Trans Politics, Trans Activism, also 'rolling is this transphobic?' thread

I think it is time to separate the discussion, and leave the Trans/Genderqueer/Agender/Questioning thread as a space set aside *for* trans/queer/questioning people (cis people are welcome on that thread! It's not a 'no boys' situation, but I think it's better to allow that space to continue be trans-led and focused on trans, nonbinary, questioning and genderfull ILX0rs, rather than trans issues in general, because it's exhausting for trans people to have to be 'all transphobia discourse all the time'.)

So we should create a wider thread for discussion of trans issues, transphobia, politics etc.

This subject is intensely emotional for a lot of people, so please try to be respectful and thoughtful. Genuine questions of 'is this transphobic, can we talk a little deeper about how and why?' are OK. General 'let me play devil's advocate with your life' discourse is really not OK.

A note on language: cis and trans are not slurs, they are descriptors, but we should all be careful of making assumptions. (Yes, I include myself in that.) I'm going to respectfully ask people to think carefully about use of the other common trans activism acronym in terms of accuracy and specificity - if in doubt, spell it out, in fact, spelling it out is good practice in general. If people or groups or ideas are trans-exclusive, then let's talk about and address that trans exclusion. If you mean 'trans exclusive feminism' then say 'trans exclusive feminist' - and if the person or idea is really not someone or something that can be called feminist (I'm referencing your G-L*nners here) think about whether just plain 'transphobe' or 'trans hatred' or 'trans exclusion' is a more accurate term.

Gender GP are experiencing a lot of issues with their website (don't know if this is a DDOS or if they are having too much of a good thing in terms of support) but a description of the issues here:

https://www.gendergp.com/transgender-community-urgently-needs-support-trans-healthcare-petition/

You can skip directly to their petition / open letter here:

https://www.change.org/p/transgender-healthcare-services-in-the-uk-are-broken-urgent-improvements-are-needed

(Just a reminder, do not give change dot org money if you want that money to reach the organisation you care about - if you want to donate, do so directly via trans organisations, change dot org money goes only to change dot org. They WILL try to catch you if you're not paying attention.)

Oh! I think the petition is UK only, so be mindful of that, too.

https://gal-dem.com/transphobia-sexual-violence-sound-like-a-man-hang-up-vawg-investigation/

I want to be careful not to suggest that transphobia is in any way less of a problem in America

and I suspect this may be just my perception based on the fact that Rowling has become the face of this on Twitter and in the media

but I get this sense that anti-trans politics and transphobia is a little more pitched in the UK? Or more of a high profile issue publically?

yes

I think the main problem is that it is much more acceptable within left and liberal/centrist circles. The main public faces of transphobia being ppl like Rowling, Hadley Freeman, etc. adds to that.

xpost

Probably still easier for a trans person to access specific healthcare here than in the US tho (but they're working on making it more difficult).

most distinctive about the UK situation is the extent to which influential liberals and liberal publications have been basically leading the charge and spreading stuff associated elsewhere with the religious or fascist right (and the hard right following suit has made this stuff pretty much hegemonic in UK media). there was a minor outcry recently from prominent UK liberals when biden made some minor gesture towards trans rights ("I can't believe I agree with trump..." etc)

Probably still easier for a trans person to access specific healthcare here than in the US tho (but they're working on making it more difficult).

idk how much it varies between states in the US. it's bad here and probably getting worse

Why does the UK appear more transphobic than the States? Why does that UK transphobia turn up more noticeably on the Left, among progressives and especially people who identify as feminists, in the UK?

Like everything else to do with differences between the UK and the US, it comes down to Class, and attitudes towards Class, what Class is, and how it works.

The foundational myth of the US is the American Dream, the idea that class is something fundamentally malleable, mutable, alterable that individuals can and do change over the course of their lives. That an immigrant can arrive penniless, work hard at a blue collar job, buy a house and send their children to university, at which point the family becomes middle class. Yes, in reality this is completely unattainable to most, but it is still a myth that people *believe* in deeply. In class, birth should not be destiny, to most Americans.

In the UK, class is something far more inborn, inherent, inflexible, and unalterable. The very deep British belief is that if you are born into a class, then you will die as that class, no matter how much money you gain or lose. The circumstances you were raised in, what accent you have, where you went to school, these things *matter*, both conceptually and materially, they will shape your future outcomes in life. A working class person who accumulates a lot of money will be dismissed as “jumped-up” nouveau-riche; a middle class person with a plummy accent who insists they’re working class because their grandad was a milkman will be lampooned as a fake "mockney".

At the core of Feminist thought, is the idea that sex is a Power Relation, like race, like class. Women are disadvantaged, exploited and oppressed As A Class. How you are likely to think about the class of "Women", what it means and who it contains, is likely to be heavily influenced by how you think "Class" works, whether you view it as inherently inalterable or fundamentally mutable. Do you believe that it is possible for an individual to alter their position, within a systemic power structure? If you, like much of the UK, you believe that is inherently impossible, that’s how you end up with supposed progressives who believe that transmasculine people are "jumped-up lesbians" and transfeminine people are "fakes and mockeries".

And that’s the most important thing to grasp about UK transphobia - these appalling ideas don’t just turn up in the ~Gender Crit~ feminists – they turn up among people like the UK Skeptic movement, who played a huge part in the Guardian-New Statesman axis of transphobia, people who are deeply invested in maintaining the class status quo from Helen Lewis to Kier “trans rights are just a culture war” Starmer; and also among traditional ~Working Class~ leftists who refuse to see gender as a class or a class issue, such as the Mark Fisher wing and the SWP during their rapey years. Which brings up another problem, that in the US, trans rights are unequivocally a progressive issue; in the UK left, they are often a stick to beat 'feminists' with.

The state of trans healthcare in the US vs the UK... this is complicated, because quite frankly, US trans healthcare is better because the US healthcare system is so fucked up. It’s so fragmented that it is far more open to individual healthcare providers, whether they are trans affirmative or exclusionary. Trans friends in the US keep and share lists of therapists, surgeons, HMOs, private healthcare providers etc. who *will* offer gender affirming services, and gender confirmation treatments if necessary. If you can find the money, you can find someone who will help you.

The NHS, on the other hand, is a political football. Centralised gender clinics in the UK function as a bottleneck, by design. You have to pass arbitrary tests designed and administered by cis people. In the US, trans friends share lists of doctors who will prescribe hormones; in the UK, trans friends share the exact statements you have to make to pass the gatekeepers, lying if necessary, to access care. (It is the exact situation that Sandy Stone describes 30 years ago in The Empire Strikes Back – that’s how far behind the US the UK is, in terms of trans care.) Trans people being put on waiting lists that are years long, or being told the referral time is literally "infinite" – that is a political decision coming from the current government.

In happier news, that indicates the winds may be shifting on transphobia within traditional bastions of feminism:

https://feministlibrary.co.uk/statement-on-transphobia-and-accountability/

thank you, that explains a lot, appreciate it.

I thought this was a pretty good article on the phenomenon as well from a couple years ago: https://theoutline.com/post/6536/british-feminists-media-transphobic

this fucking country

as a med student at Brighton and Sussex (i will be having my obs and gynae placements on the mentioned wards) THANK YOU!!! i've heard stuff about ward staff getting phone calls from angry old men about this and it's honestly baffling. like it's not going to affect you???

— ellen (@e_petersxx) February 10, 2021

re: fake story picked up by mutliple outlets about the trans police banning midwives from saying "mother" and "breastfeeding" on wards (non-gendered language has been recommended for people who aren't women, the press presumably thought it didn't sound dangerous enough unless they added the censorship bit)

one recurring theme in this shit is how provisions for trans men, nonbinary people and others keep getting portrayed as being done exclusively for the sake of not hurting trans women's feelings or something (this seemed to be one of JKR's contentions). it's clearly a strategic propaganda choice and related in some way to how trans men keep being identified as trans women, in public and in the press. has there been any writing on this phenomenon?

i literally couldn't sleep last night thinking about this wave of trans hostility currently sweeping across the UK, it's completely fucked up

my employer is now backing away from its relationship with Stonewall

i just literally cannot get my head around 1) why 2) why now

btw anybody who hasn't seen this Contrapoints should do

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gDKbT_l2us

i feel you. between chave dappelle, the sports ban in tx, the bullshit in loudon county, it feels like the reactionaries are organized and amplifying more right now.

it makes me wonder if as a nation we genuinely accept LGB people or if we've just learned that it's not socially acceptable to discriminate against them the way it seems to be fine to do to trans people. The arguments are the same as they were in the 80s: the predatory concerns, the destabilising of family life, it's like we learned nothing.

yeah i suspect thats a major part of it. aside from terfs, its mostly the same interests (ie conservative christians/fascists) pushing these arguments and narratives. i think this is where the whole "you cant say [bigoted thing] about [marginalized group] without [non-material, superficial social repercussions] these days!!!!" complaint comes from, like this stifled antagonism that finally has a target that they can direct their reactionary hostilities towards with some greater degree of social validation.

it is odd though because in Britain a lot of this stuff is coming from a place you wouldn't necessarily expect. The Guardian isn't great but its unique selling point is its alleged left-wing perspective (comparatively, maybe, but generally lol) and to see it take such an editorial line has been confusing because it makes no sense.

it's going to be so obvious in 20 years to everyone what the right side of this argument was, the problem is that it's hurting people right now

^

If only there were actual problems in the world that people could direct their inchoate anger towards, maybe then they'd feel less harmed by the life choices of others that don't impact them in any meaningful way.

Bill 2 is 'the most transphobic bill ever proposed in Quebec,' activist says

Sorry if this isn't the right thread for this, but am I the only one who continually fucks up the right pronouns while speaking? My daughter's 12 year old friend is going by "they/them" and I keep messing up and saying "her/she". Really trying to get it right, but I'm becoming seriously concerned about my 51-year-old brain's ability at defeating my subconscious impulses.

practice! I’ve had a few people change pronouns in my life and just taking ten minutes a day to repeat to yrself a short script like “Their name is x. Their pronouns are they/them. They like x and it’s fun to hang out with them” or w/e works pretty well ime, and it doesn’t seem to occur to a lot of ppl

also gets easier the more they/thems there are in yr life, which will likely happen over time if you have 12-year-olds in yr life

also, it helps not to worry too much about it! not because it isn’t important (it is), but because the more of an anxiety you develop around it the harder it will be (again, ime). when you inevitably mess it up, correct yrself quickly and without any “oh geez it’s just so hard, I don’t know why I can’t get this, I’m so sorry” etc.

Thanks Nicole! Practicing is what I need for sure. Luckily, I’ve haven’t screwed up in front of my daughter’s friend yet and my daughter is more than happy to correct me when I do slip up. I’ll get there eventually.

I’ve had a few people change pronouns in my life and just taking ten minutes a day to repeat to yrself a short script

yeah, same ... also, what nicole says ... you will inevitably mess it up, but don't get defensive or demeaning

Open letter signed by 16,000 calls for BBC apology over trans article
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-59074096

You’d think they could have at least recapped the reason that the study is said to be flawed.

Nice to know that some “appreciations” were sent in, though, I wasn’t aware of a formal avenue for those. Maybe they should keep a running ticker of how many they get.

Fuck K4thl33n St0ck fuck K4thl33n St0ck fuck K4thl33n St0ck

the implication that “many trans women are lesbians, and many cis lesbians enjoy fucking them” is an equal statement to “all cis lesbians must be willing to fuck any given trans woman” is so deeply absurd, and the fact that so many publications treat it like a reasonable debate that must be had sucks so much.

there are people with certain physical traits who I don’t want to fuck; people have sexual preferences within a given orientation! but if I were to make a big public stink about it and imply or outright state that those traits invalidated their identity and the sexuality of the people who do, I would expect to be called out for it!

my heart aches for trans women in the UK these days, it’s bad enough dealing with this shit when it’s thousands of miles away

yeah, same ... also, what nicole says ... you will inevitably mess it up, but don't get defensive or demeaning

― sarahell, Thursday, October 28, 2021 1:39 AM bookmarkflaglink

it's just weird *how* defensive people get when they make this mistake, like, if you call a friend by the wrong name or say their last name wrong, and they correct you, you don't sit there causing a scene.

i've fucked it up, been corrected just like anybody else, it's....feedback, you apologize, correct, move on. not that I wouldn't understand why someone who has been misgendered a lot might be momentarily frustrated, but usually the correction is just a polite one and people go apeshit over it.

https://archive.md/MwYYz

uk getting very scary, they're planning to lump in trans-affirmative therapy with gay conversion therapy (as transphobes have been pushing for) and totally ban it for under 18s, also likely banning mermaids

feels like it would be a good time to start taking to the streets? the polls always seem to show that the transphobes are a vocal minority, should start taking advantage of that

Trending now in UK:
#CisISASlur

(and not trending in a "everyone is taking the piss out of it" manner)

these fucking babies don’t know what a slur is

who’s the snowflake now??

Fuck K4thl33n St0ck fuck K4thl33n St0ck fuck K4thl33n St0ck

otm and also i think sussex have handled this quite poorly

there are people with certain physical traits who I don’t want to fuck

The problem is that women are being accused of transphobia for saying this exact thing, if one of those physical traits happens to be having a penis. Here's an example from Simon H. in a post on a different thread four years ago:

Feminist Theory & "Women's Issues" Discussion Thread: All Gender Identities Are Encouraged To Participate

a couple of trans comrades have outright stated that 1. sexual preference for certain/specific types of genitals are inherently transphobic

Further down in that thread, j. says they see people expressing this position as well and supposes it isn't too uncommon. It's clear that this line of thinking persists to this day -- it's easy to find very recent examples of it on Twitter. Stating the position is in itself an act of pressuring people into having sex with people they don't want to have sex with. Can we all agree that's a bad thing to do?

just to jump slightly backward to nicole and Neanderthal on pronouns upthread: yes it is new and will take practice.

But honestly it is really not that hard for well-meaning people to navigate this in a well-meaning way. As long as they're truly, y'know, well-meaning.

Currently I am navigating this because my eldest (14) is nonbinary they/them. So are many of their friends. I will likely mess up. But the guiding principle is just to... not be a dick, I guess? The people who are having the most trouble with it tend to already not be on board with the whole project. And of course if you're not on board with the whole project, your motivation to practice and be a non-dick is lessened.

For me, if I try to relate an anecdote about what Ash said to Jinx and how Sky reacted, well, I'm going to be using their names a lot more than I otherwise would. A sentence like "Jax said that Sky and Ash are going to Sky's house" both avoids misgendering, and avoids potential confusion between singular and plural.

the "not being on board" is key, if you support your trans or non-binary friends, you're not going to fly off the handle if you get corrected when you screw up. but if your viewpoint is "I'm really, really trying hard to do this bullshit for you, but as much as I love you, I think this is fucking stupid", you get angry when corrected because you think you shouldn't have to do it anyway.

dating while trans can be a gauntlet of managing different kinds of transphobia; i feel grateful to the few ppl who have been attracted to me without making me feel weird about their attraction. that's about as far as i care to have an opinion on the matter which is otherwise really dense and confusing to me

Stating the position is in itself an act of pressuring people into having sex with people they don't want to have sex with.

No. Conflating abstract discussions about ppl's preferences with coercion makes no sense to me - like if we were having a discussion about, for instance, whether it's racist not to be attracted to ppl of certain ethnicities, I think there'd definitely be ppl arguing that. Casting this as "lesbians pressured into having sex with trans women", as the BBC article did, strongly misrepresents the issue at hand - any casual reader browsing the headline will obviously interpret this as women being personally coerced into having sex, not some philosophical disagreement. Which of course is great for the gender critical crowd because their concerns all boil down to thinking trans ppl are sexually predatory anyway.

vtc, did u just not read the next sentence in my post or

cis people have long portrayed trans people as either punchlines or disgusting untouchables, often both. this absolutely informs who and who isn’t considered attractive collectively and individually.

this doesn’t mean that any given person must correctively fuck trans people, or that every person who doesn’t want to sleep with trans people is a bigot, but it does mean that we should all (trans people included, sometime especially so) examine and correct how those anti-trans biases affect our worldviews

now, if someone comes along and points this out, and someone else responds by loudly and publicly refusing to do so, rallies a bunch of cis people in support of their brave stand against being “pressured” to fuck trans people, and uses that organization to lobby against equal public services for trans people, then yes, they’re doing transphobia!

given that this is one of the main ways that anti-trans organizations have gained power and influence, and that that power and influence has led to very real material restrictions on our individual lives and collective well-being, you can perhaps forgive us for reacting to someone coming along taking the “just asking questions, let’s all be reasonable here” tone about “simply” not wanting to have sex with trans people comes off as in direct service of transphobia.

don’t want to fuck us? don’t fuck us! a billion tweets can’t make you. just keep it to yourself for god’s sake, it’s being used by more hateful people than you to hurt us.

Short version:

The goal isn't to keep "men" out of women's sports. The goal is to bully queer kids into killing themselves.

It's working.

it didn't pass. _this_ time.

The reason it didn't pass is Montana has a right to privacy enshrined in its state constitution.

Section 10. Right of privacy. The right of individual privacy is essential to the well-being of a free society and shall not be infringed without the showing of a compelling state interest.

That's the reason we still have legal abortion here, too, despite the state seemingly getting redder by the hour. If more states had a right to privacy that ironclad, we'd be a whole lot better off as a country.

the mcbride interview is terrible and cis people really shouldn't share it as insightful or helpful

a friend of mine who has been a trans activist since he first transitioned as a teen more than two decades ago mentioned something in his stories that rather than going for the argument that they did, lawyers should have gone for the equal protection clause under the 14th amendment. he said that some others had been making this legal case with some vigor— anyone know what he’s talking about?

i don't, but i'm also not a civil rights lawyer, so i couldn't really speak to it.

So as I understand the legal arguments presented by the plaintiffs and by the Biden administration, they did assert protection under the Equal Protection Clause. And the three liberal justices did believe the Tennessee law violates equal protection. But the conservative majority decided it didn't have to rule on that in order to uphold the law — their extremely tendentious ruling basically said this wasn't about people being transgender, it was about people being legal minors. So Roberts' decision says, basically, "We're not yet ruling on whether transgender people constitute a protected class for any purposes beyond the Bostock decision."

Since this court was almost certain to uphold the Tennessee law, it's really for the best that they didn't use it to directly consider equal protection. That will likely be decided in a future case, like the one over trans people being kicked out of the military. At least three of the conservatives — Thomas, Alito and Barrett — seem likely to eventually find that transgender people aren't a protected class warranting heightened scrutiny in discrimination cases. Barrett said so explicitly in her concurring opinion.

So it's hard to know how that issue will be decided and what the parameters will be. But the best cases to fight for it will be with adult plaintiffs, who don't have the rights limitations that minors do.

Meanwhile Chris Geidner has a good piece on the direct culpability of the NYT and other mainstream outlets in creating a climate that enable the Skrmetti decision: https://www.lawdork.com/p/where-is-the-outrage-over-skrmetti

and ACB in essence wrote, "Come back to us when you're discriminated enough, then we can talk."

Yeah. Her argument was so dishonest.

thanks tipsy!

Meanwhile Chris Geidner has a good piece on the direct culpability of the NYT and other mainstream outlets in creating a climate that enable the Skrmetti decision: https://www.lawdork.com/p/where-is-the-outrage-over-skrmetti

― paper plans (tipsy mothra)

Geidner is right, and.

My uncle sent me a NYT link this morning. My uncles and aunts, they do read the NYT. They're "boomers", I guess, but they're also progressives. I don't care what they read in the times, because they know me, and they listen to me and they respect me.

I pick my battles. I'm not going to prioritize fighting with my older relatives who think that all the "news" in the NYT is fit to print. It makes about as much sense as fighting with mainline Protestants. In America, they're literally dying out. Their place in institutional systems of power is not terribly important to me. I don't rely on them to protect me. It makes sense that Geidner cares about the New York Times - he's written for them. He's an important and valuable person but he _doesn't actually have any institutional power_.

that's what frustrates me most about a lot of liberals - they keep saying "put us in power and we can fix this". and mcbride can't, ok? mcbride can't fix this. her role is the role of every member of a marginalized group who has the approval of the Democratic party - to be tokenized. to be one of the "good ones". to be trotted out as an enforcer to keep the rest of us in line. i _don't_ think of her as an enemy or hate her or anything like that. she _doesn't speak for me_, though. people who think she _does_ speak for me because we're both trans women... that's central to the failure of liberalism.

i see pundits writing in newspapers about internet discourse being detached from reality, and they're right, and they're also mote-spotting (Matthew 7:3). in a lot of ways it sucks what happened to liberalism, what happened to Discourse, what happened to the "mainstream media", and _it happened_. same with the supreme court. do the democrats really think that if we just sit through another 50 years of this court that they can Fix This by strict adherence to the nomination process? i'm one of the rare few who _remembers_ merrick garland. i remember how the democrats failed to fight for him, because following The Rules was more important to them. the republicans had and have no such moral compunctions.

now i _know_ that the democrats didn't lose people when they failed to fight for merrick garland. and, at the same time... the democrats have lost most people. and rather than working to regain the confidence of their base, they're going for the 10% of people who are "undecided". for so long they've had this principled, high-road refusal to "play to the base" and now they _don't have one_.

and of course none of that is _overtly_ about trans rights, except it _is_ because all of these things are _interconnected_. because if someone doesn't fight against genocide in gaza, how can i expect them to fight against genocide in america?

why should i be outraged at the new york times? i don't think the new york times is a good paper. i think it prints a lot of things that aren't fit to print. i believe words are dead and actions are alive. why should i seek the living among the dead (Luke 24:5)?

The Democrats are kind of up for grabs. Which everyone is mostly treating as a crisis, for good reason, but also these are times parties actually can be redefined and realigned. The end of an old order (which God knows the Democratic leadership is) is always chaotic, but it also makes things possible. This is where having some more good inspiring leaders and a more coherent economic vision on the left would help. I'm sure people are stepping up in different ways all over, I hope some of them have chops.

Which is to say that obviously the time to advocate for trans rights is now more than ever. I was glad to see a lot of trans rights sign at the No Kings rally I went to. Protecting trans rights has to be part of the baseline for any actually useful Democratic Party.

The Democrats are kind of up for grabs. Which everyone is mostly treating as a crisis, for good reason, but also these are times parties actually can be redefined and realigned. The end of an old order (which God knows the Democratic leadership is) is always chaotic, but it also makes things possible. This is where having some more good inspiring leaders and a more coherent economic vision on the left would help. I'm sure people are stepping up in different ways all over, I hope some of them have chops.

Which is to say that obviously the time to advocate for trans rights is now more than ever. I was glad to see a lot of trans rights sign at the No Kings rally I went to. Protecting trans rights has to be part of the baseline for any actually useful Democratic Party.

― paper plans (tipsy mothra)

i certainly would support a democratic party that was able to effectively articulate and implement a coherent set of values, a democratic party that's "actually useful". that said i'd support any organization that's actually useful. the frustrating thing about the democratic party is that... my impression is that the people with the money want one thing, and the people with the votes want kinda the opposite. that's kinda the sticking point. i wish i could say i saw a method of resolving that conflict. honestly, i don't.

when it comes to "chops", my feeling is that we don't just "git gud" on our own because of some inherent genius. it's having access to those structured resources, that support. those institutions have been getting destroyed from the inside out since at least the '80s. i do think there's... not just regulatory capture, but also judicial capture. an actually useful democratic party, i support that, but any means for me to do actually useful stuff in an organized, minimally adequately resourced, non-violent manner... yeah i'd jump at the chance.

Talked to the heads of state-level LGBTQ advocacy groups for Tennessee and Georgia about the Skrmetti decision and the overall embattled state of LGBTQ rights in the South in particular. Both were forceful about rallying around trans rights and pushing back against people now wanting to back off a little.

Chris Sanders of Tennessee Equality Project: "I'm particularly frustrated by the very small minority of people who want to break off gay/lesbian/bisexual people from trans people. They fool themselves into thinking that if we just didn't have to deal with gender identity issues, the movement would magically have everything it wanted. And that is not true. The Project 2025 people do not like any form of what they would describe as 'aberrant sexuality.' And if you think for one minute that they are forgetting us, that's ridiculous. We are all in this together."

Interview here: https://theprogressivesouth.org/headlights-ep-10-lgbtq-rights-in-the-south/

A friend of mine wrote this, but I'd post it regardless. (gift link) Credit to him for getting it into the NYT.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/02/opinion/suicide-hotline-trans-kids.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Tk8.VFRW.zxILowzRKQpH&smid=url-share

The kids were telling us that to survive, they needed a kinder, safer world. We don’t have to take expensive, showy steps to get there. It can involve as basic a gesture as a middle school teacher wearing a rainbow necklace or a neighbor planting a trans flag in the yard. These are more than performative gestures to someone who feels abandoned.

A community college could open its library — and its L.G.B.T.Q. materials — to surrounding neighborhoods. The librarian could make a point of complimenting someone’s gender-nonconforming haircut or clothing. These kinds of safety signals let kids know where they can go in an emergency.

Hell of a moment from Kae Tempest at Glastonbury last weekend (and I say that as someone who didn't care at all for his earlier work as Kate).
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DLhrAjBoirf/

That's powerful.

A friend of mine wrote this, but I'd post it regardless. (gift link) Credit to him for getting it into the NYT.

― paper plans (tipsy mothra)

kudos to your friend! it's absolutely true that trans kids don't need much in the way of support. a lot of times i will hear from cis people that they don't feel like they're doing "enough". funnily enough it always seems to be the people who are doing the most who have those concerns.

i don't know, maybe it's kind of ally imposter syndrome. nearly every trans person i know has imposter syndrome. worrying about not _really_ being trans, about not being trans _enough_. a good chunk of the cis queer people i know have told me similar things.

one of the best things an ally can do for a trans person, a queer person, a lot of different people, is like what george michael said: listen without prejudice. that's what i try to do when people look like they might need support. just say "hey, if you need to talk to me, i'm here to listen". and if they want to talk - a lot of times they don't, and i don't push them - i listen, and i validate them. i say what they're feeling isn't wrong, that they don't deserve to be treated how they're being treated.

it doesn't feel like a lot, but it's not a small thing. it's really fucking hard to sit with someone who's going through something awful, to hold that space for them. particularly if it's something you can't fix. it's incredibly valuable. i value the people who are able to do that a lot. i think a lot of the people i know feel the same way, even if they can't necessarily say it.

i'm linking to this post i just made in the "free speech and creepy liberalism" thread.

Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

anybody who seeks to support trans rights needs to know about this.

a friend shared this post with me, it really resonated with me

https://ruthpearce.net/2025/09/25/reject-trans-doom-posting/

Ruth is an amazing woman (and is/has been in some great bands, too). As someone who finds it difficult to go out and participate in community, I fall into the doom spiral of despair and inaction all too often, so I really needed to read this. I appreciate that it's not about positivity for its own sake, but as a foundation for action.

Great piece. This is a hard truth:

"We tend to consume doom-posting on our own, on a phone. We often have no-one to process it with, and little context beyond the content in front of us. In this way, doom-posting offers only a partial account of reality, and no way out from despair"

that's an excellent article, thank you for sharing, i know Ruth and she's a wonderful person. that was something that i really needed to read

this is a similar piece that gave me hope, written just after the uk supreme court decision, can't remember if i've already shared it on here or not

https://hjosephinegiles.substack.com/p/while-the-supreme-court-ruled-i-tore

this is a similar piece that gave me hope, written just after the uk supreme court decision, can't remember if i've already shared it on here or not

https://hjosephinegiles.substack.com/p/while-the-supreme-court-ruled-i-tore

― ava (aiva)

it's new to me!

for the most part i find it really personally relatable. the one thing place where i differ is that i _don't_ regret the time i spent attempting to appeal to liberal ideas of "trans rights". not because i thought it was _effective_, but because i needed to _learn_. estrogen didn't magically fix all my problems. it fixed _one_ of my problems, haha. i had to do a lot of work. i had a lot of crap to unlearn, and a lot of good stuff to learn. i don't regret coming into transition with liberal ideas any more than i regret taking 43 years to figure out that i was a girl. ignorance is the natural state, and we tend to learn what we're taught. transition gave me the opportunity to unlearn some of the crap i've internalized.

_this_ is why i have hope, and _this_ is why i continue to engage and work with liberals. i was a liberal, and it didn't benefit me, and i was able to learn, and i've seen lots of liberals similarly learn. it's not my _responsibility_ to teach anybody, and...

i was having coffee with a friend yesterday and she said "i hate to agree with the liberals, but maybe we do need a charm offensive". and what i said was that i'd been conducting a one-woman charm offensive for years. not only am i a white, cis-passing, professionally-educated trans woman (liberals tend to want to pretend this shit doesn't matter, but of course it fucking does), i'm pretty fucking charming, if i do say so myself. people can say whatever the fuck they want about trans women, and the people who know me... they can choose to listen to what those jerks on tv and the internet say, or they can listen to them and say "That's Kate! That's ridiculous, Kate is nothing like that."

i'm not disappointed that liberal politicians aren't supporting us because, well, for most of my life liberals haven't supported us. but not just for that reason. liberals have failed to meaningfully support _most_ marginalized groups. one of the liberal values i was taught was to be inquisitive. if someone is genuinely inquisitive, sooner or later they're going to figure out that what transphobes say doesn't really accord with the evidence. not only that, but the younger someone is, the less likely someone is to have internalized the liberal bullshit i internalized.

so yeah, for me, the best way to support trans rights is _not_ to spend my time focusing on trans rights. "charm offensive" nothing. for me, what's important is to _listen_ to people with problems i don't have, to learn from them, to fight for _them_. because the truth is that trans people are no longer able to fight for ourselves. we have no voice of our own.

of course liberal politicians don't speak for us. they never really did. the people who support us are all around me. i see them everywhere. the current system of oppression is built on lies and delusion, and it is failing, failing catastrophically. of course they don't want to acknowledge it's failing, because, you know, they're committed to lies and delusion. the truth is that most ordinary people are _better_ than the systems we're subjected to. the truth is that together we are powerful, but that power doesn't come from the labour party or the democratic party or _any_ political institution. it comes from our values, values which _aren't_ shared by people in charge of the system. of course they aren't. the system is so broken that people who have effective values, the kind of values that make a system _work_, _can't_ put them into practice.

when it comes to dr. pearce's post, i do agree with her general point, but i don't read gill-peterson's "reject trans liberalism" the same way she does. i don't think her essay is "dire" at all. her writing has really opened my eyes to a lot of things. i _do_ reject trans liberalism. trans liberalism has never had a place for me, even though i _am_ a binary-passing white woman. trans rights, to me, can be achieved only as part of a larger intersectional struggle. trans rights _cannot_ be achieved, i believe, unless they go hand in hand with the struggle against white supremacy, against patriarchy, against capitalism. the reason i say this, the reason i'm no longer a liberal, why i'm now an anti-liberal leftist, is because _that's what's most supported by the evidence_.

it's because of this, i think, that any argument for trans rights based on liberalism and liberal institutions is inevitably going to lead to doomerism and despair. this is why i spend so much time with liberals. this learned helplessness is the single biggest impediment to trans rights. lots of bad shit is happening, and it hits me pretty directly, on a very personal level. and that's _why_ it's important for me to tell the people around me, over and over, that we are _empowered_, that we not only _can_ work together to create a better world, that we are creating a better world _right now_ just by living our values. that we're doing it in a far more lasting and meaningful way than any asshole who talks a bunch of hatred and bigotry and lies ever will. no, i don't follow the news. that's not me sticking my head in the sand - that's me understanding and valuing the real power i have, the real power we have.

cracking post kate, especially that last paragraph there

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/health/trump-gender-affirming-care-funding.html

this shit, plus the house ruling yesterday on marjorie taylor green's insane bill criminalizing gender-affirming care for minors, is what i've feared for a long time (selfishly, as the parent of a trans kid)

there will be legal challenges but most hospitals will probably just stop providing this care anyways to avoid potential funding loss

i am so stressed and mad about this. at least today's move is getting press coverage, the bill passing yesterday was barely mentioned anywhere

the way things are going, I could totally see a bunch of new clinics right along the border in Canada, like the dental clinics in Mexico

It’s not selfish to be worried about something that affects you and yours directly. It’s disgusting. I’m so sorry.

Sorry NA, this sucks.

as far as i can tell, the content of this new order is pretty much a revival of the order the administration put out pretty soon after inauguration. that earlier order did have some impacts for sure, a lot of local hospitals ended gender-affirming surgery for minors and some ended all gender-affirming care for minors, but not all hospitals ended up fully complying, including the one we take my kid to. so we'll see what happens this time. if they do stop providing this care, there are still options in terms of providers that aren't funded by medicare/medicaid. but i'm just sick of this and i was already stressed all week about the aforementioned bill.

i’m so sorry NA

very sorry you're having to worry and stress about this NA

Really sorry to hear it, man.

Literally cannot believe the depths to which these hateful fucks will go.

https://www.them.us/story/trump-administration-chest-binders-trans-nonbinary-warning-tomboyx-gc2b

Marty Markary is an absolute demon. from spreading deadly misinformation during COVID to acting as anti-trans henchman here, he'll get solitary in Hell.

Disappointing to see the name Martin Freeman here on donations to violent anti-trans bigot Graham Linehan. Is this you @Marfrman ? £2,000 ? Martin Freeman’s ex-wife is public terf Amanda Abbington. Martin himself came to fame alongside Ricky Gervais in The Office. #CelebrityTerfs pic.twitter.com/OK9g2yHDIB

— India Willoughby (@IndiaWilloughby) January 5, 2026

I remember back in the days of yr fave is problematic tumblr reading the dirt on this guy and him having an impressive range of terrible opinions on a variety of topics.

It's still around if you google. Just had a refresher and yeah - anti immigration, islamophobic, jokes about sexual assault. Used to like Hip-Hop "before it all went n word this and n word that". Prince of a man.

yes I saw all that when he was getting ripped on here for the laughable po-faced last mod in town aesthetic he and Eddie Piller indulge in for their various acid jazz compilations. Laughable wanker, but also seriously bigoted.

found it

https://www.tumblr.com/yourfaveisproblematic/45883559709/martin-freeman

yeah he has been terrible in everything since The Office (in which he was just playing himself) and was the worst thing in The Hobbit / HHGTG / Sherlock, all of which were already shit without him. Richard Herring had a thing about calling him "Tim from The Office" as in "Tim from The Office is playing Bilbo in The Hobbit" which is exactly right, he has two or three facial expressions which he does instead of acting, and has the arrogance to think that he's a genius and not try any harder to do his job.

noted that he doesn't actually say "n-word" but uses the actual word

Wins are rare and deserve to be commemorated:the high court dismissed the terf's attempts to prevent trans ppl from using the changing rooms for the Hampstead Heath ponds.

The ponds are truly one of the wonders of London and I'm happy everyone will continue to be able to use them without the genitals inspectors getting in the way.

Yup, a nice bit of good news

I'd thought that it was more a technical "this is not the appropriate court" finding, though I could definitely be wrong (and of course the genital inspectors would relish a bigger court)

Definitely good news though: the consultation where 86% supported the current trans-inclusive arrangement (and the same percent opposed the "biological sex only" option) https://news.cityoflondon.gov.uk/consultation-results-published-on-hampstead-heath-bathing-ponds/

Naturally Sex Matters had previously filed for judicial review of CLC's operation of the ponds on the grounds that the non-transphobic options were illegal.

“Sex Matters” is the name of an anti-trans group? oy vey

Yes, dunno if you are aware but a big terf thing is to try to take focus away from gender (socially constructed) and instead focus on sex (biological). This is of course nonsense for many reasons both philosophical and biological.