transandnonbinary

For those unaware, hundreds of contributors to the NYT wrote an open letter addressing concerns of the dangerous & biased way the Times has been been covering trans people. They, of course, take no responsibility and instead condescend to their own writers and readers about the "important journalism" they are doing. (Some have pointed out that it's always been trash when it comes to queer issues, as it came under similar fire during the AIDs crisis.)

Their self-importance has been satirized perfectly by The Onion, who was in truly incredible form that day:

It Is Journalism’s Sacred Duty To Endanger The Lives Of As Many Trans People As Possible

“Quentin” is a 14-year-old assigned female at birth who now identifies as male against the wishes of his parents. His transition was supported by one of his unmarried teachers, who is not a virgin. He stole his parents’ car and drove to the hospital, where a doctor immediately began performing top surgery on him. Afterward, driving home drunk from the hospital, Quentin became suicidally depressed, and he wonders now, homeless and ridden with gonorrhea, if transitioning was a mistake.

We just made Quentin up, and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean stories like his aren’t potentially happening everywhere, constantly. Good journalism is about finding those stories, even when they don’t exist. It’s about asking the tough questions and ignoring the answers you don’t like, then offering misleading evidence in service of preordained editorial conclusions. In our case, endangering trans people is the lodestar that shapes our coverage. Frankly, if our work isn’t putting trans people further at risk of trauma and violence, we consider it a failure.

We stand behind our recent obsessed-seeming torrent of articles and essays on trans people, which we believe faithfully depicts their lived experiences as weird and gross. We remain dedicated to finding the angles that best frame the basic rights of the gender-nonconforming as up for debate, and we will use these same angles over and over again in hopes that this repetition makes them suffer. As journalists, it is our obligation to entertain any and all pseudoscience that gives bigotry an intellectual veneer. We must be diligent in laundering our vitriol through the posture of journalistic inquiry, and we must be allowed to fixate on the genitals.

It is against free speech to stop us from fixating on the genitals.

Scathing. I love a writer with a solid crystal of salt in their heart. The entire thing is wonderful, and hey -- clicking on the link is the way they keep making money.

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Footnote: the monthly social is still going through this weekend! ♥

Small announcement: The social post will go up tomorrow and last through the weekend like the previous one did. ♥


As I'm sure you're all aware, there's only truly horrific news dominating the conversation lately. The murder of Brianna Ghey is tragic and devastating in itself. She was a 16 year old subject to constant bullying who, by all accounts, was already an incredible advocate for herself and her friends. Of course, there's been an outpouring from her community and worldwide; a gofundme to benefit the family for funeral costs, etc, has blown well past its goal (it's nearly at £100,000 at the time of this writing), vigils in her honor fill the streets, and people are being more vocal than ever about how our youth have potential and deserve to grow up. Of course, there's been more disgusting right-wing and terf howling (articles being changed to deadname her, shouting that there's no evidence her murder was motivated by bigotry, etc), but I can't imagine anyone will look back kindly on people being vicious about the murder of one so young and bright.

Folks also took the time to remember another young trans woman taken from us too soon: Zachee Imanitwitaho. The gofundme for her funeral costs is still about $1.5k from its goal, so please please contribute if you can, and definitely spread the word. Not only is this another tragic story about a creative, wonderful young lady taken from the world, but it still shows the disparity in attention that is given to the death of a white person over a person of color, even when they're both trans. It's a beautiful thing that Brianna's gfm got so much attention, but a little more of that support could be spared for Zachee and women like her.


Another important crowdfund going on is for Hawaii's The Lavender Clinic, which is the only clinic for the majority of trans and non-binary youth to receive gender-affirming care. They are on the verge of shuttering completely. As of this point, they are achingly close to funded. Our youth in Hawaii need care and support; please give what you can and share everywhere!

I'm still alive. Sorry! Even with taking time off for the holidays, I was still thoroughly wrecked by the first month of this year. But I wanted to let you all know I wasn't fading out again -- I just had a time with sickness, resolving a work situation, car repairs, and a house appliance snafu.

I hope you all are doing well! I hope that your initiations to 2023 were much less chaotic than my own.

Relevant comm updates:

1. I will make another social post towards the middle of the month, since I've missed the boat on first of January and February at this rate. I'll let you know once I've settled on a date.


2. The way I was doing the news roundups occupied far too much of a stress corner in my mind. I think I will shift to sharing relevant things as I find them.


3. If there are other types of posts you'd like to see on here, let me know! I really do want to make this a welcoming and helpful space for everybody.

That's all from me for now.
-zig

Hi everyone! I'm going to be taking the next week or two off from the weekly news posts; with working in the restaurant industry and doing some light traveling around the holidays, I just have a lot to keep up with. Still! I have not come empty handed.

A trans writer and critic I greatly admire recently unlocked a short story on her Patreon that she wrote a while back. I must have missed it when she first posted it, but I've read it now and boy. Wow. It's about JKR so it involves the relevant topics (transphobia, conversion therapy, etc).

Under the Stairs by Gretchen Felker-Martin

The money. I am throwing money away as fast as they will let me. Literacy. Schools. Hospitals. Every day there is a flood of letters. Children I have taught to read. Lives I have saved with access to surgery and modern medicine. Women who have fled their husbands with my help. A man slapped me, once. I know what they go through. I lived with my brother. I lived in a council flat. A fat spider weaving in the corner. Aragog.

I decide to meet them where they are, to open my heart to their dissent. A great thick encyclopedia written by the fans and edited by me. The first meetings: fawning. Inspiration, oh my God, find myself, my whole life. I love them. I have met them all a thousand times. Lost children who found me. I am like them. They need me.

This is later than I wanted to post this, but I had a lot of things to do after finishing work! Also some of these are from earlier than just the last week, but I figured it would be find for my first post of this sort. But essentially another regular thing I want to start doing is posting weekly news round-ups. I hope they'll be of use and interest to you all! ♥

I'm American, so my sources will likely reflect that. Please always feel free to share pertinent news in the comments & in your own posts to the community at any time. (:


ACTIVISM
South Korea's LGBTQ community confronts crushing headwinds in fight for equality; a dive into the lives of South Korean queer activists, featuring a new love of my life, Lesvos.
( +2 )

POLITICS
Gays Against Groomers Headline Anti-LGBTQ+ Rally in Ft. Lauderdale; something hard for me to be even slightly objective, given my immediate reaction in tumblr tags upon learning this was even a group.
( +5 )

CLUB Q
Why Queer Communities Are Welcoming Armed Antifascist Protection; in which the title is self-evident.

--similarly: Drag Queens Increase Security in Wake of Club Q Attack
( +2 )

HATE WATCH
Atlanta Man Arrested for Threats Against Two LGBTQ+ Nightclubs; grim. it never seems to end.
( +5 )

HISTORY
Zdeněk Koubek; a bio on a trans male athlete in the 1930s.
( +2 )

IN MEMORIAM
Day Rodas, Trans Woman Who Worked at L.A. LGBT Center, Found Dead; absolutely tragic.


OTHER
My Non-Binary Tits (And Their Many Sizes); a piece I relate to heavily as a big-chested genderqueer who bops between reduction vs. top surgery constantly.
( +3 )

ON THE BRIGHTER SIDE..
Ohio lawmakers postpone bill that limits health care for LGBTQ+ youth; they'll likely reform and reintroduce it, but hey -- any relent is good at this point.
( +7 )

The incredible Julia Serano shared another essay pulling apart more anti-trans rhetoric. (x) It continues to be no surprise that all these sorts of things go right back to white supremacy and its purity politics, but it's fascinating to see her so easily lay it all out. I can't wait to get my hands on her books!

While degeneration is not a real phenomenon, unfounded fears about “pure” and “untainted” members of our ingroup being “contaminated” or “corrupted” by some “lowly” outsider or “Other” is an extremely common trope. In fact, it’s a popular reaction to stigma. In Sexed Up, I cite research demonstrating that people imagine stigma to act as a “contagion” that can be “contracted” via interactions with stigmatized individuals. Once “contaminated” by this stigma, the person in question is imagined to be permanently “dirtied” or “spoiled” by it.

So returning to our late nineteenth century examples, it’s not that people of color, or sex workers, or LGBTQ+ people, and so on, had “de-evolved” or were “degenerates,” but rather that these groups were socially stigmatized. And fears that these groups might “corrupt” the “pure” straight white majority stemmed from a deep-seated belief that their stigma was “contagious” and had the potential to “contaminate” (and thereby “ruin”) those who are otherwise “untainted.”

[...]

Clearly, these anti-trans/LGBTQ+ “grooming” charges have nothing to do with CSA. But they do perfectly fit the stigma-contamination mindset that I described in the previous section: As LGBTQ+ people, we are imagined to be imbued with stigma that has the potential to “contaminate” anyone who is “exposed” to us, potentially “turning them queer” in the process. In other words, this is merely the failed theory of “degeneration” all over again. And just as “degeneration” was imagined to spread via “sex,” the “grooming” charge — as well as the related accusation that we are “sexualizing children” — insinuates that LGBTQ+ people (but not cis-hetero people) are inherently sexually “contaminating” and “corrupting.”

[...]

There are many facets to fascist and far right thinking, but a major recurring theme involves stigmatized outsiders (whether they be immigrants, people of color, people with disabilities, Jews and other non-Christians, and of course, gender and sexual minorities) as an imagined “contaminating” force that is insidiously “corrupting” society and the traditional family, and which must be eradicated for the greater good. This is what allows them to perpetually cast themselves as the “aggrieved victim” even when they are members of the dominant/majority group in society. And it’s why they often continue to refer to said minority groups as “degenerates” — in other words, they still believe in “degeneration” as a threat to their own “purity” and “superiority.” The stigma-contamination mindset is central to fascist and far-right thinking.