Welcome to “Spill the T”!
By: Martie Sirois
Tags: Transgender, LGBTQ, Newsletter, Race, Culture

As one measure to be more intentionally inclusive here at GftT, I have begun actively seeking more BIPOC (black, indigenous, and other people of color) who are trans, parents of trans youth, or public trans advocates to be writers for GftT. If you happen to know a BIPOC trans person, please send them our way! (You can even forward this email now!)

What is Spill the T?

Recently, Medium rolled out a new feature for publication called newsletters. This is basically like the “letters” we used to send, only now it’s easier for people to subscribe! They can sign up to receive our newsletter by clicking the box at the end of all our stories, or through this email.

Spill the T will also be featuring more exclusive content in the coming months (I tried this month, y’all. I tried. It’s coming, I promise!) If you’d like an idea of what kind of exclusive content I’m talking about, read more here.

Onto the name…

So, I decided to name this “Spill the T” as a play on words… I didn’t think I’d need to explain it, but my husband had no idea what “spill the tea” was. 😉So on that note, let me say that as the Mom of 3 teens, this is a phrase I’ve heard a lot over the past 3–4 years. Well, this, and other versions, like the kinda old “sipping tea” memes (a.k.a., “I’d offer my advice, but that’s none of my business” — see pic above), “what’s the tea?” “I’ve got some tea!” and “y’all want the latest tea?” Plus other variations. You get the idea.

In teen & queer communities, “tea” is a word for “gossip.” Like, good, juicy gossip. All the need-to-know stuff. That’s what I hope to showcase here in the coming months.

And of course, “T” is a play on “tea,” and it can stand for whatever that personally means to you! I intended it as the “T” in the LGBTQ acronym for transgender or trans. But maybe for you personally, T represents the word testosterone (as I have a few trans male friends who refer to it as just “T”), or, it could stand for testosterone blockers, or the ‘T’ for therapy in HRT. It could be the little “t” as we sometimes see in MtF, or FtM. It could stand for the trans non-binary pronoun they. It could stand for transition/transitioning, or top surgery — if that’s something you’re anxiously awaiting, or transsexual, if that’s how you identify. It’s a fluid letter!

Curation, stats, & technical stuff

I am overjoyed and so thankful that this publication has seen a small (but steady) growth since our inception about a year ago. We now have an audience of 410, up 38 new followers since May 20. (That’s an average of roughly one or more new followers per day, over 30 days. A steadier trend than we’ve had in the past, where we were gaining 1–2 new followers per week.)

I believe that “slow and steady” is the key to success in many areas of life, including writing.

Also, more of our writers are getting curated. (What is “curation” and why does it matter? Read here!) Just for comparison, looking at April and May this year:

In April we published 11 new stories. Of those 11, we had 3 that were selected for curation by Medium’s curation team. Those pieces were curated under either the LGBTQIA or poetry categories.

we had that were selected for curation by Medium’s curation team. Those pieces were curated under either the LGBTQIA or poetry categories. In May we published 13 new stories. Of those 13, we had 7 that were selected for curation by Medium’s curation team.

Not only were more of our stories curated, they were also curated under more topics than in any previous month. Throughout May we had GftT stories curated in the LGBTQIA; Equality; Justice; Style; Culture; and Media categories.

For those of you who like crunching numbers, you’ll maybe appreciate these screenshots.

This is today’s screenshot of our 30-day average number of unique visitors daily (to the GftT publication):

As you can see, we experienced a surge in views (and visitors) on May 27th:

Looking at minutes read over the 30-day period, May 27th also accounted for the day when we had the largest number of minutes spent reading GftT.

June 11 was the next highest day, for visitors, views, and minutes read:

But looking at total number of minutes read for a 30 day period, you see how it adds up — a total of 6,764 minutes that readers spent reading material on GftT.

Round up of latest content & highlights

We’ve gained several new writers over the past 2 months (and there are more to come! I’m still vetting emails and accounts for writer requests — a great “problem” to have!)

Click on the author’s name to visit their personal page; click on the title to read their story. (This may work better if you select “open email in browser).

Most recently, W.E. Massoud wrote about navigating your identity when you don’t have a community, in “When You Don’t Feel Cis or Trans Enough.”

Jas Martinez graced us with more of her powerful poetry about current events in “Freedom Has a Price.”

Alix Caprari, one of our new writers originally from Italy (now writing from The U.K.) navigated the question of how do I live my hair situation in the story “The Importance of Hair for Trans Women, and spoke of the momentary illusion “that someone is actually into me” in the story “Transitioning Through Online Dating.”

Kathryn Foss, whose been with us for a few months, talks about how “placing an individual’s grammatical discomfort over the emotional and mental health of another is not acceptable,” in the story “My Discomfort With Pronouns.”

Emma Elizabeth Halliday speaks of the unique struggle of having a brain that is hard-wired female, but your body develops male, in “How Does It Make Any Sense?”