I want that one TV episode or film where the gay friend tells the straight friend to fuck off because they’re not a token or an accessory to prove how liberal someone is.
that show airs right after the mini-series that stars a fat woc as the main character who saves the world with brains and action
Hijra by Takeshi Ishikawa
Even if we pretend that the correlation between cancer and intersex traits is real, we must ask: Why is it that we don’t go around removing breasts to prevent breast cancer? The answer is quite simple: Preventing cancer is not really the goal. Rather, the cancer rhetoric is used to justify surgical interventions, making it the darkest of lies.
Why do medical professionals seek to surgically erase intersex traits? Maybe it’s their ignorance about sex variability. But I doubt it. Doctors, regardless if one specializes in canines or human beings, are smart people. What’s more likely is that these medical professionals are acting on a dangerous combination of fear and authority. A body that challenges binary understandings of sex is scary to those who refuse to embrace natural biological diversity found across species. For years, many medical doctors reached for their scalpels to ease their fears and assert their authority over the body. They are experts on the body, after all.
” Georgiann Davis, “Standing with Susie the Dachshund” (via feministsociology)Pakistani transgender candidate to run for office
A member of Pakistan’s transgender community is to contest upcoming general elections on a ticket of equal rights, saying the community has more to offer than begging or dancing at weddings.
The air date on the HereTV website was March 1st. Hopefully they’ll soon post the full episode.
Q.
“Trailer for documentary “Out In Mumbai.” Three members of Mumbai’s LGBT community share their personal stories and struggles on their way to a first anniversary celebration of the historic 2009 repeal of an oppressive anti-gay clause which had been part of the Indian Penal Code since 1860. Available excusively on HereTV.
$195 million portion of the federal government’s $4.2 billion budget for homeless-assistance programs targeted toward homeless youth.
44,483 youth given a bed in a shelter through runaway and homeless youth act programs in 2008.
766,800 homeless youth identified through these programs.
From the Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the Human Rights Campaign
BIRTH RIGHTS AND WRONGS: Response to Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival Official Policy
After years of debate, as of April 11th Lisa Vogel has finally drawn definitive lines around inclusion of trans women at MWMF. It is a hard truth to swallow that a person can call themselves a trans ally and support this festival..
Together we can break the stigma.
Eshu's Playground: your bleeding red is meaningless to me
allyship without critical thought and critique is a type of allyship i fundamentally don’t want.
i don’t want allies who are not critical of the cause they are championing for.
i don’t want allies who take on the symbols and agendas of organizations with histories of fucked up, transphobic, classicist, and racist behavior without having grappling with those histories as much as many of us who decide not to champion for marriage equality the HRC way have. to be my “ally” means you have wrestled with those troubling histories, over and over again. not once. not for five minutes. but over and over again.
and fundamentally you have made the choice that marriage equality is important, but there are ways to support marriage equality without erasing the equally legitimate concerns of people who fall under the LGBT umbrella and don’t see marriage equality as the most important issue.
i don’t want allies who are so lost in their fervor to bleed red espouse the same trickle down, wait your turn, your day will come equality rhetoric the HRC and many organizations solely concerned with gay and lesbian marriage equality do, all the while maintaining their label “champion of equality”
i don’t want allies who want holidays, special days, special buttons, special colors, special time out of my struggle for liberation to be acknowledged and thanked over and over again. you don’t become an ally for the pretty buttons or the t-shirts. this isn’t a kony pony sort of deal.
i don’t want allies who center themselves in the movement. have straight people ever asked themselves why media coverage of marriage equality focuses on YOUR creative signage for the cause? YOUR involvement in the movement? why are you continuing to take up space in a movement that advocates for something you already have and benefit from regardless of what the supreme court rules on? step back and let the gay and lesbian actors of marriage equality take center stage. nobody should care about your ability to recognize the idea that “Jesus had two dads and he turned out okay” for example.
i don’t want allies who espouse the same fucked up rhetoric of GAY IS THE NEW BLACK. ONCE UPON A TIME INTERRACIAL MARRIAGES WERE ILLEGAL TOO.
Newsflash, the civil rights movement may be over but black liberation hasn’t come and despite being legalized interracial relationships are not necessarily given any better treatment in our society.
i don’t want allies whose understanding of LGBT issues begins and ends with marriage equality. if i can’t talk to you about HIV/AIDS, youth homelessness, queer and trans incarceration, cis-supremacy (or what some people call cissexism), survival for QTPOC, disability rights, labor rights, racism, and dismantling oppression from a decolonized praxis, just to name a few, then you’re essentially telling me the steam train runs out after marriage equality has been accomplished and back to your life you will go.
i don’t want straight allies who are incapable of being critical
and i really have no use for queer and trans folks who want to bleed red and not be critical
again i say, allyship without critical thought and critique is a type of allyship i fundamentally don’t want.
S.C. Lawmaker Comes Out After False, Salacious Blog Post
After a political blog attempted to out a Charleston County, S.C., lawmaker, she decided to take matters into her own hands. County Councilmember Colleen Condon announced to her colleagues that she is gay after local blog FitsNews published a post that alleges she left her husband on adulterous terms to be in a lesbian relationship.
“Yes, I’m gay,” Condon said. “I don’t think that’s a sex scandal in 2013.”
According to the Post and Courier newspaper, Condon was married for 15 years until she and her husband divorced amicably in 2011. The relationship she is in now was initiated after their divorce. County Council chairman Teddie Pryor dismissed her statement, saying it was unimportant and her “business.”
Our Transgender Daughter Is Just Another Girl: Tell Her School to Stop Discriminating
I haven’t seen this on tumblr at all yet, so I figured I might as well share it, at least for my followers’ sake, because I know a lot of you also fall under the GLBT umbrella or are allies who support GLBT rights.
It’s a petition I was alerted about regarding the discrimination of a six year-old transgender girl. Her school has suddenly decided to no longer recognize her as a girl, and has decided they will no longer let her use the girls bathroom.They now only allow her to use the boys room, the staff room, or the room in the nurse’s office which is used for sick kids.
As the petition says: she is not sick, she is not an adult, and she is not a boy. She is a girl, and she deserves to be treated with respect.
They need approximately 9.5K more signatures, so it would be totally rad if you could sign this or pass it on. c:
(Source: thatemperor)
Claudia Is Intersex, Let's Talk About It
Intersex people are born with a mix of sex characteristics – some traditionally considered male, and some considered female – in the same body. For example, I have a vagina and later developed breasts and hips, but I also have XY chromosomes, and had testes at birth. I’ve got some “male” traits and some “female” traits in the same body, so it’s not so easy to clearly assign me “male” or “female.” My own body is just one example; intersex isn’t a single category, and there are many different variations of intersex and, within each variation, a lot of diversity. Not all male or female bodies look and function the same, you know? Knowing that I’m intersex alone doesn’t really tell you much about me or my body.
Full article here
In current debates on marriage equality, it’s usually assumed intersex people will gain equal rights when gay marriage has been legalized or that they already have equal rights. Unfortunately though, neither is the case.
Terminology is of much importance here…
a very interesting article: http://bit.ly/Pphlf5
Testimony by YOU!
Video titled: “Uneasily Defined: Definition of Queer”
About:
For TESTIMONY’s 300th post, Coalition for Queer Youth wanted to start a conversation with our awesome tumblr community about something we spend a lot of time thinking about. Defining the word ‘queer’ and what being queer means to people who identify, has always been important for us personally and in our work and also ever changing and evolving!
We found this video of a few youth sharing their definitions of queer and WE WANT TO HEAR YOUR VOICES TOO! We know there can be as many different answers as there are people and that’s what makes this really, really cool.
REBLOG and tell us your definition of queer and/or what being queer means to YOU! After all, that’s what TESTIMONY is about :)
Anti-gay academic books to be banned in Albania
The Albanian office of the Commissioner for Protection from Discrimination (CPD) has announced that it will take of the market all academic texts which discriminate against the LGBT community and update any others where same-sex relations and identities are discussed.
The announcement (24 December) followed a complaint by The Pink Embassy/LGBT Pro Albania rights group complained to the CPD on this matter. The complaint submitted on 7 November 2012 also two texts used by the faculties of medicine and law in all Albanian universities which contained prejudice against the LGBT community.
In its decision, the CPD found that two text books were prejudiced and most be amended.
Click the header link above to read the full article.
