automatically put at a greater risk for victimization, unsafe sex practices and mental health problems. These risks are 2 times greater for LGBT youth vs non LGBT youth.

The most common main cause for all youth homelessness is due to family conflict. Specifically for LGBT youth the problem arises over their sexuality or identifying as trans. More than half of them get a negative reaction when coming out to their families. 1 in 4 are thrown out of their homes.

Other reasons some are kicked out their homes include: homophobia, transphobia, poverty, failed systems and aging out of the foster care system.

It has been discovered that those who identify as LGBT have greater needs as well. and Those who identify as trans have the greatest needs to be met. They are in need of not only housing but are also discriminated against when it comes to employment, emotional support/acceptance and education. Trans youth has similar needs but because they are trans they typically need more support as they transition and healthcare because they often undergo hormone replacement therapy (HRT) or gender reassignment surgery and they can be costly. Not to mention the cost of name change, legal support, gender marker change etc are also associated with this.

Compared to non LGBT youth service providers report overall that the physical and mental health of LGBT youth experiencing homelessness is worse.

It is crucial that we create a safe place for all young people and create a better system of support. The federal government  needs to improve services and treatment and could do so by looking further into school safety by aggressively addressing school bullying and ensuring that homeless youth are able to continue getting their education , expanding housing options such as more shelters and recognizing homeless youth as a special needs population protecting them from federal policies that may be limiting them from getting help. Regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity everyone deserves the right to be safe.

If you are a LGBT youth experiencing homelessness, you have resources. https://www.lgbtcenters.org/LgbtCenters has a map of LBGT community centers located all over the U.S. The It Gets Better Project reminds you that you are not alone.Q Card Project allows youth to engage in their health and find service providers. ( http://www.qcardproject.com/) Reach out to your Gender and Sexualities Association club at school or be an activist and start your own student club. (https://gsanetwork.org/) and if you’re experiencing suicidal thoughts the suicide prevention line is 1-800-273-8255. 

Remember that you are loved and that your life is valued.

- xoxo, Erin