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At Aston University, we are committed to achieving gender equality and ensuring that there is representation, progression and success for all. We are pleased to hold the Athena SWAN Silver Award as an institution - a reflection of the impact we have started to make towards gender equality - and we are working towards achieving Gold in 2024. Initiatives that have led to the Silver Award include our research into gender issues, leadership training for female staff (Advance HE’s Aurora programme), a women’s forum, and outreach activities to encourage school-aged girls into engineering. What is Athena SWAN? The Athena SWAN charter was originally set up to help women advance their careers in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEMM) higher education and research. The charter has since expanded its remit to support: - Academic roles in all disciplines, not just STEMM subjects - Gender equality work - this must be recognised, distributed appropriately, and rewarded - Negative cultures and behaviours tackled - including gender-based bullying and violence - Intersectional and structural inequalities - More active commitment to tackle these and a commitment embedded in proprieties - Inclusive of all gender identities - Caring responsibilities - to mitigate the negative and gendered impact of these - Professional and support roles. - You can read more about Athena SWAN on Advance HE website. Athena SWAN at Aston - Key Senior Staff University Athena SWAN Lead: Hannah Bartlett. Hannah supports all College and University gender equality initiatives, working closely with Jens Klots (EDI Data Officer) and Claire Richards (EDI Partner). She is experienced at analysing data, reflecting on trends, and designing interventions that are monitored via our Athena SWAN action plans. - Plan and Approach To be successful in the awards, Aston needs to demonstrate that all staff and students are engaging in the Principles of Athena SWAN. We have formed self-assessment teams for each School as well as for the University (this latter includes those not in a School). These teams are leading the analysis and review of the data and opinions that we gather, and will then implement actions and assess their benefits. If you would like to join one of these teams, or hear more information about the role or Athena SWAN, then please register your interest with the relevant person named below. We have formed self-assessment teams for each College as well as for the University (this latter includes those not in a College). These teams are leading the analysis and review of the data and opinions that we gather and will then implement actions and assess their benefits. If you would like to join one of these teams, or hear more information about the role or Athena SWAN, then please register your interest with the relevant person named below. - University (Preparing for Gold) Dr Hannah Bartlett - College of Engineering and Physical Sciences (Awarded Gold) Dr Mirjam Roeder - College of Health and Life Sciences (Awarded Bronze) Dr Olivia Hunt - Aston Medical School (Preparing for Bronze) Dr Afshan Ahmad - Aston Business School & Aston Law School (Awarded Bronze) Professor Helen Higson and Dr Lauren Traczykowski - School of Social Science and Humanities (Awarded Bronze) Aurélia Robert Athena SWAN aims to achieve a better gender balance in Higher Education Institutions. Society is 50:50 men and women but our staff numbers (academic, teaching and research and professional, technical and support) are not so well balanced – particularly in some schools. - Detailed data and statistics for at least three years, compared with national benchmarks - (For Silver) A focus on improvements since Bronze, especially through priority initiatives - (For Gold) A focus on improvements since Silver, especially through evidence of longitudinal improvement, and sector-leading gender equality practice and supporting others to improve - All staff and students engaged in developments and implementation of initiatives - Evaluation, with consultation and feedback - Demonstration of embedding of the Principles through leadership and communication sustainably - Actions that involve and assist all gender identities and intersectionalities - Consideration of gender equality as an integral part of what everyone does (similar to working and studying safely, ethically and legally) - Charter Principles In determining our priorities and interventions, we commit to: - adopting robust, transparent and accountable processes for gender equality work, including: a embedding diversity, equity and inclusion in our culture, decision-making and partnerships, and holding ourselves and others in our institution/institute/department/directorate accountable b undertaking evidence-based, transparent self-assessment processes to direct our priorities and interventions for gender equality, and evaluating our progress to inform our continuous development c ensuring that gender equality work is distributed appropriately, is recognised and properly rewarded. - addressing structural inequalities and social injustices that manifest as differential experiences and outcomes for staff and students - tackling behaviours and cultures that detract from the safety and collegiality of our work and study environments, including not tolerating gender-based violence, discrimination, bullying, harassment or exploitation - understanding and addressing intersectional inequalities - recognising that individuals can determine their own gender identity, and tackling the specific issues faced by trans and non-binary people - examining gendered occupational segregation, and elevating the status, voice and career opportunities of any identified under-valued and at-risk groups - mitigating the gendered impact of caring responsibilities and career breaks, and supporting flexibility and the maintenance of a healthy ‘whole life balance’ - mitigating the gendered impact of short-term and casual contracts for staff seeking sustainable careers. For the University - Reduced impact of staff turnover - Attraction and retention of good staff - More stimulating and motivated environment - More engaged and effective employees - Grant successes: Research Councils UK states in its ‘Statement of Expectations for Equality and Diversity’, “RCUK expects that equality and diversity therefore is embedded at all levels and in all aspects of normal research practice… RCUK will reserve the right to introduce more formal accreditation requirements for grant funding should significant improvement not be evidenced.’’ REF 2021 guidance outlines, “evidence for supporting equality and diversity… recommendation that the evidence included participation in schemes such as Athena SWAN” - Improved recruitment, induction, career development and progression pathways - Improved career satisfaction and motivation - Recognition of personal circumstances and aspirations - Greater flexibility in working environment - Knowledge of and fairness in promotion processes - Greater communication, understanding and acceptance of roles and responsibilities. - Charter Principles The Athena SWAN Charter is based on ten key principles. By being a member of Athena SWAN, the University is committing to a progressive Charter, adopting these principles within their policies, practices, action plans and culture. - We acknowledge that academia cannot reach its full potential unless it can benefit from the talents of all. - We commit to advancing gender equality in academia, in particular addressing the loss of women across the career pipeline and the absence of women from senior academic, professional and support roles. - We commit to addressing unequal gender representation across academic disciplines and professional and support functions. In this we recognise disciplinary differences including: - The relative underrepresentation of women in senior roles in arts, humanities, social sciences, business and law (AHSSBL). - The particularly high loss rate of women in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine (STEMM). - We commit to tackling the gender pay gap. - We commit to removing the obstacles faced by women, in particular, at major points of career development and progression including the transition from PhD into a sustainable academic career. - We commit to addressing the negative consequences of using short-term contracts for the retention and progression of staff in academia, particularly women. - We commit to tackling the discriminatory treatment often experienced by trans people. - We acknowledge that advancing gender equality demands commitment and action from all levels of the organisation and in particular active leadership from those in senior roles. - We commit to making and mainstreaming sustainable structural and cultural changes to advance gender equality, recognising that initiatives and actions that support individuals alone will not sufficiently advance equality. - All individuals have identities shaped by several different factors. We commit to considering the intersection of gender and other factors wherever possible. - Examples of Good Practice - Mentoring/coaching for staff and students - Inspiring women @Aston - Research into gender issues (Prof Gina Rippon, Judith Baxter, Prof Richard Crisp, Prof Mark Hart, Carol Marley, Crissie Rodgers, Jane Andrews, Pam Lowe) - Recognition and awards, internal and external (eg. Aston Excellence Awards) - Encourage schoolgirls into engineering careers - Equality and Diversity Forum - Aston University Women’s Forum - Aston Women in Business Society - Annual WES student conference on campus - Aston Book Club - Leadership Foundation National Aurora Programme - Aston Women’s Leadership Development Programme - Early Career Research Forum - Every researcher counts (VITAE) - Equality Policy - Comprehensive induction and re-induction after career breaks - Flexible working/career breaks - Maternity cover for teaching and research - Expanded nursery - Careers and placements advice for students and graduates - Disability network - LGBT network - Student Union - Women returners career breaks - Menopause Focus Group - Menopause Mentors For details on any of these initiatives, please contact Hannah Bartlett. - Support for Parents The Parents & Carers Staff Network was set up by and for colleagues from both academic and professional services to support colleagues through the work-life balance, challenges and complexities of parenting and caring. We run regular, informal and friendly virtual sessions and organise a yearly, in-person networking event with specially selected guest speakers. - Group I: 0-4 yrs. old children - Group II: 5-11 yrs. old children - Group III: 12+ yrs. old / teenagers - Group IV: Single Parents - Group V: Carers *looking after a family member, partner or friend who needs help because of their illness, frailty, disability, a mental health problem or an addiction and cannot cope without their support The network is open to all staff members and PhD students. If you have any queries about the network or you would like to join us, please contact us.

LGBT glossy Out has named British singer Sam Smith as its Out100 “Evolution of the Year.” Smith appears on the magazine's annual Out100 cover wearing a dramatic red eye shadow outlined in black, a red overcoat, and a black purse. Smith came out non-binary in March and changed their pronouns to they/them in September. “I feel happier and more comfortable within myself when I'm wearing more feminine clothes, which I'm experimenting with more and more,” Smith told the magazine. “In changing my pronouns, I felt incredible freedom. It's like a brick was lifted off my chest, and with that freedom comes another kind of pain. Feeling this free in our skin is answered with abuse. And that’s really hard. For the last year and a half, I’ve thought about changing my pronouns. I’ve always hid behind my 'he, him' pronouns because I was too scared. I thought living a life playing pretend would be less painful than being authentic. But I’d rather be myself, even if it means being abused for it. I’d rather get all this shit for being myself than lie to myself. That’s not a way to live.” Smith added that they've trained their voice to be genderless. “If I find a piece of music I love, I wear it like it's a dress,” they said.

Every year during Ramadan, 22-year-old Nour and her family, who are Canadian Shia Muslims living in the Greater Toronto Area, send trays of Iftar to their Muslim neighbours and engage in communal food sharing. As over one million Muslims across Canada celebrate their second Ramadan in self-isolation during the pandemic, circumstances have forced people like Nour to revise their traditions, including Iftar. This year, limited by COVID-19 restrictions, Nour’s family will be dropping off trays of food to the entire neighbourhood—non-Muslims included—with a note explaining the holy month, their tradition, and the classic meals. The holy month of Ramadan is ushered in by the new moon, which introduces the ninth month in the Islamic calendar. It was during this month that the Islamic religion was born in 7th-century Saudi Arabia. As the most spiritual month of the year begins, many Muslims honour its significance by participating in a dry fast every day from dawn to dusk. Fasting plays a role in teaching patience, compassion, and gratitude. It also reminds people about those experiencing poverty and hunger. When the sun sets during Ramadan, Muslims typically congregate to break fast together and eat Iftar. For many Muslims, in addition to a glorious feast, Iftar includes praying, recalling memories, and connecting with their community. Hours are spent around dinner tables, on couches, in Masjids, or even outdoors, as communities talk and pray over food while growing closer to those around them and Allah. The community aspect of Iftar is a crucial part of Ramadan for many Muslims. Connecting to her Muslim neighbours and community members wasn’t the only difficulty Nour faced during a Ramadan in quarantine. For Toronto Muslims with intersectional identities like Nour, who is bisexual, it can be especially challenging to feel a sense of community. In 2016, Imam El-Farouk Khaki and his husband, Troy Jackson, co-founded Toronto’s first LGBTQ-friendly masjid, Unity Mosque. The masjid was the first to allow queer and trans Muslims to attend prayers without hiding their sexual or gender identities. Five years after its opening, this queer-inclusive masjid nestled in the heart of downtown Toronto is still an anomaly in the city. For queer Muslims hoping to connect with their faith and community this Ramadan, the options for safe spaces are limited, an issue exacerbated by the pandemic. With these limited options, queer Muslims often need to create their own safe spaces. This Ramadan, community members and grassroots organizations are dedicating their efforts to creating inclusive celebrations for queer Muslims. From veganizing traditional meals to hosting virtual community meditation circles, here’s how queer Muslims are finding joy and celebration during their second Ramadan indoors. Organizing Iftar drop-offs The Queer Muslim Network Toronto is a grassroots organization that shares lived experiences and art from queer Muslims in the GTA. Summeiya Yehya Khamissa, a fourth-year York University student, founded the organization in Oct. 2020. Khamissa is a Muslim genderfluid lesbian. They’re currently completing an undergraduate degree in Children, Childhood and Youth Studies at York and hope to achieve a Master’s degree in research on queer Muslim youth in Toronto. In an interview with The Pigeon, Khamissa described The Queer Muslim Network Toronto as their “heart and soul.” Growing up in a community that often rejected people because of their identities taught Khamissa how crucial community support is. “I think a lot of that love [comes from] our collective experience of conditional love within our families and the mainstream Muslim community,” they said. “This has taught us what rejection and isolation feels like and has built the basis for unconditional community support and love.” Khamissa said their sadness at the thought of spending another Ramadan alone inspired them to start the community-based collective—to show other queer Muslims in Toronto that there are people nearby who understand their struggles and experiences. For most Muslims, collective food sharing and community gatherings are integral to the month’s festivities. Members of the community who have strained connections to their culture and family, like many LGBTQ2S+ Muslims, often don’t have access to traditional meals or social Iftars. This year, Khamissa’s organization collaborated with Queering Ramadan to host a queer Iftar for Ramadan on April 25. The groups set up an Iftar drop-off program to help the community feel connected for their second Ramadan in quarantine. Individuals identifying as LGBTQ2S+ and Muslim—regardless of whether they’re fasting, are “out,” or have a fixed address—were invited. Together, the organizations raised over $1,000 to provide meals for queer Muslims in the GTA. The money will service queer and trans Muslims who may be fasting alone, missing home-cooked meals, or living with unsupportive families, as well as new Muslims who have yet to experience the communal nature of Ramadan because of COVID-19. The Queer Muslim Network Toronto’s Instagram page will also be highlighting queer individuals throughout the month of Ramadan, showing how community members are making Ramadan their own. “I really hope that will inspire other people to realize that there are so many other ways to do Ramadan, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be the ways that we were taught as kids,” Khamissa said. Khamissa shared some ways they plan to celebrate Ramadan this year. They’re vegan and have recently been learning to veganize the classic Ramadan dishes that belonged to their family for generations. Khamissa said this helps them redefine what Ramadan means to them. “Although I want to keep aspects of my identity, I understand that I need to alter some things for the life that I live,” they said. “This has been a really beautiful way to connect to my roots and figure out how I’m going to pass down my identity to those who come after me—as the radical queer brown aunty I’m destined to be.” Celebrating family traditions—with a twist In addition to family traditions, Nour shared how she’s staying connected to her community and faith this month with The Pigeon. “For me, Ramadan and Muharram are the two times I feel intensely related and wanting to be a part of my community,” she said. “Those are the two months of the year that I go to Mosque and am around my community, so not having that for the past two years has been interesting.” She said she wants to spend this Ramadan figuring out her spirituality and doing things that make her feel closer to God and faith again. “Something I’m doing this year is making care packages to give out to people who are experiencing houselessness,” Nour said. “I feel like Ramadan is a great time to do that [because] it’s a month for kindness and giving back.” She’ll fill the care packages with various essentials like meals, toiletries, menstrual products, and protective face masks. Nour added she’s privileged enough to have access to these items, and the act of donating them helps her be mindful. Helping unhoused people can be a common tradition for many Muslims. Their fasts only happen during daylight, but hunger doesn’t end at Maghrib for those without access to reliable meals. For the last year and a half, Nour said she’s also developed a virtual community made up of other queer Muslims. She’s attended queer Muslim virtual events hosted by Faizan Imaan’s LGBTQI Muslim Organization and Reconstructed Magazine and plans to continue tuning in during Ramadan. Nour explained meeting like-minded people through these virtual spaces was comforting. “There are so many times that you feel unwelcome in your communities. You just need someone who really understands it,” she said. “We’re all in isolation, given the pandemic, so it’s really nice to know that there is a place for me, there are people I can turn to, and this community will always welcome me no matter what.” Learning to be appreciated and hold space Leya Precious Thunder Warrior is a non-binary Sufi Muslim whose roots are in Mesopotamian Syria and Iraq, and Old Norse and Slavic pagan traditions. They were gifted the medicine name Precious Thunder Warrior by their curandero, a traditional native healer. “I grew up in a mixed-race household. My mother was American, and I was never really invited to fast as a child,” they told The Pigeon. “As I learned more about spirituality, I learned that [what] felt most important to me was to celebrate Ramadan, to be fasting and to use that as time to profoundly listen to my body.” This Ramadan, they are fasting and working on incorporating more prayers into their celebrations. They plan on spending time with family and having COVID-friendly Iftars. “I make sure that I call my uncle every single Iftar and we break the fast together,” Leya said. For their community, Leya wants to provide coached meditation circles and whirling meditation this month. Sufi Muslims often whirl as a form of prayer requiring a faithful spin until someone reaches religious ecstasy. This year, Leya’s meditation and whirling events are accessible through Zoom and Eventbrite. The events will include a moment for attendees to break fast and have a virtual Iftar before continuing the meditation. “I am inviting anyone who comes to a safe space to share what they need to,” Leya said. “[You can] be as queer, or as Black, or as brown, or as disabled as you are and just exist and be appreciated and hold space.” Finding your way back to faith Ali Khan, a 23-year-old University of Toronto student and journalist, is spending his first Ramadan with his family in four years. While at school, Khan got used to praying and making dua before Iftar alone. Now, he’s adapting to celebrating with his family again. “I’m in a different place with my faith than my family is,” Khan said. “I’m relatively new to my own queerness—I only realized I was bi a year ago. Since then, it has caused me to rethink my relationship with Islam.” Khan said coming into his sexuality and identity urged him to look into more progressive forms of Islam. He searched for this type of faith after growing up in an “old-fashioned” household where he rarely saw progression in the community around him. “What makes this Ramadan different is that I don’t actually know what progressive Islam really looks like,” he explained. “What I’ve planned is to do some more reading, do some more learning into what progressive Islam looks like, and try to bring this year’s spiritual connection to a place of self-acceptance.” He explained that after connecting with his queerness, he lost his connection to God. Now, he wants to spend Ramadan rebuilding and strengthening that connection once again. “Queer Muslims are Muslim too,” he said. “The only difference is that Muslims who are openly queer or trans […] may have fewer opportunities to be welcomed into Muslim communities.” Khan believes people should internalize the notion of self-acceptance to help the overall community. “Unapologetically being yourself and setting an example for other people who might still be in the closet or worried about the reprisals of coming out […] are deeply meaningful celebrations of the self.” When asked how non-queer Muslims can better support and celebrate queer Muslims this Ramadan, Khamissa mentioned the month’s charitable nature. “We need to realize that as such an under-resourced group, the only people we have are each other,” they said. “If we’re letting the other people fall through the cracks, we’re not changing anything. If we’re fighting for liberation for queer Muslims, or we’re only fighting for South Asian and Arab Muslims, or able-bodied Muslims, nothing is ever going to happen.” Khamissa added it’s vital to acknowledge intersectionality in Muslim communities, too. “The general Muslim population should remember those folks in the community that truly need the help—Black queer Muslims, Black trans Muslims, [and] other racialized trans Muslims,” Khamissa said. They added that because of their goal to prioritize queer Muslim youth in Toronto, Khamissa wants to see more programs for queer Muslims in Muslim spaces. “What I think would be more powerful than making our own centres would be Masjids right now that are already existing, creating their own programs [for queer youth].” Leya Precious Thunder Warrior spoke about the need to exist together. They think inclusive Masjids and communities are integral. “Creating Mosques and families and communities that are welcoming of their queer children, cousins, aunts and uncles [is vital], they said. “We are such a family-oriented community.” According to Leya, non-queer Muslims can show their support by understanding their queer Muslim peers’ intersectional hardships. “There is a lot to be reckoned with and understood by non-queer Muslims who want to be a part of this space of peace and acceptance,” they said. “I ask for those who are Muslim to notice themselves and their own stories and what’s difficult and maybe taxing about being a Muslim,” they explained. “Acknowledge that whatever you struggle with will be a lot harder for queer Muslims.” With online celebrations, Iftar drop-offs, and efforts to stay connected during a pandemic, the queer Muslim community has proven to be tightly-knit—the way it should be during Ramadan. The joy queer Muslims are feeling this month needs to be preserved even when Ramadan isn’t happening. Queer Muslims have found community during Ramadan, but it’s important to remember that this solidarity doesn’t always last year-round. Moving forward, Nour hopes to see more recognition from non-queer Muslims in her community. She said local Masjids need to follow the footsteps of Unity Mosque, and Muslims need to bring online representation to a physical setting. She added that community members—queer or non-queer—need to support each other as Muslims and human beings above everything else. “Find a way to not only accept us but to recognize that we are still a part of the Muslim community [and] we always have been,” Nour said. “Find ways to make your community safer and more inclusive.”

In the past few years, the number of terms used to identify gender has grown. It’s becoming more common for people to be open about their gender expression and how they would like to be addressed. We are familiar with the pronouns he/him and she/her, which most cisgendered males and females would go by. What about the people who identify as non-binary and don’t go by either terms? The gender neutral pronoun ‘they’ was recently added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. With the definition, “Used to refer to a single person whose gender identity is non-binary.” Non-binary individuals now have their preferred pronouns validated. People who are very fervent with their grammar might find this shocking coming from America’s oldest dictionary. Times are changing and people are more accepting of one another in this generation. It’s all about respecting one another’s identity. “The gender community is really pushing using proper pronouns and even gender neutral pronouns as the transgender and nonbinary community come out more to the forefront,” Executive Director of Adirondack North Country Gender Alliance Kelly Metzgar said. “We are demanding that these changes and our lexicon be made in referring to ourselves and others.” According to the report of the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, non-binary individuals make up 25-35% or more of transgender populations. The vocabulary in conversations about gender identity is constantly changing. Some people may not be used to different gender neutral terms yet but they will continue to appear in literature. No one should assume someone’s pronouns. It’s considerate to ask. Some individuals may have gone by other pronouns before but now they prefer they/them. Singer-songwriter Sam Smith, was proud to announce on Twitter that their gender pronouns are now they/them. We should always be accepting of one another and treat people with the same respect you would want from them. When introducing yourself to others you might say your name and your preferred pronouns, that way the other person feels comfortable with sharing theirs as well. Even email signatures now commonly include preferred pronouns. However, it’s common for people to not know how to address someone and they may accidentally be misgendering. “It’s really not pleasant to the person who is being misgendered especially when you are trying to live your authentic life and present as you want to be presenting,” Metzgar said. In fact, if someone does purposely use the wrong pronouns and proceeds to behave in that manner, it can be a form of sexual harassment. Learning people’s preferred pronouns can take time and it’s OK to make mistakes as long as you’re correcting them. The language and terms can be confusing but Metzgar puts it as “reorienting our thought process.” International Pronouns day is on October 16 so share your preferred pronouns with the world. When professors send out emails to their students before the start of a semester, they might include their pronouns and in return ask for yours.

When Sasha was in college, she did what a lot of young women her age do: she Googled which birth control would work for her. But after some research, the answer seemed to be: none of them. Almost every method had drawbacks: increased risk of irregular bleeding, depression, menstrual cramps, or pelvic infections. When Sasha began her first sexual relationship, she ended up temporarily taking hormonal birth control pills. But she was so nervous about those failing that she always used condoms as backup. (The Daily Beast is using a pseudonym at Sasha’s request.) All the drama made Sasha wonder if she even wanted to have children at all. “I realized that the things I had been looking forward to about having kids were almost exclusively limited to the idea of seeing a future significant other being happy to become a father,” she said. But when it came to her own feelings, Sasha “dreaded almost every other aspect of being a parent.” She didn’t want to experience pregnancy, the trauma of childbirth, the financial burden of raising a little one. And she worried how being a parent would “directly inhibit [her] ability to achieve other goals in life.” Sasha spent time volunteering with children to see if she’d change her mind. It only solidified her feelings. “I didn’t dislike the kids, [but] I just wasn’t comfortable there,” she said. “I realized that parenting a young kid would just not be for me.” She began researching permanent contraception in the form of a sterilization procedure. Sasha made the decision to not have sex until she could afford the surgery. To this day, she hasn’t been able to get one. So Sasha, who is now 25 and lives in Minneapolis, hasn’t had sex since her sophomore year of college. “I feel as though I’ve had to put part of my life on hold,” Sasha said. “Even if I were to meet someone today who was perfect for me and I wanted to be in a serious relationship with them, I would have to wait until we could move forward with that part of our relationship.” Part of the problem, Sasha and others say, is how difficult it can be for young women and non-binary people to convince doctors they will not “regret” opting into a procedure that leaves them unable to have children for the rest of their lives. Women in the United States must be 21 to have their sterilizations covered by Medicaid or the Indian Health Service. Those with private insurance do not have that age restriction. One study cited by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) reported that around 20 percent of women who get the procedure before they are 30 feel “regretful” afterwards. That risk of regret drops down to 6 percent for women who are sterilized after age 30. Still, ACOG lists sterilization as the most common form of contraception for married couples, with 18.6 percent of American women aged 15-49 getting permanent contraception. To find encouragement, Sasha has trolled the r/Childfree subreddit, where users provide support to like-minded internet friends who also don’t want to become parents. The subreddit has a pinned Google Doc where users can share the names and contact information for doctors who have helped them get the procedure and spoke to them in a respectful, judgement-free manner. Sasha recently saw a health-care provider for a different issue and mentioned that she was planning on having her tubes tied. To her “surprise,” the doctor was very supportive “right from the get-go.” Though this specific practitioner is not a surgeon, she plans to refer Sasha to the right doctor for the procedure. “She suggested that I write a letter about why I don’t want children and why I want the procedure, as this may help convince doctors who may be concerned about performing permanent sterilization on a person my age,” Sasha said. “She also warned me of a doctor who requires his patients to see a psychologist and have them sign off on the procedure before he will agree to perform it. I suspect that doctor does not require his patients to have a psychologist sign off on their decision to have children, which arguably has a far greater impact on someone’s life than not having them. This policy sends the horrible message that the decision to not have children is most likely the result of a mental illness.” Nisha Verma, MD, the Darney-Landy Fellow at ACOG and a complex family planning specialist, told The Daily Beast that, “There is still some paternalism where there’s a provider who won’t do permanent contraception or tubal ligations for younger people or those who haven’t had kids. I’ve seen some people who have been turned away from other doctors. But many of us have intentionally shifted from that and are counseling patients instead of telling them what to do. We talk about the potential regret and that this is permanent, but feel that it’s important to provide permanent contraception to people who feel that this is something they really want, whether they’re 18, 21, or relatively ‘young’ people.” Dr. Verma added that it’s normal to see patients who feel like they have to “prove that they deserve” permanent contraception. “I don’t want them to feel like that at all,” Dr. Verma said. “I preface the conversion by saying, I’m here to honor your decision whatever that is, I just want to have a conversation about all of the options.” Kristy MacLennan, a psychology honors student from Perth, Western Australia, recently completed a research study and thesis on the lived experiences of childfree women who have been refused sterilization surgery by doctors. She spoke with 11 people for this project. Many participants said they developed tokophobia, or the fear of being pregnant, because of how difficult it was to get their procedures done. This led some to avoid sex completely. “The situation ended up splitting me and my partner at that point up, just because I kind of went through a stage after that where I was just like, ‘I don't want to have sex at all if this is going to be the outcome,’” one woman told MacLennan. Another newlywed said, “For the first almost year of our marriage, living together and like, our intimate life was almost non-existent because I was so terrified.” Even when Sasha gets her sterilization procedure completed, she suspects she’ll still have trouble feeling comfortable being intimate with others. “I’ve been thinking about this for so long now that I suspect even after I do have the surgery, it will probably be a while before I can get over the fear and the idea that I could get pregnant any time I have sex.” Matt, an 18-year-old college student from Central Florida, has never had sex—and he doesn’t plan to until he’s had a vasectomy. “It’s cooled down the [number of people] who I can reasonably go out with,” he said. “I haven’t dated anyone. I went on one date, but the issue is she said she wanted five children. So when I told her that I don’t want kids, we just became friends.” He once told his family pediatrician that he wanted a vasectomy, and the doctor told him that he would change his mind eventually. In response to answering people who ask why he doesn’t want children, Matt has created a list of reasons on his phone’s Notes app. “Well for one, there’s the whole climate thing,” he said. “The world going down the drain is a good way to put it. There’s overpopulation and the financial burden.” Other reasons are more mundane: “I like getting my sleep and I’m very sluggish if I don’t get a whole lot of it, there’s annoying stuff that small children do, plus having to plan vacations with children is difficult, and I don’t want to hold up any lines because my kid is doing something that’s getting in the way of anyone.” Lynn, a 32-year-old woman from the Shetland Islands, off Scotland, who works as a farmer and uses both she/they pronouns, has always known she didn’t want to be a mother. “As a 3 or 5-year-old, I’d get into a bad mood and stop playing if I was made to be a mom to our dolls,” she said. “I wanted to be the dad, out doing work and not left stuck with the baby.” In her early twenties, Lynn went to a nurse to discuss how she could improve her “hellish” and “agonizing” periods that left her taking days off of work to lie in bed in crippling pain. When she mentioned getting a hysterectomy, the nurse told her to quit working “men’s jobs,” and to find work as a receptionist or in a school. That experience discouraged Lynn, and she’s never gone through with the procedure. Lynn did have sex with a partner she dated in her twenties, and she always wanted to use condoms. He didn’t like to use them. “I had said to my boyfriend the first conversation that we ever had that I was not a marriage person and someone who didn’t want children and he was fine with that... until his actions and words proved otherwise a few months into the relationship.” Lynn alleges that her former partner would sexually assault her while she slept so he did not have to use condoms. This led to a pregnancy scare that left Lynn unwilling to have penetrative sex ever again. “I know that even 99.9999% effective pregnancy prevention wasn’t good enough for me,” she said. Lynn broke up with her partner, but later got pregnant as the result of a different rape. She got an abortion, but felt so traumatized by the encounters that she swore off sex, and men, for good. While the decision to not have children—and, for some, therefore sex—remains deeply personal to every individual, there is evidence to suggest the choice falls in line with declining birth rates in the United States. Melissa S. Kearney, a professor of economics at the University of Maryland, recently co-authored a report on the “The Puzzling Fall of Birth Rates Since the Great Recession.” The paper found that between 1980 and 2007, US birth rates “generally fluctuated within a narrow range of roughly 65 to 70 births per 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44.” But since 2007, the numbers have “plummeted, reaching 55.8 in 2020, about a 20 percent decline over 13 years.” This reduction impacts women “across many demographic subgroups,” meaning there’s no one type of woman who’s having less children. Women with and without college degrees, teens, and women of differing races are contributing to the steep drop-off in birth rates. “We tentatively speculate that women who were raised in the 1990s and 2000s have ‘shifted priorities,’ as compared to the previous cohorts of women who grew up in earlier decades,” Kearney told The Daily Beast. “The different life decisions of these more recent cohorts of women with regard to childbearing could reflect changes in preferences for having children, aspirations for life including career and leisure goals, and parenting norms. Specifically, the fact that parenting is a much more intensive activity than in previous decades.” Kearney added, “Anecdotally, one hears some young women refer to the climate crisis as a potential factor affecting their decision making, but I don't know if that is a driving force for these women or how widespread that sentiment is.” Haidong Wang, an associate professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington who specializes in demography and economics, said that it will take a few years to know for certain how the pandemic impacted birth rates. “But if you follow cohorts of women who were born in 1950, 1960, 1970, and on, you will see a steady decline in their fertility,” Wang said. “Even if COVID hadn’t happened, there are no reasons to believe that the fertility rate would increase.” All of the people who spoke to The Daily Beast about their decision to remain abstinent until they can get sterilized felt like they would not regret their decision as they got older. “If anyone asks me that, I just say, ‘Well, I won’t change my mind,’ and I leave it at that,” one 17-year-old from Arkansas who plans to get the procedure done when she’s 21, said. “If they try to continue and argue with me, I just blow them off.” “Almost no one asks you if you think you might change your mind...they just tell you that you will,” Sasha said. “I have thought it through very well and my mind has not changed for seven years. If I am someone who as a person radically changed, then I could adopt. If they are still distraught, I point out that IVF would still work, too.” Most of the women who spoke to The Daily Beast said that they were tired of being second-guessed as if their decision to not have children were irresponsible. To them, it’s the opposite—they feel it’s quite responsible, actually, to not complicate a new life by exposing it to their own problems. “I’m not some poor, loveless, hate-filled being,” Lynn said. “I knew from a young age that people are bad to each other, and that if I could prevent anyone from suffering the badness of other people, I would prevent it,” Lynn said. “And that means not bringing another person into the world.”

News from the LGBTQ Center New Safe Zone Curriculum; Lunch and Learn Sessions The LGBTQ Center is introducing a new Safe Zone curriculum this fall and in- vites you to register for an upcoming workshop. The Safe Zone program intro- duces participants to LGBTQ terminology and the experiences of LGBTQ individ- uals at WFU and prepares participants to take action steps towards creating a more inclusive environment for LGBTQ people. After participating in the work- shop, participants are invited to become members of our Safe Zone network on If you are interested in attending a workshop, please register with the PDC. Safe Zone workshops are excellent professional development opportunities, and we invite departments and units to schedule workshops specifically for their area. Please contact email@example.com to request a workshop. In addition to the new curriculum, the LGBTQ Center is also introducing month- ly Safe Zone Lunch and Learn sessions for individuals who have been through the workshop and are interested in learning more about specific topics. Each session is from 12:00 - 1:00 pm; participants are invited to bring their lunch, and the LGBTQ Center will provide dessert. The dates and topics are as follows: September 14: Getting to Know the In's and Out's of the New LGBTQ Center October 19: LGBTQ History at WFU November 16: Supporting Non-Binary Trans Folks Please contact the LGBTQ Center at firstname.lastname@example.org with questions regarding the Safe Zone program or to request a workshop for your department or unit The Pro Humanitate Institute is excited to announce several updates in the Academic Programs area. The purpose of the Academic Programs & Community Engaged Research area of the Pro Humanitate Institute is to ethically promote, assess, and sustain community engaged teaching, research, and scholarship through partnership cultivation, course development and logisti- cal support, program design, and research support. Faculty who are interested in growing the depth of their com- munity engaged teaching, research, and/or scholarship are invit- ed to apply to be ACE Fellows here by September 23rd. The ACE Advisory Council will review the applications along with member(s) of the Boston Thurmond Neighborhood Associa- tion. ACE Fellows receive additional professional development funding to support their community engaged work as well as opportunities to collaborate with community partners and other faculty who are doing related work. Any faculty member can request funding from PHI through ACE Mini-Grants ACE mini- grants provide small scale funding that enables faculty to incor- porate deeper connections with community in their work. Applications for funding are collected and responded to on a rolling basis. Any funding requests over $1,000 are approved by the ACE Advisory Council. The application for funding is now live. The application also includes guidance on what we can and cannot fund. Finally, faculty who are interested in having their community engaged course designated as an ACE course should contact Shelley Sizemore or Alessandra Von Burg. This new course designation offers a way for students and other mem- bers of the campus community to identify community engaged courses across the college. PHI will highlight these courses and help to advertise them each semester to prospective students. ACE designated courses are reviewed by the ACE faculty Adviso- ry Council chaired by Alessandra Von Burg. Wake Forest Law has launched a fully online, part-time Master of Studies in Law (MSL) degree program for working professionals who want a better understanding of the law with 30 students starting in August and applications being accepted for a January start. The Pro Bono Project is the recipient of the American Bar Association (ABA) Day of Service Award from the Law Student Division thanks in part to Wake Forest Law students’ dedication to pro bono legal services, especially during the ABA’s Pro Bono Week in October 2015. Wake Forest Law’s LL.M. degree program was featured in the summer issue of the International Jurist as one of the best LL.M. programs in the U.S. in terms of law school experience. Since 1991, for the past 25 years, the Elder Law Clinic has provided free legal services to the community in Forsyth and surrounding coun- ties. Each semester, a new group of students joins the Elder Law Clinic to provide free legal assistance to moderate income seniors. The school conferred hoods on the first two JD/MDiv dual degree graduates, Ashley Escoe of Arnoldsville, Georgia, and Marie Nkonge of Greensboro, North Carolina, and the first JD/MaSUS dual degree graduate, Nicholas Griffin of Fox Island, Washington. For the first time in the history of Wake Forest Law, JD students have the opportunity to spend a semester studying at a university in China. Carson Smith (JD ’16) is the first Wake Forest Law student to be recognized by The National Jurist as Law Student of the Year. He is one of five students recognized from law schools across the nation in the current issue of the magazine. Wake Forest Law’s new Two-Year JD for International Lawyers is featured in the international LLM Guide here.

- Location: London, E1W 3HW - Salary: £15 per hour planning, preparation £25 per hour delivery - Hours: Group preparation and delivery. Hours (largely evenings and weekends) to be negotiated by mutual agreement with the organisation (zero-hours contract), plus 2-4 hours per month of team meetings, supervision and line management - Location: Based Shadwell/Wapping, E1 & other London based venues - Contract: Two year contract with possible extension or renewal subject to funding - Responsible to: Groupwork Coordinator - Closing Date: 12pm on Monday 16th December 2019 An estimated 12,000 men are raped every year and 76,000 sexually abused or assaulted. Yet just 4% of men will tell someone. Of those who do, it takes on average 26 years to do so. SurvivorsUK provides specialist support to men and boys, trans and non-binary people who have been raped, sexually assaulted or abused. Our aim is to help any man, boy or gender non-confirming person to have the confidence to tell someone what’s happened to them and to know that it’s OK to seek help. When they do, we want to ensure they have access to the right support so they can deal with the impact of their experiences of criminal harm. We provide emotional support, information and signposting to survivors and anyone worried about someone they know, through a national website and webchat service (open till 9pm most evenings). Last year, 2,600 people contacted us via our webchat services and social media. In London, we are the only organisation providing specialist services for men and boys, including individual counselling and therapeutic groupwork, available till 9pm six days a week. Across London, we provide the capital’s only Independent Sexual Advisor (ISVA) Service that helps men and boys through the criminal justice system. ABOUT THE ROLE Groupwork+ is an exciting and challenging project at SurvivorsUK. It builds on the success of our Groupwork pilot to meet the needs of more men, across a wider area of London, reaching more diverse communities. Groupwork+ helps men with complex and high support needs, including men for whom generic services don’t work. You will need to be a highly skilled groupwork facilitator with experience of dealing with extremely vulnerable clients, willing to work flexibly and on your own initiative. Importantly, you will be a compassionate person able to blend therapeutic work with practical support and care. This post is subject to an enhanced DBS Clearance. To apply, please complete the applicaton form and email it to [email protected] or by post to SurvivorsUK, 11 Sovereign Close, London E1W 3HW to arrive by the closing date and time. Interviews to be held between 9am-1pm, Friday 20th December 2019.

Video playlists about Transgender Talks about Transgender See all talks on Transgender Exclusive articles about Transgender It’s time for everyone to see trans and non-binary people and support them — here’s how The next time you see something that makes you uncomfortable in public or online, remember the silence that trans and non-binary victims can hear when no one comes to support them. "Stand up, step in and be by our side," says author Jamie Windust. Posted Mar 2021 Sports are designed around men — and that needs to change Women are some of our highest achieving athletes, but whether they’re out winning titles or just hitting the gym on a regular day, the sports world is still not taking them seriously enough. Meet two women trying to level the playing field. Posted Mar 2020 See all articles on Transgender How to raise kids without rigid gender stereotypes We call young people who step outside gender lines “brave.” But if adults truly want to support them, we need to be willing to show some courage and embrace some discomfort, say Michele Yulo and Audrey Mason-Hyde. Posted Jun 2019

Charlotte and the Music Maker 15 January 2023 Adult: $35 to $40 Charlotte plays the trumpet on a cardboard tube, the xylophone with two knitting needles, and the drums on anything that bangs. Her musical talents are not appreciated at home, so she sets off into the wide world, where the Music Maker comes to her rescue. Families will enjoy this magical journey with Platypus Theatre exploring the sounds and colours of the instruments and the exciting possibilities that music has to offer. Come early for the Instrument Discovery Zoo at 2PM. Jennifer Tung appears with the Calgary Phil as a member of Tapestry Opera's Women in Musical Leadership, a program designed to collectively develop the next generation of female and non-binary conductors and music directors in Canada. Please note this concert has no intermission. JENNIFER TUNG conductor PLATYPUS THEATRE ensemble CALGARY PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA

English Teacher at Shenandoah High School Coast 2 Coast oversized load movers with pilot car, pole car & route survey solutions I adore to have enjoyable and get drunk Mommy of 2 who LOVE Alabama football. Country Girl 100% Mommy to a beautiful lil girl, my mini me, Layla Theresa Brown Love Jesus ⛪️ and my 3 awesome, beautiful kids Beautycounter is a clean living lifestyle brand with a mission to get safe products into the hands of everyone. 714 like this We Create World-Class Software Experience มาร่วมเติมเต็มการทำงานในโลก Software ยุคใหม่กับพวกเรา Rachel Ophoff seeks Jesus with all of her heart, soul, and spirit. That's why watching her Evangelical family fall prey to Trump has broken her heart and really ticked her off. She writes and speaks to remind people that it's all about Him. being.us - Our journey as an intelligent, compassionate, resourceful, autistic, transgender, gender non-binary DID system. 46 videos - 17 subscribers Christian, Roadschooling Mom of 4, Author, Promoter, Dreamer, Problem-Solver. Living the dream, learning the ropes, and loving ... 2 videos - 3 subscribers Welcome to Christ the King Spiritual Life Center! Nestled in the majestic countryside of upstate New York, Christ the King is a ... The Sports girls have a nationwide radio show and podcast to help athletes raise money for their foundations and charity events. 59 videos - 83 subscribers From my viewfinder to your screen, here is some of my work. 175 videos - 149 subscribers TrailRidge REALTORS realize that there are many trailheads leading to the top of a mountain. We see these as the choices our ... 101 videos - 132 subscribers Official YouTube channel for Bethesda Softworks. Watch for all things DOOM, Elder Scrolls, Fallout, DEATHLOOP, Dishonored, ... 839 videos - 1.7M subscribers The King's Singers are a British a cappella vocal ensemble founded in 1968. They are named after King's College in Cambridge ... Richland High School (2005 - 2009) Waco High School (1993 - 1997) Charlotte High School (1993 - 1997) Eldorado High School (1993 - 1997) South Pittsburg High School (1990 - 1994) South Pittsburg, TN Beth (Wright) Goff Yorktown High School (1986 - 1990) Mary Beth Goff Harrisonville High School (1980 - 1984) Beth (Walker) Goff Yorktown High School (1979 - 1983) Beth (Anderson) Goff Penn Hills High School (1975 - 1979) Penn Hills, PA Beth (Anderson) Goff Penn Hills High School (1975 - 1979) Penn Hills, PA Mary Beth Goff Mother Seton Regional High School (1972 - 1976) West Snyder High School (1972 - 1976) Beaver Springs, PA North Ft. Myers High School (1970 - 1974) North Ft. Myers, FL Fitzgerald High School (1965 - 1969) Beth (Hall) Goff Westgate Collegiate/Vocational High School (1961 - 1965) Thunder Bay, ON Derby High School (1953 - 1957) Midland High School (2008 - 2012) Bates Middle School (2006 - 2010) Charles D. Owen High School (2001 - 2005) Black Mountain, NC Liz (Sala) Goff North Attleboro High School (1999 - 2003) North Attleboro, MA John Carroll High School (1997 - 2001) Bel Air, MD Lenoir City High School (1995 - 1999) Lenoir City, TN Betsy (Taylor) Goff Northwood High School (1995 - 1999) Marana High School (1995 - 1999) Elizabeth (Mcniff) Goff Foundation School (1993 - 1997) Jacksonville Beach, FL Pinckney High School (1993 - 1997) Ware County High School (1992 - 1996) Ayer High School (1990 - 1994) Custer County High School (1986 - 1990) Miles City, MT Cactus High School (1985 - 1989) Elizabeth (Tully) Goff Thunderbird High School (1982 - 1986) Elizabeth (Hicks) Goff Hoover High School (1978 - 1982) Des Moines, IA Benjamin Bosse High School (1978 - 1982) Liz (Meisner) Goff Croton-Harmon High School (1977 - 1981) Betty (Meeks) Goff Dixon High School (1973 - 1977) Libby (Frangowlakis) Goff Belfry High School (1971 - 1975) Betsy (Ross) Goff Lexington High School (1969 - 1973) East Syracuse-Minoa Central High School (1969 - 1973) East Syracuse, NY Elizabeth (Sartin) Goff Arkansas City High School (1968 - 1972) Arkansas City, KS Wyandotte High School (1965 - 1969) Kansas City, KS Betty (Mitchell) Goff Madison High School (1964 - 1968) Terra Nova High School (1963 - 1967) Betty (Ruth) Goff Oxon Hill High School (1963 - 1967) Oxon Hill, MD Betsy (Kagen) Goff Baldwin School (1962 - 1966) Bryn Mawr, PA Garfield High School (1960 - 1964) Johns Creek High School (1960 - 1964) Betty (Caldwell) Goff Fulton County High School (1954 - 1958) Betty (Gagliardi) Goff Durfee High School (1952 - 1956) Fall River, MA Haywood High School (1949 - 1953) Tunica County High School (1947 - 1951) Austin Business Journal - Thu, 04 Feb 2021 Austin Business Journal - Mon, 23 Sep 2019 Austin Business Journal - Wed, 20 Jan 2021 New York Business Journal - Fri, 11 Sep 2020 New York Business Journal - Fri, 03 Jul 2020 The North Star Monthly - Thu, 14 Mar 2019 Austin Business Journal - Fri, 07 Jul 2017 Austin Business Journal - Fri, 08 Jan 2021 CultureMap Austin - Mon, 17 Dec 2018 KFVS - Mon, 15 May 2017 New York Business Journal - Fri, 13 Sep 2019 NPR - Sun, 04 Jun 2017 Austin Business Journal - Wed, 17 Jul 2019 The Southern - Sun, 22 Sep 2019 Austin Business Journal - Fri, 04 Oct 2019 The New York Times - Wed, 17 May 2017 Mother Jones - Mon, 02 Jul 2018 Austin Business Journal - Thu, 17 Oct 2019 Austin Business Journal - Fri, 27 Sep 2019 Napa Valley Register - Tue, 06 Nov 2018 Beth Evonne Floyd Goff 1924-2020 “greatly beloved because she greatly loved” Beth Evonne Floyd Goff was called to be home with our Lord Jesus … Beth Goff, Physical Therapist Assistant Graduate Meet Beth Goff- An HGTC Student Success Story I’m Beth Goff and I like to move: cheer, dance, play games outdoors! As a senior at Auburn University, I tore my Achilles tendon. September 12, 1958 - January 26, 2020 Beth Anne Goff, 61, of Selinsgrove, passed away on Sunday, Jan. 26, 2020, at the Geisinger Medical Center, Danville. She was born Sept. 12, 1958, in Lewisburg,... View the profiles of professionals named "Beth Goff" on LinkedIn. There are 70+ professionals named "Beth Goff", who use LinkedIn to exchange information, ideas, and opportunities. Beth Goff Photography. 774 likes · 15 talking about this. Family - Seniors - Commercial- Real Estate- Occasions Beth Goff. Owner - Manager. Telephone: 1-630-230-8399. Email: Bradley Burroughs. Funeral Director & Embalmer. Bradley was born and raised in DuPage county and graduated from Glenbard North High School in 2010. He went on to receive his Associates Degree in Mortuary Science from Worsham College of Mortuary Science in Wheeling, Illinois. Beth Goff is a country girl at heart. 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Salina- Carolyn Beth Goff (Wakefield) died 02/27/2021. Carolyn was born March 13, 1935 to Bessie E. (Whittecar) and Earl Thomas Wakefield Sr. both of Salina, KS. Beth Goff has worked as a teacher in American Canyon for over 17 years (at American Canyon Middle School and American Canyon High School). She has modeled for her students a … Beth Goff is . View Beth Goff’s professional profile on Relationship Science, the database of decision makers. JESSICA BETH GOFF 7812 MURRAYS NURSERY RD MOSS POINT, MS ZIP 39562 Phone: (601) 508-7756. Get Directions. Mailing Address. JESSICA BETH GOFF ... Beth Goff in the US - 87 Public Records Found We found results for Beth Goff in Springfield, TN, Atlanta, GA and 78 other cities . View addresses, phone numbers, emails, background checks, and … Lori Beth Goff lived life. Even though her life was much too short, she lived with purpose and passion. 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Upstairs at the Western are are looking for pieces of writing between 10 and 15 minutes of duologue from either a self-contained mini-play or an excerpt from a longer work. The work must be suitable for two female, GNC or non-binary actors. This work must not have been previously professionally performed. Each writer will receive advice and critical feedback of 500 words from arts professionals @lesleyacts & @winsomevogon in addition to having their piece performed on stage, script in hand, by professional actors in front of an audience. Who can apply: You’ll need to send themthe full play script plus a brief introductory outline & personal biography. Applications are open to all but they will prioritise writing from female, GNC & non-binary playwrights, writers of colour & the LGBT+ community They particularly welcome applications from actors of colour and those from within the LGBT+ community. Please send us an acting CV or Spotlight link when applying How to apply: Please address all queries and applications firstname.lastname@example.org and include SCRATCH in the subject line. All the info here is also on their website http://www.upstairsatthewestern.com/about/get-involved/ … Deadline: 25 October 2019

Not safe for most workplaces. Age 18+. All characters chronologically over 18. Scarleteen is great for under 18. I spent some time writing special scenes in "Two Houses" and then realized I'd already shared a post about Teal meeting Bea's parents. Trying to decide what to do for this week and next on #WipItUpWednesday, I thought of sharing Nano-prep. On my Facebook timeline, I shared the 4 names I've come up with the quad relationship that's going to be my romance in November. Btw, I haven't figured out who of these 4 might be my Autistic character, although one of them will be. I also haven't figured out who I'm going to introduce to my characters first. IOVITA m&f Ancient Roman Latin masculine and feminine form of JOVITA. From the name Jove. She has a midpoint clitorophallus but identifies as cisgender, not intergender HAPPY f&m English (Rare) From the English word,happy. Not their deadname, although hippy parents suggested it. Non-binary MAIRÉAD f Irish Irish form of MARGARET. Pearl. Her nickname would be Mysie. Transgender woman who has had vaginoplasty and an orchie, but HRT produced small breasts that she likes. She still takes estrogen even though she doesn't have to take an androgen blocker anymore. ZIBA (1)f Persian Means "beautiful" in Persian. Muslim bisexual hijabi woman. She enjoys breaking stereotypes of hijabis. Powered by Linky Tools Click here to enjoy the other #WipItUpWednesday hoppers 10/18/2017 10:47:10 am Your characters all sound so interesting, Joelle! I can't wait to get to know them more! 10/18/2017 05:54:16 pm Thanks :) I'm getting impatient to write them :D Leave a Reply.

Former Trump adviser Stephen Miller has given a series of bizarre interviews, attacking “transgender ideology” and legendary actor, activist and ally Jane Fonda. Miller, who served as a senior advisor to former president Donald Trump, told Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Broady that he joined in a lawsuit against the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) – a division of the US government to enforce civil rights laws against workplace discrimination. He explained that he took issue with the EEOC’s new guidance on sex discrimination which includes protections for transgender employees. Miller, who earlier this year started a far-right law firm called America First Legal, claimed the EEOC failed to “include a constitutionally required religious exemption” in the new guidance. He tried to argue that the inclusive policy would force “people of faith” to “violate their deeply held beliefs” to “adopt a transgender point-of-view”. The former Trump adviser shifted to using the tired argument that furthering trans rights and inclusion is a “radical agenda” and somehow an “assault” on the US nation and “Western civilisation”. However, America’s leading scientific and professional organisation representing psychology, the American Psychological Association (APA), has continually pushed back at such notions. The APA has said that transgender and non-binary identities are “healthy” and have existed for hundreds of years across cultures spanning the globe. So transgender identities are not new and have been woven into the fabric of history. Miller is listed as an extremist by the Southern Poverty Law Centre. He tried to argue that the USA is a “country whose ethical, religious and moral heritage is Judeo-Christian”, adding that his personal view is that the acceptance of transgender people is “destined to topple in on itself”. “For this agenda to succeed, for the transgender ideology to succeed, they need people to be scared and quiet and not to speak the plain truth,” Miller argued. In a bizarre twist, Miller is not only attacking transgender people but also actor and activist Jane Fonda. Miller accused Fonda of committing “treason” in the 1970s during an interview with Fox News Primetime. The former Trump adviser was invited to come on the show to discuss the proposed oil pipeline in northern Minnesota. The discussion then turned to Fonda, who has joined the protests against construction of the pipeline which demonstrators say would violate Indigenous American lands. But Miller took the time to bring up Fonda’s participation in protests against the Vietnam War almost 50 years ago. In 1972, she carried out a highly-publicised two-week tour of North Vietnam, which the US was at war with at the time. The actor visited villages damaged by the US military forces and even asked pilots to stop the bombings. She later apologised to American veterans for her actions. During the Fox interview, Miller questioned what “kind of movement holds up a leader” like Fonda, who he claimed was a “tool of North Vietnamese communist propaganda”. “By any definition, what she did in the Vietnam war is treason, and she’s held up as a hero?” Miller said. One Twitter pundit questioned what Miller’s definition of “treason” is, sharing a photo of Trump supporters climbing a wall during the January riots on the US Capitol Building.

It can often be tricky to get your significant other into anime. Many people who haven't watched anime before harbor some seriously weird misconceptions about the genre, and refuse to watch anime on principle alone. Others are willing to try a particularly acclaimed series, but still approach the show with a skeptical eye. If you want your loved one to actually come away liking anime, the first series you expose them to must be carefully chosen. Luckily, there is a wide range of anime for your girlfriend, boyfriend, or non-binary date to try out. Within the medium, different shows span a variety of moods and genres, which means that most people can find a show that relates to their outside interests. If you're not pushy, and remember to keep your partner's preferences in mind, hopefully the two of you will have a great time exploring anime as a couple. Even if your significant other isn't into anime, there's a good chance that they've at least heard of Fullmetal Alchemist. Luckily, the story of the Elric brothers' quest to get their bodies back is engrossing enough to live up to the hype that surrounds the series. While many fans would start by showing their partner the 2003 version of the show, the updated, considerably more manga-faithful Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood might be a better choice if you want to guide your sweetheart towards a recently released series. If your significant other is into superheroes, My Hero Academia is a great first anime for them to check out. In the show, Izuku Midoriya is one of the few people to be born without a "quirk" (AKA a superpower), but he's determined to become a superhero anyway. When he meets his idol, All Might, he's suddenly given the chance he's been waiting for. The show is accessible to non-anime fans who are familiar with Marvel and DC, while also doing an excellent job of showcasing what's great about shonen anime. If your date is into psychological thrillers, ERASED is a great entry point into anime. In the show, Satoru Fujinuma is sent backwards in time to prevent his classmate Kayo Hinazuki from being brutally murdered. The story is filled with high-tension encounters that leave viewers wondering who is behind Kayo's death, and whether Satoru will succeed in saving her. At only 12 episodes long, it's the perfect show to binge-watch over the weekend. My Love Story!! is one of the most adorable romance anime in existence, which is why it's a great show to watch with your significant other. The show's protagonist Takeo Gouda is so utterly smitten with his girlfriend Rinko Yamato that it's impossible not to root for them. Not only will this series show your significant other how heartwarming and funny anime can be, your viewing is bound to end with a shared feeling of romantic bliss.

I’m usually not one to judge, but binge watching TV shows is fucking sad, no matter how good they are. You automatically picture someone sitting at home, alone, in their underwear, lights dimmed, eating a takeaway or fattening snacks, watching episode after episode for hours on end. Over the past week I’ve become a sad bastard. I’ve been power watching episodes of Billions like Shaun Ryder popped ecstacy and ket back in ‘89: several at a time, several times a day. Binge watching is very unlike me, and now I’m pondering whether this marks the extremely early onset of middle age, or if it’s due to the archetype of Billions’ thematic conceit. The plot centres on an adversarial battle between Chuck Rhoades’ pious public prosecutor versus hedge fund Billionaire and serial insider trader Bobby Axelrod – think Gordon Gekko spliced with Einstein. But it’s the professional ménage á trois Axelrod, Wendy Rhoades and Chuck occupy that sows the most fertile terrain for Billions’ sumptuously unscrupulous Machiavellianism. Axe and Chuck manipulate Wendy’s trust as though it and she is a pawn in their personal duel. Wendy only finds herself in this ethical bind as she works as a motivational therapist for Axe Capital’s horde of sociopathic traders whilst being married to Chuck. And, yes, if the above sounds outlandish, it probably is, and partly why Billions is so addictive – it isn’t demanding you take it seriously. It’s a realist abstraction, excessively infused with popular cultural memes, clichés and Easter eggs. Take the scene where Axe’s right hand man, the terrier like mid-life crisis suffering Wags’, who’s adopted the lifestyle excesses of Roy Schneider’s Joe Gideon from All That Jazz, shouts ‘It’s Showtime’ in the mirror. It’s a cool bit of reverence and doubly clever too, as the producing network for Billions is called Showtime. And what other reaction, other than wincing perhaps, is there but to guffaw at the Domination fetish that Wendy and Chuck share? Recognising this, you can have few gripes, but I do bristle that a show full of very smart characters all use Apple (with its incredulous OS) laptops, desktops and phones (well, maybe they all have shares?). More likely, the network and showrunners have (suitably) taken the money for product placement. The plot twists and scheming are entertaining but Billions’ magnetism is also procedural. Bobby Axelrod’s love of being ruthlessly right, ‘I love what I do’ he states after flirting with retirement, and Axe Capital’s culture, represent an idealised capitalist vision we can all believe in – where meritocracy reigns. Intelligence, drive and ambition are sacrosanct, and arbitrary measures, such as Axelrod’s gingerness, class, age, sex, race, sexual orientation and where you went to school, are deemed utterly irrelevant in lieu of your profitability. Of course in the real world this is fanciful bollocks, people continue to face superficial forms of discrimination. However, Billions’ cynicism, while selective, is also extended to Rhoades’ public service. Even within a system festooned with cronyism, self-interest, betrayal and lobbying, said realities become malleable to Chuck’s sense of duty synergising with his own ambitions. I’m a huge Paul Giamatti fan and his turn as Chuck, particularly his earnest speeches on the need to punish Axelrod for his ill-gotten gains, could inspire Robespierreist tendencies in even the most hardened Thatcherite. There are a number of interesting character sub-plots; Chuck’s reluctance, often revulsion at being tethered to his father’s manipulations in helping maintain the family name. The successful manipulations of Axelrod’s wife, largely to protect her husband’s brand, shows she’s just as ruthless as Axe, but she struggles to be accepted as a legitimate business woman in her own right due to her husband’s considerable influence, and to reconcile living a lavish lifestyle with misguided nostalgia for her modest upbringing. The Axe Cap employees are more intriguing than Chuck’s underlings because their wealth allows them to behave in ways most of us cannot afford to. It reveals a ghastly revelation, the wealthier you are, the more liberty you’re afforded. Bill ‘Dollar’ Stern is an interesting comic aside. He’s a pound shop Axelrod; a conglomeration of testosterone fuelled Trumpian court jesterism, luddite machismo and an admirable honesty that making money sustains him. This is counter-balanced by the stoic and measured Taylor, introduced in season two. Taylor’s a non-binary analyst (preferred pronouns; they, theirs and them. Jordan Peterson dislikes this!) who Axelrod sees as a potential protégé. An intellectual equal to Axelrod in his employ allows the show’s writers to move beyond formulaic insider trades ‘I am not uncertain’ and analyse the disreputable methods rival hedge funds use, directing the businesses they invest in, to trick their competitors into bad ‘shorts’. It shows us behind the curtain of how the world operates at a macro level. What this entails, and the consequences, is unfathomable for us normal folks when we’re preoccupied with managing our budgets, organising holidays, doing the weekly shopping, or going out for a meal. Smartly, Billions’ places you in an echelon of society few people can inhabit. It’s like discovering what’s at the bottom of the Mariana Trench is what you suspected was there all along. Before the mystique of uncertainty allowed the imagination to run riot, post discovery projection is freed to be applied liberally to suit our confirmation biases. This is how we want Axelrod and Chuck to be, and in particular, Bill Stern – completely unapologetic. Such delineation frees us from ambiguity and hypocrisy at enjoying these characters, and alleviates any jealousy at being subject to them, particularly as most of us lack the stomach or capability to emulate their kind of ‘success’. And so it’s no surprise my appetite for this show is voracious as Axe’s and Chuck’s motivation to finish on top. I’ll finish the third season off by the end of next week. The downside to binge watching? The episodes will run out and I’ll have to wait until 2019 for more. This is harmless hedonism, but let me say it, like me, once you start you won’t stop. You’ve been warned.

A(gender): An Anthology The Western-instituted gender binary of “man” and “woman” violently imported on much of the global population by settler colonialism and imperialism has intrinsically shaped how the vast majority of us understand gender today. The gender systems of Indigenous cultures throughout the world remain subjected to persecution, inferiorization, and erasure, as they have historically. Many Indigenous cultures have upheld a gender system which openly accepted or tolerated more than two rigidly-defined roles and still do today, although the damaging effects of settler colonialism and imperialism remain resoundingly present throughout the world. The violence directed at those who we may consider “queer” or LGBTQIA+ exemplifies this most evidently. While the gender binary of “man” and “woman” has begun to notably lose its grip in the early twenty-first century, at least regionally, there is still much work to be done. A(gender): An Anthology is an attempt to uplift the perspectives of those who may identify as being without gender, genderless, gender neutral, or otherwise separated from identifying within gender systems. It exists as a unique collection of personal essays, poetry, and abstract writings by agender writers questioning, examining, and critiquing gender. Edited by Michael Paramo Am I Man? Am I Woman? I don’t know. When I am awake, I act. Do my actions make me male? Do they make me female? Does doing things give me a gender? Do my actions make me male? Years ago, man and woman, with love and wisdom, tell me: “Boy, put your hands down. Don’t walk like that. Boys don’t walk like that.” Years later, I see a certain recognition in the eyes of man and woman both when I enter a room. This isn’t you, I scream at me. A dense cloud forms in my head. It expands. It hurts. Do I uphold the systems that men built for man to thrive in? Do they benefit me? Or do I suffer from those systems? Years ago, man and woman, with love and wisdom, tell me: “Boy, don’t cry. It’s a waste of time. Boys don’t cry.” Years later; bruised, alone, I cannot cry. I want to. The cloud in my head gets heavier. I can’t think. I can’t breathe. Man, tell me. Am I still a boy, if I want to cry but cannot? If I do not want to be feared or respected, but loved? Can I be a man without these things, and without wanting them? Can I still be violent without wanting these things? I know that I am violent. Does my violence have a gender? Is my violence male? Is all violence male? Years ago, man and woman, with love and wisdom, tell me: “Boy, be a Man. Be tough, be strong; or people will crush you and eat you up. All boys must become men.” Years later, I can taste my blood in my mouth. But there is also blood on my hands. Not my blood. There is fear in the other Man’s eyes. My secret is safe. Yes, I have a secret. What is my secret? I don’t know. But I know that I must keep it a secret. If I am found out, then people will crush me and eat me up. And I must protect myself. I must protect my secret. When Man’s violence comes knocking at my door, I will give him Man’s violence in return to protect myself and those I care about. I do not say this with confidence. I say this with fear. I do not want to be crushed. I do not want to be eaten. I do not want to be found out. The cloud in my head gets denser and more painful. My actions, likely make me a man in your eyes. Does that mean I am a man? Why do I feel like I’m always performing an extremely uncomfortable role? Why do I feel like a prude playing a stripper? Exposed, but desperately trying to stay covered? Stop looking at me. I will hide my face behind a beard. Could it be that I’m a woman playing a man? What is a woman? Years ago, woman and man, with love and wisdom, tell me: “Boy, stop being so shy. Girls are shy. You’re a boy.” Years later, I am still shy. But the women around me are not. I already know I’m not who I pretend to be; but am I also not what I think I am? Another cloud forms in my head. The pain doubles. What else do I know about women? Years ago, woman and man, with love and wisdom, tell me: you must protect women. Women are kind and gentle. But they are weak. Men are strong.” Years later, I see women that are kind. But I also see women that are cruel. Women with great capacities for committing violence, physical or otherwise. But they are all strong. Is all violence male? It isn’t only men that I see screaming at women that they can’t be women because people told them that they were boys when they were born. It wasn’t men that were telling women that they can’t escape from their male privilege even though they weren’t men. It’s not only men that say that a person’s genitals can tell us the truth about who they are. It isn’t just men who drive these women to kill themselves. Woman, tell me. Do you fear me? Do you fear that my violence is male? I am big, I am strong. I am of able body. I get angry. It is not wrong to fear me. I can tell you not to fear me, but how do you trust a Man to tell the truth? I’d tell you that I might not be a man, but I fear your violence. You can keep your fear and I will keep mine, until I know that I do not have to be afraid of you. The cloud gets denser; and I feel weak and miserable. I feel imprisoned by something that I cannot explain. Years ago, man and woman, with love and wisdom tell me: “Boy, stop being so scared of everything. What’re you, a girl?” Years later, I’m scared. But I’m called a fine young man. I see fear in the eyes of men and women when I’m in their presence. They’re scared too. What are we all so afraid of? I’m scared that they will discover my secret. I’m scared of being caught naked. I’m scared that my truth will be laid bare, when I don’t know what that truth is myself. I’m scared of men. I’m scared of women. I’m scared that men will try to kill me. I’m scared that women will try to make me kill myself. I’m scared of myself. Because I cannot understand what I am. I cannot understand what men are. And I cannot understand what women are. Women and men are both violent. Women and men are both cruel. Women and men can both be kind and strong. Women and men can both command respect and fear. The system is unbalanced; but women and men are both capable of the same things. I can be all of those things. And I have been all of these things. But that still does not tell me if I’m a woman or if I’m a man. Neither makes sense. Nothing fits. What am I, if I’m not a man or a woman? What am I when I stop pretending to be either? There’s a loud screaming in my head. I can’t hear myself think. Years ago, I was alone, broken and bleeding. I didn’t want to live. Man and Woman had done this to me. Man and Woman did not try to save me. I saved me. Not man. Not woman. But me. Stripped of Man and stripped of Woman I found that I still exist. The clouds part a little and the sun bursts through. I exist outside of man and woman. I exist. Is there any part of you that exists beyond your manhood and your womanhood? What makes you a man or a woman? When I am asleep, do I dream male things, or do I dream female dreams? If I were to show you my dreams, would you be able to tell? Do women dream only of roses? Do men dream only of war? When I am dead, what am I? Man or woman? What will I be to myself, and what will I be to you? To myself, I will be nothing. To you, I will likely be a man. But stop making me a gender. Stone Ship is an Engineer, watersport enthusiast, metalhead and pop culture lover from Tamil Nadu. They believe in the power of rock music and storytelling to make the world a better place. They can be reached at @sunkenstoneship on Twitter. My favorite adage about education runs, “simplicity is useful, but untrue; whereas complexity is true, but useless.” When it comes to gender, two models are primarily used for explanation: the gender spectrum and gender galaxy. I’d like to present a “Road Model of Gender.” The gender spectrum model has the benefit of simplicity. It’s easy to visualize a gradient between male and female with people along the whole spread. But it’s overly simple. Agender and genderqueer people who are outside that gradient are completely ignored in this model. “The Transgender Language Primer” describes the galaxy gender model as: “a galaxy is a 3d object in space that consists of billions of star systems, nebulae, dark matter, and other space objects, all interconnected by the force of gravity. Similarly, gender is an overarching term that consists of incredibly diverse identities that can be expressed in infinite ways. Like a galaxy, gender is an interconnected web between the relation of people’s internal gender, which is unique to them, the expression of their gender, and its relation to the socialization and expectations both within their own societies and elsewhere.” I suspect this model’s closer to the truth, but too complicated for most people to grasp, and doesn’t acknowledge the corridor most people keep to currently. The Road Model of Gender There exists two metropolis cities and a main road that runs between them. One city is men and the other is women. Binary gender people live in the cities. Cis people live in the city they were born in, binary trans people moved to the other city. Nonbinary people don’t live in those cities. Many live along the road or travel between the cities. Demi-gender people usually live closer to one of the cities. Genderfluid people travel between them. Agender people don’t live in the cities or along the road. Other nonbinary, genderfluid, genderqueer, or agender people might be exploring the rest of the world. The mountain tops and valleys, other cities, maybe even other worlds. All those places exist, though many people in the cities don’t believe them and stay where they feel safe. Bigender, trigender, multigender, polygender, etc. people have dual/multi-citizenship. Best metaphor would be frequent travel and telecommunication so they’re living and working in multiple places simultaneously. Anyone can travel. They might move throughout their life, or they may just take a vacation or even a hike. People live where they say they live, even if they aren’t there right now. We really don’t need border control among these cities, thank you very much. The biggest flaw with the galaxy model is that it focuses entirely on what’s possible but doesn’t provide any framing for why so many people cluster in two groups or between them. The city model helps answer that. People live in the cities because it’s convenient. Their stuff is there, moving is a hassle, and socio-economic reasons pressure people who hate the city to stay. They provide greater access to services and jobs. The major hospitals are there. Concentrated infrastructure is cheaper. Cities provide the illusion of safety. The city-dwellers imagine it’s dangerous and lonely outside them (it’s not). People stay in the cities because it’s easier and they’re afraid to leave. Better the devil you know than the one you don’t. Other people just fall in love with one of the cities and that’s the only place they want to be. Telling them to leave feels hostile. Being told cities are inherently bad might feel like an attack on something they love that’s a key part of their identity. You don’t have to be born in the cities. Plenty of people aren’t. They may move (by choice or force) to one of them very early in life because it’s perceived as easier. They may still be treated as a foreigner or feel like an outsider. Others live their whole lives outside them. The idea of living in a city or wanting to may seem strange to them or outright hostile. The feuds between them may seem silly and unnecessary. We should make services easily available and accessible to people outside the cities. We shouldn’t punish people for where they live or push them through intentional inconvenience to live places they hate. Pronouns are a way to say where you’re from. Refusing to acknowledge and use someone’s pronouns is like insisting they live someplace they don’t (maybe someplace they hate). It’s wrong and insulting. People who use multiple pronouns are telling you where they are now as they travel. Other travelers may use one set of pronouns because that’s where they pick up their mail and it’s convenient. Trying to tell someone they have to fully assimilate if they move and totally abandon their old culture is also insulting. Even if they don’t want to live there, that doesn’t mean some traditions aren’t still meaningful to them. They might still have an accent, and that’s fine. Likewise, someone can be perfectly content in the city they were born in but favor the dress, mannerisms, etc. of a different city. That’s not inherently bad. It can be inspiring and freeing for many people. Ignorance and power structures can make it harmful in some contexts. Culture never exists in a void. For myself, I live in the woman city, I was born here, I like it here, but sometimes I just have to get out. Travel, go camping, whatever, just away. I really hated it as a kid, but it grew on me. I use she/her, and I look fabulous in a dress. But sometimes (like now) trying to wear woman’s clothing gives me a low-key panic attack. I dreamed of binders decades before I knew they existed. In roleplaying games I’ve played an even proportion of men and women. My last two characters were nonbinary. Because of course if you could turn into a wolf or a bird you could also change your sex characteristics and why wouldn’t you some days if you could? Oh… I hope this model can serve as a bridge between understanding the gender spectrum model and the gender galaxy model. It’s helped me understand where I live and travel. Maybe one day we’ll all be scattered among the stars, but for many of us they still seem like distant lights. Deramin is an artist who makes queer nerdy embroidery patches and decorates hats and jackets (as Majestic Mess Designs). She also writes articles and poetry, usually about queerness, disability, and D&D. Her work has been featured multiple times in The Asexual Journal. She discovered she was asexual and genderfluid from D&D friends. Now in her 30s, she lives off a steady diet of tabletop roleplaying games, warm kindness, spite, gallows humor, kombucha, and farmers market fava beans in Eugene, Oregon. Twitter: @OTDDeramin I accepted myself as nonbinary basically the same day I came out as nonbinary. I was joining an online Discord, very nervously as usual, and the group required that you post an introduction sharing certain things about yourself. Before I joined this group, the only genders I’d ever known were male and female, and the only pronouns I’d ever come across for people were “she” and “he.” The list of possible roles in this chat room though included a “nonbinary” option for gender, and “they/them” for pronouns. Seeing that those were options I could choose was what finally made it click for me. Before all of that, going into public restrooms and being addressed in gendered ways always made me uncomfortable, but I was always able to play it off. Restrooms had other people, and I’m social anxious and awkward as it is, so that makes sense. Being addressed in a gendered manner usually meant being called terms that, for where I grew up, would be considered a bit rude to do to people. Because calling someone “sir” or “ma’am” where I grew up in Colorado when addressing someone that wasn’t much higher up than you in work environments, was more like back talking. After moving to Atlanta, it was the opposite. So, you know, I had to get used to that, and the discomfort would go away, or so I thought. To no one’s surprise, it didn’t. But, having rationalized it as much as I could, I had just learned to live with the almost constant discomfort of what I now know to be social dysphoria. So, on that day in September 2016, just over two years ago to the date of me writing this, it seemed like the world finally clicked into place in my brain. I spent a few months only really being out to anyone else in that chat room and a few other smaller ones specifically for nonbinary peoples and such, before finally gaining the courage to come out to my best friend and my partner. And that’s where my more serene world started cracking at the edges. Neither of them were disrespectful about it, my partner even agreed to misgender and deadname me in person so I could stay in the closet and not get the treatment that the more out and open trans people in my school got, which was really nice of them. My best friend, on the other hand, was a bit less accepting. To this day, two years after coming out and having finally mostly transitioned to my new name and a more affirming clothing style, he still doesn’t seem to fully get it. And that’s when it finally hit me, that most cisgender people probably won’t understand. Online interactions, though, were amazing, in comparison. Most people were super respectful of light pronoun correction, and the people who knew me with my old name and gender were mostly able to transition over with me with little to no difficulties. That same chat room that got me to finally accept myself to myself? I’m now one of the head admins, next in line to be server owner when the current one steps down, and almost half of the staff are trans in some way or another. Having said all of that, though, it says something that I’m able to accept myself, even recently finally accepting that I’m agender on top of being nonbinary. I’m even able to be out and proud of it online, but I only feel comfortable being out to three or four people offline. I’m not out to my parents or family at all, though I suspect my closest sibling knows because of my current fashion choices, considering half my wardrobe is nonbinary-flag-colored. I’m not out to anyone at school, I’m not even out to any of my three dorm mates, because it could very easily turn sour. In my two years of immersing myself into the asexual and trans communities, for all of my other nonbinary peoples, there seems to be one truly unifying thread of reality. The intense difficulty of coming out, staying out, and being able to be who you are inside. When one of the most common slogans on items for nonbinary people is “You are Valid,” or something along those lines, it just feels like most people think we are not, in fact, valid. Obviously it feels great to get validation for something about yourself, whether it be your talents or skills or gender, but having a validating phrase be one of the main things to put on pins makes it all to real that we aren’t seen as valid by the majority of society, or at least it doesn’t feel like we are. When my partner buys me a nonbinary-flag-colored squishy with the words “you are valid” it is the highlight of my month, which says something about the situation we have to put up with. Very few nonbinary people I know and almost none of the agender people I talk to regularly are “out of the closet” to people they talk to in person and didn’t meet online. The number one stated reason is rejection. Not being accepted as “a real thing” by a portion of people, being called attention seekers, and constantly being confused for a binary trans person by those who are more accepting but not really up to par. There isn’t even legal acceptance in most places. I can’t get the proper gender marker on any of my documents because I’m a citizen of the wrong state, and many others are in my position. And for agender people, and lots of nonbinary people in general, it’s often sparked by the fact that so much in life is gendered in one way or another. I’ve seen and talked to quite a few people going through this, and they’ll usually mention how they just feel it would be easier to be binary, and that they don’t want to be nonbinary because the world is so heavily binarized. Obviously not all nonbinary people feel this way. In fact, I don’t feel this way, and for the past two years I’ve questioned my gender a grand total of once or twice a year, because being nonbinary just feels right in the inner most parts of myself. I mentioned it before, but I’m not out at home or school. Sure, I changed my preferred name in the system, but because changing my legal name would get back to my mom I’ve refrained from doing as such because I don’t feel like she would accept me as I am. And even if she did accept me, she would have ridiculous ideas about what I am or what I’m doing. I don’t even mention my sex because then even well-meaning people would start to get ideas about what I look like, or what I do with my life, or crazy things like that because they have these stereotypes of nonbinary people in their heads. I wanted to come out to my dormmates when I moved in, but when in the first week they started making attack helicopter jokes and stuff like that, I no longer felt like I was able to be myself around them. People like to say that there aren’t gendered stereotypes for agender and nonbinary people, but that’s just not the case. There’s this idea that nonbinary people are all assigned female at birth, wear chest binders, have undercuts and wacky hair colors, and wear punk clothing. So, now, not only do people I interact with expect me to behave and socialize like my assigned gender, but when I tell them I’m nonbinary they might expect me to act a certain “nonbinary” way, instead. Some people even try and say that the names we pick are “too feminine” or “too masculine,” gatekeeping our identities from us. Not every nonbinary person feels physical dysphoria, we don’t all wear chest binders — we don’t even all have chests to bind. Some of use want surgery, some don’t, but some people believe nonbinary means to be one way or the other. Not every agender person uses the same pronouns, we don’t have to and so we don’t. Some people are fine with using “they/them” alongside their preferred pronoun, some aren’t. Just because I use or don’t use certain pronouns does not automatically give someone a clear indication of my gender right off the bat, despite what some may think. Fact of the matter is, by being ourselves we tend to break all the “rules” about gender there are. Even some groups of otherwise nice trans people think we are “not real” or “attention seekers.” We break gender boundaries so hard that some of the other people breaking gender boundaries think we’re going too far, though luckily they seem to be in the extreme minority. We are ripe targets for slander, hatred, violence, disdain, you name something negative and nonbinary people are likely to have gotten it or even are still getting it. And yet, we’re also somehow invisible: no acceptance, no recognition, called fake at every turn — people forget we exist at the same time they are kicking us down. I feel the effects of these things even if they don’t happen to me, just like what happens in any community. I choose not to expose myself to the possibility of these things happening because I know I couldn’t handle it where I’m at right now. I’m not able to be out to my family yet, I rely on them for finances and being disabled in the streets is not something I’d survive. But, hearing about the worst of it while experiencing the more moderate versions of it at the same time takes its own toll on you. Living life when your very existence breaks most people’s ideas of gender is hard, even when you are in a space that is more accepting or you are more able to pick and choose who you’re out to. Gender is hard. Sometimes it’s not the personal acceptance of it, sometimes it is. Sometimes it’s not the social acceptance of it, sometimes it is. Sometimes it’s questioning your gender every two days, and sometimes it is questioning it two times a year, or even every two years. But, regardless, binary trans people will tell you that gender is hard. Nonbinary people, both those who are trans and those who aren’t, will tell you gender is hard. Agender people, whether trans or not, whether they also identify as nonbinary or not, will agree with you that gender is hard. Gender hasn’t been hard for me in the ways it often is for many agender and nonbinary people. I’ve rarely questioned my gender, I’ve rarely been directly told I’m making things up or other worse stuff I’ve heard others say happened to them. While my home and social life aspects could use some work, they aren’t unsalvageable like those of a few others I’ve talked to. But, even still, if you asked me if gender is hard, I’d affirm as fast as my brain could process the question. Cisgender people don’t get how hard it can be and it’s not a fault of their own either. They just don’t have to deal with all of the internal and external difficulties as those who break the binary do. What they can do, though, is be respectful. Because even if gender isn’t something to ponder and question and agonize over for days or weeks or months or even years for them, it is for us. Not every agender person is the same, of course. But the day my partner asked if I wanted to go by my deadname still or if I’d decided on a new name, was the day in my life I felt the best about myself. People say not to make your life your gender, which I agree with. My life isn’t my gender. But my gender, and acceptance of it, is what makes my life one that I’m happy to be living. Sasha Valeria is a Nonbinary writer and editor, alongside being one of the head admins of the Asexuality and Aromantic Discord server. They love reading, writing, coding, and gaming, and don't like interacting with people much. Having dealt with losing the ability to speak due to muscle strain conditions, they spend most of the time in their room. I think I got it At fourteen zoning out on the knoll Thinking about how there’s no magic coming My body’s on a set course from now to oblivion No magic spell to cross the binary is coming And nothing made me more sad than that I think I got it I never would’ve assumed so I suppose I was unhappy with myself Until my body started resembling an unwelcome guest Maybe I just never gave it much thought I let people paint and put a name on it When they craved hair like an indicator Not talking about the mop on their head Talking about the hair that solidifies chromosomes “I know you hate it but why would that matter?” Yeah I really let them have their way Threw away my ‘me’ and let the wolves fight it out No reason to complain right? I had it good Getting the clout of my peers, it’s good right? Love, fame, and a living wage, that’s good right? Knocking back 12 shots just to cope, that’s good right? Crying in the mirror, that’s the good stuff right? Saving none of your love for yourself, that’s the good thing yeah? I had what they wanted, it never looked like suffering So no one ever lent a hand, just let it all slide Why’s that? I know why’s that That’s why I think I got it Yeah I got it When I tell them I’m not of their number But they don’t care, they got a bone to pick Man man man, they gotta throw down hands And nothing makes me more ill Makes me wanna tear my skin off Rip my organs out and rearrange them In a way where they’ll start to see me Do I wanna? No, but it’s like I gotta Cos I got it, but they have to see I got it I got the scars but, nah I ain’t got it Somedays I feel like one way, so I don’t got it Sebastian Noël is a nonbinary autistic poet, artist, and general stuff-er from the UK. Alongside poems they are currently writing their ongoing comic: 'Toerag' which explores neurodiversity and gender identity from a light-hearted kid’s point of view. For more poems visit: http://thetartanprelude.tumblr.com/ For comics visit: https://tapas.io/series/Toerag My Twitter can be found @lnc0 Two months ago, while in the movie theater, of all places, a sudden thought popped into my head. I have no idea what gender is. Absolutely no clue. I understand the basic concept and that it’s a thing that other people experience, but, just like with sexual attraction, I lack the ability to grasp what it actually is. Exactly the same as in that case, there isn’t a void inside me where gender should be. I’m not missing anything. Whatever metaphorical slot gender is supposed to fit into within me simply doesn’t exist. Again, just like with sexual attraction, a lifetime of confusion and struggling to fit into a box that spit me out as soon as I tried to set foot inside it suddenly made sense. I’m not a woman. I always suspected that I wasn’t a real girl, and not only because the girls in 2nd grade said it was impossible for me not to like pink despite supposedly being a girl (never mind my argument that assigning genders to colors was ridiculous). I rejected being ladylike and wearing dainty shoes that you couldn’t play in the mud in and I loved playing with toy trains and cars and wearing pants whenever possible. But I didn’t attribute these inclinations to not feeling like a girl. I just liked certain things and didn’t like others. My parents didn’t shove traditional social norms down my throat, but all explanations for why boys and girls are expected to act in certain, different ways just made me angry because they made no sense. Adults were supposed to be these wiser beings, and yet they insisted on getting this basic fact wrong. Hair and clothes and toys and careers and nothing whatsoever that I could think of could possibly be determined by gender. I couldn’t envision anything that made less sense. I rejected it all immediately, only growing angrier upon discovering that it wasn’t a small amount of clearly deluded people who thought that way, but everyone around me. And everyone on TV, and in books, and in magazines. Everyone. I felt like the only sane person in The Twilight Zone. Years passed. I thought I must be a girl by default because there were only two genders, but it still didn’t feel right. But I wasn’t a boy, either, because even the term “tomboy,” which the media I consumed only used to refer to girls, also didn’t fit. I wasn’t a boy, so I wasn’t going to refer to myself as one, even if that wasn’t what the word actually meant. Then I learned about trans people (only within the binary), and thought that maybe I was a boy. That lasted about two seconds because I immediately went “nope.” And every time I revisited the issue and tried to lean fully into the boy side of things, I got thrown back, but I couldn’t retreat to the girl side, either, because that also rejected me. I was in a limbo between two cities that both had closed its gates to me and all I could see outside of them was a wasteland where nothing grew or lived. It took over three decades of living to discover the terms “non-binary” and “genderqueer,” as well as a plethora of others that I’m still learning. A light bulb lit in my head. You can be something other than a man or a woman? Actual options? Omg! I wasn’t in limbo land anymore! I fit somewhere! Yay! Except… I was still clinging to the idea of having a gender. I’d yearned to find out what it was for so long, to feel that certainty and comfort in your gender that everyone else around me did, that when the word “agender” showed up on Tumblr, I read the description, went “that’s not me,” and moved on. I needed a gender. I wanted one so badly that I tricked myself into believing that I really did feel a gender. It was there. I just didn’t know what it was, and none of the many terms that I looked at seemed to fit, but I couldn’t be genderless. People have genders. Okay, so some people didn’t have genders, but I definitely had one. Just like I definitely felt sexual attraction, and that blog post about asexuality that I related to was wrong. Yup, I was wrong that time, too. It was a headcanon that did it. It wasn’t even the first time that I’ve had a non-binary headcanon for a character I love. It was one of the moments that had no linear progression from one second to the next. I saw a post on Tumblr from someone who shared my headcanon, then, two hours later, I was watching that character on the big screen, and it came to me. I almost gasped in the theater. No, I don’t have a gender. And no matter how many articles I read about gender, I’m going to be the outsider looking in who can only partly grasp what people are talking about when they refer to that visceral sense of gender inside of them, because it’s completely outside of my experience. I can only see the ripples that gender constructs and the expectations it casts on the world. And I’m good with that now. Being agender is okay. Just like being ace is okay. It’s taken me thirty-four years of cycling through incomprehension and anger and frustration and back to confusion to finally find acceptance and happiness in discovering what my real identity is. And I’m so relieved. Lijavi Toledo Loaiza is a Latinx, neurodivergent, bi ace writer. They’re working on their first novel, which encompasses their several, intersecting identities, as well as others, in an attempt to put some representation out there. You can find their thoughts on Twitter @lijavitoledo The skirt doesn’t quite fit: your hair is too short, thighs too thick — feminine… Not enough balance, or something. The skirt doesn’t fit. What would help? A long/violet wig? Different shoes? If you only had a different body. If you could only alter you as in a game, stretching cheekbones and thinning legs to mannish ones, pulling out little hairs along your chin — if only it were cheap. Easy. Common. The skirt doesn’t fit; you unzip and pull it off. Stand there in your underwear, exposed. The skirt never fits, or hardly ever does — it fit once or twice, on those euphoric days of which there have only been a few, maybe four days: where you lay on the carpet floor of your childhood bedroom feeling good about yourself and your gender; the skirt didn’t matter because you were on a high — you have now been drunk once, post twenty-one, so you can say it now, that feeling of gender euphoria is like feeling drunk. That night you drank yourself high you were stumbling in the downtown night telling the woman beside you I feel like a cloud, not very poetic but realistic —you were happy, floating on the proverbial high of science. Gender euphoria, rare, feels quite similar: you are happy because you stopped caring, ten minutes past, about the crook of your glasses and the length of your skirt along your thin, girlish legs; you feel, for once, like you. It comes maybe every five months or so—you are reading a novel about a similar character to your own when it occurs to you that you are okay — that you are a boy — and that you have, for an hour, at least, emerged from your fog. Or you watch an inspirational film at the end of which you cry out all your confused pain. Or you take a shot of testosterone (prepare the vial, the needle, penetrate the former with the latter, draw up, push out bubbles, stick the thing into your stomach and push) and you know that now things are alright. You are lying on the carpet floor of your childhood bedroom with a stuffed unicorn and its ten siblings peering down at your lying body and you are wearing the skirt and it splays like a paint splash across the soft lines of your thighs, the old carpet. You take a shot of testosterone and it stings, but you get to wipe the red blood bead from your skin and then bandage it over, like love. It is literal self-love, you think, and grin. You look into the mirror in your father’s bathroom and do not recognize yourself, so you look a little longer, staring until you start to take on the old shape. Your head does not match the rest of your body — your head does not match your hair — you were born with wrong parts and the godly quest, ingrained, to find new ones. In which holy, gold grail will your future chest lie? Physical transition is a matter, you consider, of receiving and removing. You are trying to lose the breasts. Maybe then, you think, you will achieve heaven. Maybe then, you will have run yourself free from wonderland C. Bougie is an undergraduate English major at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh with focuses in creative writing and LGBTQ+ studies. Find more of their work at cpbwrites.wordpress.com. I sometimes wonder what this life would be If everyone could be accepted as Themselves; just you as you, and me as me, And them as them, and all that other jazz. For if I must be judged I wish it were Not by a label slapped on me at birth. I hope the content of my character And not my pants determines now my worth. I’m not a woman nor am I a man Nor any gender known under the sun. It is this simple fact of who I am That leads the world not to accept but shun. Yet I still know that I’m worthy of love Whate’er my gender—or my lack thereof. Audrey is a 22-year-old recent grad trying to answer that ancient question, "Now what?" She is a genderless panromantic asexual, writes poetry when the mood strikes, and is passionate about social justice and the arts. You can find her on Twitter @aduarte96 as long as you don't expect anything too exciting. (Yet!) I have always admired androgynous people. In a world in which our identity is scripted, even before we are born (just look at most parents' craze around the sex of their future baby), I think dancing to the beat of your own drum is a beautiful act of defiance. However, as I became more involved in the queer community, I have come to the realization that gender non-conformity exists in many forms. I will come back to that later. I know gender is a complex issue, constantly questioned, fabulously multi-faceted and never quite fully understood. I have always been attracted by its ambiguities, its blank spaces in which masculinity and femininity co-exist without ever being clearly defined. As I grew older and started to dig into the wonderful realm of gender studies I realized gender was a social construct, separated from any biological perspectives. This gradually led me to the idea that if my gender was (as Butler puts it) a performance, then I could not only play with it but also make it disappear. And after intense periods of questioning, studying and discussing with other non-binary folks, I realized that I did not relate to the concepts of femininity or masculinity. In fact I did not relate to anything at all. To me, gender is an expression of the self. I know that for some people it is deeply linked to who they are and how they want to be seen, which I absolutely respect. However, I realized that in my case I would rather consider my gender as a blank slate. As someone who had deeply suffered from anxiety, loneliness, bullying, self-doubts, and other perks of being an introvert, being a queer and geeky teenager playing with my identity was a way to reconstruct the self I was never allowed to love. By dissing all common fashion sense in a campy mix of cute skirts, comic book tee-shirts, Hawaiian shirts, oversized hats, and flower prints, I discovered that I could use my appearance to feel more confident and empowered. This playful exploration (even if it came with some questionable fashion choices I would mostly like to forget) led me to the realization that I did not have to conform to what society expected me to be. I did not have to be feminine because I was born with certain genitalia. I did not have to be masculine to prove my point either. I could just be me. As social beings we are conditioned to categorize people as male or female and understandably so: categories make us feel safe, in control. However, I do not feel like gender is important to me. I do not care if people perceive me as male or female, even though, in a heavily patriarchal world, refusing to be one or the another becomes an act of defiance. Do not get me wrong, I think there are powerful ways to reclaim masculinity and femininity. But what if we could learn to become more flexible, to leave people space for exploration, growth, and self-discovery? If gender was seen as more fluid, less essential to who we are, maybe people would feel less obligated to conform to socially scripted performances. Maybe we could just be ourselves and feel good about it. This is why I do not think appearance should be gendered. It took me a long time to realize that androgyny did not mean being white, thin, heavily- tattooed/pierced, and only wearing 'masculine' clothes. Gender-neutral individuals are still commodified, even in queer communities in which they are deemed more desirable. Feminine-looking individuals are often seen as impostors, either victims of patriarchal codes or cisgender males in disguise trying to infiltrate spaces they do not belong. As someone assigned female I've thus had a hard time defining myself as fem (in other words someone whose gendered presentation is on the feminine spectrum). Even if I would love to rock a more gender-neutral presentation, I feel like femininity is what I am the most comfortable with. Because I spent most of my youth feeling like an ugly duckling, taking care of my appearance has become my way to navigate the exterior world. I like having long hair and wearing a bit of make-up because it makes me feel beautiful. I'd rather wear fabulous dresses than pants because they fit my curves better (thank you body issues) and are a lot of fun to play with. I like jewelry, bright colors, and cute accessories because they allow me to express myself. I do not think my gender expression and style are better than anyone else's: I just feel it is what fits me best. As a feminist, I also feel like embracing my femininity is an act of resistance. For marginalized people, taking care of others, daring to be vulnerable and fighting our internalized misogyny is a powerful move. This is why I have come to consider myself as a fem agender. Because my gender expression does not invalidate my gender identity. Because neutrality should not be defined as necessarily masculine. However, embracing my femininity still comes with its issues. Even if many people believe that gendered presentation (how you look) does not define your gender identity (how you feel), queer people have to constantly prove themselves, even in their own communities. This can be explained by the fact that marginalized folks have the tendency to reproduce, even unconsciously, the oppressions they are subjected to. By questioning other people's identity if they do not look a certain way or are dating someone of the opposite sex we recreate the same scrutinies we have to face in our everyday lives. This creates an atmosphere in which many gender non-conforming folks feel like they are never good enough. Instead of supporting each other, we become afraid to express who we are for fear of being considered frauds. This is why it is important to rethink how we see bodies, clothing, and self presentation in general. Queer culture is all about deconstructing heteropatriarcal and cissexist norms — a fact that I have embraced by stepping out of gendered categories altogether. And do not get me wrong, I do not think my experiences reflect those of other LGBTQ people in general. My only wish is to be able to embrace my own identity as I see most fit. No matter how I look, I do not belong to any gendered category. I am just being me. Shei is a French queer freelance writer, witch, and LGBT jewelry crafter. They identify as agender (they/them), can rock any hair color, and are passionate about feminism, pop culture, and gender studies. They can be found on Instagram (@_godsavethequeer_) and Tumblr (outer-space-unicorn.tumblr.com). Stoję w ciemnej kuchni ze szklanką gorącej herbaty w dłoni; oparta o kuchenny blat patrzę przez okno. Lubię te wieczory i te krótkie chwile, zanim ktoś wparuje do pomieszczenia zapalając światło — i nawet go po sobie nie zgasi, choć widzi, że mnie nie jest do niczego potrzebne. Czuję ogromną samotność. Prawdopodobnie nie znam jeszcze terminu agender, ale wiem, że jestem inna – także od moich przyjaciół, a co dopiero od ludzi, z którymi w tamtym domu żyję. Tego wieczora myślę o oswajaniu samotności, skoro jest ona inherentną częścią mnie. Tak jest lżej. Przynajmniej na jakiś czas. Długo, kiedy myślę o sobie, myślę: kobieta, skoro biologicznie wszystko świadczy, że nią jestem. Skoro nie mam dysforii (chyba nie mam, dzisiejsza ja nie jest pewna, jak to do końca dla niej działa). Jednocześnie nie potrafię powiedzieć, co czyni mnie kobietą. To po prostu „fakt, [wstaw wzruszenie ramion tutaj]”, myślę. I, równocześnie: żadnej z cech, które się na mnie składają na mnie nie potrafię opisać jako inherentnie kobiecej. Jako ludzką, jak najbardziej, każdą z nich, ale nie: kobiecą. „Problem” w tym, że choć to ono jest mną, nie widzę siebie przez moje ciało. Nie porzez jego kształt. Gdy patrzę w lustro widzę: mnie. Tylko tyle. To nie moje piersi, ani macica definiują kim jestem, tak samo jak nie definiuje tego moja niepełnosprawna noga. To, kim jestem definiuje mój umysł. A choć zaprzątają go mocno kwestie feminizmu, nie czuje się kobietą czy mężczyzną. Wie, że jest tylko jakością dodaną do dwóch brył tłuszczu, które znają kilka zabawnych sztuczek. Nie myślę o tej nieprzystawalności dużo, ale kiedy myślę zostaję z poznawczą pustką. Co to znaczy być kobietą? Wpisywać się w stereotyp płci? Wyłamywać się z niego? Nie potrafię — choć próbuję — tego nijak poczuć. Aż kiedyś wracam tramwajem do mieszkania (już innego, bez ludzi, którzy nigdy nie byli moją rodziną) i myślę, że może jestem agender. Że po prostu istnieję poza płcią. Ta myśl przynosi mi ulgę. I pozwala posunąć się w moim rozumowaniu o krok dalej. Płeć zawsze była dla mnie czymś nieprawdziwym. Abstraktem, w żaden sposób niezakotwiczonym w rzeczywistości. Nie była czymś czym zamierzałam lub chciałam się przejmować (choć jako osoba świadoma wszechobecnego patrarchatu, niestety, muszę). Od zawsze czuję się poza. Głęboko niewidzialna. Czasami to dobre poczucie — wygodne, dla mojej introwertyczności. Częściej jednak ciąży. Choć lubię to kim jestem i dobrze czuję się ze swoją aromantycznością, aseksualnością i agenderowością, trawi mnie też myśl, że te trzy słowa ujmują tę część mnie, przez którą tak łatwo się o mnie zapomina. W taki zwykły, codzienny sposób, gdy cisheteronorma i seksualizacja wskroś przenikają rzeczywistość i, także te jej aspekty, które pozornie nie mają nic wspólnego z seksem czy romansem. Jak wtedy, gdy stoję w szkolnym korytarzu, a ktoś praktycznie na mnie wchodzi. Gdy po egzaminie nikt nie pyta: Idziesz z nami na piwo? Kiedy mieszkam w mieście, w którym nie mieszka żadne z moich przyjaciół i przez cały ten czas nie odwiedzi mnie tu żadne z nich. Okruszki zbierające się pod opuszkami palców i drażniące skórę bardziej niż powinny. Jesteśmy, jako gatunek, organizmami biologicznymi, które wmawiają sobie, że są czymś więcej, a jednocześnie wszystko w naszych społeczeństwach podporządkowane jest pociągającej za niewidzialne sznurki biologii. To tak jakby ludzkość, z pełną świadomością grawitacji, stanęła na rękach i upierała się, że jeśli puści ziemię: upadnie w niebo. Nie jest łatwo być tym, na kogo faktycznie nie działa grawitacja. Poczucie samotności wraca. Dobrze jest mieć więcej słów, które pozwalają ją zrozumieć i osadzić we mnie. Nawet jeśli bywa, że te słowa ciążą. I że sama myśl o potencjalnym tłumaczeniu ich większej części ludzi, których spotykam każdego dnia, sprawia, że zaczyna brakować mi łyżek. Dobrze jest je mieć, choć utwierdzają mnie w przekonaniu, że moja samotność nigdy nie zniknie. I że, tak jak myślałam te kilka lat temu: mogę ją co najwyżej oswoić i do pewnego stopnia polubić. Provided below is an automated translation of Ginny N.’s piece. This is for accessibility purposes only and is not meant to supplant the original version: I am standing in a dark kitchen with a glass of hot tea in my hand; leaning on a kitchen counter, I look out the window. I like these evenings and those short moments before someone enters the room, lighting up the light — and will not even extinguish it, although he sees that I am not needed for anything. I feel huge loneliness. I probably do not know the term agender yet, but I know that I'm different — also from my friends, let alone the people I live with in that house. That evening I think about taming loneliness, since it is an inherent part of me. It is easier. At least for some time. For a long time, when I think about myself, I think: a woman, since everything biologically proves that I am her. Since I do not have dysphoria (I probably do not have it, today I am not sure how it works for the rest). At the same time, I can not say what makes me a woman. It's just "the fact [put a shrug here]", I think. And, at the same time: I can not describe any of the features that make up me on me as inherently feminine. As human, most of all, each of them, but not: feminine. The "problem" is that although it is me, I do not see myself through my body. Not by its shape. When I look in the mirror I see: me. Just enough. It's not my breasts or my uterus that define who I am, just as my disabled leg does not define it. Who I am defines my mind. And although feminism is very intriguing to him, he does not feel like a woman or a man. He knows that he is only a quality added to two lumps of fat that know some funny tricks. I do not think about this incompatibility much, but when I think I'm staying with cognitive emptiness. What does it mean to be a woman? Fitting into the gender stereotype? Break out of him? I can not — although I try — feel nothing at all. Until one day I come back to the apartment by tram (no one else, no people who have never been my family) and I think maybe I am an agender. That I simply exist outside of sex. This thought brings me relief. And it allows me to go a step further in my reasoning. Sex has always been something untrue for me. An abstract, in no way anchored in reality. It was not something that I intended or wanted to care about (though as a person aware of the omnipresent patrarchate, unfortunately, I have to). I've always felt outside. Deep invisible. Sometimes it's a good feeling - comfortable, for my introversion. More often, however, she is pregnant. Although I like who I am and I feel good about my aroma, asexuality, and agenderism, I also think that these three words capture the part of me that makes me forget so easily. In such an ordinary, everyday way, when cisheteronormativity and sexualization permeate reality and, also those aspects that seemingly have nothing to do with sex or romance. Like when I'm standing in the school corridor, and someone is practically stepping on me. When after the exam no one asks: Are you going with us for a beer? When I live in a city where none of my friends live, and none of them will visit me all this time. Crumbs that gather under the fingertips and irritate the skin more than they should. We are, as a species, biological organisms that tell ourselves that they are something more, and at the same time everything in our societies is subordinated to attracting the invisible strings of biology. It is as if humanity, with full consciousness of gravity, stands on its hands and insists that if it releases the earth, it will fall into the sky. It is not easy to be who gravity actually does not work on. The feeling of loneliness is coming back. It is good to have more words that allow her to understand and settle in me. Even if it happens that these words weigh. And that the mere thought of the potential translation of most of the people I meet every day makes me miss my spoons. It is good to have them, although they confirm my conviction that my loneliness will never disappear. And that, as I thought these few years ago: I can only tame it and to a certain extent to like it. Ginny N. – an aromantic, asexual, agender atheist from Poland. Feminist and aspiring SFF writer, who creates diverse queer characters as a default. Also writes essays for Gallifrey.pl and Lewa ręka fantastyki — about Doctor Who and about pop culture in general from a leftist perspective. Pronouns are she/her, they/them — or no pronouns at all. Before he’ll unlock the museum doors, he asks you to change your thinking. You promise enthusiastically, emptily, knowing what he wants to hear but not understanding it at all. “Once I let you in, admire the relics, compliment them,” he reminds you, “but accept their obsolescence.” You can’t help but think them pretty even stashed in dusty boxes. Months later, the papers report arson, callous destruction of beautiful property, and you weep for long-misplaced relics. He sheds tears for your ignorance, but breathes relief, unburdened of long-unwanted antiques. Some hard days xe walks along the desiccated riverbed again. On the worst days, xe bends down, scoops up flecks of copper mud, brings them to xyr lips when xe yearns for that old taste of brackish water. Fewer days are hard now. More often, xe sucks on butterscotch or licorice, leaning back in xyr rocking chair with a dog-eared book and a flop-eared dog. Xe listens to the grass shiver in the wind, no longer dampened by crying estuary. Xyr parents — both dentists — liked xyr house better before the dam was built. They live on a hill; they’ve never lost their vinyls and egg crates to the jealous sea. They call xym on the phone sometimes. By mutual unspoken agreement, no one speaks of the dam, though xe knows what they think, and they know When xe hangs up, xe smiles, only a touch sad that xe can't ask for saltwater taffy Lore Graham is an agender speculative fiction writer who lives in Massachusetts. When ze isn’t writing poetry or romance, ze’s usually cooking, cross-stitching, or spending time with zir cat. You can find more of zir work at grahamlore.com. Sometimes, I feel like an impostor. A poser. To the world, I am a male. I have the parts in working condition. I must be male. Am I male? I must be, otherwise… “What are you, freak?!” The demons that dwell in my head scream at me. “You can’t not have a gender!” “What are you, an idiot?” “If you look like a he, you’re a he. Facts don’t care about your feelings.” I somehow always manage to pull myself out of this train of thought. I don’t know how I do it. There’s this weird incongruity betwixt how I see me and how society sees me. Excluding a few close friends and others online due to wonderful internet anonymity, I am not “out” as agender. It’s the same thing with my asexuality. How can you describe the feeling of lacking an attribute that nearly all the world shares. How do I explain how I don’t have a gender. Will I get acceptance or outright denial of such a claim? Does it matter? I’ve been thinking a lot about gender recently, or more specifically, my lack thereof. I think about how I use the facade of a male for every day-to-day life. It’s not that I’m comfortable in my body, nor am I uncomfortable. It’s just… detached. This feeling has plagued my thoughts. I thought it was abnormal. Well, in a sense, it is. If I were to use the term “abnormal” to mean not-widespread, then it would be. But that doesn’t, or rather shouldn’t matter to me. Should it? Playing the mask of male isn’t the only way I think I’m an impostor. I’m also not agender. I can’t be. I must merely be pretending. How can I know what I don’t have? The second-guessing, it’s evident in my writing. You could see it in my thoughts if you could read my mind. One thing that has really helped placate me was developing my own model of understanding gender. I even made a video on it. Here, I’ll quote a relevant part: “There would also be a condition of a ‘lack of agreement or disagreement,’ or general apathy, this is how I view my agenderism (though some agender individuals may view this in alternate ways, you get the basic gist).” I guess it’s the writing that helped. There’s something about articulating my thoughts that I find comforting. Hey look, it’s happening right now! Is it weird that I don’t know what I’m supposed to be writing? I wanted to write about how I feel like an impostor in some sort of “doublethink” kind of way. I guess I veered off-track. I started writing about my inner thoughts and feelings and now I’m writing about how I’m writing about my inner thoughts and feelings. That can really throw someone off, that level of meta. Hmm… should I write about some personal experiences now? Alright, let’s see. I really only started to figure out that I was agender after I started to get to the root of what gender is. Ideas festered in my mind and I made an entire YouTube video based on that. It was a weird attempt at reconciling the ideas of social constructivism, performativism, and innateness. If I believed gender was nothing but a social construct, doesn’t that mean everyone would technically be agender? That’s a point I was at for some time. That caused a lot of issues as well. I didn’t know what I was. Some sort of thing? Y’know, I’ve noticed a weird trend in my writing. I absolutely love italics. See, I did it again?! As I’m writing this out on my computer, my word processor keeps wanting to correct the term “agender” to “gender.” Literally converting a word to its antonym. At some point, recently, I had commented that I was the four a’s. Asexual. Aromantic. Atheist. Agender. Another way that I find myself second-guessing myself. I think that I might like identifying with things that I’m not. Is my agenderism a phase? Am I caught up in some leftist conspiracy to destroy gender, obliterate Western civilization, and turn the FRICKIN’ FROGS GAY?! Probably. Do I care? No. Something else that has been common with me recently, apathy. It comes in waves of lethargy, I just don’t care. Is that normal? Again, do I care? No. I’ve noticed that I’m struggling to stick to the topic of agenderism. It does seem a bit difficult to write about one’s lack of a gender identity, to be honest. Maybe I’ll touch up on one more topic before I leave. Toxic masculinity. How am I still affected by it? I guess years of conditioning don’t just evaporate once you realize a truth about yourself. I really should be wrapping up now, I borrowed some books from the library and need to finish them up before I return them. Note: This entry is a spiritual continuation of "An Impostor." Once upon a time there was a little child who thought too much. All day, the child would think. The child's parents didn't like that. They were concerned for their child. How was their child to grow up, get a steady job, get married, and carry on the family name if the child were to think all day? The child's peers were not fond of the child as well. They were cruel to the child. They taunted and teased. The minor annoyances that children inflict upon others. The child went to school as well. The child's school teachers did not like the child either. To them, the child was a danger. A disruption. The child was defiant of their authority, contradicted them. The child really did think too much. The child thought this too. Day and night, in waking hour and sleep, thoughts were the plague of the child's mind. Thoughts beginning with "Why?" and "How?" The child knew this was not normal. The child was aware of their abnormalities in other ways as well. For instance, the child never seemed to be interested in matters of love. This was no concern for the child at merely six years of age, but, as time passed, it started to become noticeable as they entered adolescence. Just as well, the child realized something else: the child did not like pink or blue. Did not fit the divide. The child was pushed to one side, the side befitting what was between the child's legs. Forced and shackled to a color, the child grew sad. The child grew detached. The child went quietly, putting on an act of blue. The act was so good, the child even fooled themself. Years later, the child saw through their own lies. The child is not happy, but the child knows. The child knows that they stand apart from ideas of blue or pink entirely. The child knows, and that is enough. Grappling Hooks is an aroace, agender individual. Ey is a second-generation Indian-American immigrant who lives in New Jersey. Ey uses They/Them or Ey/Em pronouns. Plays the guitar, sings, has a YouTube channel, and a Twitter which can be found @HooksGrappling It’s a strange thing, how often you can make new discoveries about yourself in such a short amount of time. Realizing I saw myself as agender was one of those times, although it wasn’t a gradual progression for me. It came to me, rather suddenly, as I was lying down to go to sleep one night. There’s always a common link between lying in bed at night and having these kinds of thoughts; having realizations about one’s life. It was like a sudden spotlight flicking on, revealing where I was on the stage, and showing me, finally, what character I was. In that moment, I realized I didn’t see myself as male or female. Neither of the words seemed to fit. As I thought on it more, I started thinking that they might never have to begin with. I was thrilled to have had this revelation and gain a better understanding of myself, but it came with some degree of regret as well. I kept thinking, for months after realizing it and trying out neutral pronouns, that it would have been so much better if I had known this years ago and had more time to get comfortable with this new sense of self. I could have made use of the LGBT resource center at college. That could’ve been another way of making connections and meeting more people. People like myself. Since graduating and moving back home, I’ve been struggling with depression and a kind of longing for the past. I kept wishing I could go back to where I was in college. I had friends there and a sense of purpose. I had a clear sense of who I was and who I wanted to be. I felt I had lost that once I graduated. Many of my friends had moved away or moved on to new parts of their lives and it was harder to keep in contact with them. It’s not something I blame them for or hold against them, but it still didn’t make things easier. I became lost in my day job, which didn’t provide the same kind of stimulation, instead giving way to daily repetition. I didn’t feel like myself at all, or really like anyone at all. I had the usual outlets to keep me afloat; friends, family and hobbies, but it often felt like it wasn’t as effective, like the power that it once had was slowly dwindling. Yet this sparked a sense of self in me again. There was something new I was realizing about myself that could, potentially, take my life in a new direction and break me out of the rut that I found myself mired in. This was in May 2017 and it has been just over a year since then. I found communities online, started attending pride events, and encountered people who were like me. My expansive social circle that had once dwindled started to grow again. This fairly major discovery gave way to smaller discoveries that kept coming to me over the course of the next year. I kept finding new revelations that explained things about myself, things that I never fully understood when I was young. Invariably, it often had to do with how I presented myself online. It had become a convenient way to explore my identity, even if I wasn’t fully aware of it. It’s more common for people to show what they look like when they’re on the internet now. People want to show their appearance, which there’s nothing wrong with. When I was a kid though, that wasn’t really the case. In school, I was encouraged to not show what I looked like online or even give out my real name. Everyone in my class was taught this, actually. We had to watch a whole presentation about how you never truly know who or how many people were on the other side of the monitor. They never said it outright, but the general default seemed to land on the other person being a murderer, so you never wanted them to know where you lived or what you looked like. Someone showing you a picture of themselves was a rare thing and a sign of trust, in my experience. I had a few people ask me to show a picture, although I rarely actually used pictures of myself. There were people I was close to that earned that privilege, but more commonly I would use a picture of a random person, usually taking from street photography I found online. I wouldn’t claim to be the person in the photo, but I would claim that’s basically how I look. I thought I was very clever, but I’m sure it’s a ruse no one actually fell for. Yet there was a common theme in all the photos I chose. Invariably, the person was someone whose gender could not be determined simply by looking at them. They were always more androgynous. At the time, I don’t think I was aware of any reason why. The photos I chose unearthed something in me, giving me that feeling of seeing myself even though I was fully aware it wasn’t and it wasn’t even close to how I actually looked. Yet, when I look on it now, it almost feels like I was showing how I wished I looked. My ideal face. I’ve always struggled with having what was considered a generally masculine appearance. I’ve had frequent anxiety about having facial hair and body hair. I never wanted chest hair or arm hair, yet I have it all the same. It was a way of vicarious living, I suppose. Lately it’s been easier to find things I like about my body, but it’s not always an easy thing to do. Like most things, it takes practice, I imagine. Although, I get better as time goes on. In a way, that was the advantage of having an online presence. I could cultivate this image I wanted of myself. Some saw it as deception, building relationships off of a lie, and it was. I didn’t think it was as harmful. Most of that attitude seemed to be from people who preferred I be female, because of the potential of an online relationship. I never pretended to be female or claimed to be. Most people assumed I was based off the way I spoke online. It came off as more feminine to people, as I’d been told. Yet somehow, I was fine with that. People mistaking me for a girl, strangely, didn’t get under my skin. However, when I did consider myself male, only a few people actually knew, and sometimes they would tell strangers and I found that infuriating. I didn’t want people to know. I still didn’t want people to think I was female either. I didn’t want people to think anything. At the time, I justified it as people not wanting to form an opinion of me based on my gender. I wanted it to be thought of based on how I acted as a person. Though people seem to assume one or the other anyway. I suppose it’s a natural curiosity in people. At the time, the only categories in my head were “male” and “female.” It could’ve been that, without realizing it, I was taking the only option I knew of that was the closest to saying “neither.” It didn’t make sense to me at the time. I didn’t understand why I was doing these things or why these things upset me, even as they were happening. It was just my natural, intrinsic reaction. It was not something I could explain. It became clear to me as to why when I had the realization of who I was. For me, it explained all of those things and numerous others. More than I would’ve imagined, and seemingly more all the time. It should be overwhelming, it seems like, but it’s made my life feel more stable. In the end, these little revelations helped ease my anxiety. The initial anxiety I felt was feeling like I discovered it too late. I felt as though I had wasted many years of my life not knowing who I was, and I kept thinking how many years I could have had and how much better it all would have been. But the past is the past. That’s the important thing that I have to remember. As a hobby of mine, reading has often helped me understand myself at different times of my life, and this was no exception. The mantra that has been coming to mind, one I came across years ago in the series A Song of Ice and Fire, is a simple one: “If I look back, I am lost.” The important thing to remember is to not look to the past or what could have been. What matters is who we are going forward. Yet it’s hard not to wonder, which is how those revelations helped. Even if I didn’t have the word for it at the time, it doesn’t mean that I wasn’t who I discovered myself to be. Would it have been better? Possibly. There’s no way to tell. The way the past could have been has just as much uncertainty as the way the future can be. The only difference is that the future can be what you make of it. The way I’ve begun to see it, I was always who I am, even if I wasn’t aware of it. Going forward into the future, I can embrace it, and live that life now. It is never too late to start the life you want. Alex was raised in St. Paul, Minnesota and studied creative writing St. Cloud State University, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in 2014. They identify as both asexual and agender. They previously wrote reviews for video games for the sites PlayStation Home Gazette, PowerUp Gaming and Twin Cities Geek. Stories have been a lifelong passion of theirs, whether it’s reading them or telling them. They primarily write fiction, with stories spanning across multiple genres. While they keep their tastes broad, the fantasy, science fiction and horror genres are very close to their heart. I had a good friend recently ask me about my pronouns. And, interestingly, they are the first person in my life ever to do so. But my answer to the question is complicated. Because what is a pronoun? It’s a word that substitutes for a noun, and a personal pronoun is associated with a grammatical person, as in, first, second, or third. First person is easy. I was agender before I even knew that was a word. I was assigned female at birth. I was socialized as a girl, as a woman. I never particularly identified with things associated with femininity, but I never identified with masculinity either. My favorite toys weren’t dolls or trucks, but animals. And like every kid, I liked dinosaurs to the point where I said I wanted to be a paleontologist. My parents never forced me into particularly gendered interests. I was never told I couldn’t do something because I was a girl. At the same time, I was never told I had to do something because I was a girl. No one ever told me to be more ladylike. Gender roles weren’t emphasized to me by my family in ways that I can remember. I liked reading and music and basketball and movies. I had friends who were girls and boys. And these things are still true as I’ve gotten older. If you look at my brain and the way I process information, I’m more “rational” than “emotional.” I’m not particularly nurturing. I like talking about ideas more than I like talking about people. And these are things unfairly associated with men. There was a meme going around a few years ago where you were supposed to pick the three fictional characters that you were most like, and I chose Daria, Nick Miller, and Sherlock Holmes. Everyone else I saw do the meme stuck to characters that were the same gender as them, but I didn’t even think about it. It was only as I got older when I realized that my gender mattered to other people, that it prevents me from feeling like I have bodily autonomy. That some of my interests are “weird.” I studied philosophy, one of the most male-dominated academic fields, and I was told in graduate school that I would never get a job except maybe as a department’s token feminist philosopher. One thing I have most in common with other women is being unfairly treated, unwantedly hit on, talked over, never taken seriously, made to do secretarial tasks at jobs where I was not in a secretarial position. I’ve often wondered how my life would be different were I man. But I know I’m not transgender. I don’t feel like I’m in the wrong body exactly. I’d prefer being in a sexless body. I’d prefer being a brain in a vat. I’m not genderfluid. I don’t move on a spectrum I feel like I’m not on in the first place. When I’m alone, I don’t feel gendered. I don’t think of myself as a woman. I’m just me, I am I, the first person. Second person is rightfully impossible. The ideas of masculinity and femininity are bogus, and we all know this even as we cling to them, because they’re so easy to disprove by the existence of people who don’t fit into them the way they “should.” And femininity doesn’t even really exist on its own; it is essentially just the negation of masculinity. Women are always a lack. Biological sex exists on a spectrum and is based on far more indicators than the outward appearance of genitals or the ability to give birth. There are chromosomal factors that determine sex but with multiple variations that don’t neatly fit into male and female. There are corresponding hormones with variations in levels. But though the amount of certain hormones has been found to affect behavior, none of this means that there are strictly two genders that correspond neatly onto strictly two sexes. You, the second person, are somewhere on these spectrums. You exist in a culture that has its own gender norms. You have your own psychology and set of experiences that no one else has access to. You know if you don’t fit into the role you’ve been given or the body you were born with. But you usually have to choose one or the other. Social practices have worked to take biological averages and use them to reinforce a social gender binary. Our current form of capitalism has run with the notion of pink and blue as a way for parents to broadcast their child’s gender to the world before the child is even born. Capitalism loves rigid distinctions, because categories can easily be marketed to. And so gender is a pink tax as girls and women pay more for clothing and shampoo. Gender is a category used to establish social hierarchy and is found at the heart of a toxic rape culture that allows one half of the population to feel justified in dominating over the other half, often in domestic settings. We’ve legitimated violence against anyone who doesn’t fit into two gender categories because of some statistical biological tendencies. This binary is so important to people and important to our social practices that we all fit into one box or the other. Are you an M or an F? You get asked this in strange places like buying a plane ticket, registering for university classes, or getting a library card, as if it could possibly matter. I don’t know how anyone else experiences gender, I don’t know you, the second person, but I know you were forced to adhere to a gender in one way or another. And if you fit, if your psychology and biology and social expectations all line up neatly into one end of the spectrum or the other, then you might not understand how and why not all of us do. Third person is the problem. When I’m with a few members of my family and a few close friends, I can sometimes just be me. I like to think that people who know me just see me and not a gender, but I’ll never really know if they do. I tend not to think about people’s genders, because I’m far more interested in a person’s ideas than anything else about them. But people who know me always use “she” and “her” for me without hesitation. The world assumes I’m a woman. My body falls easily into the generic notion of human female. I have hips and breasts. I also keep my hair long so I can pull it off my face and because it’s easier to cut myself when it’s longer — a decade-old habit from being too poor to afford a haircut. I could hide under baggier clothes, and sometimes I do. If I’m being honest, I dress, generally, like a teenage boy. Sneakers and jeans and graphic t-shirts and flannel and hoodies. But I’m still always she, her, miss, ma’am. A stranger meeting me for the first time will see “woman” first and will automatically make assumptions about me without conscious thought. They will evaluate my body in terms of whatever the cultural ideal is and in doing so sum up my worth. This also often means I will be automatically dismissed, not listened to, not believed, not liked, by both men and women, because we have been socialized to have automatic biases against women. It will be expected that I be “nice.” There is significant research that shows men don’t believe women, women are generally seen as more untrustworthy than men, and men simply don’t believe that gender biases exist, even when provided empirical evidence to the contrary. Other people need the categories, need the pronouns, need the shortcuts, because it makes life easier when you don’t have to think about why someone else might be different from you and what that means. Even our brains seek patterns and fill them in without conscious thought. Disruptions in the patterns make the brain work harder and use more energy, which is something none of our bodies like to do. Some anthropologists have suggested we simply have a natural tendency to think in binaries. And all of this is why my answer to my friend was that I don’t really care about pronouns. I don’t feel strongly as a “she,” I’m just used to it. I certainly don’t feel like a “he.” I’m fine with “they,” but I feel like that is reserved for people who are non-binary but still have an identity. I appreciate non-binary people who insist on “they.” I hope that by their insistence, they can normalize the use of “they” as a singular pronoun, because it should be. There should be language available for people who do not fit into the binaries, and it should be just as automatic in the third person and just as patterned into our speech as “he” and “she.” But I just don’t feel non-binary or fluid. I feel like nothing. The thing about third-person pronouns is that they aren’t for you. These pronouns exist for other people to use to talk about you. And it doesn’t matter what I say or do or insist on, people are going to gender me as a woman anyway because of how I look, because of how they were socialized, because of how I have been shaped by the world around me and all the social structures I was born into. I’m a statistical anomaly. An agender, aromantic, asexual person who resents being a biological entity and resents being in a society that won’t recognize any of these things about me anyway. Getting accurate pronouns in a language that doesn’t think I exist isn’t a battle I can fight. Because getting my pronouns accurate doesn’t matter to anyone except maybe the friend who asked me the question in the first place. To everyone else I’m “she.” Heidi Samuelson is a writer based in Chicago and a former academic philosopher, earning her PhD in 2012. She wishes she knew what asexuality and aromanticism were when she was in her teens and early 20s. Her writing has appeared in the Open Court popular culture and philosophy series and can be found on Medium: @heidisamiam and Twitter: @heidisamiam. Michael Paramo is a two-spirit aromantic asexual and lead editor of The Asexual journal. As a graduate student studying (a)sexuality, gender, attraction, and intimacy, they have presented their research on historicizing asexuality at the National Women's Studies Association and have been selected for publication in a peer-reviewed journal to be released in late 2018. They aspire to live near the forest and the ocean one day and be fully embraced by the beauty and power of nature. They can be found on Twitter @homoasexual and @Michael_Paramo The Asexual is an independent journal for ace writers and artists that relies on donations of $1.00 or more per month via Patreon. Without this support from our patrons, this journal would not be possible. Supporters of The Asexual journal currently donating $5.00 or more per month: Akilah Thomas Alex Stabler Alexandra Bowers-Mason Andrea Berman Anna Short ANNE HAWLEY Annie Robertson Bethany King Brittainy Brown Ceili Sauer Chris Pasillas Christian Scheuring Courtney Boucher Damianne Abel Daniela Illing David Allen David Jay Duke Lambert Dylan Morris Elisheva Averett-Balser Florian Freyss Heidi Samuelson Helen Doremus Jacob Irving Jennifer Smart Jessica Beroldi Jessica Shea Joe Kort Julia Julie Rozen Kaitlyn Mahoney Kate Gilbert Katie Frey KatieC Kianna Carter Kiya Kyle Lindsey Laurel Williams Lindsey Petrucci M. D. Hooks Madeline Askew Mat Jarosz Rane Wallin Robin Taylor Rosemary Derocher Samantha L Sarah Lister Sety Stephanie Keahey Tawny Case Vari Robinson virdant Walter Mastelaro Neto Owner retain copyright of their respective work(s) upon publication in Agender: An Anthology, but agrees to give The Asexual first serial/electronic rights and print rights as well as electronic and print archival rights. Owner agrees that if the work is published subsequently, either online or in print, credit to The Asexual is provided.

Ashley Allen always had the mentality of, “If I was in charge, I would do it differently.” Now, they make that come true as CEO and founder of ITequality. They started the company in 2017 after working as a system admin at Verizon, and before that, working as a Salesforce consultant in order to provide for three children. Read on to learn about this green-haired, tattooed, smash-the-mold trailblazing partner, and the journey to running a business and blazing trails all along the way. How did you get your start in tech? Ashley: When I was fresh out of college with a bachelor’s in mathematics, I found out I was pregnant with my second daughter. I wondered how I’d get a job if I had to leave in nine months, so I started looking for work-from-home jobs, figuring I’d do something like stuff envelopes, making minimum wage. From a Craigslist ad, I found a startup Salesforce consulting company, who hired me to code. After a year, I left my developer role, and did freelance Admin work. I didn't really find my stride with my career until I met someone who truly believed in me. His advice was to always know the value of my work, and he was the first boss I ever had who really built me up. In fact, 5 years after I left that position, I went back to thank him and had lunch with him! In 2014 got a job at Autotrader.com as an in-house Salesforce admin. That was eye-opening because I hadn’t worked in such a large organization. Later, I worked at Verizon and recently, I started ITequality. Tell us about ITequality. What it’s mission? Ashley: We are a Salesforce consulting company, but we’re also so much more than that. We are community outreach. We help people gain Salesforce experience. Maybe they need a small resume boost, or they’re going back to work after being a stay-at-home dad. We strive to help people any way possible. ITequality is very much about helping nonprofits and the community. Why? Ashley: When I was growing up, I was an at-risk kid struggling with mental health issues. I would not be where I am today without the teachers, neighbors, counselors, and friends I had to lean on. We have this vision of creating a non-profit tutoring café where LGBT and at-risk kids can get tutoring help, do their homework, get free food, and have a safe place to go after school. Most of all, I want kids to have people who believe in them, the way I had people believe in me. I want every child to know they are important, and there are people who care about them and genuinely want them to succeed. I want profits from ITequality to kickstart this vision, and one day have it grow into a self sustaining nonprofit. Wow. Do you have time for fun? Ashley: I’m so passionate about this that it feels like a hobby. It doesn’t feel like work to me. For fun, I do enjoy ceramics, ballet, and gardening. My partner and I have three kids, and we like to do crafts, robotics, cooking and music with them. What have been some of your challenges in starting ITequality? Ashley: I self Identify as a non-binary lesbian. When somebody looks at me they don’t necessarily see a stereotypical business woman. When I started ITequality, I thought to myself, ‘Who do I want to be? Am I going wear long sleeves to cover my scars and tattoos?’ I wondered if my appearance would hurt my credibility, and I really wanted to be successful. At the same time, I wanted to be authentic, and so I decided to just be me. That was extremely hard because at first nobody hired me. It was months before I had one customer. I was broke. One night, I tried to lighten my hair to a brown color using a store-bought box of hair dye, but made a huge mistake which resulted in a horrific shade of orange. It was late at night, and I needed to fix the color, so using what I had on hand, I covered it up with some old bright pink hair dye. I had forgotten that I had a meeting at the Chamber of Commerce the next day, and now I would be showing up with pink hair. I was at rock bottom. I had nothing left to lose. However, in a turn of events, everybody at the Chamber of Commerce loved my hair. They really loved it. It was the self-esteem boost that I needed so badly. Shortly after, I received a phone call to help a company with a Salesforce quick start. And so, the day after I dyed my hair pink, I had my first customer. How do you continue to learn and grow? Ashley: There are a few different ways I like to learn. I’m extremely active in the local user group community. I’m the Orange County Non-Profit User Group leader. My co-founder and I go to community led events like Tahoe Dreamin, WITness Success, Forcelandia, Force Academy LA, TrailheaDX and Dreamforce. Wherever we go, there’s always something new to learn. Hands-on learning is important as well. I’ll go to Trailhead, and focus more on reading the trails than getting the badges. I’ll ask a team member to do something in Salesforce, and then teach me. It reinforces what they’ve learned and I enjoy that experience. I believe certifications are important. I have seven Salesforce certifications with three that I’m actively pursuing. What does being a Trailblazer mean to you? Ashley: A Trailblazer is somebody who pushes through all of those barriers in front of them, in order to get to where they need to be. I had an incredible network of Salesforce Ohana who helped me learn Salesforce, but I also read through thousands of pages of documentation before the days of Trailhead. My story resonates with others because so many people work just as hard to learn and grow. Trailblazers push through those barriers to make the path a little easier for the next person. What is your advice to Trailblazers? Ashley: That day that I got my first customer was life changing. They didn’t care that my hair was pink, or that I had tattoos and scars. You don’t need to fit someone else’s mold to be successful. People are going to hire you for your brain. If somebody is going to discriminate against you, they’re going to find a reason regardless of how much you try to fit in. Don’t let that hold you back. Don’t be afraid of failure. On my certification journey, I have failed four separate times, and I have failed the same exam twice. My advice is it’s okay to fail. Failure is part of the learning process and part of being human. It’s not about always being perfect; it’s about learning how to fail forward. Learn more about ITequality. - How Personalized Experiences Lead to Repeat Customers How Personalized Experiences Lead to Repeat Customers Type Article Yara Lutz, SVP, CRM at Merkle, discusses how, as the market shifts, there is no longer a debate on “if” we want to deliver personalized customer experiences — it's on “how” best to deliver them. - Salesforce EMEA Exec Works to Increase Inclusion Salesforce EMEA Exec Works to Increase Inclusion Type Article Salesforce exec Leon Mangan champions recruitment, accessibility, and equality for people with disabilities. - 5 Reasons Your ABM Needs AI 5 Reasons Your ABM Needs AI Type Article AI can help streamline your communications with prospects and customers to ultimately close more sales and reduce churn. CMFocus's Girish Balakrishnan covers 3 ways AI can improve your sales and marketing processes to provide a better overall experience. - Meet Trailblazing Partner John Garvens of Emelar Consulting Group Meet Trailblazing Partner John Garvens of Emelar Consulting Group By Holly Rushton Type Article Once an aspiring professional musician, John Garvens's journey has been anything if not out-of-the-ordinary. Read more about this Trailblazer's path to the Salesforce community in this interview. - 5 Apps Every Mobile Growth Marketer Needs 5 Apps Every Mobile Growth Marketer Needs Type Article Adi Erel of Neura shares her list of 5 must-have apps to help mobile growth marketers.

Today’s post comes to you by popular demand — which makes sense because she was very popular, and she also knew what she wanted and demanded it! Well, okay, mostly she just got it herself. She knew exactly who she was from a remarkably young age and never wavered. Isabel Vargas Lizano was born on April 17, 1919 to Francisco Vargas and Herminia Lizano in San Joaquin de Flores, Costa Rica. As far as I can tell, it was a pretty unremarkable event. She was frequently called “Chavela” by her family. Despite that affectionate nickname, things would take a turn for the worse — her very religious parents were embarrassed by Chavela’s tomboy-ishness, going so far as to hide her when they had visitors to their home. They ultimately divorced, leaving her to be raised by her uncle, and then she contracted polio. Chavela managed to survive the illness relatively unscathed — she and her family credited this to the rituals and talismans of shamans and witches, rather than the scientific medicine of doctors. By seventeen years old, Chavela was fully aware that she wanted a career in music and — since there weren’t many musical opportunities in Costa Rica — she moved to Mexico. Initially, she sang on the streets — dressed in traditionally masculine clothing, wearing the red poncho (or more specifically a jorongo) that would become a signature part of her performance “look” in her professional years. The look was a conscious decision — Chavela felt she looked “like a transvestite” in women’s clothing and had trouble walking in heels. To fit into the masculine music scene she was attempting to break into, she began smoking cigars, drinking heavily, and making sure to keep a gun on her at all times. During this period of her career, sometime in the mid-1940s, she had an affair with Frida Kahlo — the romance was relatively brief, but intense. Chavela even lived with Frida and her then-husband Diego Rivera for more than a year. And Frida expressed in letters to her friends that she was very attracted to Chavela. (And yet, there are — of course — scholars who are certain they were just good friends.) In her thirties, she became a professional, becoming known for her own unique take on ranchera — singing solo, with only her guitar as accompaniment instead of a mariachi band, and slowing down the tempo for more dramatic tension or so they could come across as more humorous and, y’know, suggestive. These songs were typically sung from a man’s perspective ( a straight man’s, I should say) and Chavela Vargas refused to change the genders in the songs when she sang them. While her homosexuality certainly would not have been approved of offstage, on stage it was all part of an entertaining act that audiences embraced. Towards the end of the 1950’s, her reputation began to expand greatly — particularly in artistic circles. She was a popular performer in Acapulco, singing in the champagne room of La Perla, frequently in front of tourists from other parts of the world. She was so well regarded that she was hired to sing at the wedding of Elizabeth Taylor and Mike Todd on February 2, 1957. Chavela would later claim that she slept with Ava Gardner at that wedding — I haven’t found an corroboration of that, nor have I found any other examples of Ava Gardner having dalliances with women, but I suppose we all have to experiment at least once in our lives and if Elizabeth Taylor’s wedding isn’t the time and place to do it, when is? She is known to have had numerous romances after this — including, apparently, with some very famous people, but she would never share their names. A few have stepped forward, including American author Betty-Carol Sellen, but Chavela was very careful to keep these things private (particularly, I assume, because very few if any of them would have been open about their sexuality at the time!) In 1961, with the help of José Alfredo Jiménez, Chavela’s first album was released: Noche de Bohemia. This was the first of more than 80 albums that she’d release over the course of her career. Later that year she released Con el cuarteto Lara Foster. Rumor has it that although her career was just beginning to take off, Chavela began a short-lived affair with Arabella Árbenz Villanova in 1964 after their paths crossed coincidentally — the problem being that Arabella was also having a torrid romance with Televisa executive Emilio Azcárraga Milmo, also known as “El Tigre.” When El Tigre learned of this affair he was infuriated and tried to destroy her career. Despite his pretty powerful influence in Mexico, he very nearly did. although Chavela Vargas is — as far as I can tell — still banned from appearing on Televisa in any capacity. Her next album, Hacia la vida was released in 1966. By the time her fourth album Corridosde la revolución came out in 1970, Chavela had become quite popular, though she still wasn’t invited to headline concerts — but as her popularity grew, so did her alcoholism. Despite her struggle with drinking, Chavela managed to release three albums in 1973 and one more in 1975. However, due to her constant battle with addiction and El Tigre’s continuing campaign against her — Chavela was forced to retire and completely disappeared from the public eye. The details are a little bit sketchy here, but according to Chavela while she was “submerged in an alcoholic haze” — as she would later describe it — she was found and taken in by a family of Native Mexicans who attempted to help nurse her back to health. It would be decades before the public learned any of this, and at the time many assumed she had died. She had very little money at this time, and sometimes only ate when friends invited her to their homes for meals. On September 2, 1988, at the request of mutual friend Patria Jiminez, lawyer Dr. Alicia Elena Pérez Duarte arrived at Chavela Vargas’ home in order to stop her from drunkenly signing some legal documents. This began an intense romantic relationship, which both Chavela and Alicia would describe as “something greater than love.” Chavela moved in with Alicia and her four kids — but Chavela’s reliance on alcohol, and her great attachment to firearms, put a heavy strain on the relationship. Although Chavela did manage to quit drinking — which she credits to a shamanistic ritual (though Duarte has publicly disagreed with that statement) — it turned out her violent streak and penchant for guns was not dependent upon alcohol at all. Alicia ended the relationship, though she remained Chavela’s legal representation. In 1989, a couple of Chavela’s albums were rereleased, sparking renewed interest in the singer. When the nightclub El Hábito opened in Mexico City in 1991, they invited her to perform after spotting her in their audience. Eventually, she agreed — though it was her first time performing on a stage since the 70’s and she was 72 years old at the time. It was also her first ever sober performance. This launched a full revival of her career, which involved several more albums and also international fame the likes of which she had not experienced before. She performed not just in Mexico but even performed numerous sold out shows in Spain and France. And finally, she was the headliner of these shows — an honor she had certainly earned. She also provided music for several films during this period, primarily at the behest of Pedro Almodóvar who was a fan, a friend, and a champion for her career after meeting her in Madrid in 1992. Chavela once described him as “my husband in this world.” He traveled the world with her, pushing greater and greater opportunities towards her. Despite his best efforts, she insisted that she did not want to begin a career as an actress — although she did appear in the 2002 biographical film Frida about her former lover Frida Kahlo, singing her song “La Llorona.” That was the same year Chavela published her autobiography Y si quieres saber de mi pasado (which translates to And if you want to know about my past). Although her sexuality had been a fairly open secret for decades — her relationships with women were fairly well known rumors, not to mention her refusal to ever change the genders or pronouns in the songs she sang — it was within the pages of her autobiography that she finally, publicly came out as a lesbian. The following year on September 15, at age 83, Chavela Vargas had her debut performance at Carnegie Hall. The performance was recorded and released as an album creatively entitled Chavela at Carnegie Hall. The performance was considered groundbreaking given her age and sexuality in a musical genre that generally would have denied her for either of those, and in 2019 the album of the recording was named on Mitú’s list of Spanish-language albums that “Changed the Face and Feel of the Music Industry” calling it “the stuff dreams and legends are made of.” In 2012, just months after releasing her final album Luna grande, the 93-year old Chavela Vargas was hospitalized in Cuernavaca, Mexico for respiratory problems. Several weeks later, on August 5, she passed away. It’s comforting, I think, that when she did pass away she knew it was coming and seemed to have made peace with it. She spent her final days making statements like “My name is Chavela Vargas, don’t let them forget!” Her final words, according to her Facebook page, were “I leave with Mexico in my heart.” But truthfully, it’s hard to “leave” if your music is as significant as hers remains to this day, and there’s certainly no way to forget her. Aside from the longevity of her own music, she’s received a lot of tributes — Joaquín Sabina’s song “Por el Boulevard de los Sueños Rotos” is dedicated to her, Juan Carlos created a series of portraits of Chavela which were presented at the Centro Cultural de España en México in Mexico City in 2012. One of the characters in Sergio Ramírez Mercado’s novel La Fugitiva is based off of Chavela. And in 2017, the biographical documentary Chavela was released. She’s even had a Google Doodle in her honor! In 2019, she was commemorated on the Rainbow Honor Walk in San Francisco, which is a “walk of fame” type of thing for LGBTQ+ people who have “made significant contributions in their field.” Given that she essentially reinvented ranchero music, opening it up to women performers, I’d call “significant contributions” an understatement. She remains one of, if not the, most celebrated lesbian in Mexican history. Okay, so, we left off last time and, frankly, things were looking up for queer people in comic books, right? All the major comic book publishers were telling stories about LGBTQ+ people, they’d not shied away from talking about the AIDS crisis and other issues that were important to the queer community. So things are looking up right? Well buckle up, this ride is about to get bumpy. There’s a pretty strong start to these years — Judd Winick created the non-fiction graphic novel Pedro and Me: Friendship, Loss, and What I Learned about his friendship with AIDS activist Pedro Zamora, a friendship spawned by their time together on The Real World: San Francisco. The work would go on to be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and actually win eleven other awards including the GLAAD Outstanding Comic Book Media Award and the Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Honor Award. Dark Horse Comics had begun publishing comic books telling additional Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel stories. Willow Rosenberg and Tara Maclay appeared in both series of comics, beginning in 2001, giving some much needed lesbian representation to the brand. DC apparently did not take well to not getting the Outstanding Comic Book award, as the following year in Green Lantern (vol 3) #137 Kyle Rayner’s assistant Terry Berg came out of the closet. The book did earn DC another Outstanding Comic Book award from GLAAD. (Green Lantern would actually win it two years in row, after Terry survives a brutal hate crime in issue #154.) DC also published an arc in their American Century series about the Red Scare, and how it ended up being wielded against the gay community. This didn’t end up winning any awards, but it is a pretty insightful piece on an often overlooked aspect of that part of US history. Shortly after finally officially confirming that Mystique and Destiny were lovers in X-Treme X-Men #1, Marvel handed off the reigns of their series X-Force to Peter Milligan, who created a number of queer characters including Bloke, who died pretty much right away, and Vivisector and Phat who pretended to be in a relationship for media attention and then both realized they were actually gay in a storyline that carried through 2002. When X-Force was cancelled, they were introduced in the new X-Statix series to continue that plotline. In fact, 2002 was a pretty gay year for Marvel all around. In Citizen V and the V Battalion, they revealed that “best friends” Roger Aubrey and Brian Falsworth — classic heroes from the 1970s, the latter of whom had died in 1981 — were actually lovers. Retroactively, that made them Marvel’s first gay characters. Meanwhile, Moondragon began a romantic relationship with her female roomie Marlo — which means that old storyline about Cloud turning into a man because they were in love with Moondragon is actually even worse than we knew, but clearly Marvel has put in a lot of effort to move past that. Meanwhile, Image Comics was busily churning out Age of Bronze, a comic book retelling of the Trojan War, which included Achilles and Patroklus, and it did not make any effort to straightwash them. In 2002, DC introduced a superhero team designed like a law firm, the Power Company led by Josiah Powers, who also had a relatively quiet domestic life with his partner Rupert. Meanwhile, in Hellblazer #173 John Constantine actually landed a boyfriend named Stanley Manor. Like all of Constantine’s relationships, it ends badly (in the very next issue). But we have much, much, much bigger news to cover in topic of “gay things DC published in 2002.” On July 1, 2002 The Authority #29 was released….after the team defeated their latest “big bad,” Midnighter and Apollo got married! Not only is it super sweet in a way that’s kind of weird for that particular series, it also has the distinct honor of being the first same-sex marriage in mainstream comic book history. Much like the Comics Code Authority, underground comix were fading out as well — partially because distribution had changed in the 90’s, and it was easier to have things published “above ground” so to speak. Paige Braddock had been publishing Jane’s World independently for some time, but in 2002 she started her company Girl Twirl Comics primarily to get her work more widely distributed. It worked. Also, by now, a lot of self-published or independently published comics were just being distributed as online comics — like the online strip Young Bottoms in Lovewhich began in 2002 as well. It was an anthology strip collecting a lot of creator’s work, edited primarily by Tim Fish (who also did a lot of the artwork). In 2003, Marvel began releasing a sort of reimagined Rawhide Kid miniseries, which was an Old West comic series that originally debuted in 1955, produced by the now defunct Atlas Comics. Marvel had taken over the series in the 60’s, and turned him into a soft-spoken but energetic gunslinger from a fairly standard wild west action hero and then left the title abandoned for a while. With the new series, Marvel decided to add one more characteristic to set the hero apart from other heroes of the genre: they made the Rawhide Kid gay. Although they definitely played off of stereotypes for laughs, the presentation was generally applauded for its positive portrayal of a gay man in a genre that we really hadn’t been part of before. (I’m not entirely sure we’ve been a part of it since, to be honest.) Other than continuing the aforementioned storyline between Phat and Vivisector, Marvel really only dabbled a bit in other LGBTQ+ stories in that year — revealing that the Black Cat was bisexual, and having the Punisher have some dealings with a gay sheriff. It was also kind of a quiet year for DC, aside from the aforementioned hate crime story in Green Lantern, though they also gave Dick Grayson (the most objectified man in comic books) a story pretending to be the romantic partner of his police partner Gannon Malloy to protect him from homophobic harassment from other cops. The more stunning moment was in the pages of Gotham Central #6 — the last panel of which showed a picture of Renee Montoya kissing a woman, outing her as a lesbian to the rest of the precinct. The story would continue on for several issues, revealing it was done by an old enemy, Marty Lipari, as part of an even larger scheme by Two-Face. (Renee, interestingly, is the first of the characters created in Batman: The Animated Series to make their way into the comics and end up an iconic queer character. Not the last though!) There’s also a neat juxtaposition when compared to the Dick Grayson storyline, since Renee’s captain on the force is none other than Maggie Sawyer so she had a lot more support than Gannon Malloy did. One other pretty big thing that happened in that year was the formation of Prism Comics, which is a non-profit organization to help LGBTQ+ comic creators network, and to spread information and increase availability of LGBTQ+-related comics. They do a lot of panels at conventions like San Diego Comic Con and New York Comic Con. They also award the Prism Comics Queer Press Grant to an aspiring comic creator every year. And their web site was also one place I got a fair amount of the information that I’ve been presenting to you over this whole series of posts, so you should probably check it out. In 2004, DC tried launching an imprint called “DC Focus” that wasn’t going to tell superhero stories. It didn’t sell, but one of their series — Hard Time — was about a men’s prison. One of the inmates was actually a transgender woman named Cindy Crane. While her placement in the prison suggests that she’s been misgendered by the system, the inmates all treat her and refer to her consistently as a woman. Also, in the Vertigo imprint’s series Y: The Last Man they revealed that one of their three leading characters, Dr. Allison Mann was not just queer but also real sassy about it. Meanwhile, Marvel was starting to dabble with making some of their classic X-Men characters queer — they made Angel gay in an alternate universe set in the year 1602, and set the stage for a romantic relationship between Northstar (who, I guess, is gay in every universe) and Colossus in their Ultimate Universe. They also created the, as far as I know, first ever pansexual superhero in the shapeshifting genderfluid Xavin in Runaways (vol 2) #7. (Runaways in general is a pretty queer series, with two of the major characters being lesbian and literal rainbow Karolina Dean and bisexual witch Nico Minoru.) But maybe the most memorable thing that Marvel did was in 2005 — which was to re-introduce us to Billy Kaplan, better known as Wiccan. I say “re-introduce” because his history with Marvel goes back to 1986 but he wasn’t actually real, and then he died….it’s a long story. But it would have to be when your mother is Scarlet Witch and your dad is Vision. Anyways, his reintroduction was in Young Avengers #1 and by Young Avengers #6 he was in a romantic relationship with his teammate Hulkling. While at the time this was just adding two new gay characters to their existing repertoire, they rapidly became fan favorites, and their inclusion earned Young Avengers the 2006 Outstanding Comic Book award from GLAAD, and also got them a Harvey Award for Best New Series. DC dove hard into its sassy lesbian thing that it had begun with Allison Mann, by revealing Scandal Savage was a lesbian in a relationship with fellow supervillain and teammate Knockout. The following year, in their 52 series they brought back a new incarnation of an old character: Katherine “Kate” Kane. While the previous Batwoman had been established pretty much solely to prove how straight Bruce Wayne was, this Kate Kane was like….almost an apology to the queer community for erasing us during the decades they followed the Code. While they didn’t give too much information about Kate all at once, one of the very first things they revealed was that she was Renee Montoya’s ex-girlfriend, but eventually as her backstory was revealed readers learned that Kate was an out and proud lesbian who’d been booted from the military thanks to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. And unlike the previous Batwoman, this Batwoman was a very independent superhero who seldom crosses over with others — even Batman only worked with her a handful of times. That was the same year, by the way, that Alison Bechdel released her autobiographical comic Fun Home: A Family Tragicomicwhich focused on her relationship with her closeted father. The graphic novel was critically acclaimed, being officially listed as one of the best books of 2006 by The New York Times, The Times, Publisher’s Weekly and Amazon. Entertainment Weekly said it was the best non-fiction book of the year, but Time said it was the best book of the year, period. It was nominated for a whole mess of awards I won’t even list, but it won the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Comic Book, the Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work, the Stonewall Book Award for non-fiction, the Publishing Triangle-Judy Grahn Nonfiction Award, and the Lambda Literary Award in the Lesbian Memoir and Biography category. It got turned into a musical, which launched off-Broadway in 2013 and has also won and been nominated for a ton of awards. And the praise and attention have barely slowed down since — in 2019, The Guardian placed Fun Home at #33 in its list of the 100 best books of 21st century. Most mainstream comics about straight people can’t even garner that much attention, and this was getting noticed by everyone, from comic book fans to literary academics. So, when I say that Fun Home is an important piece of LGBTQ+ history and culture….believe me, and go read it or see it on stage. Or better yet, read it and then see it on stage. I guess everyone was pretty lesbian-ed out after 2006, though, because barely anything happened with queer women in comics the following year. However, Midnighter got his own series by DC’s WildStorm imprint at the very beginning of 2007 which focused heavily on his relationship with Apollo and with their adopted daughter. It was the first mainstream series with a queer character’s name as the title, the first mainstream solo superhero series with a queer lead, and the first mainstream series with a gay man as the lead. (Well, okay, technically, Northstar had gotten his own miniseries in 1994, but it completely ignored his sexuality which is why I ignored it. And I stand by that decision.) So, y’know, kind of a big deal. Apparently this gave publisher’s the idea that queer characters could be strong enough to be leads in their own right — the end of the following year Top Cow Comics released a story arc in Witchblade wherein the lead, Danielle Baptiste, would question her sexuality and begin a relationship with her roommate Finch. IDW Publishing confirmed the homosexuality of Duncan Locke in Locke & Key – Head Games #4 only four months later. As far as I can tell, those were the first queer characters for either of those companies and both of them are leading characters. Marvel even decided, by 2009, that it might just be time to make some of their longstanding X-Men characters actually be queer in their primary universe, instead of just in alternate ones. In June, they introduced Kyle Jinadu, who is (I believe) main continuity’s Northstar’s first ever actual boyfriend since he came out of the closet over a decade prior! X-Factor (vol 3) #45 featured the first kiss between characters Rictor (who’d been introduced in 1987) and Shatterstar (who’d been introduced in 1991). I’d like to say this made a big splash — I have been a fan Shatterstar specifically since about 1991, so I was certainly charmed. but it simply couldn’t compete with what DC was doing with their queer characters that year. At literally the same time as that kiss, Kate Kane made waves again by taking the leading in Detective Comics. That’s big because Detective Comics is one of — if not the — longest running comic book series in history. And it’s still going after launching in 1937. It was literally the series that founded DC Comics. (DC is short for Detective Comics — which makes the company’s name actually Detective Comics Comics if you think about it.) It was an anthology series for a while, until they introduced Batman in 1939 in issue #27 (which is the most valuable comic book in history) and he was essentially the star of the series after that. For seventy years and 827 issues. In 2009, the series took a brief hiatus for three months because of various other story arcs going on with the Bat family, and then they released issue #854, with Batwoman taking the lead. There was also a ten page back up strip featuring Renee Montoya, who was now the superhero known as the Question. So, yeah, they took essentially the most important series in DC Comics and handed it over entirely to lesbian characters. Batwoman remained the lead until issue #863. In 2010, one of the last major American comic book producers finally introduced its very first LGBTQ+ character. That would be Archie Comics, who finally gave us Kevin Keller in Veronica #202. I gotta be honest, I can’t tell you too much about him. I don’t read Archie Comics much. But, in 2012 — just two years later — in Life with Archie #16, which is a sort of flashforward to adulthood series — Kevin Keller got married in the second same-sex marriage in mainstream comics. (Except for a nameless gay couple getting married in Ex Machina #10, technically they were second. But they didn’t have names.) Kevin, and his husband Clay Walker, also had the first same-sex interracial marriage in mainstream comics. So, they may have gotten a slow start with queer characters, but they really decided to jump in and go straight to doing something that Marvel comics had still not done. That issue, by the way, was boycotted by the One Million Moms because it was sold in Toys’R’Us stores which led to the comic completely selling out, and subsequently inspiring Kevin to get three solo comic book series. Thanks One Million Moms! As a side note, the Comics Code Authority — which had ben increasingly irrelevant has it was abandoned by publisher after publisher, some of whom were adopting a ratings system that Marvel had created essentially out of spite when the CCA had demanded changes to an X-Force story in 2001. DC Comics, which was only submitting some stories to the CCA by this point, announced they were completely discontinuing use of the CCA on January 20, 2011. That left Archie Comics as the only publisher still using the CCA….for exactly one day before they also announced they were stopping that practice. So that was, at long last, the end of that. Anyways, it was only a matter of months after Kevin Keller’s wedding when Marvel would go ahead and have their first same-sex marriage. Although Wiccan and Hulkling got engaged first (in Avengers: The Children’s Crusade #9 — also their first depicted kiss), the first wedding would actually be between Northstar and Kyle Jinadu. Here’s the thing, and maybe it’s because I was mostly a Marvel fan at the time, or maybe I’m having some Mandela effect thing, but I really recall Marvel advertising Astonishing X-Men (vol 3) #51 as being the first gay marriage in comic books. They sent out “Save the Date” cards. They made it a really big deal. And I can give them a pass on not including anything from underground comix but…really, they were third (or fourth, depending on if we’re counting that nameless couple in Ex Machina.) They didn’t even manage to have the first interracial same-sex wedding. Still, it was a first for Marvel and for Marvel fans and specifically Northstar fans, this was pretty exciting and it was very cool that Marvel made an extremely big deal about the fact it was happening. They had like….basically every superhero that had ever been in any comic book Northstar was ever in appear, or at least show up on the cover. (I’m not even sure if Kyle actually had any guests at the wedding, just all Northstar’s superfriends.) This was such a big deal, the original proposal for the splash cover art sold on eBay for more than $2,100. Also by Marvel, and I’m including it here solely because the second panel is so great, in Avengers Academy #23, the character Striker came out to his bisexual teammate Lightspeed. Just look at her face. (And in case you weren’t convinced about how very LGBTQ+ this all is, Lightspeed’s superpower involves leaving a rainbow behind her when she flies.) So, you may be wondering, what was DC doing right about now? Right? Well, as it turns out, rebooting their entire continuity. Okay, technically that began in 2011 but this is like a whole thing to talk about so I wanted to get those marriages out of the way first. So, basically, DC does this every once in a while where they kind of “start over” their whole universe, and this time in 2011 they also merged it with some of their offshoot imprints like WildStorm and some of their Milestone and Vertigo content. This led to some good stuff for queer people in comic books….and it also led to some bad stuff. I’m going to dissect that in entirely too much detail for you right now. So, to start with, part of this “The New 52” branding they were doing as they reset the continuity was that they were launching with only 52 series to like establish their remade universe. (And to be clear, “resetting” doesn’t mean, in this case, erasing all of the history of every character and starting from scratch. A lot of important and memorably storylines and moments were kept as part of their character’s backstory – like they did not retell Batman’s origin story.) One of the first of these series was Stormwatch — starring, among a handful of others, Midnighter and Apollo. Unfortunately when they decided to reset the continuity….DC also decided to drop their wedding from their history, they’re just dating. It’s fine, it’s not like that was a major moment in their character’s histories and also an important moment in LGBTQ+ comic history… And for the record, as of my writing this in 2021, they still have not married again. (Maybe that’s why Marvel advertised Northstar and Kyle’s wedding the way they did, since DC had already been like “no wait, that never happened.”) The next week after launching that series, they launched Batwoman (vol 2) — a permanent solo series, not miniseries like volume 1 had been, all about Kate Kane who remained pretty much exactly as she was prior to the reset. This series also included Maggie Sawyer, with whom Kate begins a relationship. Two weeks after that, the new Teen Titans series began which would quickly introduce Bunker, a gay Latino character, as one of their team members. That was released roughly the same time as Justice League Dark which brought back John Constantine. So they relaunched with four series, pretty much right off the bat, featuring LGB characters in leading roles. And that’s it — that’s the good news. Pretty much none of their otherwise established queer characters were anywhere to be found until 2012, when they brought back the Pied Piper, and in their series about Earth 2 (which is an alternature universe) they did reveal that the Green Lantern Alan Scott was gay. But, if you were noticing, there’s still a demographic that was completely missing: they now had no transgender characters. At all. And only one of their LGB characters wasn’t white. So what I’m saying is, it kinda seems like a backslide, right? In fact, there wouldn’t be a transgender character in DC Comics at all until Batgirl #19 in 2013, when Barbara Gordon’s roommate Alysia Yeoh came out. She was a minor character, and was both a lesbian and transgender, as well as being Asian. DC apparently thought this scored them major diversity points (I guess it actually kind of did) and so they went on to advertise her as their first ever transgender character….despite the fact that they’d previously had a whole bunch like Coagula, Lord Fanny, and Shvaughn Erin. As a side note, this was about the time DC’s character Tremor stated she was asexual in The Movement (vol 1) #10 — something that I believe was actually a first, because I can’t find any other superhero (or even comic book character) who had claimed that identity for themselves before that. 2013 was also the year that Kate Kane and Maggie Sawyer got engaged — exciting! The first mainstream same-sex marriage between two women! But DC co-publisher Dan DiDio pulled the plug on that plotline, causing enough of a stir that Batwoman writers J.H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman quit the series. DC’s public explanation was, essentially, that superheroes can’t get married so their books don’t end up being about their marriages. While there’s a certain argument there that I can follow, it was pretty gross to cancel that same-sex marriage in comics so soon after retconning out the first same-sex marriage. (It looks even worse when you consider that married heterosexual heroes Adam and Alanna Strange were introduced in Justice League United #0 the very next year.) Like I said, a backslide. Fortunately, DC wasn’t the only comic book game in town. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt published Nicole George‘s memoirs in comic book form with Calling Dr. Laura. Image Comics gave us Betty — essentially a queer gnome — in their new fantasy adventure series Rat Queens. The following year, Fantagraphics published Julio’s Day — a story that follows a fictional, closeted Mexican-American man and his family for 100 years. Parts of it had been published previously, but the story had never been completed until this. Shortly after that, Northwest Press began their 1940’s noir series Dash — the main character of which was gay private eye Dash Malone. Hill and Wang finished up 2014 by releasing Second Avenue Caper, based on a true story of a group of friends illegally importing experimental HIV medicines from Mexico during the beginning of the AIDS crisis. That year, DC gave us the first glimpses of an extremely open romantic relationship between longstanding Batman villain Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn — a villain imported to the comic books from Batman: The Animated Series (just like Renee Montoya was!) in the pages of Harley Quinn (vol 2). In 2015, Barbara Gordon (Batgirl) got a new roommate after Alysia moved out to live with her new girlfriend. This new roommate, Frankie Charles, was openly bisexual. If it seems like Batgirl is going to be the salvation of DC Comics though — guess again! Just two issues later, they’d kick up a whole mess of controversy by giving us a story in which a guy dressed up as Batgirl and attempted to replace her. It seemed to play off the deeply inaccurate and offensive idea, often trotted out anytime one of those “bathroom bills” gets proposed by conservative politicians, of men dressing as women to commit crimes. In the end, the creators of the story apologized for the story. Just a few issues later Alysia Yeoh would get married to her girlfriend Jo Muñoz in the pages of Batgirl (vol 4) #45 — marking the first same-sex wedding in the new DC continuity, between two minor characters in a book that is almost entirely focused on Barbara Gordon’s relationship with Dick Grayson. If that sounds like I’m judgey and bitter, like when I talk about it I’m thinking about how great a Maggie Sawyer/Kate Kane wedding would have been and it would hav focused on the people actually getting married….well, there’s a reason for that. (The reason being that I’m judgey and bitter.) I have to be honest. This is pretty much where the sources I’ve been using stop. But a lot has happened in the past few years, so there’s more to tell. So I’m going to go off of my very fallible memory. Like, I’m going to research the things I remember, but like…if I don’t remember that it happened, it’s going to be tough for me to research. And I pretty much only read DC and Marvel so….I’m sure other publishers had things they did. I just don’t really know what it was. So, there’s going to be probably a lot of things I’m missing. (Not that I covered literally every moment before this, either.) If you know of something that I’m missing (or something that got skipped over even before this in the series), please leave a comment about it and let us all know! Anyways, 2015 was also the year we sort of kind of got second ever pansexual superhero. Supervillain? Depends on the day. That would be Marvel’s Deadpool. Deadpool himself, of course, had been around since 1991. And he’d been flirting with, y’know, everyone since pretty much that time. And it had been said before by Deadpool writers that his type was “anyone with a pulse” but in 2015 was the first time his sexuality was actually given a label — on Twitter, when writer Gail Simone confirmed that she had “always thought of Deadpool as pansexual.” Granted, in the actual pages of comics, Deadpool’s love interests have always been women or female-presenting cosmic entities. But that hasn’t stopped him from flirting with well, basically everyone but most especially Spider-Man and Wolverine. And Cable. And Colossus. And Thor. And….yeah, everyone. This was the same year that Marvel went fully into their “make a classic X-Men gay” thing they’d dabbled in with alternate universes before. This time, they picked Iceman. They’d hinted, once, kind of obtusely, that he wasn’t straight back in 1994 and then completely dropped it ever after. In 2015, they had the original X-Men team — as teenagers — brought forward in time which led to a lot of confusion when you’re trying to tell someone about what plotlines were happening, so bear with me. Jean Grey telepathically learned that Iceman was gay, and told him so. This led teen Iceman to ask a very good question: “how can my older self not be, but I am?” And, honestly, LGBTQ+ readers like myself were kind of nervous about what Marvel was getting at. In November of that year we actually found out, when teenage Iceman confronted adult Iceman and adult Iceman finally came out in the first issue of his own series, Iceman #1. Honestly, it’s a pretty great scene but it’s kind of important because it’s Marvel’s first queer-led solo series. But it was also a game changer in that Iceman had been a main character in their comic books since 1963, one of the original five X-Men. And, frankly, it was seamless, it made perfect sense with the decades of character development he’d had — given that his parents had been portrayed as ultra-conservative that whole time. Five issues later, Iceman told his parents he was gay… and it didn’t go well. (This all, once again, retroactively changed who Marvel’s first gay character was!) Speaking of first gay characters, DC made a bold move in 2016 by bringing a completely reenvisioned Extraño back into the picture in Midnighter & Apollo (vol 1). This was actually an incredible move on their part — no longer the flamboyant mashup of offensive stereotypes, now he chose to go exclusively by his real name Gregorio de la Vega, and was a much more serious and in many ways jaded sorcerer. But! He was married to Tasmanian Devil — the first member of the Justice League to come out! And despite the fact that I don’t think they ever interacted, I somehow feel like that’s perfect. Anyways, Midnighter & Apollo needed a character with mystical powers for the story arc they were telling and they could very easily have gone with anybody. Even if they specifically wanted a queer one, Constantine would have been an obvious choice. But the writers decided they wanted to bring more queer people into the new continuity — something desperately needed — so they dipped into DC’s history and brought us some. Aside from his appearances in that series, Gregorio has since shown up in issues of Justice League and Justice League Dark. Over the next few years, Marvel would introduce a bunch of LGBTQ+ characters. None of them come to mind as being especially noteworthy, but I’ll highlight a few. First, from Marvel: former Dora Milaje (who MCU fans should be familiar with) soldiers Ayo and Aneka abandoned their positions in 2016’s Black Panther: World of Wakanda #1 to join together both as lesbian lovers and freedom fighters. In 2017, America Chavez would become Marvel’s first queer woman to lead a solo series in America, which also explained her backstory as being from an entirely female alternate reality. In 2018, we were introduced to Darnell Wade — a mutant with teleportation powers and also an NYC drag queen who became one of the X-Men and would go on to emcee Iceman’s birthday celebration — and Dr. Charlene McGowan — a transgender woman whose skills as a scientist have made her an invaluable ally to the Hulk. The book’s creators brought in Crystal Frasier to help make sure they had an authentic trans voice behind the character. The next year, Mystique and Destiny were confirmed to have gotten married at some point “offscreen.” In 2019, there was confirmation — first on Twitter and then in the X-Factor and Lords of Empyre books — that Tommy Shepherd, aka Speed, Scarlet Witch and Vision’s other reincarnated kid, was bisexual, and recently has been dating X-Factor’s Prodigy. Speaking of X-Factor, this latest incarnation of the team is led by none other than Northstar which, if I’m not mistaken, makes him the first queer superhero to officially be a team leader. Also, back to discussing Scarlet Witch and Vision’s kids, Vision made a daughter with a robot named Virginia who was programmed with Scarlet Witch’s brainwaves, right? That daughter, named Vivian, declared in 2019 that while she hadn’t fully explored what her sexuality might be that she was absolutely not attracted to boys. She later followed that up by kissing her female teammate Ironheart. That’s three for three on Vision and Scarlet Witch having queer kids. (They’ve have other kids who’ve all died before their sexualities were explored at all. So we can just assume they must’ve been queer too.) Get those two to a PFLAG meeting asap. If they needed to have a straight child to save the world, that would be the end. I love them. And Billy and Hulkling — who, remember, got engaged in 2010 even before Northstar did — finally actually tied the knot in 2020. Just a ten year engagement. (The reason I’m focusing on these kids is because WandaVision was the impetus for me writing this whole series.) Not everything Marvel has decided to do has been great, or met without controversy. They announced the introduction of their first non-binary superhero in a sibling duo featuring the non-binary Snowflake and their twin brother Safespace. And, like, okay, I get what Marvel was trying to do by kind of reclaiming those terms that are often used to disparage liberals. But doing that with what you’re advertising as your first non-binary character? There was TONS of criticism that it actually implied that non-binary people were the oversensitive types of people the term “snowflake” is often meant to attack. The book they were supposed to be in has yet to appear, and might have been cancelled. Thing is….they also are not the first non-binary character Marvel’s had. This year they quietly introduced two character named Cam and Monica Sellers, two young mutants who identify as non-binary. Minor characters I’ll grant you, but they exist. Not to mention that a lot of the shapeshifters in the Marvel universe — Xavin, Mystique, Loki, etc — are pretty clearly genderfluid, and have been for a long time. While Marvel was finally diving into introducing plenty of LGBTQ+ characters, DC was actually focusing more on the already established queer characters. I mean, they definitely introduced new ones too, don’t get me wrong. But the highlights, for me at least, were putting lots of effort into Midnighter’s adventures, and a lot of development of the unconventional open relationship between Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy — including giving them a wedding in 2020’s Injustice: Year Zero series (that’s in an alternate universe, not the mainstream one). They also took some longstanding characters like the villain Cheetah and gave her a romantic history with Wonder Woman supporting cast member Etta Candy. They did bring Doom Patrol’s Rebis back as a non-binary hero, though eventually the “component parts” split up and they just became Negative Man and not non-binary. In 2018, they reintroduced Alan Scott in the prime continuity, and made him gay (again…or still….alternate timelines can be so confusing.) One thing they did, which I have to assume was a sweet homage to the work of Neal Pozner and Phil Jiminez, was make their newest incarnation of Aqualad, Jackson Hyde, a gay teenager. They’ve also recently reintroduced some of their queer characters from before the 2011 reset, such as Obsidian. Despite that, as of my writing this, there is still not even one transgender superhero in DC’s new continuity. So while I’ve been churning out this series, Marvel made one big announcement that I have to include even though, technically, nothing has come to fruition yet. Apparently, this June, someone new will take on the title Captain America in a new series called United States of Captain America and this time it’s going to be gay teenager Aaron Fischer, a character created by Jan Bazaldua — one of only a handful of openly transgender creators at Marvel. This looks like they’re going to dive into a story about homeless queer youth — a really serious issue that has, to my knowledge, never really been address in comics before. It is an issue that primarily effects queer people of color, and it looks like Aaron’s white, but I guess we have to start somewhere? So, I do have high hopes for this and we’ll just have to see where that goes. But, I do think it’s a very cool full circle kind of moment to give the title to a gay guy, when that series was where Marvel first began giving our community any real representation way back with Arnie Roth in 1982. So, now that you’re pretty much all caught up to where we are now….let’s talk about where we should go from here — in the hopes some head honcho from a major publishing company is reading this…. Here’s what I think needs to happen, and if you have your own ideas, tell me about them in a comment. Hire more transgender creators. Marvel has only ever had 7 openly transgender creators and 4 non-binary creators. DC has had one single non-binary creator, and also only 7 transgender staff members. Bring queer characters back from the dead. Everyone dies in comics, so I’m not going to complain about the number of queer characters who’ve died. However, there’s a saying I came across a lot while I researched this series: “The only people who stay dead in comics are Bucky, Jason Todd, and Uncle Ben.” But two of those people have come back from the dead. And you know who hasn’t? A long, long, long list of LGBTQ+ characters. But especially, DC, bring back Coagula or Lord Fanny. Or both. Don’t just ignore that before you reset continuity, you had some awesome trans superheroes and since you reset your continuity you have free reign to bring them back. (While we’re on the topic of bringing people back, bring back Fade too.) The vast majority of LGBTQ+ characters in comics are white, cisgender, and wealthy or at least middle class. There needs to be more diversity than that, there’s so many more stories to tell. I can’t stress this one enough. We need more human transgender, genderfluid, or non-binary characters. Like, there’s not that many out there already and a significant number of them are aliens or actual shapeshifters, or both. Just don’t name them Snowflake, and it’ll be fine. DC, you gotta give us a wedding between either Midnighter and Apollo (to get them back where they were) or Kate Kane and Maggie Sawyer (to make up for teasing us so!) One or the other. Or both. Just give us something. This might only be on my wishlist, but I’d love to see a mainstream publisher give us an all queer superhero team. Found families are such an important part of the queer community and queer experience, I’d love to see that reflected in comics. Okay! Phew! We made it. This is the end. I don’t usually do this because it can make this blog, which is a hobby, feel like a job, but in case you want to look at some of the things I skipped over or breezed past without much detail, I’ll give you the main sources I used. Also the places where I snagged a lot of the images — usually I just do a Google image search and call it a day, but this series was way more work than I thought it was going to be. But also lots of fun, so it was worth it! Anyways, those sources are: Queer Comics History, Gay League, and Prism Comics. I also dipped into the Marvel Database and DC Database, mostly to confirm dates of issues of their comics. If you’re interested to know the pretty much complete list of every LGBTQ+ character that’s been in those company’s comics, they do have categories for those characters to make them easy to find. Here’s Marvel’s. Here’s DC’s. Anyways, we’ve come a really long way in comic books since characters were changing genders because they were bored on Mars. And that’s largely because of queer creators making their voices heard, even if they had to do it underground spaces. Now, with no Code and online distribution making it publishing even easier, I’m sure we have a lot more quality queer content on the way, and I for one can’t wait to read it. So, last time we talked about the Golden Age of Comics and the subsequent Silver Age of Comics — the era ruled over by the Comics Code Authority. When the Code loosened up in 1971, the world of comic books entered a new era: the Bronze Age of Comics. (I don’t know who decided that all these periods needed to be named like this, but…it’s getting to be a bit much, isn’t it?) The Code was still not ready for LGBTQ+ people to appear in the pages of comic books…but the people making underground comics did not care. They were ready to go for it — and queer artists, emboldened by the growing gay rights movement — were ready to push the envelope even farther. In October of 1971, artist Rand Holmes tackled the homophobia in the book Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) — which we will some day talk about in greater detail some day when I tackle the sordid history of conversion therapy — stating that it sets psychiatry back by 50 years, and going so far as to have the lead character of his “The Continuing Adventures of Harold Hedd” engage in explicit oral sex with another man before blatantly calling out the book’s author David Reuben M.D. by saying “you are rilly fucked up man.” I’m not sure if word ever got back to David Reuben but the whole thing was a pretty fantastic call out. The following year, the feminist comic book Wimmens Comix began its run — being published initially by Last Gasp though it would change hands over the years. As if to exemplify how much they did not care about the status quo, the first issue included a story called “Sandy Comes Out” by Trina Robbins — featuring the first openly lesbian character in comics. Despite breaking new ground, the comic was not especially well received by the LGBTQ+ community — in part because Trina Robbins is a straight woman, but mainly because it simplified the complexities of coming out. And so in 1974, Mary Wings entered the world of underground comix by self-publishing the entirely lesbian-focused book Come Out Comix. 1974 was also the year that Steve Glanzman’s story “Toro” was published — one of his U.S.S. Stevens stories that were printed in Our Fighting Forces by DC. Toro is a tragic story — and ostensibly a true on (as all of Glanzman’s war comics are believed to be), but there’s little question that the character it is about is not a straight man. Being published by a mainstream publisher, this was toeing the line of what the Code would allow. It managed to eke out a Code seal by never really going farther than referring to the character as a “fairy” in a way that might have implied that he was magic rather than gay. Though 1975 was something of a quiet year — with the exception of a lesbian being introduced in the second issue of Further Fattening Adventures of Pudge, Girl Blimp by Lee Marrs, and the character Pudge getting almost arrested at a gay rights rally. Howver, 1976 was a banner year for gay comics. It kicked off in February with the first recurring openly gay character in mainstream comics — comic strips, that is — when Garry Trudeau introduced the character of Andy Lippincott to his daily strip Doonesbury. That same year Howard Cruse had the continuing character of Headrack come out in the second issue of Barefootz Funnies. Headrack, while not the central character, was the best friend of the central character and so was a continuous presence in the series. Which meant, officially, the first gay recurring character had appeared in comic strip and comic book format. Pretty important, but there was more ahead for 1976. Roberta Gregory — one of the contributors to Wimmen’s Comix — began self-publishing her own work, centered around lesbian characters, called Dynamite Damsels and Larry Fuller put together an anthology series featuring all gay male characters called Gay Heart Throbs. All of these, of course, were underground comic that did not need to meet the Code’s standards and intentionally did not. So, despite the fact that 1976 was a pretty impressive, groundbreaking year….most of the United States only knew about Andy Lippincott. In 1977, Gerard Donelan (often just called “Donelan”) — a fan of Joe Johnson‘s cartoons — submitted work to The Advocate, disappointed that they weren’t continuing to run Johnson’s work. After they ran his first cartoon, they hired him to create a regular strip called “It’s a Gay Life” — which would run for 15 years. This, perhaps, was the inspiration Rupert Kinnard needed to begin creating “Cathartic Comics” for Cornell College’s student newspaper, which featured the Brown Bomber and Diva Touché Flambé — the first gay and lesbian (respectively) black characters in comics. This is often overlooked, because there’s no actual crime fighting or supervillains in the strips, but Brown Bomber is also the first gay superhero — he transforms into his superheroic identity through the power of magic hiccups. Of course. The following year, a book of gay cartoons from the magazine Christopher Street was released. It was advertised as “The World’s First Gay Cartoon Book!” which, as we’ve seen, was not strictly speaking true. But I’m including it in this article primarily because the title of the book makes me laugh every time I see it: And God Bless Uncle Harry and His Roommate Jack Who We’re Not Supposed to Talk About. Other gay magazines, such as In Touch For Men would also soon release their own cartoon collections in 1978. But without the funny titles. Meanwhile, still in 1978, DC was working hard to counteract various rumors about some of their characters being gay. To that end, they introduced a woman named Shvaughn Erin — an officer of the Science Police, very capable woman — to be the love interest of Element Lad who had been continuously subjected to rumors of being gay since his creation. Despite this, the rumors persisted. It’s like the people at DC had never heard of a beard before. Anyways, with queer cartoonists taking the lead in telling queer stories with underground comix, Denis Kitchen decided his publishing company, Kitchen Sink Press, could help get those stories out there even more. In 1979, he asked Howard Cruse to help him put together Gay Comix — an anthology series exclusively featuring LGBTQ+ stories by openly LGBTQ+ artists. Gay Comix would run for 26 issues, ending its run in 1998. It would go on to feature Jerry Mills‘ series “Poppers,” and so many others I could probably write a whole article just on it. By 1980, the Code itself had lost much of its sway. Major publishers were starting to get books sold at comic book stores without with the CCA seal, simply by marketing them as “for mature audiences”, and the CCA was putting its stamp on books that would never have been allowed before. Eclipse Comics published the graphic novel Detectives Inc.: A Remembrance of Threatening Green (by Don McGregor), which featured lesbian characters and Stewart the Rat (by Steve Gerber) which also featured a little bit of queer content. Even Marvel, I guess, tried to dabble in queer content. Kind of. It was a deeply offensive story (especially if its your first time having gay men in a story) called “A Personal Hell” from Hulk! #23, written by Jim Shooter. Again, deeply offensive, so we’re going to breeze on past it. I wish we could pretend it never happened but….we’re not done with Jim Shooter yet. Kitchen Sink Press and Eclipse Comics both, apparently, discovered they could make money from unabashedly presenting queer characters. In 1981, Kitchen Sink Press introduced a recurring strip called “Omaha, the Cat Dancer” in its anthology series Bizarre Sex. Several characters engaged in homosexual activities throughout the course of the strip, but it kicked off with the openly bisexual character Shelley Hine in that very first strip. Also in 1982, Marvel comics tried the whole “gay characters” thing again, with much more success. They introduced the character Arnie Roth, who had been friends with Steve Rogers before he became a superhero, defending him from neighborhood bullies. Arnie ran into Captain America, revealing that he had long ago guessed Cap’s secret identity. Captain America and Arnie set off on an adventure to rescue Arnie’s “roommate” Michael Bech. When they succeed and Arnie and Michael are reunited, Captain America figures out pretty quickly that they’re actually a couple. It’s a sweet little story, and gives Arnie Roth the distinction of being Marvel’s first gay character. And, because he’s a minor character and he’s not shown kissing, and because Michael is consistently called his “roommate”…he also has the distinction of being the first gay character to have his story told with a CCA seal of approval. (Marvel made a recent announcement regarding Captain America while I was researching this…which I found particularly interesting because of this…but that’s for the end of this series. If I talked about it while it was news, it wouldn’t be history, right?) DC began publishing stories without the CCA seal — marketing them as being for “mature readers.” These included Camelot 3000, in which the Knights of the Round Table are reincarnated in the year 3000 AD. The knight Sir Tristan, when his memories awaken, finds he has been reincarnated in the body of a woman named Amber. Tristan gets more upset when he discovers Isolde, his great love, has also been reincarnated…also as a woman. Isolde helps Tristan come to terms with the situation and the two become lovers again. Despite the fact that Tristan has kind of medieval attitudes about sex, gender, and sexuality (which is kind of understandable since Tristan is from that time period) it’s actually like pretty good transgender representation. A gigantic leap forward since the last major transgender representation in comics was decades earlier and was….oh right….a bored guy on Mars. Also in 1982, something new and important happened very quietly in the underground comix scene. Gay Comix #3 incuded a story entitled “I’m Me!” by David Kottler appeared, his only credited work in comics of any kind, at least under that name (as far as I’ve found). The story is a brief one about his transition. David seems to have been the first openly transgender comic creator and the first to tell a story about an actually transgender person (not some wacky sci-fi/fantasy genderbending hijinks) in that format. Not to be outdone, in December of that year, Eclipse Comics series SABRE by Don McGregor introduced two gay characters, named Deuces Wild and Summer Ice, who were presented as lovers basically as soon as they appeared. A year later, the same series featured the first gay kiss in mass-produced comics — by the same characters, unsurprisingly. Underground comix had, of course, had plenty of gay kisses by this point, but those were not mass produced by any definition. Eclipse Comics was operating somewhere between underground and mainstream — they were able to mass produce comics but, obviously, did not care at all about the Code. Their books would sell anyways. 1983 was also the year that Alison Bechdel began publishing her comic strip series “Dykes to Watch Out For” in the magazine Womannews. If Bechdel’s name sounds familiar, that’s either because you already know her work, you love the Broadway musical Fun Home, or because the Bechdel Test is widely used to sort of gauge the quality of female representation in pieces of media. The test — if you haven’t heard of it — is basically, are there two named female characters who speak about something other than a man. That test is named after her, despite her crediting her friend Liz Wallace for the idea, because it was first described in — you probably guessed this already — the strip “Dykes to Watch Out For.” (But not until 1985, at which point Bechdel was self-syndicating the strip.) The strip would run continuously until 2008, at which point Bechdel decided to retire it, except for occasional special ones like the “Postcards from the Edge” story she published in 2017 for the “Ides of Trump” campaign. Bechdel was not the only queer artist putting out new, gay work in 1983, however. In the UK, David Shenton published his first graphic novel, Stanley and the Mask of Mystery. Howard Cruse, though still producing Gay Comix began publishing a strip called “Wendel” in issues of The Advocate, and the series “Jayson” by Jeff Krell began appearing in Philadelphia Gay News (it would later be published in Gay Comix and Meatmenas well.) Also in 1983, was the first issue of Alpha Flight — a Marvel comic book series about a Canadian superhero team. They’d been introduced as enemies of the X-Men back in 1979, but now they were getting their own series. And one of their founding members was Northstar. Now, one of the problems with taking bad guys from a single comic book issue four years prior and making them stars of their own book series was….you had to make up backstories for them. Creator John Byrne was convinced that Northstar was a closeted Olympic athlete — and also secretly a superhero, and was determined to tell that story. Now, the Code and also executives at Marvel — primarily editor-in-chief Jim Shooter (I told you we weren’t done with him) — prevented him from telling it as plainly as he’d have liked. It’s been said that Shooter was determined to have “no gays in Marvel Comics.” The comics were full of hints about how Jean-Paul Beaubier (that’s Northstar’s secret identity) was too busy with Olympic training to be interested in girls, how he would ignore his throngs of female fans, etc. Like, it wasn’t spelled out but it was hard to miss. But outside of the pages of the comic, Byrne would tell pretty much anyone that Northstar was gay. As a result, Northstar is pretty widely considered to be the first gay superhero from a mainstream comic book publisher (despite not actually be out in the comic book). But one thing Marvel did manage to do in this year without any concern about the Code was to use the word “gay” — meaning homosexual — for the first time in a mainstream comic book. It’s a subtle little thing — a bit of dialogue I’m sure many straight women will have lived through themselves. It appears in Fantastic Four #251, when the characters of Julie D’Angelo and Sharon Selleck are discussing their new friend Grey Landers (whom Julie is all about) right before Johnny Storm — the Human Torch — comes over to ask her out. They’re setting up a whole love……some sort of geometric shape….but, alas, a purely heterosexual one. The next year, in Vigilante #5 DC introduced the freelance mercenaries Henry Cannon and Marschall Saber (or simple, Cannon and Saber). Although their being a gay couple was presented as like a minor detail that didn’t matter, probably to sneak it by the Code, really the whole plotline wouldn’t work if they were not. Despite the subtlety, they didn’t get this approved by the Code. The story is, basically, that a D.A. has arranged for them to go into witness protection together if they kill each other’s bosses. They do so, but before they can be entered into Witness Protection, they get attacked in their home by the Vigilante. In the ensuing fight, Cannon and Saber were actually winning until the fight was interrupted by the Electrocutioner. The story almost managed to get a CCA seal, primarily because the gay characters were villains but their relationship is actually pretty wholesome — they work as a team, they protect each other over anything else, and they support each other’s goals. There are good guy gay couples in the media now that don’t have relationships this healthy. Marvel, meanwhile, revealed that their character Cloud was transgender…..uhm….kind of. You see, they introduced a plotline wherein Cloud was falling in love with Moondragon, one of her female teammates on the Defenders…..so she began shapeshifting into a man. This story did not get approved by the Code, but still managed to get sold in stores. Some stores, anyways. It would later turn out that Cloud was actually a nebula from space that had taken on human form, lost their memories, and become a superhero. The Marvel Database officially lists Cloud as “genderfluid” and, in this sense, that’s pretty literal. Still don’t think this storyline was quite up to par with the one in Camelot 3000 but that’s not up to me, is it? There was a bit of a minor shakeup in the comic book world, as two new publishing companies were trying to make room for themselves in the industry. One of them was Megaton Comics — who we’ll follow up with later — and the other was First Comics. Among the various hurdles First Comics was dealing with was their own unwillingness to abide by the rules of the Code. For example, in Sable (vol 1) #15, the lead character Jon Sable assured Grey Adler, his love interest’s best friend, that he didn’t judge homosexuals. Grey would become a major recurring character, leading Sable into various adventures pertaining to issues facing the gay community. Though Marvel and DC were just beginning to put their toes into the big LGBTQ+ representation pool, the underground comics scene was really getting the hang of it. 1984 was the year that Tim Barela debuted his strip “Leonard & Larry” in Gay Comix. The strip would later also be published in The Advocate and Frontiers— and it would run in Frontiers until 2002! The strip featured a wide variety of characters, all falling under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, and was praised for its depiction of queer families and for the fact that the characters in it aged realistically over the years. By the end of 1984, there had been at least one queer character introduced in virtually every area of comics — there was still a long, long, long way to go between where we were then and where we are now (and where we still need to go!). And we’ll go over more of that journey in the exciting next episode! Queer history, as we all know, can be difficult to track down. Sometimes that’s because the language we use now didn’t exist, so it’s hard to identify queer people. Sometimes it’s because people actively tried to suppress the information. And sometimes, unfortunately, its because no one was paying attention. The Sydney Cliff Murders are one such instance — even today, this doesn’t even have a half-assed Wikipedia page. (Yet. I’m betting that will change after this though. Fingers crossed anyways.) The Sydney Cliff murders were a string of murders from the 80’s through the 90’s against gay men in the of Sydney, Australia which may have had as many as 90 victims — primarily in Marks Park at the top of the Bondi Beach cliffs, which was a popular cruising spot for gay men, but also in some other areas that were popular “gay beats”. The police hardly ever investigated the crime scenes, just took a cursory glances and declared them suicides or accidents. Those weren’t totally off-the-wall or impossible suggestions, but let’s be honest: the police would have actually investigated them anyways if it weren’t for who the victims were and where the victims were. According to retired High Court justice Michael Kirby, the police viewed gay men as low level criminals (even though sodomy was decriminalized there in 1984) and thought that homosexuals should pretty much expect to be hurt or killed. But it wasn’t a rash of suicides plaguing the gay community of Sydney. It was murder. And, no, it wasn’t a serial killer on the loose or anything nearly that dramatic — it was groups of violent, homophonic teenagers who knew that crimes against gay men would never be taken seriously by the police. For the most part they were right — only a handful were arrested for the murders specifically, though a number were arrested for other crimes and then later were discovered to have been involved in a murder at Bondi Beach. “Poofter bashing,” as it was called, was something of a sport. The earliest one of these deaths that I can find is that of David Williams. He was found, naked, at the bottom of the cliffs in the area of Manly. His clothes were neatly folded at the top of the cliffs. No investigation was made, no coroner made any report about his body. Scott Johnson was a 27 year-old American “brilliant” mathematician (some of us can do math! Not me, but….some of us!) who had graduated the University of Cambridge and moved to Sydney in 1986 to be with his partner Michael Noone. He had applied for permanent residency and had nearly completed his PhD at the Australian National University by the end of 1988, when his naked body was found at the bottom of the North Head Cliffs in Manly. His clothes were in a folded pile, with his student ID, a ten dollar bill, and his watch nestled on top of them. Police called it a suicide. Neither Michael Noone or Scott’s brother Steve believed that for a minute and made sure the police of New South Wales knew it. On July 22, the following year, Ross Warren — a discreet but not exactly closeted television news anchor — disappeared. His car was found near Marks Park, and his keys were found in rocks at the top of the cliffs. Police reasoned he must have accidentally fallen off the cliff into the water, and on July 28 they announced they expected his body would wash up soon. It didn’t. Nevertheless, police declared that his death had been accidental, there was no foul play, and he also hadn’t faked his death. His mother Kay began writing frequently to the police, insisting they actually investigate his disappearance. Warren’s body has still never been found. On November 23 of 1989, John Russell — a local Sydney bartender — was found dead at the bottom of the cliffs on the Bondi Beach side of Marks Park. Police investigated enough to discover he had a high concentration of alcohol in his system, and ruled he had accidentally fallen off the cliff. Not quite a month later, on December 18, Alan Boxsell was attacked by a group of teenagers in Marks Park. He managed to flee his assailants and even, surprisingly, reported the attack to the police. He identified some of the bashers. Days later on December 21, David McMahon was assaulted by a group of teenagers in almost the same place where Russell would have fallen from — one of the attackers even suggesting “Let’s throw him off where we threw the other one off.” McMahon managed to escape, and identified some of his assailants to police. Some of them were the same people identified by Boxsell. None of them were arrested due to a “lack of evidence.” In 1990, a Thai man named Krichakorn Rattanajurathaporn was attacked with a hammer and knocked off the cliff. This one — as a nice change — was investigated and three teenagers were arrested. They would be known as the “Tamarama Three.” Despite the fact that one of those teenagers was reported saying to the police “The easiest thing with a cliff is just herding them over the edge” the police didn’t begin investigating the rash of murders. Five months later, in December of 1990, eight boys discovered a phone number written in the toilets in Alexandria Park, and used it to lure Richard Johnson to the park after dark. There, they beat him to death. The eight boys — who would be called the “Alexandria Eight” were arrested and eventually convicted of the crime. Homicide detective Steve McCann secretly recorded conversations the boys had with each other and other inmates — they bragged about killing gay men at the cliffs at Bondi Beach. Despite this, only McCann was interested in looking into the deaths of gay men in that area. His investigation was hampered by resistance from his fellow police officers. He turned to lawyer, and official liaison between the New South Wales police and the gay community, Sue Thompson for help but even so there was only so much they could do. Through their investigation they learned that “poofter bashing” was something of a widespread sport — a gang of at least thirty teenage boys and girls, called the “Bondi Boys” frequently engaged in it as a form of initiation. As an aside, there’s a lot of victims or possible victims here. I could not talk about them all while also talking about the police action (or lack of action, as the case may be) and keep this post to a relatively reasonable size. But I don’t want to overlook them, as so many of them have been continuously overlooked. So I am promising that there will be a follow-up post (posts?) about the victims. All 88 if I can find all of their names. I’m still making working on that list. Anyways, back to what the police were doing…. By 2000 — after eleven years of hearing from Kay Warren — one of her letters (which contained copies of all of her previous letters) caught the attention of the police. It was handed off to Detective Steve Page. He noticed what McCann had noticed — a lot of gay men were dying or disappearing around Marks Park. He picked up where McCann’s investigation had left off. Page was able to prove, through reenacting the scene with a dummy on December 9 2001, that John Russell was thrown from the cliff he was found at the bottom of — there was nothing accidental about his death after all. This opened the doors on many more closed “investigations” (if you can really call them that). Revisiting these cases was a major undertaking, and so it became a full-fledged project named Operation Taradale. The task force interviewed the Tamarama Three and the Alexandria Eight — all of whom denied any involvement in killing John Russell, Ross Warren, or any of the others In 2012, at the request of Steve Johnson — now a wealthy former AOL executive — and his family, an inquest was made into the death of Scott Johnson. It was determined that the original investigation had not been thorough, and that the death should be re-investigated. As a result of this, the New South Wales police began Operation Parrabell, a review of 88 investigations into various deaths of gay men — trying to determine if the crimes should be classified as hate crimes. That list of 88 deaths is based on recommendations by Sue Thompson and criminologist Stephen Tomsen going as far back as David Warren’s death, but Parrabell met criticism — even from Sue Thompson — for their methodology. Of the 30 unsolved deaths in that list, she and Tomsen found compelling evidence of foul play in 22 cases. The Operation Parrabell task force for unsolved homicides accepted eight of those as potential anti-gay hate crimes that needed to be investigated. Those eight did not include Scott Johnson. In 2015, another inquest into Scott Johnson’s death was made — also recommending the case be investigated again, as a homicide. In November of 2017, a third inquest formally declared that Johnson had been the victim of a hate crime. As a result, the following month a reward of one million Australian dollars was offered by the Australian government for any information leading to conviction. With no information forthcoming, the Johnson family doubled the reward in March 2020 — and in May, a man named Scott Price was finally arrested for the murder of Scott Johnson. These cases inspired a television miniseries in Australia called Deep Water. A documentary was also made that year, to go alongside the fictionalized show, called Deep Water: The Real Story. As of now, 22 of the Sydney cliff murders remain unsolved. A parliamentary inquiry regarding the New South Wales police’s response to hate crimes against LGBTQ+ individuals in Sydney between 1970 and 2010 is currently underway. We may never see justice for all of those many queer individuals who were lost in these murders, but I take some comfort in knowing that, finally, there are at least some people who are trying. With his literary success following 1891’s publication of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde returned to writing for the theater. He penned the tragedy Salomé, but quickly turned to comedies. Lady Windermere’s Fan debuted at the St. James Theatre on February 20, 1892 and proceeded to tour England — despite the outrage of more conservative critics. He followed this work up with the 1893 comedy A Woman of No Importance. He was then commissioned for two more comedies. By now Wilde was earning approximately 100 pounds each week — by today’s standards that’s about 12,211 pounds or 15,756 US dollars a week. No longer tied to John Gray, Wilde’s relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas turned romantic, and Wilde used that ample income to spoil his new beau. In many ways, Douglas quickly became the center of Wilde’s entire world. Douglas and several of his friends founded a magazine called The Chameleon, which was as pro-gay as any publication could be at the time without being shut down by law enforcement. Wilde was a regular contributor. Douglas also led Wilde into the seedy underground of London’s gay prostitution circles. Every time he rendezvoused with a prostitute, it followed the same pattern — Wilde was introduced to a young man by a fellow named Alfred Taylor, Wilde would take the young man to dinner, and then to a hotel room. Sometimes, Douglas would meet them there too. Douglas’ father was John Douglas, the 9th Marquess of Queensberry (more commonly known just as Queensberry). He’s mostly known in history for being cruel to his family and for creating the Queensberry Rules which, apparently, are what modern boxing rules are based around. Oh, and all of the stuff we’re going to talk about. He’s known for that too. (Spoiler alert: it’s not good.) Now, Queensberry and his son fought like all of the time even before Wilde entered the picture — and even though Queensberry was initially charmed by Wilde, it didn’t take him long to piece together what was actually going on with the two. He was not having any of it. He cornered Oscar in the Wilde family’s London house and threatened him — the initial description of this encounter ended with Wilde giving a clever retort (“I don’t know what the Queensberry rules are, but the Oscar Wilde rule is to shoot on sight”) but later accounts by both Wilde and Queensberry make Wilde sound much less assured and much more afraid — and with good reason. On February 14 of 1895, Wilde’s greatest script premiered in London at the St. James Theatre — The Importance of Being Earnest. The cast was led by popular actor Allan Aynesworth, who later stated that the first night of that show was his greatest triumph on stage. The show itself was hailed as a massive success, even by most critics. Queensberry had planned to attend the premier and publicly humiliate Wilde by throwing a bouquet of rotting vegetables onto the stage — but Wilde had made sure to ban him from the theater — which didn’t actually help calm things down at all. Four days later, Queensberry left a calling card for Wilde at a club he was known to frequent. The card read: “For Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite.” (Perhaps history’s most infamous spelling error.) Wilde’s friends, including Robbie Ross, begged him to let it go, but Douglas urged him to sue Queensberry for criminal libel. The problem with that was, in order to avoid going to prison, Queensberry would have to publicly prove that Wilde was a sodomite. (Or a somdomite, I guess.) Wilde had been sleeping with men for years and basically wrote about it in a very popular novel (Dorian Gray), so like not really a bright idea to challenge this. But Douglas hated his father, and was also all too happy to disagree with Robbie Ross — who he often butted heads with. Wilde was all too eager to give Douglas anything he wanted, and so he sued for libel. Queensberry went for Wilde’s jugular almost immediately. He hired Wilde’s former college friend Edward Carson to represent him in court, and hired a number of private detectives to investigate. They amassed a veritable mountain of evidence. Wilde’s lawyer opened the trial on April 3 by preemptively asking about letters Wilde had written to Douglas (letters which Carson had procured) — Wilde claimed the letters were innocent, “prose sonnets”. Carson, meanwhile, opened by stating that he’d located several male prostitutes who were willing to testify against Wilde. Carson’s cross examination was even more brutal — and although Wilde gave sassy answers that got a lot of laughs, they didn’t help the outcome of the trial. In the end, Carson discredited Wilde by proving he had lied about his age under oath. He also, using text from The Picture of Dorian Gray, managed to successfully paint a picture of Wilde seducing Douglas (which was almost the opposite of what had actually happened.) Moving on from this, Carson started asking about facts — inquiring about his friendships with lower-class men that he had been seen with at dinner. Wilde insisted they were merely friends and that he did not believe in social barriers. Then, Carson directly asked Wilde if he had ever kissed a certain man — Wilde proclaimed in no uncertain terms that he had not because “he was a particularly plain boy – unfortunately ugly – I pitied him for it.” Carson demanded to know why that was relevant, and for the first time Wilde didn’t really have any answer. Wilde dropped the charges, and Queensberry was found not guilty. This was disastrous for two reasons: the first being that Wilde was responsible for all of Queensberry’s astronomical legal fees, which was more than he could afford — and the second being that the courts issued a warrant for his arrest on the charges of sodomy and gross indecency almost as soon as Wilde had left the building. Robbie Ross and another friend named Reginald Turner tried to get Wilde to flee the country, and arranged for a train and a boat to take him to France. Meanwhile, Wilde’s mother wanted him to fight. He was basically paralyzed — either with fear or indecision — until all he could say was “The train has gone. It’s too late.” He was arrested on April 6. Ross and Wilde’s butler, under strict instructions, went into the Wilde family house and packed up all of his letters, manuscripts, and some personal items. While Wilde awaited trial in prison, Alfred Douglas visited him every day — which was nice since this was actually pretty much all Douglas’ fault, and he hadn’t done anything to help out during the criminal libel trial. When the new trial opened on April 26, Wilde plead “not guilty”. Douglas left for Paris at the urging of Wilde. Several of Wilde’s other “somdomite” friends also left the country for their own safety — including Ross. This trial had captured the attention of the public around the world, even as far as the United States. While being cross examined, Oscar was asked to explain “the love that dare not speak its name” — a phrase originating in a poem written by Douglas. (And that’s the most Douglas participated in this trial, I’m just saying.) Oscar responded with this speech that literally brings a tear to my eye every time, so I’m going to share it here verbatim even though it’s kind of long: “‘The love that dare not speak its name’ in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art, like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as “the love that dare not speak its name,” and on that account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an older and a younger man, when the older man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it, and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it.” While this was, in my opinion, a beautiful speech….it reallydidn’t help out with the whole “not guilty” thing. Nevertheless, the jury failed to reach a verdict. Wilde’s friends were able to post bail, and Wilde was free. Sort of. He was shunned by nearly everyone; his wife wouldn’t let him back into the house. He was forced to stay with two of his few remaining friends, Ernest and Ada Leverson. At this point, even Carson attempted to intervene on Wilde’s behalf — asking the Solicitor General Frank Lockwood if they could “let up” on Wilde. Lockwood replied he would have liked to, but that the trial had been so publicized and so politicized that it was not going to be possible. A third trial followed, taking place on May 25. This trial was against both Wilde and Alfred Taylor, who had also been arrested for procuring prostitutes for Wilde but who refused to turn state’s evidence against the writer. Sir Alfred Wills presided, and gave the harshest punishment the law allowed: two years of hard labor. He was also very clear that he would have given a harsher punishment if he’d been able to, claiming the sentence was “totally inadequate” for what he considered “the worst case [he had] ever tried.” After the sentence came down, Wilde asked, “And I? May I say nothing, my Lord?” But his question was completely drowned out by the very large crowd that had come to see this beloved celebrity’s downfall. Wilde was immediately sent off to Newgate Prison for processing, and then was sent to Pentonville Prison. His “hard labour” there was walking on a treadmill and separating rope fibers — so, y’know, really productive for society and all. He was later transferred to Wandsworth Prison. While there, he collapsed from hunger and ruptured his right ear drum. On November 23 1895, Oscar was transferred to Reading Gaol by train. While he was waiting on the platform for the train to arrive, a crowd gathered to spit on him and ridicule him. At Reading Gaol, he was eventually allowed a pen and paper, he wrote a 50,000 word letter to Alfred Douglas (which he was not allowed to send until he was released and which, later, Douglas would deny ever receiving.) Over the course of the self-reflective letter, Wilde does forgive Douglas for his involvement in getting Wilde into this position. The letter was partially published in 1905 under the title De Profundis. Throughout the trials and his imprisonment, all eyes — even internationally — were on Oscar Wilde. LGBTQ+ people across the Western world, but especially in Europe, in particular were watching with a sort of horrified fascination. Just before the end of Wilde’s sentence, inspired in large part by the writer’s legal troubles, Magnus Hirschfeld founded the Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee in Germany — the first organization to work towards securing legal rights for queer people. After his release on May 18, 1897, he immediately went to France and never went back to Britain or Ireland. He took the name Sebastian Melmoth, and began to advocate — through letters to English publications — for prison reform. He also wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol about a man who was hanged while Wilde was imprisoned there. Also, at this point, Wilde’s wife had gotten him to relinquish parental rights to their kids and had changed their last names to “Holland” (and, yet, poor Vyvyan was still named Vyvyan.) They never divorced but were completely estranged. In August, he reunited with Douglas, but the two were only together for a few months. There’s differing explanations as to why they didn’t stay together — the truth is probably a combination of both. Some say that, after everything that had transpired in their lives, they weren’t able to get their relationship back to what it had been before the trials. Others say that Douglas’ family threatened to cut him off financially. Personally, I can’t imagine that their relationship wasn’t full of resentment, probably on both sides — and if you’re struggling with a relationship that seems like it’s failing and then your family says to break it off or spend the rest of your life completely broke? Yeah, it makes perfect sense to break it off. Wilde was impoverished for the remainder of his life, and had only a small collection of friends left to him. With nothing left to lose, he was very much open about his sexuality for the years he had left. By the fall of 1900, Wilde was fighting with illness which physicians later stated was from an infection of his right ear drum — the illness left him weak and depressed and frequently unable to leave the bedroom of the hotel he was living in. He famously quipped, “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One of us has got to go.” On October 12, he sent a telegram to Robbie Ross saying “Terribly weak. Please come.” By November 25, 1900, Wilde’s illness had developed into meningitis (the same illness that struck down his little sister so many years earlier). Robbie Ross arrived on November 29, and immediately sent for a Catholic priest. The priest performed a conditional baptism, and Wilde died the next day. His friends Reginald Turner and Robbie Ross were with him when he died. Wilde’s tomb, which is in Paris, was commissioned by Ross, who also requested a compartment be built for his own ashes — which were dutifully placed there in 1950. In the years since his death, Oscar Wilde has become arguably one of the world’s most celebrated queer figures. In 1967, Craig Rodwell named his LGBTQ bookstore the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop in order to make sure it was recognized as a safe place by others in the community. In 2014, Wilde was one of the first honorees of the Rainbow Honor Walk in San Francisco. He was also one of 50,000 men posthumously pardoned in 2017 under the Policing and Crime Act, also known as the Alan Turing Law. Although she regularly said her middle initial stood for “Pay it no mind”, Marsha P. Johnson proved to be a difficult person not to notice. Though Johnson is commonly referred to using female pronouns (she/her/hers) — and I’ll be doing that here — her actual gender identity is a bit of a mystery. She variously described herself as gay, a transvestite, and as a (drag) queen — though words like “transgender” really weren’t being widely used yet during her lifetime. My personal opinion is that she would probably identify as gender non-conforming or non-binary, but make your own judgments. Johnson was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey on August 24, 1945 — one of seven children — and was named Malcolm Michaels Jr by her parents, Malcolm Michaels Sr and Alberta Claiborne. They were not, from all accounts, a particularly open-minded family and Claiborne was said to believe that being a homosexual was like being “lower than dog.” Johnson was raised in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and remained a devout, practicing Christian for her entire life. At the age of five, Johnson began to wear dresses — but stopped because she was harassed and teased by neighborhood boys. Some time during this period, Johnson was sexually assaulted by a boy who was roughly the age of 13. In 1963, Johnson graduated from Edison High School and promptly moved to New York City with $15 and a bag of clothing. By 1966, she was waiting tables, engaging in sex work, and living on the streets of the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan. She also began to perform as a drag queen — initially going by the name “Black Marsha” before settling on Marsha P. Johnson. She was often recognizable for having flowers in her hair — something she began doing after sleeping under flower sorting tables in Manhattan’s Flower District. She usually had on bright colored wigs, shiny dresses, and long flowing robes. Marsha was known to be peaceful and fun, but there was a violent and short-tempered side to her personality (which her friends commonly called “Malcolm”) — leading some to suspect that she suffered from schizophrenia. Between her sex work and her occasional violent outbursts, Johnson claimed to have been arrested more than a hundred times. When the Stonewall Inn began to permit women and drag queens inside, Johnson was one of the first to begin regularly visiting the bar. Some witnesses have even credited her with starting off the riots in 1969. Although this claim has certainly gained traction and become the popular version of events, she likely was not the woman who sparked off the Stonewall Riots by throwing the legendary “first brick” — this was also rumored, and was perhaps more likely to be Jackie Hormona or Zazu Nova by eyewitnesses — Johnson did have one particularly iconic, though unconfirmed, moment in the riots. She is said to have shouted “I got my civil rights!” and thrown a shot glass at a mirror. ( Some said this — the “shot glass heard round the world” — was the moment that started the riots, but Johnson herself disputed this. According to Johnson, word of the riots reached her and she immediately went to collect her friend Sylvia Rivera so they could join in — but Rivera was sleeping on a bench. According to Johnson, she arrived at about 2:00 am, forty minutes after the riots began. (I guess word traveled fast!) There are many reports that on the second night of rioting, Johnson climbed up a street lamp with a purse that was loaded down with a brick — which she dropped through the windshield of a police car. Though there’s a lot of stories about those riots, and a lot of confusion about the details it is very clear that Johnson was there and made a noticeable impact. Although she’d been an activist before, Johnson became a real leader in the LGBT movements that followed the riots. In 1970, she and Sylvia Rivera founded the Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (STAR) — an organization that provided community support for transgender youth. She also joined the Gay Liberation Front and participated in the Christopher Street Liberation Pride rally that commemorated the first anniversary of Stonewall (and was, essentially, the creation of the Pride festivals we celebrate.) At one rally in the early 70’s, Johnson was asked by a member of the press what they were protesting for –Johnson shouted into the reporter’s microphone “Darling, I want my gay rights now!” Johnson once said, “I was no one, nobody, from Nowheresville until I became a drag queen. That’s what made me in New York, that’s what made me in New Jersey, that’s what made me in the world.” In 1972, she began to perform periodically with the international drag troupe Hot Peaches. She was also continuing to work as a sex worker, taking the money she (and Rivera) earned from that business to help pay the rent for the housing for transgender youth that STAR had established that year. Johnson also took on an active role mentoring all of the youth in their care, becoming a “drag mother” even to those who were not performers. Although STAR declined and closed in 1973, it was a groundbreaking organization and the shelter that it provided queer youth was truly revolutionary. In 1973, Johnson also performed with the Angels of Light drag troupe — taking on the role of “The Gypsy Queen” in their production of “The Enchanted Miracle”. That same year both Johnson and Rivera were banned from participating in New York’s gay pride parade — the committee organizing the parade felt that drag queens and transvestites brought negative attention and gave the cause “a bad name.” In response, Rivera and Johnson marched ahead of the beginning of the parade. In 1975, Andy Warhol took pictures of Johnson for his “Ladies and Gentlemen” series. Johnson’s success as an activist and a performer, as well as her regular appearances throughout the decade, earned her the nickname “Mayor of Christopher Street.” By 1979, Johnson’s mental health was beginning to decline quite severely. Her aggressive side was coming out more often, and a Village Voice article called “The Drag of Politics” listed all of the Manhattan gay bars from which Johnson had been banned. In 1980, a friend named Randy Wicker invited Johnson to stay with him for a particularly cold night and the two remained roommates for the rest of Johnson’s life. This was — as far as I can tell — the first time Johnson had a permanent address since moving to New York in 1963. In the 1980’s, Johnson began to work with ACT UP as an organizer and marshal, and was a prolific AIDS activist. She made this her primary focus for the last few years of her life. On July 6, 1992 — just after that years New York Pride festivities — she was found dead in the Hudson River with a large wound in the back of her head. The police ruled her death a suicide — despite pressure from the community and the fact that she had a wound in the back of her head. One witness had spoken of Johnson’s fragile mental health to the police — which was all the police, who had no interest in investigating a black queer person’s death, needed despite witness testimonies also describing Johnson being harassed by a gang. Another witness claimed to have heard a man brag about killing a drag queen named Marsha. The police did allow Seventh Avenue to be closed so that Johnson’s friends could spread her ashes out over the river. In 2012, an activist named Mariah Lopez was finally successful in convincing the police to re-open Johnson’s case and investigate it as a homicide. That was also the year that the first documentary about Johnson was released: Pay It No Mind — The Life and Times of Marsha P. Johnson. This documentary included footage from an interview that had been filmed only ten days before Johnson’s death. Fictionalized versions of Johnson also appeared in the films Stonewall (released in 2015) and Happy Birthday Marsha! (released in 2016.) In 2017, another documentary was released — The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson — which followed the Anti-Violence Project’s Victoria Cruz investigating Johnson’s death on her own. Despite all of these tributes, it wasn’t until 2018 that the New York Times published an obituary for her. Johnson — with her friend Sylvia Rivera — will be honored with a monument in Greenwich Village, near Stonewall. This is perhaps most fitting for Johnson, since she was quite insistent about moving the Stonewall monument from Ohio to Christopher Street in New York City in 1992 — famously saying “How many people have died for these two little statues to be put in the park to recognize gay people? How many years does it take for people to see that we’re all brothers and sisters and human beings in the human race? I mean how many years does it take for people to see that we’re all in this rat race together?” Johnson may not have “thrown the first brick” at Stonewall, but she led the fight for LGBTQ+ equality in every other way. Randy Wicker said of Johnson that she “rose above being a man or a woman, rose above being black or white, rose above being straight or gay”, while Rupaul described her as “the true Drag Mother.” So, while we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, let’s all pay plenty of mind to Marsha P. Johnson — and to the other heroes who stood up that day and said “Darling, I want my gay rights now!” Most Americans are aware of the Red Scare — the witch hunt for Communist agents in the US led by Senator Joseph McCarthy. Despite the infamy of that event, there was a notable queer element that often gets overlooked, despite lasting longer and impacting a greater number of government employees: the Lavender Scare. Gay men and lesbians were said to be communist sympathizers and dangerous security risks. Given that the 1947 Sex Perversion Elimination Program had already seen to legally labeling homosexuals as dangerously mentally ill, so these assertions fed into growing public unease. There was a national call to fire them from employment in the Federal government — which made it even more difficult for queer people to be out of the closet anywhere in the United States. Though the official Lavender Scare was focused on Federal government and armed forces employees and contractors, you can be sure that thousands more across the country lost their jobs simply because of the fear that McCarthy and his allies were stoking. In February, 1950 McCarthy announced that he had a list of Communists that worked for the government. Two names on that last were homosexuals who had been fired and then rehired. Senators Kenneth S. Wherry and Senator J. Lister Hill interrogated these two individuals — called “Case 14“and “Case 62“. I can’t find real names for those two, but they were dismissed from their positions — the first official victims of the Lavender Scare. A week later Deputy Undersecretary of State John Purefoy testified before the Senate Committee on Appropriations that the State Department had actually fired, and later hidden, 91 suspected homosexual employees they had flagged as security risks. In truth, the Senate Committee was not shocked to learn this, since they had essentially given the State Department leeway to purge homosexuals from employment in 1946. However, the testimony revealed this information to the public and granted legitimacy to all of McCarthy’s claims — strengthening public support for his Red Scare. On April 15, 1950, the Republican National Chair Guy George Gabrielson (a name that truly sounds fictional, but it isn’t) made the claim that “sexual perverts” who had infiltrated the government were “perhaps as dangerous as actual Communists.” He argued that homosexuals were susceptible to blackmail and therefore a great risk to national security. (Later investigations found that not a single person who lost their job during the Lavender Scare ever revealed classified information, and most never had access to any. In case there was any confusion, this was never actually about national security!) In a somewhat ironic twist, McCarthy hired Roy Cohn — a closeted homosexual — to be the chief counsel of the Congressional subcommittee. (Cohn was also a terrible, terrible human being. We can’t all be winners, I suppose.) Working alongside J. Edgar Hoover, they fired multitudes of accused gay men and lesbians. They also used rumors of homosexual activity to coerce their opponents and to smear those they suspected of being communists. In March of 1952, the Federal government fired 162 employees because they might have been gay. On April 27, 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10450 which — among other effects — led to a ban on gays and lesbians working for the Federal government of the United States altogether and even more heightened drive to uncover homosexual infiltrators. Suspected homosexuals were interviewed and surveilled for signs of gender non-conformity — as were their roommates and friends. Investigators relied on “guilty by association” — anyone with ties to homosexuals must be one as well. People were given lie detector tests and grilled with questions about their personal sexual history. Police were asked to raid gay bars and homosexual meeting places, and then share their arrest records. Within its first year 425 suspected homosexuals were fired from the State Department alone. Over 5,000 Federal employees were fired because of suspicions that they were homosexuals. Every single one of them was not only lost their job, but was publicly outed as well. Many more were pressured into resigning. McCarthy effectively convinced the government and the media of a connection between homosexuality and Communism — calling them both “threats to the American way of life” and even blatantly telling reporters “if you want to be against McCarthy, boys, you’ve got to be either a Communist or a cocksucker.” He repeatedly referred to homosexuality as an invasion. The rhetoric caught on. Those who’d been removed from their jobs found it impossible to get hired anywhere else — a few resorted to suicide. Federal investigators later covered up most of those deaths. The effects of the investigations rapidly expanded out from just government work, leading to an untold number of homosexuals (and suspected homosexuals) being fired and denied employment from even ordinary, non-government jobs — even in Hollywood. Gay and lesbian bars were raided by police with an ever-increasing regularity. Even queer organizations like the Mattachine Society (which was founded partially in 1950 partly in response to the Lavender Scare) were forced to adapt by 1953, adopting specific policies that specified they were loyal to the United States and forcing out founder Harry Hays — who happened to actually be a gay Communist. The discriminatory practices destroyed lives and families, even among the most powerful people in the country. After Lester “Buddy” Hunt Jr. was arrested for soliciting prostitution from a male undercover police officer, his father Senator Lester Hunt was blackmailed and attacked by his political opponents (which included McCarthy) — destroying his political career and tearing apart his family. On June 19, 1954, he sat down at his desk in his Senate office and shot himself in the head with a rifle. It wasn’t until Frank Kameny was fired from the United States Army Maps Service that anyone sought to challenge these firings in court. He brought his case all the way up to the Supreme Court — making him the first person to argue in United States courtrooms that homosexuals were being treated as second class citizens. They decided against him in 1961. (This would be the beginning of Kameny’s profound influence over LGBTQ+ rights in the U.S. — but he would never hold another paying job for the rest of his life, and survived only on the generosity of his friends.) In 1969, the Supreme Court had realized the error of its ways and ruled differently in a similar case. Of course, that didn’t help Kameny much. Between 1947 and 1961, more Federal employees had been fired for being suspected of being homosexual than were fired for being suspected of being Communist. Records of the number of people who were fired as part of the Lavender Scare get more than a little fuzzy after that, but it was hardly over. Even after the end of McCarthy’s career in 1957, the tactics used in the Lavender Scare remained in effect for several more years. In fact, the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee (aka the Johns Committee after state senator Charley Eugene Johns) officially began using these same practices to drive the queer population out of state universities in 1958. They pursued students and professors for doing such suspiciously homosexual behaviors as wearing Bermuda shorts on campus. Professors were immediately removed from their positions for even being suspected on queerness, students were allowed to remain on campus only if they routinely visited their school’s medical facility for routine psychological treatments. In 1964 the Committee began printing pamphlets entitled Homosexuality and Citizenship in Florida — or colloquially known as the Purple Pamphlet. Because it included pictures of homosexual activity, it was immediately considered controversial and called “state-sponsored pornography” — ultimately leading to the dissolution of the Committee in 1965. Executive Order 10450 was struck down in court in 1973 but not formally repealed. Parts of it were undone by President Bill Clinton, through the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy and Executive Order 13087 — the latter of which officially ended the FBI’s and NSA’s discriminatory hiring practices. The Executive Order was not truly repealed until 2017, when — in one of his last acts in office — President Barack Obama signed Executive Order 13764. At about the same time, outgoing Secretary of State John Kerry finally issued a formal apology on behalf of the State Department for the discrimination that occurred. The long-lasting effects of the Lavender Scare drove the queer community of the U.S. deeper underground, turned public sentiment against the LGBT+ community for decades, and to this day continues to impact hiring policies, and public ideas about homosexuality, around the country. Congress is, even now, preparing to decide on whether or not to pass the Equality Act — which would, among other things, protect LGBTQ+ people from employment discrimination. I would say that almost seventy years after the beginning of the Lavender Scare, it’s about time. Jackie Shane was an R&B singer who was a sensation in the music scene of Toronto, and was a nationally charting artist in Canada — and broke new ground as an openly queer performer. Jackie Shane was born in Nashville, Tennessee on May 15, 1940. She would later explain that she began dressing as a girl when she was 5, and that she identified herself as a woman in a man’s body by age 13 — but openly she described herself as gay. Her mother supported her, and Shane would later say she never had any problems in school — at least, not because of her sexuality or gender identity. As a teenager, she played the drums and was a regular sessions player for gospel and R&B record labels in Nashville. Through this, she met various famous musicians including Jackie Wilson. Nevertheless, she was a black queer kid living in the south during the Jim Crow era. In 1959 or 1960, she moved to Montreal — still fully presenting as a man. She was brought by a local saxophonist to see Frank Motley and the Motley Crew perform. Frank Motley invited Shane on stage — and quickly became the band’s lead vocalist. She traveled with them, recording with them in Boston and performing in Los Angeles and Nashville. Shane moved to Toronto in 1962, where an R&B scene was emerging on Yonge Street, and went solo. Shane’s arrival in Toronto has been described as a “revelation” — her sound was unlike anything else in the city. The way it’s described, she appeared on the scene and instantly became a legend. She was still presenting as a man, though she clothes were becoming more androgynous, and she typically dodged the question of gender altogether when asked. Canada may not have been as oppressive as Tennessee, but they wouldn’t decriminalize homosexuality until 1969 and were decades away from acknowledging transgender identities at all. Her performances had a profound impact on the Toronto Sound and on the queer community and culture that would develop in the city over the next decades. For live performances, Shane was a performer through and through. She would tour with around 20 trunks of outfits, and insert monologues and comedy bits into her songs. In 1962, Shane released her first solo recording — a cover of the song “Money (That’s What I Want)” with a B-side recording of “I’ve Really Got the Blues.” “Money (That’s What I Want)” was later re-released as the B-side on a recording of “Have You Ever Had the Blues?” The same year, she released her second single — “Any Other Way”, which almost instantly became the #2 hit on Toronto’s CHUM Chart of the top 30 songs being played on local radio stations. It is probably her most famous song. During live performances of “Any Other Way”, she would add quips that were usually used to underline the subversive subtext of the lyrics “Tell her that I’m happy, tell her that I’m gay.” (Her live album is available on Spotify and on iTunes, so you don’t even have to take my word for it, you can hear it for yourself.) “Any Other Way” was followed by releasing the single “In my Tenement”, which did not do nearly as well and only charted in upstate New York. She began to focus on performing and touring, and did not make any new recordings for several years. In 1965, Jackie Shane returned to Nashville, where she performed “Walking the Dog” on Night Train. I don’t know that this was a particularly huge moment in her life, but there’s video that I thought I’d share. Two years later, “Any Other Way” was re-released and this time it rose to #68 on Canada’s national RPM chart. This seems to have encouraged Shane to return to recording new music, as she released “Standing Up Straight and Tall” later that year. This was followed by a live album. In 1969, she released “Cruel Cruel World” — this would prove to be her last recording. (Although, some tracks from the live album would later be re-released on the Motley Crew album “Honkin’ at Midnight.”) Her prominence began to fade in 1970, and in 1971 she moved to Los Angeles to take care of her mother. She turned down an offer to be part of the band Funkadelic and all but disappeared from public consciousness. Her mother passed away around 1996, and Shane moved back to Nashville. At this point she literally disappeared for years. Rumors persisted that she had committed suicide or been stabbed to death — in truth, she was just living a quiet life at home. Frank Motley managed to connect with her, and relayed the news that she was alive. Some of her musician friends attempted to reconnect, there were discussions about a reunion tour — and then her phone number was reassigned and she disappeared again. But she was not forgotten. In 2010 CBC Radio released a documentary about her called I Got Mine: The Story of Jackie Shane. The producers had sent a letter to Shane asking if she would participate — but she never responded, leaving question as to whether or not she was even alive. A 2011 documentary called Yonge Street: Toronto Rock & Roll Stories included Shane. These documentaries were very well received, and the media began attempting to contact Shane for interviews but to no avail. In 2014, a scout for the reissue record label Numero Group finally managed to reach Jackie Shane by phone, very much alive — although none of her staff had ever even see her face. The scout, Douglas Mcgowan, built a friendship with her over the phone and convinced her to allow his label to re-release her recordings. Though Shane was able to retain her privacy, she was no longer hidden from the world. Her live album was reissued and shortlisted for a Polaris Award in 2015 (and again in 2016 and 2017). In 2017, her influence on Toronto was remembered in an anthology of essays entitled Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer. That same year, a compilation album of many of Shane’s recordings was released and called Any Other Way. The album was nominated for “Best Historical Album” at the 2019 Grammy Awards. In 2019, Jackie Shane finally granted an interview to Elaine Banks. The interview was aired on the CBC Radio program Q on February 8. This would be the first publicly broadcast interview Shane had given in decades — and it would also be her last. In February of 2019, Jackie Shane passed away in her sleep. She was found in her home on February 21. She was 78 years old. With everyone’s minds on yesterday’s general election I thought I’d delve into the world of politics. The Boston Globe has called her the “most perennial of perennial candidates” but her mark on politics is perhaps greater than the credit they give her — Althea Garrison was the first transgender person (that we know of) elected to a state legislature in the United States. Though her tenure was brief, the barrier she broke is undeniable — even if she never meant to or wanted to. Garrison was born in Hahira, Georgia on October 7, 1940. At nineteen years old — still living in the closet as a man — Garrison moved to Boston to attend beauty school — but it turned out she didn’t like being on her feet all day. So she enrolled at Newbury Junior College and earned an associate’s degree. She followed that by attending Suffolk University and earning a B.S. in business administration, and then an M.S. in management from Lesley College. After this, she got a certification in management from Harvard University. Afterwards, she decided she didn’t actually need to attend every college in the Boston area, and didn’t earn any more degrees. In or around 1976, she transitioned into living as a woman and asked the courts to change her name. The court documents read that the name Althea Garrison “is consistent with petitioner’s appearance and medical condition and is the name by which he will be known in the future.” It’s a bit unclear what “medical condition” they’re referring to — and honestly, we’ll probably never know. To this day, Garrison has never publicly acknowledged her transition, In 1980, Garrison volunteered with Ted Kennedy’s presidential campaign. She says, this is when her interest in politics was sparked. When he lost, she reasoned that if she could campaign for him, she could just as easily campaign for herself. In 1981, she began working at the comptroller’s office and campaigned for a seat on the Boston city council. She was not elected. The next year she ran as a Democrat for the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and was not elected. She ran for city council again in 1983 and 1985, and then ran for the Massachusetts House of Representatives again in 1986. She tried for city council again in 1987 — and then left the Democratic party. She ran for city council as an independent in 1989. She must have also run for office some other times, because in 1991 — running as a Republican for the city council — the Boston Herald stated she had run for office nine times. Garrison herself thought it was somewhere around ten or eleven. I only count eight, including the 1991 campaign but I’m admittedly really terrible at math. Anyways, in 1991 she came in third during the preliminary election for her district. In 1992, she hit the campaign trail once more — still as a Republican, and gunning once again for the Massachusetts House of Representatives. She took incumbent Nelson Merced to court, challenging some of the signatures he’d used to qualify for the Democratic primary. The court ruled in Garrison’s favor, and Merced was taken off the ballot. Irene Roman became the candidate for the Democratic party. Roman garnered 2,014 votes. Garrison beat her by a narrow margin of 437 votes — totaling 2,451. Garrison quickly fell under attack. Many criticized that she had won disingenuously because she’d kept Merced off the ballot. (But, really, the court did that.) A reporter for the Boston Herald named Eric Fehrnstrom already had her in his sights. You may recognize his name — he was a top aid for Mitt Romney during his 2012 campaign. Fehrnstrom had discovered the court documents regarding Garrison’s name change — and according to colleagues he was positively gleeful. Two days into her tenure, the Herald published a front page story speculating about her gender. I should note here, that technically Garrison still hasn’t come out. Even in the face of the ensuing scandal, and the remarkably unkind comments of her political opponents at the time in regards to her gender, Garrison has only ever stated that she is a woman. She has never addressed this, and probably never will address this. And that’s okay. Admittedly, it has made me feel awkward about writing this but at the same time the extremely ugly circumstances of her outing don’t take away from Garrison’s accomplishments, her impressive persistence, or the barriers she helped break down for transgender people in the United States. Because of Fehrnstrom, she’s part of our nation’s strong queer history. Anyways, Garrison finished her term and developed a reputation for voting in favor of unions, and frequently reaching across the aisle and voting with Democrats. At the same time, she voted against marriage equality, against gun control, and against legalized abortions. When it came time for re-election in 1994, eight unions in Boston strongly backed her — as well as the Massachusetts branch of the AFL-CIO. Nevertheless, she was defeated. Charlotte Golar Richie, the Democratic candidate, won with 2,108 votes to Garrison’s 1,718 — an even narrower margin than her skin-of-her-teeth victory in 1992. Since that time, Garrison has consistently run for office, running variously as a Republican, a Democrat, and an independent. She has run for Boston City Council in 1995, 1997, 1999, 2003, 2005, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, and 2017. She ran for the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 2000, 2006, and 2010. She also ran in a special election for state Senate in 2002, and for mayor of Boston in 2001. She did not win any of these elections. However, she is positioned to take over Ayanna Pressley’s seat on the Boston City Council when Pressley moves to serve in Congress. In 2018, after 37 years, Garrison has retired from the comptroller’s office. But she has not retired from her political aspirations — despite being up for a position on the Boston City Council, Garrison ran as an independent for the Massachusetts House of Representatives in the 2018 general election — which she lost to Liz Miranda. I know this sounds like a whole lot elections that Garrison didn’t win — but the take away here is that she has never given up. Even when attacked for who she is, she never gave up. And that, if nothing else, broke down barriers and proved transgender people could hold office — allowing for Stacie Loughton‘s election in 2012 and Danica Roem‘s election in 2017 (both of which are whole other stories.) UPDATE: Since writing this post, Althea Garrison was sworn into her new seat on the Boston City Council on January 9, 2019. It’s been a really great month for queer music — we’ve got a new album from country’s first openly gay singer Steve Grand; a new album from British synthpop band Years & Years, led by the openly gay Olly Alexander; and Panic! at the Disco’s lead singer Brendon Urie came out as pansexual. With all this new news, I — of course — wanted to check out some old queer music history. It’s no surprise that led me to the incomparable Mother of Blues herself: Ma Rainey. Born Gertrude Pridgett on April 26, 1886 in Georgia or possibly in September of 1882 in Alabama (depending on if you believe Gertrude or the U.S. census — researchers seem generally not to believe her). She was the second of five kids (the other four were pretty definitely born in Alabama — and her parents lived in Alabama. I’m just saying.) At 12 or 14 years old, Gertrude performed at a talent show in Columbus, Georgia and then began performing in black minstrel shows. According to Gertrude, she first heard blues music in 1902. The story goes that she heard a performer singing a blues song at another minstrel show — Gertrude was entranced, committed the song to memory that day, and immediately began using it as an encore to her own performances. Of course, she also claimed to have invented the name of the blues genre (she didn’t) so she’s not always the most reliable source of information. Just sayin’. Two years later she married William “Pa” Rainey — a traveling comedian and vaudeville performer. Some time shortly after that, she and her husband formed a company called the Alabama Fun Makers Company. The troupe was short-lived, and in 1906 they both joined Pat Chappelle’s Rabbit’s Foot Company where they both performed and became quite popular. In 1912, the Rabbit’s Foot Company was taken over by F.S. Wolcott. The Raineys stuck with the company for two more years before joining Tolliver’s Circus and Musical Extravaganza — which billed the duo as “Rainey and Rainey, Assassinators of the Blues”. The name stuck, and the two were soon using it on their own without being part of a troupe of performers. Soon after that, Gertrude was getting bookings all on her own — using the name Madam Gertrude Rainey, or “Ma”. When Ma took the stage, she was a sight to behold — adorned in a diamond tiara, a necklace made out of $20 pieces, rings on each finger, wearing a golden gown with gold-capped teeth. She carried a gun and an ostrich plume. Audiences were enthralled. In fact, even though she was in the deep south, her shows were peacefully integrated between black people and white people. She was sometimes hired by wealthy white people to play private parties, but after every single one of these she would go out dancing and socializing at the local black café. The Raineys spent winter in New Orleans, where they met a large number of blues performers — including Louis Armstrong, Pops Foster, and another queer blues singer Bessie Smith. (A story later came about that Ma had kidnapped Bessie, forced her to join the Rabbit’s Foot Company, and made her sing the blues but even Bessie’s family denied the story.) In 1916, Ma separated from her husband, ending both their working and romantic relationships. Her star continued to rise, and in 1923 Paramount Records asked her to record songs for them. With Paramount, over the next several years, she released more than 100 singles and sold so many of them that she has been credited with saving the company single-handedly. The recordings were very popular — but, you know how some performers are better live than if you’re just listening to them? Ma Rainey was universally considered one of those — and audiences became even more eager to see her, and even more excited at her shows. Ma was not as open about her sexuality as some of the women of early blues — Gladys Bentley for instance — however, she wasn’t in the closet either. In 1925, neighbors called the police when one of her parties became too raucous. The officers arrived just as things were beginning to get shall we say intimate with the all-female group. Ma Rainey was arrested for “running an indecent party” but was bailed out by Bessie Smith the next day. This may have been one reason Rainey’s guitarist Sam Chatmon thought the two were romantically linked. This incident may have been part of the inspiration for “Prove It On Me Blues”, which Rainey recorded in 1928. The lyrics are a fairly explicitly about lesbianism and of breaking gender norms. As far as I can tell, this was the first recorded piece of music to celebrate a queer sexuality. “Went out last night with a crowd of my friends They must’ve been women, ’cause I don’t like no men. It’s true I wear a collar and tie, Makes the wind blow all the while.” Paramount ran an ad for the song — a drawing of Ma Rainey in a three-piece suit (albeit, with a skirt and heels) and a fedora, talking to a group of women with a policeman watching from across the street. The ad said “What’s all this? Scandal? … Don’t fail to get this record from your dealer!” 1928 was Ma Rainey’s last year as a recording artist. Popular music styles were changing, so her contract with Paramount ended. She toured a little bit longer, before settling down back in Columbus, Georgia. It was about this time (1932) that Sterling A. Brown wrote a poem about her called “Ma Rainey”, describing how powerful her performances were. In her later years, she opened a handful of movie theaters — the Lyric, the Airdome, and the Liberty Theatre. On December 22, 1939, she had a heart attack and died but her legacy continues to this day. Six months after Ma’s death, Memphis Minnie wrote a tribute song called “Ma Rainey”. It was the first such song, but it would not be the last. In 1965, Bob Dylan paired Ma Rainey with Beethoven in his song “Tombstone Blues”. In 1982, August Wilson published a play about her called Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. In 1983, Ma Rainey was inducted into the Blues Foundation’s Hall of Fame. In 1994, the U.S. Post Office released a commemorative stamp in her honor. Ten years later, her song “See See Rider Blues” (recorded in 1924 — you can hear it below) was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and was also added to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress. In 2015, a film about Bessie Smith was released (Bessie) in which Mo’Nique played Ma Rainey, and one year later the First Annual Ma Rainey International Blues Festival was held in Columbus, Georgia. Last year (2017), in the same city, the Rainey-McCullers School of the Arts opened — named after Ma Rainey and Carson McCullers. In 1952, Langston Hughes released a poem called “Shadow of the Blues”, in which one character proclaims of Ma Rainey: “To tell the truth, if I stop and listen, I can still hear her!” I think we still hear a bit of Ma every time an artist releases a song about queerness — and if that’s the case, I hope we never stop hearing her.

Emplaw Monthly - End of October 2020 NEW FROM OUR AUTHORS Pensions and Trade Unions The Pensions team, from Emplaw authors Gowling WLG, set out why and how companies need to be aware of trade unions when considering changes to pension provision. Free webinar on remote hearings A topical free to view webinar from Emplaw authors Cloisters FOCUS ON CONTENT Employing EU citizens in the UK in the context of Brexit Amongst our suite of user-friendly information about Recruitment is a card on Employing EU citizens in the UK in the context of Brexit. Click below for the full list of cards on Recruitment including an Overview of Matters to Consider in the recruitment process, DBS checks and much more. EMPLOYER/EMPLOYEE ADVISOR NEED TO KNOW Becoming an anti-racist organisation MHFA has published guidance to support mental health and wellbeing as part of its work in actively encouraging organisations to be actively anti- racist. CIPD and EHRC guidance on supporting employees suffering domestic abuse The CIPD has produced, with the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). Guidance for employers, on managing and supporting employees experiencing domestic abuse. It recommends employers develop a domestic abuse policy and create an effective framework around domestic abuse support. Brexit preparations: government campaign and information from Emplaw authors The government has launched its ‘time is running out’ campaign urging business leaders to step up preparations for ‘Australia-style’ arrangements from 1 January 2021. Emplaw authors Gowling WLG explore the key issues for businesses including workforce, supply chain and customs/border tariff issues ICO Updated Guidance on subject access requests. The guidance aims to provide clarity on the following: - Stopping the clock whilst organisations are waiting for the requester to clarify their request - What is a manifestly excessive request - What can be included when charging a fee for excessive, unfounded or repeat requests LEGISLATION AND LITIGATION The Restriction of Public Sector Exit Payments Regulations 2020 These Regulations are made in order to impose restrictions on the amount of an exit payment a listed public sector authority can make in connection with the exit of an employee or office holder, where that exit takes place after these Regulations come into force. The restrictions cap an exit payment at a prescribed amount, currently £95,000 except in specific circumstances as set out in these Regulations. The Regulations come into force on 4 November 2020. The cap will apply to payments of a prescribed description which are not exempt, including payments arising from a contractual entitlement such as redundancy payments. These Regulations set out the sequence in which multiple exit payments are to be treated as having been paid where multiple exits take place in a 28-day period. These Regulations also make specific provisions in relation to statutory redundancy payments and early retirement related payments, as well as provide flexibility by allowing exit payments to be paid in excess of the cap with HM Treasury consent or in compliance with HM Treasury directions. Section 153A(9) of the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 (‘the 2015 Act’) allows for the level of the cap, currently set at £95,000 to be varied by regulations therefore allowing revaluation upwards or downwards if appropriate, whilst still fulfilling the manifesto commitment. These Regulations will result in some public service pension scheme provisions needing amendment due to the cap applying to employer-funded early access to pension arrangements to allow for early retirement. In this scenario, the pension scheme member receives an actuarially reduced pension from the scheme to reflect early receipt of pension benefits with the employer funding the amount of reduction through arrangements between the employer and pension scheme. This increases the member’s pension rights and enables the scheme member to have early access to their pension benefits without any actuarial reduction, ahead of their normal pension age. Since the coming into force of the enabling power in the 2015 Act, some public sector bodies have tried to adjust exit terms for employees and implement a similar cap. However, this has proved to be difficult and, in some cases has resulted in legal challenge in the absence of a legal obligation upon an employer to cap payments arising from a contractual entitlement. The Scottish Government have implemented a £95,000 cap on exit payments for bodies where pay and terms are devolved. This was done by updating the Scottish Public Finance Manual. HM Treasury has decided to proceed with a legislative approach in order to apply the exit payment cap to contractual arrangements. European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (Relevant Court) (Retained EU Case Law) Regulations 2020 (Regulations) The government has laid the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (Relevant Court) (Retained EU Case Law) Regulations 2020 (Regulations) before Parliament, together with a draft explanatory memorandum.The Regulations extend the power to depart from retained EU case law after IP (Implementation Period) completion day to specified appellate domestic courts including the Court of Appeal, and further related provisions. The government has also published its response to the preceding consultation as reported in Emplaw Monthly for July,. The Data Protection, Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendments etc)(EU Exit) Regulations 2020 These draft Regulations make amendments to the Data Protection, Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendments etc) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 (S.I. 2019/419) (the 2019 Regulations). The 2019 Regulations made amendments to legislation in relation to the regulation of the processing of personal data, in connection with the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (“UK”) from the European Union (“EU”). In particular, the transitional provisions in the 2019 Regulations to enable personal data to continue to flow from the UK to jurisdictions which were subject to an EU adequacy decision immediately before “exit day'” will be updated to reflect the changes to the current EU adequacy decisions that are in force by adding the Japan adequacy decision and removing the Privacy Shield decision (Case C-311/18, “Schrems II”) from the list. The explanatory note with the Regulations provides a useful quick summary of the framework of data protection legislation pre and post IP (Implementation Period) Completion Day (11pm on 31st December 2020) ET annual awards statistics for 2019/20 published The Employment tribunal quarterly statistics for April to June 2020 have been published and they include annual awards statistics for 2019/20. The figures show that in 2019/20, age discrimination claims received the largest average award (£39,000) compared to other discrimination jurisdictions. The highest maximum award in 2019/20 was for disability discrimination, at £266,000. REPORTS AND CONSULTATIONS Ethnic disparities and inequality in the UK: call for evidence The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities has issued a call for evidence in order to to review ethnic disparities and inequality in the UK, focusing on the areas of education. employment and enterprise, health,crime and policing. The deadline for responses is Monday 30 November 2020 at 11:45pm. Gender Pay Gap reporting: a comparative analysis This report maps international gender pay gap reporting legislation, with the goal of highlighting best practices internationally and a way forward for the UK. It is a collaboration between the Fawcett Society, the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London (GIWL) and Thomson Reuters Foundation. The report states that UK gender pay gap legislation is much less robust than in other countries. UK annual report on modern slavery This report details activity delivered by the UK government since Autumn 2019 to tackle modern slavery, including: · Monthly operational data shows that, in June 2020, there were 1,845 active law enforcement investigations, compared with 1,479 in June 2019. This has been complemented by increased training for frontline police officers on the signs of modern slavery and improved operational intelligence on the nature of modern slavery. · In 2019, the number of prosecutions and conviction rate increased with the number of completed “flagged modern slavery prosecutions” increasing from 294 to 349, and the conviction rate increasing to 71.9% in 2019, an increase from 65% in the previous year. · The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA) continued to make progress using its powers under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) to investigate serious cases of labour exploitation. In 2019/20, the GLAA conducted over 200 operations across a range of sectors. · On 26 March 2020, the UK became the first country in the world to publish a Modern Slavery [supply chain] Statement outlining the steps it has taken to drive responsible practices and prevent risks of modern slavery in Government supply chains. · The Home Office is developing a new Government digital reporting service for modern slavery statements. Separately, the Sentencing Council has launched a consultation on proposed sentencing guidelines for offenders for modern slavery offences. The consultation closes on 15 January 2021. GENERAL AND COURT UPDATES Three-tier alert system The government introduced a series of regulations on 12 October which came into force on 14 October setting out rules for a three-tier system of alerts: medium, high and very high. The restrictions will cease to have effect in relation to a particular area 28 days from the date in which the restrictions came into force in that area, unless the Secretary of State directs otherwise. If such a direction is issued, the restrictions will continue in effect for a further 28 days. The need for the restrictions in these Regulations must be reviewed by the Secretary of State every 28 days. The Regulations themselves expire six months after the date on which they are made. The government has revised its shielding guidance for people who are clinically extremely vulnerable. The new guidance is aimed at striking a better balance between providing practical steps to keep people safe whilst reducing some of the potentially harmful impacts on mental and social wellbeing associated with strict shielding. UK Supreme Court The UK Supreme Court has published an update to its arrangements during the COVID-19 outbreak and an updated its Practice note. COVID-19 – Scotland Scotland published a Strategic Framework on 23rd October and is introducing a 5-level system of protection levels from 2 November. COVID-19 – Wales The Welsh government introduced the Health Protection (Coronavirus Restrictions)(Functions of Local Authorities etc)(Wales)(Amendment) Regulations 2020 which came into force on 12 October 2020, enabling the Welsh ministers, by regulations, to make provision for a public health response to COVID-19. On 19 October, the Welsh government announced a ‘firebreak’ for Wales ending on 9 November. The measures are contained in The Health Protection (Coronavirus Restrictions) (No. 3) (Wales) Regulations 2020. They apply to everyone living in Wales and replaced previous restrictions. During this time: · People must stay at home, except for very limited purposes, such as for exercise. · People must work from home wherever possible; · People must not visit other households or meet other people they do not live with either indoors or outdoors · No gatherings will be allowed outdoors, such as Halloween or fireworks/Bonfire night or other organised activities · All non-food retail, hospitality businesses, including cafes, restaurants and pubs (unless they provide take-away or delivery services), close contact services, such as hairdressers and beauticians, and events and tourism businesses, such as hotels must close · Community centres, libraries and recycling centres will be required to close · Face coverings must be worn in indoor public spaces, which remain open, including on public transport and in taxis. CJRS and JSS Exit Coronavirus job Retention Scheme and Enter Job Support Scheme The CJRS closes at the end of October and the JSS starts. The JSS as previously announced has been completely remodelled and consists of JSS Open and JSS Closed, reflecting whether a business has been legally required to close as a direct result of coronavirus restrictions set by one or more of the four governments of the UK. An employer can claim the JSS Open and JSS Closed grant at the same time for different employees. Organisations that have staff costs that are fully publicly funded should not use the Job Support Scheme. JSS Open is now likely to be more attractive to struggling employers as it significantly reduces the level of the employer contribution and reduces the amount of time an employee must work.. The key points are: - The employee must work 20% (no longer a third) of their normal hours and be paid as normal for those by their employer - The employee will receive two-thirds (66.67%) of normal pay( 'reference salary') for the hours they do not work. - The employee is left to absorb the balance - Claims are subject to a maximum reference salary of £3,125 per calendar month Therefore, assuming the employee works no more than the minimum 20% of normal hours and recieves the 66.67% for the unworked hours, the maths means that an employee continues to receive at least 73% of their normal wages, where they earn £3,125 a month or less. - The employer will pay 5% of what the reference salary would be for the hours not worked, up to a maximum of £125 per month, with the discretion to pay more - The government will pay the remainder of 61.67%, of what the reference salary would be for the hours not worked, up to a maximum of £1,541.75 per month - An employer must have less than 250 employee or, if they have more employees on 23 September 2020, they must undertake a Financial Impact Test - Employers must agree the new short-time working arrangements with their staff, make any changes to the employment contract by agreement, and notify the employee in writing. Such temporary working agreement must cover at least seven consecutive days. • Each employee who cannot work due to these restrictions will receive two thirds of their normal pay, paid by their employer and fully funded by the government, up to a maximum of £2,083.33 per month (with employer discretion to pay more) • Employers must have reached written agreement with their employee (or reached written collective agreement with a trade union where the relevant terms are determined by collective agreement) that they have been instructed to and agree to cease work for a minimum period of at least 7 consecutive calendar days Principles that apply to both JSS Open and JSS Closed are: • The schemes will operate for 6 months from 1st November 2020 • Employers can only claim for employees that were in their employment on 23 September 2020. If employees ceased employment after 23 of September 2020 and were subsequently rehired, then employers can claim for them. • Employers must also pay to HMRC any employer NICs due on the full amount that that is paid to the employee, including any amounts subsequently met by a scheme grant. • Employers and Employees must also still pay pension contributions in accordance with the applicable pension scheme terms, unless the employee has opted out or stopped saving into their pension. If applicable Student Loan deductions and the Apprenticeship Levy must also still be paid. • An employee cannot be made redundant or put on notice of redundancy whilst their employer is claiming the grant for them The link to a Policy paper including guidance on the Financial Impact Test for employers with over 250 staff, and how to work out employees’ usual pay is found below but further guidance is expected shortly. Repayment of coronavirus Job Retention Scheme grants Employers must have notified HMRC by 20 October if they have over-claimed CJRS payments, failing which there may be penalties. Job Retention Bonus -Treasury direction and guidance On 2 October 2020, a fourth Treasury direction and HMRC guidance were published providing further details on the £1000 Job Retention Bonus which employers will be able to apply for in respect of eligible employees between 15 February and 31 March 2021. Company not liable for employee’s horseplay resulting in injury This case starts with this quote: ‘The practical joke must be the lowest form of humour. It is seldom funny, it is often a form of bullying and it has the capacity, as in the present case, to go seriously wrong. Mark Twain was surely right when he said: Indirect age discrimination - group and individual disadvantage required This case involved an allegation of indirect age discrimination. Ms Ryan alleged that she was indirectly discriminated against when she was not able to apply for promotion on two occasions because she was not in the South West Ambulance Service Trust’s ‘Talent Pool’ (TP). She argued that employees like her who were aged 55 or over were under-represented in the TP. ET awards £180,000 to gender fluid employee Ms Taylor had the protected characteristic of gender reassignment and the ET found that her allegations of harassment because of gender reassignment were well founded.It found that 'gender reassignment' (s.7 EqA) includes gender fluid and non-binary individuals.

New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio signed a bill on Tuesday introduced by out City Council Speaker Corey Johnson in June that adds a third gender option, X, to birth certificates issued in New York City for people identifying as nonbinary or gender non-conforming. CBS New York reports: “A letter from a physician or an affidavit by a licensed health care provider will no longer be provided. Residents can now submit their own affidavit requesting a change in gender identity.” Said Johnson: “Today is a landmark day for our city. New York is sending a clear message to people who are transgender, gender non-conforming and non-binary that we are here for you. This law will help those friends, neighbors and colleagues better self-identify on their birth certificates, a document that’s so important in everyday life.” Watch the full ceremony below:

Chancellor’s Medallion recipients, student speaker recognized during commencement ceremony University of Michigan-Dearborn recognized five students as Chancellor’s Medallion recipients and a student speaker during the university’s commencement ceremony Sunday, April 30. Victor Jimenez will receive a Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in communication, a minor in journalism and screen studies, and a public relations certificate. He graduates with High Distinction. He is a recipient of the Detroit Compact Scholarship and the Student Advance Scholarship. He received University Honors five times and earned placement on the Dean’s List every semester. Jimenez served as a student events coordinator for University Unions and Events, a position he obtained through the College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters Cooperative Education Office. An active member of the campus community, Jimenez is a co-founder and president of the campus colony of Alpha Psi Lambda National Incorporated co-ed fraternity. He expects that the colony will be voted in as a chapter at the national organization’s annual meeting this summer. Jimenez participated in the UM-Dearborn Blueprints Leadership Institute, a comprehensive, semester-long leadership opportunity designed to help students refine their leadership skills and become agents of positive social change. Prior to the start of the Fall 2016 semester, he served as a counselor for the Wolverines Orientation Wilderness (W.O.W.) program, an annual four-day outdoor adventure/college prep experience for roughly 60 incoming freshman students, held at a rural campsite. Jimenez was recently named a 2017 UM-Dearborn Difference Maker. Nominated by faculty and staff, recipients are recognized for academic achievement, integrity, leadership and creative contribution in and out of the classroom. After graduation, Jimenez hopes to utilize his education and his passion for public speaking in a full-time job in public relations or media relations. College of Business Chancellor’s Medallion Recipient Kevin Landwehr will receive a Bachelor of Business Administration degree with concentrations in accounting and finance. Having earned a GPA of 4.00, he graduates with the honor of High Distinction. Landwehr received the Chancellor’s Scholarship and the Honors Program Scholarship. Landwehr was named a James B. Angell Scholar in 2015, 2016 and 2017, and earned the William J. Branstrom Freshman Prize in 2014. He was placed on the Dean’s List for every fall and winter term, and received University Honors seven times. Landwehr held multiple part-time and full-time positions throughout his college career, including two summer internships, one with Deloitte and one with International Automotive Components. He held positions on the executive board for Beta Alpha Psi, Student Government, Student Organization Advisory Council and Wishmakers Organization, served as the business manager for the Michigan Journal, participated in intramural basketball and co-founded the Irish American Club and the Food Recovery Network. Landwehr worked as an orientation leader and as an ambassador and events team member and participated as a camp counselor for the Wolverine Orientation Wilderness program. He also volunteered for Volunteer Income Tax Assistance and Junior Achievement with Malcolm X Academy. Landwehr was named a 2016 UM-Dearborn Difference Maker. Nominated by faculty and staff, Difference Maker recipients are recognized for academic achievement, integrity, leadership, and creative contribution in and out of the classroom. After graduation, Landwehr will take the CPA exam. He will begin work full time for Deloitte in September as an external auditor in the Detroit office and will work as a part of the campus recruiting team for University of Michigan-Dearborn. His goal is to work in public accounting and to continue serving the community in governmental and advisory board capacities. College of Engineering and Computer Science Chancellor’s Medallion Recipient Brandon Lee will receive a Bachelor of Science in Engineering (B.S.E.) degree in mechanical engineering and a B.S.E. in engineering mathematics, graduating with High Distinction. Lee was a recipient of the Chancellor’s Scholarship and the Michigan Competitive Scholarship. Brandon was awarded University Honors in 2014 and 2015, and was named a James Angell Scholar in 2015 and 2016. Lee has been named to the Dean’s List seven times throughout his collegiate career. Mechanical engineering faculty describe Lee as a leader among his peers, citing several instances in which he has led group projects in class. His professors also speak highly of his individual scholarly performance in the classroom and his ability to apply advance techniques to engineering problems One faculty member described Lee as a student who “demonstrates a desire to learn above and beyond the average student in our department.” As a result of his exceptional course performance, Lee was selected to tutor two notoriously difficult mechanical engineering courses. It is rare for faculty to select an undergraduate student to tutor these particular courses in mechanical engineering, but Lee earned high praise from faculty and students alike in his tutoring role. In addition, during his junior year, Lee completed three cooperative education rotations at Denso International in Southfield, in the area of climate control. In 2016, Lee was awarded an Undergraduate Research Fellowship in Mathematics and Statistics, which provides funding for independent research under direction of a faculty member. For his senior design project, Lee and his team worked to integrate a three dimensional tracking system with complex modeling for a basketball training application. Dr. Patrick Lynch, mechanical engineering faculty member and adviser to the senior design team, speaks highly of the project at its current state. Upon graduation from UM-Dearborn, Lee plans to pursue graduate studies in engineering. College of Education, Health, and Human Services Chancellor’s Medallion Recipient Gay Johnson has successfully earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in health policy studies and a minor in women’s and gender studies. She graduates with High Distinction. Johnson was on the Dean’s List as a part-time student for Fall 2013/Winter 2014 and Fall 2014/Winter 2015. Johnson transferred to UM-Dearborn as part of the Honors Transfer Innovators program, where she successfully completed a novel research project on campus attitudes regarding reproductive health issues. An active student leader, Johnson is the chair of Women in Learning and Leadership (WILL), vice president of communications for the campus chapter of the American Association of University Women (AAUW), and served as a site leader for the annual MLK Day of Service. She is also a member of the National Society of Leadership and Success, Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, and was inducted into the Alpha Sigma Lambda Honor Society. Johnson was named a 2014 UM-Dearborn Difference Maker. Nominated by faculty and staff, Difference Maker recipients are recognized for academic achievement, integrity, leadership, and creative contribution in and out of the classroom. While doing coursework for her health policy studies program, Johnson was troubled by the lack of long-term housing for homeless individuals. Most options were only short term, usually with long waiting lists. She wants to help open a long-term shelter. Johnson believes that providing individuals with a place to stay long-term will reduce homelessness in the city. Her desire is to give individuals a second chance to become productive citizens while maintaining their dignity. After graduation, Johnson’s goal is move into a management position within the safety department at Delta Airlines. College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters Chancellor’s Medallion Recipient Jamie Jeffries will receive a Bachelor of Science degree in microbiology and minor in Hispanic studies. She graduates with High Distinction. She is a recipient of the Chancellor’s Scholarship and other private scholarships. She earned University Honors five times, was the recipient of the William J. Branstrom Freshman Prize in 2014, and was recognized as a James B. Angell Scholar in 2015 and 2016. Jeffries has maintained a 4.0 GPA through her academic career at UM-Dearborn and earned a place on the Dean’s List every semester. Although Jeffries is a microbiology major, she has been active and excelled across the STEM disciplines during her time at UM-Dearborn. She has been a Supplemental Instruction leader for both chemistry and physics courses, and was recognized in 2016 with a Supplemental Instruction leader award. Also in 2016, Jeffries received the American Chemical Society’s Award in organic chemistry. She has participated in two summer REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) progra In summer 2015, Jeffries studied the geometry of three-dimensional objects in the laboratory of Dr. Yunus Zeytuncu at UM-Dearborn. In summer 2016, she participated in an REU program at University of California-Berkeley, where she studied genetics. She has also performed research during the academic year as a member of Dr. Krisanu Bandyopadhyay’s lab. She studied nano-scale chemistry that focused on synthesis of silica-gold nanoshells. Jeffries has presented her research results widely at local, regional and national conferences. She received a SACNAS 2016 National Conference Travel Award. Outside of the STEM fields, Jeffries has also been recognized as a top student in Hispanic studies, received honor in multiple Spanish courses and was inducted into the Spanish Honor Society (Sigma Delta Pi) in 2015. Jeffries’ exceptional record at UM-Dearborn led to her being named a 2016 UM-Dearborn Difference Maker. Nominated by faculty and staff, recipients are recognized for academic achievement, integrity, leadership and creative contribution in and out of the classroom. Upon graduation, Jeffries intends to pursue a Ph.D. in the biological sciences, with a likely focus in bioengineering or molecular biology. She has been accepted to a number of top programs and will begin graduate studies in Fall 2017. College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters Chancellor’s Medallion Recipient Nic Jones will receive a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy, psychology, and gender and women’s studies, graduating with High Distinction and with honors in all three majors. Jones is the 2017 Philosophy Honors Scholar, the 2015-2016 Top Student in Psychology and the 2014 Women’s and Gender Studies Honors Scholar. They have won writing awards in fiction and poetry in addition to many other academic awards and accomplishments. They have been on the Dean’s List every semester and received the Al Turfe Scholarship and the Stokes-Hoffman Scholarship. As a young scholar, Jones has already made meaningful contributions to the fields of philosophy and transgender studies. In 2016, they presented a sole-authored paper at the national Trans* Experience in Philosophy Conference. The paper, “The metaphysics of non-binary gender identities,” is being readied for submission to a top-ranked scholarly journal. Jones has also assisted with faculty research on a range of topics, including aging, wellness and impression management. Their work demonstrates intellectual versatility and a sophisticated grasp of interdisciplinary methods and practices. At UM-Dearborn, Jones has made an indelible print as a student, colleague, SI leader, and advocate for inclusivity and equality. They designed and carried out a study of best practices for counseling LGBTQ students on college and university campuses, compiled resource lists based on this research and gave a presentation to on-campus counselors about special considerations for working with LGBTQ clients. As the assistant supervisor for the Supplemental Instruction (SI) program, they managed a team of more than 30 SI leaders and pioneered ways to strengthen this program to support student learning and leadership. After graduation, Jones will enter a doctoral program in philosophy with plans to become a philosophy professor.

Artists and Contributors *in no particular order* Ariel is a senior at Framingham State Univ. in Massachusetts. She majors in Criminology, minors in Art, and has been working on #TeamSapphire to develop this project from it’s conception. Her art is featured as the front and back cover of Our Palette! Labdhi Shah is a self-taught finger-painting artist with pieces currently on view at the international virtual exhibition: Ikouii Open, Collective Impact in Atlanta, GA. She works as a practicing art therapist, having a Masters in Clinical Psychology. Shah writes, “only through painting, that she has expressed the deepest parts of herself, which cut to the core of her humanness, understanding the meaning of her being.” Donate through PayPal using: email@example.com Javaun Dixon, who goes by Von, is a 21 year old artist from Massachusetts. He has been in love with art since he was young. He started off only drawing with pencil and paper, but now has progressed into different mediums like: digital photography, painting, and graphic arts. Farzana is a freelance photographer with a professional background and is based in Bangladesh. She typically explores feminine narratives in her work, usually surrounding the theme of social/gender equality. Arpa Mukhopadhyay is an emerging artist based in Pune, India. She believes that art is the greatest therapy known to mankind and has been painting since the time she was six. Arpa loves acrylics and mixed media. She turned pro around three years ago and her paintings have since been featured in homes and exhibitions around India! Tyrza is a self taught artist based in Massachusetts. She sees art as a reflection of the self and the world. She makes use of different mediums to challenge herself and develop her skills. Merudjina Normil is a Black Haitian-American, non-binary interdisciplinary artist currently residing in Pittsfield, MA. They are an alumni of Williams College and Pittsfield High School. They are interested in how different mediums can tell a story and hold a story. They see art as a medium of healing and community. Art is a reminder that the process is about moving through and allowing time to see, to be, and to heal. Lizette is a mother and an artist who currently resides in Barcelona, attending La Escocesa Barcelona residency through 2021. Her portfolio of work consists of a wide variety of printmaking projects. Aayush Chandrawanshi is a recent graduate from the National Institute of Design with a Masters in Photography Design; from Raipur in India. His projects explore different communities, alternative cultures, and certain social issues that affect society. He prefers working with photographs and moving images as a medium of expression. He is also interested in Documentary filmmaking and Archiving projects where he experiments with visual approaches. He also believes in Activism through imagery, which is instrumental in affecting social, political, and cultural change. Nine Yamamoto-Masson is a French-Japanese artist, theorist, academic, writer, community organiser, editor, and translator. In academic research, artistic, and activist practice, her work analyses the gendered necropolitics of (neo)coloniality with regard to the legacies of European and Japanese colonialism and how they presently manifest as configurations of power and economies of knowledge that exert violence on bodies and futures. She studies the modes of organisation of networked resistance, and the workings of resistant memory challenging hegemonic dominant narratives, focussing on the role of art and inter-diasporic, internationalist, inter-generational solidarities. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Amsterdam. In 2018 and 2019 she was a visiting researcher-artist at Hiroshima City University. Donate through PayPal using: studioNYaMa@gmail.com Erhan is a conceptual artist and author from Turkey. He’s participated in over 70 exhibitions in over 20 countries. He’s quoted on his website saying “artwork should be the object that would raise awareness”. Iván is an artist from Camagüey, Cuba. He received both a Bachelors in Humanities and Art as well as Education. Since he was in preschool, he “remembers spending long hours drawing my fantastic world. In the classroom, everyone brought sheets to my table so that I could draw pictures.” He has been featured in many exhibitions across Cuba and has won awards in contests such as the Abel Santamaría National Contest. Mazhar Naveed is a creative being and multidisciplinary artist based in Dubai, working in the field of architecture and design. He received his B. Arch from the National College of Arts Lahore in 2012. He started his art career after his first graduation from Foremen Christian College in 2003. With over 40 successful exhibitions under his belt, provokes the engagement of visitors to covering, socio-political and contemporary features of cultural landscape dealing with historical background. His artwork; ‘Belief and Identity’ have been awarded as a permanent collection of the Lahore Museum in 2013. He has been served Lahore Museum Pakistan and achieved to exhibit special exhibitions related to ancient Indus Valley and ancient cultures. Moreover, he has been served as a key role in the UNESCO-Lahore Museum projects. He has been invited to speak at the ICOM International Conference at Milano, Italy in early 2016. In 2018, his research paper ‘The Seeds of Future’ has been published in ICOM magazine. He also has been established the KHAKAH organization which reaches out to potential young talent, artists, and designers to promote their works. Eiman A. is an emerging self-taught visual artist, medical doctor, wife and mom based in Atlanta Georgia. Eiman’s artwork is heavily influenced by the surrealism pioneers, pop surrealism movement and tasteful “thought provoking” fictional novelty. It also reflects the artist’s fascination with human Psychology and the wonders of the subconscious mind, in her work you will also find a touch of her multicultural background “African, middle eastern, Islamic and American cultures”. Eiman’s artwork ranges from acrylic paintings to clay sculptures to the artist signature 3D resin paintings.

For our first Glasgow in 2024 book club meeting, the book we read was Silk and Steel, a collection of SFF short stories each of which was structured around an F/F romance. Some of the attendees mentioned not having read much or any romance before, so I volunteered to write a list of recommendations. In honour of Pride Month this list is entirely focussed on queer romances. The first section are romances in the classic sense, meaning that they have the growing relationships as a major focus of the story and that they end with the characters together in a Happy Ever After or a Happy For Now. KJ Charles – Charm of Magpies series – M/M – historical fantasy No queer romance rec list would be complete without KJ Charles. The series (starting with Magpie Lord) is set in a gothic fantasy version of Victorian London. Lucian Crane is an exiled and disgraceful peer recently returned to Britain and suffering from a curse; Stephen Day is the overworked underpaid magic user resentfully trying to help him. Heather Rose Jones – Alpennia series – F/F – historical fantasy These are sword and sorcery F/F romances set in the Ruritanian european nation of Alpennia. The first one is Daughter of Mystery, in which heiress Margerit Sovitre inherits both a fortune and a bodyguard, Barbara, who is trapped in servitude. May Peterson – Lord of the Last Heartbeat – queer non-binary – fantasy Historical-ish fantasy with a strong Italian feeling and an opera singer main character. Hugely atmospheric. Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone – This is How You Lose the Time War – F/F time loop SFF This is so good, and like nothing else I’ve ever read. The language and the settings are absolutely lush. Red and Blue are secret agents for opposite sides, learning to love each other, and fighting to get free from the organisations they represent. Alexis Hall – There will be Phlogiston – M/M/F steampunk Alexis Hall is another writer who ends up on every queer romance recommendation list. This one has Lady Rosamund Wolfram breaking out of her society role as an eligible maiden, and finding happiness with the nouveau riche Phlogiston Baron, Anstruther Jones, and the scandalous aristocrat Lord Mercury Aliette De Bodard – Fireheart Tiger – F/F historical fantasy This is a novella set in a fantasy version of Vietnam. Princess Thanh has to learn how to stand up to her domineering mother and domineering ex and find her own happiness. AJ Fitzwater – No Man’s Land – F/F historical fantasy Dorothea ‘Tea’ Jones is a young New Zealand woman with aboriginal ancestry, working as part of the Land Service as a farm girl during WW2. This book is explicitly rooted in LGBTQ+ and feminist history. Evarina Maxwell – Winter’s Orbit – M/M space opera Space princes in an arranged marriage, learning to love and trust each other against a background of interstellar politics. CL Polk – Witchmark – M/M, sequels F/F and F/NB – fantasy Edwardian fantasy with politics, with the worldbuilding based on uprooting unjust systems and healing the damage. The second section is for SFF with queer elements, but where either the relationships are established before the start of the book, or aren’t the focus, or don’t resolve happily. Katherine Fabian and Iona Datt Sharma – Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night – F/M/NB urban fantasy London based fantasy, where Layla and Nat have the same boyfriend, Meraud, who has gone missing. They have to team up to find him in time. Melissa Scott and Jo Graham – Order of the Air series – queer found family – historical fantasy Historical fantasy set in the US between the wars. The protagonists solve mysteries and try to keep bad guys out of power, while keeping their small aviation firm running. Tessa Gratton – Queens of Innis Lear and Lady Hotspur, fantasy. These are two loose Shakespeare retellings, of King Lear and Henry V respectively, with magic and lots of female agency. The first has a transman character dealing with dysphoria, the second has WLW protagonists. Michelle West, Sun Sword series – epic fantasy This series is the answer to lots of recommendation lists, with complex cultures and magic systems and lots of fascinating characters. One of the main viewpoint characters is a lesbian, another is asexual. April Daniels – Dreadnought and Sovereign – F/F superheroes with trans girl MC The main character starts the book as a trans teenage girl who is not out to anybody. Getting her superpowers gives her the outward appearance she wants, which also necessarily outs her. The book is split between super heroic fun and the much more serious issue of dealing with all the consequences from family, friends and other supers. This article was brought to you by Kate Towner in association with Promotions. Kate Towner (she/her) is a lifelong reader and fan, and occasional cosplayer and fanfic writer. You can find her on Twitter @katepreach, or co-running fantasybookclub.org We are the Bid Team for Glasgow in 2024 – A Worldcon for Our Futures. We are part of the vibrant Worldcon community. We would love to welcome you to Glasgow and the Armadillo Auditorium for the 2024 Hugo Awards. Please consider supporting us.

To launch our new festival this September, we're taking over the trams running through West Midlands with a female led* line-up of performers. Pass the Mic is a female led music event that will launch Festival of Audacity on Thurs 27th Sept to celebrate 100 years since women in the UK were granted the right to vote. Pass the Mic is an event which is being run in support of BBC Music Day 2018. It will form part of their celebration of women in music and is linked to activity in communities across the UK. Pass the Mic will take place on a West Midland Metro tram with a different female artist or musician between every stop. • You need to be aged 18-30, female, or non-binary musician, vocal artist, rap artist or spoken word poet • You must have simplistic tech requirements, this is imperative as performance will be on a tram (only a mic with PA provided and option of backing track if needed) • Must be available for a briefing on the 11th September, 5-7pm in Digbeth • Must be free all day on the 27th of September and available up to 2 hours before your allocated slot • There will be a fee of £150 (gross) for all confirmed artists • Artists must be contactable either by phone or email • We have 15 2-minute slots, 7 3-minute slots and 3 4-minute slots so we cannot guarantee how long artists slots will be until we have selected all artists • You may be featured as part of BBC Music Day 2018 Radio / TV / Online coverage. • There will be photography and filming taking place, your application will mean you consent to being filmed, recorded and photographed. Deadline: August 20th, 1pm Generously supported by Arts Council England More information about Festival of Audacity: beatfreeks.com/festival-of-audacity

This post is part of my participation in the 30-day genderqueer challenge, which I have modified to a weekly exercise. Today’s prompt: What terms in the cisgender, GSM, or trans* community are problematic? So, um, first off, lol at the idea of a “cisgender community”. I’m just going to focus on GSM and trans communities here. In which case, I’ll start with the obvious one, from the question itself: trans* The asterisk version of “trans” fell out of favour pretty quickly after rising in popularity. It was intended as a more inclusive term than the non-asterisk version (i.e. it was intended to convey the inclusion of non-binary identities under the trans(*) umbrella, as well as allowing for the multiple versions of trans(*) identity (as in, transgender as well as transsexual – more on that one in a minute)), but there are a number of problems with it. One of the major sources of side-eye for “trans*” is that it didn’t actually come from within trans communities – the term was coined by a cisgender person. Which is another way of saying that this way of talking about trans people was not self-defined, but rather a label put upon us from the outside. I don’t think that this is necessarily a death knell for a term, as communities often actively appropriate and claim words that were originally created by non-members of those communities. However, it doesn’t stop there. The thing is that adding the asterisk to trans in an attempt to “include” non-binary people is either 1) actually implicitly excluding non-binary people from trans identity; or 2) non-consensually including non-trans non-binary people in a category they don’t identify with. I’ll unpack both of those: When you claim that somehow adding an asterisk to trans is more inclusive of non-binary trans people, you actually imply that that non-binary trans people aren’t “really” trans. We are rendered into a footnote, an addendum. We are pushed out of actually transness, into um, asterisk-ness? The thing is, though, that I am not an asterisk. I am trans, plain and simple. And so are many other non-binary people. But. On the other hand, many people who are neither men nor women are not trans. Within cultures that don’t operate on a strict gender binary, that actually have socially codified alternative gender roles and identities, the cis/trans binary doesn’t make sense, and the trans narrative doesn’t fit people who fall into the non-binary gender categories of these cultures. Such folks often actively dis-identify with transness, and to insist that they are still “trans*” is to invalidate their sense of self. And so, trans* has pretty well died by now, as a term. Good! The other thing I find sometimes problematic in terms of language within trans communities isn’t a term itself, but rather a mode of language policing: that is, I sometimes take issue with the ways in which other trans folk insist that “transgendered” is “not a word”, or that “transsexual” isn’t a thing. In general, I get the sentiment. Transgender is the best umbrella term here, for sure. Transgender is an adjective, a modifying descriptor of a person, much like many other descriptors that identify people’s axes of oppression. It can be said that people are transgender (not transgendered), in the same way that people are black (not blacked), autistic (not autisticked (autismed?)), etc. And like, ok, I guess? But also, this implies that the English language is consistent in a way that it never has been. And it smacks of privilege; like, not everyone has a high level grasp of grammar, nor should they care about minor quibbles as long as they can communicate themselves. Of course, some people are actively bothered by being called transgendered, and those people have a right to define what words are applied to them, as does everyone else. But by the same token, there are trans people who actively identify themselves as transgendered, and they get to do that, ok? It’s not wrong for them to do that. It is a word. Ditto for transsexual. The word does not even remotely apply to trans people generally, but there are folks who actively and specifically identify themselves as transsexual, as changing their sex, and not just their gender. They also get to do that. Everyone gets to use the words that best describe their own experience and understanding of themselves. To be honest, this is why I prefer “trans” as far and away the best umbrella term, “transgender” if you must have a longer one. And I do think it is important to correct people (especially cisgender people) that I see using “transgendered” or “transsexual” as general terms. But I don’t correct them by telling them those aren’t words. They are words – I know they are words because people use them, and that is literally all it takes for something to be a word. They just aren’t the best words, or the right words to used in all contexts. There are other things I could talk about here, I’m sure – this prompt has endless possibilities for me, really – but I’ll leave here for now! But please, do tell me: What words that come up in trans communities do you have an issue with?

LAST CHANCE Vancouver Women’s Poetry Slam (January 11th) So! A new qualifying season is underway to determine which 5 poets will have a chance to become the next Vancouver Poetry Slam Team. It’s crucial to understand the points system. You can read about how it works for qualifying for Team Playoffs here: And about how it works for qualifying for WOWPS Playoffs here: The points system should become clear very quickly as the season progresses and we start posting results. With that in mind, here are the results from this week’s slam. After the poet’s name is the order that they performed in the first round, then their first round score. After that is the position they performed in the second round (if they made the cut) and their second round score, followed by their total score for the evening. Tonight was the Last Chance Slam meaning the winner gets automatic entry into the playoffs on Wednesday the 13th in the Vancouver Women’s Poetry Slam Championships. But since it’s only open to women and non-binary folks, it’s not a point-scoring slam. Winner take all. Here are the scores. Sac: Jillian Christmas 26.5 Julie B (1) 19.3 Megan Hooge (2) 23.8 Shawn Rath (3) 22.7 Charlie Ray (4) 21.5 Nora Nathoo (5) 24.0 Leslie Stark (6) 25.6 + (5) 26.6 = 52.2 Fourth! Nyla (7) 26.2 + (1) 27.3 = 53.5 Second! Ivana (8 ) 24.0 Spillious (9) 26.8 + (3) 27.6 = 54.4 First! Katrina (10) 24.5 Quaint (11) 25.9 + (2) 26.8 = 52.7 Third! Pamela B (12) 26.0 + (4) 24.6 = 50.6 Fifth! Congratulation so Spillious, the winner of our Women’s Poetry Slam Last Chance Slam!

Trans Support of the Hudson Valley (TSHV) hosts a workshop social each month with a community presenter, time to socialize, snacks, and free HIV & Hep C Virus (HCV) testing. Trans Support Workshops are exclusively for transgender, gender non-conforming, or non-binary (TGNCNB) folx and their partners. TGNCNB individuals who are tested for HIV & HCV will receive a $25 gift card. Februray 2023 Event | Black History Month Event The LOFT Presents: Obsidian Voices Where: Purchase College Harbor Room When: Friday, February 17, 2023 from 6:30-8:30pm Contact: Ejike Figuera (he, she, they) at [email protected] or (914) 948-2932 x15 A poetry event that focuses on Black queer and Trans Artist who will be sharing their art and their experiences. This event will also be holding space for other poets who want to share their art with the audience. Poetry is one of the most beautiful forms of storytelling and some of the greatest storytellers are Black and Queer. Black History Month is a period of reflection and celebration and we want to celebrate our Black queer and trans artist, and all poets at this event! Please come join us at Purchase College in the Harbor Room on February 17th, from 6:30pm-8:30pm, and please email [email protected] for any questions. |Click here to register!| Njambi is a London born, Kenyan-American storyteller who tells stories through spoken word and street photography, her art focuses on healing trauma through expression. She is a proud Brooklynite and her work has been featured in the NY Times and she has performed at various venues across New York including the United Nations and the legendary SOB’s. When she is not on stage she is working with youth and community healing trauma through expression. Cole Rivers (he/him) is a poet and writer of transgender experience. Cole has curated, hosted and perfomed for various progressive platforms and community based events. During the daytime, he is the Coffee Roaster for the Black Cow Coffee Company. He continues to cultivate innovative experiences that center active dialogues of intersectionality, human apartheid, queer and spiritual identity. Questions? Contact LOFT Peer Navigator: Ejike Figuera (he, she, they) at [email protected] | (914) 948-2932 x15 or LOFT Case Manager: Mia Edwards (she/her) at [email protected] | (914) 948-2932 x10 |Learn more about Trans Support of the Hudson Valley here!| Learn more about previous workshops below: 735 Anderson Hill Rd Purchase, NY 10577 Google map and directions

British author and journalist, Juno Dawson is known for her young adult fiction and non-fiction books, including; This Book is Gay, The Gender Games, Margot & Me, Clean and Meat Market, most of which are about the LGBT+ community and experience. The author has now signed a multi-book deal with the publisher, Hachette Children’s Group, to release two new works of fiction and one new non-fiction title. Sarah Lambert, publishing director for Hachette Children’s Group acquired the UK and Commonwealth (excluding Canada) rights for the two young adult fiction titles. While Lisa Miller, managing editor for Hachette Children’s Group, acquired the world English rights for Dawson’s latest non-fiction title, from Sallyanee Sweeney at MMB Creative. Dawson’s first 2020 YA fiction novel, Wonderland is the follow up to Clean and Meat Market. On Twitter, Juno Dawson announced that this book will show you the classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in a way you’ve never seen it before, “and yes, Alice is transgender,” adds the author. “Wonderland follows Alice, as she navigates a world of glossy privilege and luxury and goes in search for her missing sort-of-friend Bunny,” reads the book’s synopsis. “The trail of Bunny’s last movements leads Alice to discover a mysterious invitation to a party to end all parties – three days of high-octane excess to which only the elite are welcome. A searing exploration of mental health, Wonderland also takes an authentic look at gender and sexuality.” Publishing director, Sarah Lambert, stated, “Juno Dawson is back with yet another trailblazing novel which puts her in a league of her own and confirms her as one of the most exciting writers in the UK today. We can’t wait for readers to tumble down the rabbit hole into Wonderland!” Wonderland will be published in May 2020 by Quercus Children’s Books. “Quercus have done an amazing job of publishing Clean and Meat Market and I can’t wait to see what they do with Wonderland. You might *think* you know this story but it just might surprise you,” said Juno Dawson. The next book in Dawson’s multi-book deal is a non-fiction book titled What’s the T? which is a companion title to Dawson’s This Book is Gay. This new book tackles the complexities of identifying as transgender or non-binary in the 21st century. As a transgender author, Dawson brings her own experiences to the book with a light touch of humour. Dawson has also invited other notable trans and non-binary people to contribute to the book and ensure it reflects a collection of different experiences. What’s the T? will feature contributions from the likes of Travis Alabanza, Jay Hulme, Charlie Craggs, Juno Roche, and many others. The book will also feature illustrations from gender non-conforming artist, Soofiya. Lisa Miller explained, “Juno is already a pillar of the LGBTQ+ community, and What’s the T? will cement her place as the UK’s most trusted voice for young trans and non-binary people.” While author Juno Dawson added, “More than any of my other titles, This Book Is Gay is the one I get letters about. I hope that What’s The T? will make as much of a difference.” What’s the T? will be published by Wren & Rook, Hachette Children’s Group’s non-fiction imprint, in August 2020. Sadly, there is little information about the third book in Juno Dawson’s multi-book deal, apart from the news that it will be another fiction title, however, we will stay close to the news and let you know if any further details are announced.

Bertinelli, cast as Lovato's mom, is the latest addition to the pilot, which Lovato is executive producing. According to Variety, Bertinelli's character Lisa is "a warm, loving, self-critical and emotional mess of a woman who has lost and gained the same 30 pounds in the span of 30 years." In April, Deadline reported that Hungry "follows a group of friends who belong to a food issues group help each other as they look for love, success and the perfect thing in the fridge that's going to make it all better." Shortly after the pilot's announcement, Lovato found herself embroiled in controversy when she took to Instagram to slam The Bigg Chill, a Los Angeles frozen yogurt shop, for perpetuating toxic diet culture for offering sugar-free options to customers. Following backlash, the singer apologized The casting of Bertinelli is apt given that, like Lovato, she has also been candid about her issues with food and struggles with body image. If picked up, Hungry is set to air some time in 2022. - Demi Lovato Drops New Album & Raw Music Video - Celebrity Page › - Demi Lovato Will Hunt Down UFOs in a New Peacock Series ... › - Demi Lovato Reveals That They Identify As Non-Binary - Celebrity ... ›

Colin Firth has declined to weigh in on whether straight actors should be able to play gay roles, admitting it’s something he’s given “a lot of thought”. Firth plays a gay man in his upcoming film Supernova, a tearjerker about a couple who embark on a road trip as one of them grapples with dementia. He also took on a gay role in in 2010’s A Single Man. The actor was questioned on whether it was right for him to do so in an interview for December’s issue of Attitude, but said he remained undecided. “I don’t have a final position on this,” he replied. “I think the question is still alive. It’s something I take really seriously, and I gave it a lot of thought before doing this.” He continued: “Whenever I take on anything, I think it’s an insufferable presumption. I don’t really feel I have the right to play the character. That’s always the starting point. What do I know about this person’s life? “How can I presume to set foot in this person’s lived experience, let alone try to represent it?” His Supernova co-star Stanley Tucci, who also played a gay character in The Devil Wears Prada, added: “For so many years, gay men and women have had to hide their homosexuality in showbusiness to get the roles they wanted – that’s the problem here. “Anybody should be able to play any role that they want to play – that’s the whole point of acting.” Unfortunately, the question of whether straight actors should play gay characters is likely to remain an issue while access to film roles continues to be unequal across the board. A recent GLAAD report found that although representation of white gay men is constantly improving in major studio films, representation of other queer people is dismal, and trans and non-binary characters were found to be non-existent in major studio releases from 2019. An analysis of 118 films across eight major studios found that only 22 (18.6 per cent) included an LGBT+ character, and only nine gave LGBT+ characters more than 10 minutes of screen time. When those few roles are given to straight actors rather than LGBT+ ones, it throws up an additional barrier to queer people being able to tell their own stories on the big screen.

Asexual Community at UC Davis. Meets Fridays 4-5 in the LGBTQIA Center. A support and social group for people on the asexual spectrum. We host events to promote ace visibility and strive to create a welcoming community for people on the ace spectrum. For details, contact: email@example.com APIQ (Asian/Pacific Islander Queers) APIQ (Asian & Pacific-Islander Queers) is a non-profit student organization at UC Davis founded in 1999. Our mission is to provide a safe, confidential space for students who identify as both API (Asian and/or Pacific-Islander) and LGBTQQIA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, Queer, Intersex, Asexual). Many of our events are open to the community, regardless of ethnicity, sexuality, gender identity, or age. We hope to enrich and educate all students in the UC Davis community who are interested in queer and Asian issues. APIQ holds a variety of meetings and events throughout the year such as socials, discussions, and workshops where we explore important topics like identity, coming out, health, and politics. At the same time, we encourage strong bonds and friendships, and many consider APIQ as a second family. For more info, please visit us on Social Media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/APIQatUCD/ Instagram: @apiq_ucdavis DAA is the campus branch of NPO Athlete Ally, and sits at the intersection between athletics and the UC Davis LGBTQIA community. Our mission is to create a safe, inclusive environment for athletes, coaches, administrators, and fans of all sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions. We strive to achieve inclusion by providing allyship education and resources for our members and those involved in athletics, activating change in our local community, and engaging in social events with diverse groups on and off campus. All are welcome! https://www.facebook.com/pg/DavisAthleteAlly/ BlackOUT is a support Group for the LGBT African-diaspora on campus. The group is now being held by the Student Recruitment and Retention Center. Please contact Osiris Hal at firstname.lastname@example.org for more information. Gender and Sexuality Commission (GASC) of ASUCD GASC promotes awareness of gender and sexuality issues on campus. For more information, visit their website. A social/support group for anyone who identifies as falling under the trans umbrella (or a non-cisgender identity) or people who are questioning their gender identity. The group is open to all trans* folks of the Davis area community. For more information email: email@example.com. GSM Pride Network The GSM Pride Network provides professional development, networking, and advocacy services for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer-identified students and allies at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management across all our programs and campuses. We can be found at https://gsm.ucdavis.edu/club/gsm-pride-network. La Familia is a support group for Chicanx/Latinx students that also identify within the LGBTQIA community. La Familia is a social/support group open to people identified as any form of Latinx and any form of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trangsender, intersexed, queer or questioning identity. Our group meetings are a place where people can come together to talk about issues affecting us on campus and off, share, plan events, and have fun. For more information email: firstname.lastname@example.org. Lambda Law Students Association Lambda's mission is community, education and activism. To that end, Lambda sponsors events that raise awareness of LGBT legal issues on campus and in the community. For more info visit: Lambda LSA's website. Out in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (oSTEM) is a national society for LGBTQIA+ people in the STEM fields. oSTEM at UC Davis seeks to empower LGBTQIA+ students to succeed personally, academically, and professionally by cultivating environments and communities that nurture innovation, leadership, and advocacy. We have meetings every week in the LGBTQIA+ Resource Center where we have study spaces, workshops, guest speakers, fun science projects, and more! For more info please email: email@example.com or find us on Facebook. Queer Student Union Our primary goal is to help foster a thriving queer community at UC Davis and beyond. We provide additional resources that contribute to and bring together an already diverse network of LGBTQIA+ organizations on campus through coordinating social events, networking opportunities, and participation in local activism efforts. QSU welcomes people of all identities and creeds. Developing open bonds and friendships is how we envision building inclusivity and tolerance. To learn more, including contact information, please visit our website: www.ucd-qsu.org Queer Research Cluster An interdisciplinary cluster designed to encourage, share, inspire, disseminate, and produce scholarship on gender, sex, sexuality, embodiment, race, ability, class, and politics. For more info email: qftcluster.ucdavis.edu. Rainbow House (1st year housing community) Rainbow House is a community located on a single floor, geared towards students and allies of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual community who are interested in personal growth within a safe and supportive environment. For more info visit their website. SameLOVE is a safe space for South Asian and Middle Eastern students who identify as a member of the LGBTIQA community and/or questioning. If you are interested in re-starting SameLOVE don't hesitate to reach out to staff at the LGBTQIA Resource Center - we have a number of scholars currently working on getting this group active again! Woman-Loving is a social group for lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, queer, and questioning trans women, cis women, and non-binary women/women-aligned people. We do not tolerate racism, transmisogyny, anti-lesbian or anti-bisexual sentiment, or other forms of bigotry in order to uplift women of all experiences. Contact us at firstname.lastname@example.org for more info. At UC Davis Health Systems in Sacramento UC Davis PRIDE (people - respect - inclusion - diversity - education) supports the LGBTQ+ faculty, staff, students, patients, and alumni at UC Davis Health, UC Davis and in the Sacramento community.

Gupshup by Chayn Hosted by Chayn, we bring gritty and heartfelt conversations to you about how women are tired of being marginalised, and how they are taking up the tools of the world to dismantle patriarchy (did anyone catch that bell hooks reference?). We'll discuss the latest projects Chayn does on bringing survivor-led design and intersectional analysis to create platforms, spaces and guides to help women and non-binary people experiencing violence. We'll also interview people we admire, our volunteers and friends to discuss gender-based violence and what is being done about it. Chayn (pronounced ch-en) is a global volunteer network addressing gender-based violence by creating intersectional survivor-led resources online. Started in 2013, and have since reached more than 300 000 people and 1.5 million views across the world. Most of our volunteers are survivors of abuse. Find out more on chayn.co! Though most podcasts will be in English, there will be episodes in all the 8 languages we work in. Gupshup means chit chat in Urdu.

Every group of people has its gatekeepers. In some groups, gatekeeping is necessary. For instance, we would never trust our political leaders if they were people who simply stepped up and walked into their positions. We accept them (or at least deal with them) because we gatekeep them through our political processes. Voting, or political gatekeeping, enables us to choose candidates at least somewhat democratically. Gatekeeping in the trans community is also necessary, but for very different reasons. But what are the gates being kept, and whose place is it to keep them? Often, members of the trans community choose to take this responsibility on themselves and position themselves as the gatekeeper. Such people are often labeled “TruScum”, “bigot”, or “TERF” given the exclusionary nature of such practices, and it is commonly correct to apply these terms to them, but I’ve been called all of the above and worse myself for maintaining that gates should be kept at all. In my view, it isn’t our place as members of the trans community to keep the gates of our community policed. That right belongs to the medical and psychological practitioners who take us on as patients and work with us toward diagnosis and treatment. Our engagement with them is deeply important to ensure our mental and physical health as we move toward transition and undergo treatment. These individuals are the only ones who should be granted the power to police our gates. As members of the trans community, our role should be at most to constructively criticize those who avoid the gates and help them access proper care. I’ve mentioned diagnosis above, only in that it is commonly part of our trajectory through the process. Personally, I don’t believe diagnosis of Gender Dysphoria / Gender Incongruence should be required to access treatment, though I would support a mental health evaluation as part of the requirement, provided we could be granted guaranteed access to it, no matter our social or financial circumstances. Processes and care channels for transition vary by location. When I first transitioned, 3 months of therapy was required leading up to diagnosis of Gender Dysphoria. Once diagnosed, I was recommended on to a doctor who physically examined me and informed me on the medication for my treatment. At any point in this process, anyone can legally change their name, as I did at the very beginning. However, when it came to my gender marker, a surgical requirement barred me from legal recognition as female. For many years, this was detrimental to my well being. I’m a pre-operative transwoman, meaning that I’ve not yet had sex reassignment / gender affirmation surgery. It’s a procedure I desperately need, but have been unable to have due to health and financial complications preventing me from it. It’s something I can get one day, but there’s a long road toward it ahead of me still. Thankfully, my state changed the law to accommodate people like myself. Now, the way it works is that the onus for gatekeeping is removed from surgical procedure and instead is placed on the medical professionals monitoring our hormone treatments. I approve of this system because it encourages us toward proper care channels without being too much of a burden; also because medical professionals are in the best position to make the judgement call as to whether or not we should be legally recognized and being that they must stick their necks out on our behalf keeps them accountable and serious in the endeavor. Engagement with a system like this is good for both us and for society. My state has not once to my knowledge seen an incident of abuse of our systems. And given the availability and affordability of care here, even the most underprivileged are rarely unduly burdened by the ways our gates are kept. It is fair, balanced, and promotes safety and security for everyone. Self-ID has become a big topic around the world, recently, with the UK debating implementation of the policy and other countries, such as parts of the US, Canada, Ireland, Denmark, Portugal, and a few others have already done so. For the uninitiated, self-ID effectively overrides systems like the legitimizing pathway to legal recognition in my state, in favor of legal recognition on the basis of self-declaration alone. Meaning, one could change their gender marker on their birth certificates/government ID at will. It’s argued that self-ID will benefit poor/underprivileged trans people by removing the burdens of requiring engagement with established care channels like the ones I’ve been through. I have so many issues with this, it’s hard to decide where to begin. There is great potential for abuse of these laws and rights conflicts over sex-based rights that radical feminists have been rallying against. I won’t touch deeply on these concerns and will let those feminists speak for themselves. My main concerns are self-ID’s trans-centric effects. First of all, it would remove the layer of accountability I described that currently exists between doctors and patients in my state. With this layer of accountability removed, doctors will have less incentive to provide us with the highest possible quality of care. This could allow professionals to let other conditions presenting as dysphoria (i.e. schizophrenia, psychosis, PTSD) or comorbid conditions to slip through the gates unaddressed. It would also detract from the process of legitimization earned via our caregivers’ gatekeeping, making society at large less stable and secure. Stability and security are ensured in our current systems via this gatekeeping by the accountability of medical professionals, who ascertain that we ourselves are stable, secure, and dedicated to transition. Self-ID would also enable transfolk to self-medicate indefinitely. Many are not aware, but it is possible to purchase hormones via black markets and medically transition without the involvement of medical professionals at all. I find this concept of indefinite self-medication highly dangerous for trans people. Hormone replacement therapy is not idiot-proof, and without proper monitoring of hormone levels and dosages, one can develop liver disease, cardiovascular diseases such as DVT, etc., it is excessively easy to destroy your body if you don’t know what you’re doing. Self-ID seems to encourage this behavior. Another worry I have that springs forth from this line of thinking is that self-ID might lead to lowering in the demand for proper care, as indefinite self-medication becomes more feasible. If demand for proper care channels decreases, incentive to improve those care channels will also decline. This should be the opposite of our goals. Poor/underprivileged trans people’s main issue comes from inaffordability and inaccessibility of proper care. If we are to solve that problem and meet their unanswered demand, we need incentives to increase the breadth of availability of care and design systems to help individuals in need with accessing and affording them. This is the true solution to this problem that our governments are ignoring. Self-ID is just a bone they are throwing to us in hopes we will be satisfied and ignore the actual problem. The actual problem is far bigger than just poor/underprivileged trans people and no one seems to want to talk about that in this debate. Poor/underprivileged people die every day due to inability to access and/or afford proper care. The trans community is just a tiny fraction of the population who suffers from this social injustice. Many trans people like myself who have been through these processes and find value in our current systems have begun to speak out against self-ID. This conflict is at the peak of trends in certain spheres of trans activism that have culminated with the splitting of our community. On one side, we have the new wave of activists pushing a very identity-based narrative that effectively calls for rejection of the idea there is a biological underpinning to what trans people are and that instead, gender is entirely about one’s internal sense of identity. This side would tell you that anyone who wants to be trans is, and that transition is a choice. On the other side, we have those who understand being trans is a condition with a biological underpinning that one is born with that brings with it undeniable biological imperatives. This side would tell you that only those who are diagnosed with the condition are actually trans and that we are born this way. The truth is likely somewhere between the two. It’s difficult to say exactly where, but unless we address this growing divide in discourse with one another, I feel as though this is going to rip the trans community apart. Personally, my views align more with the thinking we are born with a condition. However, I think that it’s a condition that exists on a wide spectrum, as all human conditions do. It manifests in different ways in different bodies. Biological imperatives may vary from trans person to trans person. Most of us suffer from a full body dysphoria, that drives us to binary transitions. Others suffer from partial body dysphoria, and may only need to transition to certain degrees such as in the case of some non-binary trans people and some non-op binary trans people. Others still experience social dysphoria, which is born primarily of the distress of existing as a man/woman in society. And let’s not forget the group that claims to have no dysphoria at all. I think that when transfolk say they don’t have dysphoria, they mean many different things, but very few of those is actually, “I am perfectly comfortable living with my birth sex.” More often than not, such people actually do have the same condition but maybe have lived life in such a way that they’ve avoided suffering from dysphoria or perhaps they *do* experience it but genuinely don’t experience it the same way as others, or simply don’t understand it in the same way others do. You’ll find in this internal debate that there are a great many opinions within the trans community on what constitutes a trans person. Some will say that we should blindly accept everyone. Others would say we should maintain restrictive criteria to use in judging who to accept and who to reject. Both sides make good points. On one hand, if we accept everyone on blind faith, we open the door to those who will use that to manipulate us. There are MANY bad people out there who appropriate either trans identities or trans activism for personal/political/financial gain. With no barriers protecting ourselves from them, we are susceptible to subversion by such people. We are forced to accept them as fellow trans people/allies without questioning their motives. On the other hand, the need for gatekeeping in our community is obvious, given the pitfalls of the aforementioned view. Earlier in this article, I already gave my opinions on who the gatekeepers are and where/how the gates should be kept, by accountable psychological and medical professional evaluation. The remainder of this article is going to examine why community-driven gatekeeping attempts fail spectacularly. In order to become a gatekeeper of the trans community, one first needs criteria by which to judge other trans people. Typical criteria involves things such as sexuality, age of transition, ability to pass, operation status/desire, personal history, etc. The criteria for a TrueTranswoman™ will commonly look something like this: - Androphillic, exclusively attracted to males - Medically transitioned before the age of 25 - Passes as a woman organically - Has had sex reassignment surgery or a clear need for SRS - Gender non-conforming/feminine prior to transition - Gender conforming and highly feminine post-transition - Dysphoria began in childhood and persisted through adulthood - Never had children If one doesn’t meet this criteria, they are labeled as “pseudo-transsexual” or “transtrender” and shunned by some who follow this criteria. The key word here is “some” because not every trans person who follows this TrueTrans™ ideology follows this same criteria. If you ask anyone following this ideology what their criteria is, they might give the above set, or offer something similar with slight variance. Where might you think the difference between their criteria comes from? If you guessed “themselves” you are correct. TrueTrans™ people design the criteria used for their own merit-based gatekeeping systems just right to include themselves. If someone transitioned at 28, they might say 30, instead of 25 is the age limit. If they are gynephillic, meaning exclusively attracted to females, they might nix the sexuality requirement entirely. If they were not gender non-conforming pre-transition or are still non-conforming post-transition, they might abstain from that criteria. And so on, with ever-moving goalposts. Underlying TrueTrans™ ideology, there seems to also invariably exist another layer intended to police trans people based entirely on behavioral mechanisms and like-mindedness. Any time a trans person might advocate something a TrueTrans™ person disagrees with, or behaves in such a way that doesn’t conform to “proper” trans behavior, these will also be used as demerits. Earn enough demerits based on any given criteria, and you are not TrueTrans™. You are a psuedo-transsexual. A transtrender. Part of some #transcult incursion against true transsexuals. As I hope is already apparent, TrueTrans™ ideology is flawed. The inevitable end to this way of thinking, is that the beholder of TrueTrans™ ideology is the only true transsexual. If you dig deeply enough into each and every one of us, you will invariably find criteria by which to exclude us all. I believe that the majority of those who adopt TrueTrans™ ideology have a pathological need for validation that is satisfied by the ideology. This need can come from many sources, but most commonly it seems to be adopted by individuals who live isolated lives and struggle against oppressive forces that degrade their sense of agency, or control over themselves as they exist in their reality. By posturing themselves as a true transsexual and disparaging others who don’t fit their criteria, they receive a dose of self-validation. After disparaging another trans person, they might experience a sense of euphoria, or garner some sense of control over agency. But, these feelings are only temporary, and they always need another fix. To be fair to those who do follow TrueTrans™ ideology, not all of them are this deranged. Many do follow this way of thinking with purity of intent. They intend their actions as a gatekeeper to have a positive effect over the trans community and society at large, but so often their methods and/or motives are terribly flawed. So, what do you think? Which way of thinking is better? TrueTrans™ ideology, or blindly accepting all people claiming to be trans legitimately are? There isn’t a good answer to this question as far as I can tell other than recognizing that gatekeeping, while important to the trans community and society at large, is not our place. That onus is, and should remain, on the professionals who work with us in transitionary care channels. If an individual has not engaged with those care channels, they should be criticized, but constructively, in ways that might help direct them toward or assist them with accessing proper care. If an individual has engaged with those care channels but you still believe they aren’t TrueTrans™, then recognize that they are not your enemy. They are victims. Victims of a professional who should be held accountable for not providing them with proper care. Roving around through trans communities in TrueTrans™ attack packs to assault and harass trans people who don’t fit one set of TrueTrans™ criteria or another does no one any good. For every actual fake such groups might successfully exclude from the community, they hurt two more who are genuine. This is obviously a deeply complex and nuanced issue. I am aware that my views have flaws too, but as far as I can tell, they are the best way forward. As always though, I am open-minded and eager to hear my readers’ opinions. If you have any thoughts, especially with regard to how we should handle this issue moving forward, I would appreciate if you shared them in the comments below. Thank you! ❤

Mayor Joe Curtatone will not return for reelection, Eve Seitchik runs for councilor at large, Becca Miller announces city council campaign, and West Branch Library renovations progress Welcome to the Somerville Wire’s March 2 Weekly Roundup—a fast look at local news published every Tuesday at somervillewire.news. Readers with Somerville-focused news tips or press releases or calendar items or letter and opinion submissions can send them to Wire staff at firstname.lastname@example.org. Or call us at (617) 209-9511. Articles and Videos SOMERVILLE MEDIA CENTER VACCINATION PSA FOR SENIORS Somerville Media Centers’s Joe Lynch breaks down what seniors can do to get vaccinated. SOMERVILLE MAYOR CURTATONE DROPS BOMBSHELL AHEAD OF MIDTERM ADDRESS Curtatone announced that he will not be running for reelection. IMMIGRANTS EXPERIENCE BARRIERS TO CORONAVIRUS VACCINE Accessibility is further complicated by cultural, linguistic, and structural differences. SOMERVILLE PUBLIC SCHOOLS SEE REOPENING DATE IN SIGHT In a long anticipated culmination of events, students will at last be allowed back for in person instruction. Curtatone will not be running for reelection for mayor of Somerville At mayor Joe Curtatone’s midterm address, held on March 1, Curtatone announced that he will not be running for reelection for the position of mayor in November. He has been serving in office as mayor of Somerville since 2004. According to the Boston Globe, he has been the longest sitting chief executive in the City’s history. “It has been the honor of a lifetime to serve the city where I was raised,” said Curtatone, during the address. “For nearly 18 years, I have been privileged to work alongside so many in this community to strengthen, grow, and advance our shared goals and to take on the many challenges faced by our city, the nation, and even in some cases, the planet.” He added, “Mayors are links in the chain that extends way beyond each of our time in office. I want to honor my role in that chain and hand our next mayor a city that is on solid footing and ready to take the next twenty steps in its evolution.” Curtatone said that he is choosing not to run again for personal reasons and not because of any “calculus politically.” He said that he is, “tired of COVID, but not tired of public service.” At the moment, he has not decided whether he will be considering campaigning for governor. During the address, Curtatone spoke to the challenges that the city has faced over the past year, including the devastation wrought by the coronavirus, the structural and systemic equities brought about by racism, and the impact of climate change. “Somerville needs to rebound from the health, economic, and social hits brought on by the coronavirus outbreak,” said Curtatone. “I am determined to carry us successfully through this crisis, and I’m glad to do so without the distraction of running for another term in office.” He added, “This crisis has magnified inequities in our larger society that must be addressed. …The coronavirus has also laid bare the health crisis that is systemic racial injustice.” Eve Seitchik declares campaign for Somerville councilor at large Eve Seitchik, a socialist organizer and data scientist, announced their decision to run for the position of councilor at large in Somerville, on February 23. A two-term co-chair of the Boston Democratic Socialists of America, they have lived in the Boston area for their entire life and in Somerville for the past seven years. “I’ve always had progressive politics,” said Seitchik. “I think it was really the Bernie Sanders movement in the summer of 2015 that really activated me. With Trump winning the election and seeing these outrages nationally—like immigrant kids being put in cages—at some point, I felt like I had to do something. So I decided to become an activist.” Seitchik had been active in the 2020 fight alongside paraprofessionals of the Somerville Educators Union to negotiate a livable wage, organized in City Hall for a transfer tax on real estate development, and campaigned for police accountability and budget justice. If elected, they aim to fight for a Somerville Green New Deal that will create union jobs in the City, promote equity, and set a standard in the state. They have also proposed to defund the police, cutting the police budget by at least 10% per year in order to reallocate funds to non-violent mental health response, affordable housing, safe injection sites, and trauma support. A transfeminine non-binary person who uses “they/them” pronouns, Seitchik would be one of the first openly nonbinary city councilors on a national level. They said that they hope to see more transgender individuals in office and that representation can show others that they “can and should think of themselves as people who can play a big role in making our community fair.” “We’re really just at the beginning of gender diverse people serving in local, state, and federal government,” said Seitchik. “I think that representation does matter. It’s not the end of the story—I’m not running for city council because I’m trans—I’m running because I have these policies I care about, and I want to make our city better. But I do sometimes think about being part of this cohort.” They added, “If we win, this would be a whole new wave, and I would be among the first non-binary city councilors in the country. I think that’s exciting.” Proposed investment in street safety and mobility improvements This past week, mayor Joe Curtatone submitted a proposal to the City Council with the goal of increasing investments in street safety and sustainable transportation. The proposal would “create three new full-time staff positions in the Mobility Division to support traffic calming, transit-focused projects, public engagement, long-range policy planning, and complete-streets engineering,” according to a press release. “These needed investments would accelerate and expand our community’s efforts to save lives and combat climate change with the scale and urgency required,” said Curtatone, in the press release. “We’ve made enormous progress, from saving the Green Line and Community Path from cancellation, to constructing miles of accessible sidewalks and new bike facilities, but we must maintain progress and accelerate our efforts if we are to achieve Vision Zero and our Somerville Climate Forward goals. This proposal is an important step toward that.” The new staff positions would build on the City’s capacity to fulfill its Vision Zero commitment to eliminate serious or fatal traffic crashes. It would also support the Somerville Climate Forward commitment to decrease carbon emissions from transportation sources. The four fatal crashes that occurred in 2019 and the one that took place in 2020 have led the Somerville community to call for accelerated investment in safe streets projects and programs. Becca Miller announces city council run in Ward 7 A climate justice organizer with Boston Democratic Socialists of America, food justice advocate, and renter, Becca Miller stated on February 26 that she will be running for city council, representing Ward 7. She is motivated by the fact that the climate, housing, and food security crises have been worsened by the pandemic and recognizes that they will need transformative governance. “Somerville is a vibrant community that isn’t shy about it’s progressive values,” said Miller, in a press release. “However, our city government has not always lived up to its stated values. We need to speed up our police accountability and oversight processes for the police that were promised last summer, and the Administration still has not hired a Racial and Social Justice Director, nine months after the job position was created. Somerville can do better.” Miller was born in Chelmsford and has lived in Massachusetts for her entire life. She has been a resident of Somerville for the past five years. She works as a campaign manager at a MA food systems policy nonprofit. She coordinates a large coalition to increase state funding for the Healthy Incentives Program, which gives people SNAP benefits and money to use on fruits and vegetables from local farms. She has stated that if elected, she would bring her experience in state level advocacy to the position, with a commitment to transparency and accountability demonstrated in her actions. “I have seen how the COVID crisis has exposed inequities embedded in who has secure housing and abundant food,” said Miller. “We need to prioritize equity in our recovery, and we will be building out a Green New Deal for Somerville, community food security and farms, homes for all, free COVID testing and more.” West Branch Library transfers holds from the Tufts Administration Building On February 26, the Somerville Public Library West Branch moved book holds from its temporary location at the Tufts Administration Building (TAB) to the Central Library on Highland Avenue. The West Branch, which originally had its home at 40 College Avenue, just outside Davis Square, has been under renovation, with construction having begun in early 2019, and a small collection of books were being held in the TAB. A date for the reopening of the library has not yet been determined, but it may very well be during this spring, according to interim head of the West Branch Allison Mitchell. The West Branch Library building is over one hundred years old and is classified as a Carnegie Library. It is an example of the Neoclassical architecture of the early 20th century, and according to chair of the Somerville Historic Preservation Commission Alan Bingham, the City has been working to make sure that the renovations preserve its historical integrity. It was previously unable to serve the needs of the community and was in need of repair. New changes will include the construction of an accessible and appealing entry space, a restored skylight on the second floor, an elevator, a separate restroom for children, and spaces to host library-sponsored programs and events. According to Bingham, the renovations were highly necessary. “Somerville isn’t very good at maintaining its buildings,” said Bingham. “This is a building that was suffering from immense lack of maintenance. There was moisture intrusion in the basement. The envelope was leaking. …It withstood several decades of patchwork repairs, and it was in desperate need of fixing things properly, otherwise we stood the chance of losing the building.” He added, “The library provides so many benefits to people. A library is the repository of human genius. It’s our technology, our philosophy, our religion, our belief, our imagination, in fiction novels. It is so essential to have it and have it accessible to all.” All Somerville Wire articles may be republished by community news outlets free of charge with permission and by larger commercial news outlets for a fee. Republication requests and all other inquiries should be directed to email@example.com. Shira Laucharoen is assistant director of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and assistant editor and staff reporter of the Somerville Wire.

Operations & Development Manager - Experience Level Food Empowerment Project is seeking an experienced nonprofit Operations and Development Manager to join our small but immensely passionate team in the Petaluma area of California. We work to create a more just and sustainable world by recognizing the power of one’s food choices. We encourage choices that reflect a more compassionate society by spotlighting the abuse of animals on farms, the depletion of natural resources, unfair working conditions for produce workers, the unavailability of healthy foods in communities of color and low-income areas, and the importance of not purchasing chocolate that comes from the worst forms of child labor. With more than ten years of vegan food justice advocacy, we proudly define justice in a way that doesn't leave anyone behind. If you are passionate about veganism, farm worker justice, food access, and other justice issues, please read on. Reporting to the Executive Director (ED) and working closely with staff and volunteers, the Operations & Development Manager of Food Empowerment Project (F.E.P.) will work to enhance the strategic organizational processes and infrastructure that will allow F.E.P. to continue to grow and fulfill its mission. At the macro level of the organization, this includes annual budget building, helping set annual objectives and aligning resources to objectives. At micro levels, this includes staff leadership (hiring, training, and performance management), overseeing volunteers and committees, documenting project plans and briefs, and overseeing fundraising efforts and more. Responsibilities & Duties: - Providing operational support across all 4 core programs (farm worker rights, veganism, food access, and labor in the global chocolate industry) - Developing and executing on long-term fundraising goals and plans, including strategy for donor relations to ensure long term financial health of the org - Working with ED on operational strategy, priorities, objective planning, and human resource planning as needed - Directing and coordinating annual budget planning process and financial plan; and providing oversight of accounting practices and volunteers - Supporting the ED to develop and monitor project and campaign budgets to assure organizational efficiency and appropriate resource allocation - Overseeing hiring and performance management of future full time staff, vendors, and pro bono teams - Working with ED to oversee operational plans, including plans for local chapter expansion to scale F.E.P.’s work - Managing the purchase, deployment, training, and effective use of organizational tools and databases (such as donor database, email platform, project management tool, productivity tools, etc.) - Creating and coordinating fundraising communications (emails, newsletters, letters, events, and donor campaigns) - Managing donor database, doing all data entry, and donor reporting - Conducting all work within the values framework set out by the founder to empower those with the fewest resources and not replicate oppressive hierarchies, patriarchy, racism, and classism in our work - Deep and clear passion for the specific work that F.E.P. does, and our values, mission, and approach to food justice - 5 Years of nonprofit operations experience - 3 Years of fundraising and development experience - Personal understanding of food justice issues, labor rights, global human rights, and the impact of colonization - Understanding of the vegan, animal rights, and animal liberation movement - Experience managing annual budgets - Demonstrable leadership, planning, and operations skills - Bilingual in Spanish or Tagalog - Experience with PR, communications and/or social media - Degree in nonprofit management, business management, human resources, sociology, or any liberal arts or science degree where the focus was related to food justice - Quickbooks experience Food Empowerment Project is a vegan food justice organization and a registered non-profit 501(c)(3) based in Petaluma, CA. People of color, women and non-binary folks, immigrants, LGBTQ, and people with disabilities are encouraged to apply! Please review our website, www.foodispower.org, prior to applying. Food Empowerment Project (F.E.P.) is an ethics-based organization and we are searching for individuals whose ethics and values are similar to our organization's mission. Please be sure to include in your cover letter how your personal values and practices are parallel with F.E.P.'s overall mission and goals. To apply, email your resume and cover letter detailing why this role is an ideal fit for your experience and passions to info(at)foodispower.org. 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Liz Johnson Artur’s Black Balloon Archive has been described as many things, from “a family album of the diaspora” to “a reclamation of black representation”, but the photographer is hesitant to define her work in these terms. “You engage differently with your own work when you live for so long with it,” she says of the archive that comprises photographs shot over the last 30 years. Until recently, Artur’s personal work remained largely unseen. Existing in volumes of notebooks stacked on the shelves of her South London home, Artur’s photography career had largely taken the form of commissions for publications including i-D, The Face and Fader, and music tours with Lady Gaga and MIA. While away shooting these projects, Artur would photograph black communities across the globe, none of which were published until she released an untitled monograph of her work in 2016. Born to a Russian mother and Ghanaian father, Artur spent her early years growing up between Bulgaria, where she was born, Russia, and Germany. In 1985, aged 21, she received a camera during a trip to New York, where she was staying with a Russian family. They lived in a black neighbourhood in Brooklyn, and for the first time, Artur found herself surrounded by a diverse community that she had not experienced in Eastern Europe. Artur began to photograph the people she saw around her, fuelled by a “hunger” to connect to her roots. “I realised that I could take pictures,” Artur says in an interview with BJP-online. “And through that, I could also learn how to communicate with people.” Although Artur has been living in London for the last 30 years, her exhibition at South London Gallery, entitled If You Know The Beginning, The End Is No Trouble, is her first solo show in the UK. It follows her first museum show, which opened last month at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. However, her exhibition at South London Gallery is focused entirely on her work photographing communities in London. “The way the work is being shown is completely new,” says Artur of the exhibition, which uses unconventional methods of display, from experimental printing techniques on fabric, tracing paper and cardboard, to a series of four bamboo cane structures that each host a different section of the exhibition. The exhibition is split into four thematic sections: Peckham Rye, black-majority churches, non-binary club nights, and a still life section called Library. “When the opportunity came up to show at South London Gallery, I felt like my pictures should just become a backdrop for the things that were actually going on in South London,” says Artur, “because that’s what my work is really about.” The exhibition has been designed to act as a flexible backdrop for an integrated programme of events, inviting other artists to contribute music, poetry, dance and theatre to the space, and encouraging intergenerational collaboration. “I wanted to share the space,” she says. “For a long time, there weren’t many opportunities to show this kind of work, particularly not in a gallery or museum context. The presence of minorities in institutions like South London Gallery is important – it lets us gain some kind of common ground.” Artur’s work resists definition. To define it would go against the very thing it sets out to achieve; to record the normality of black lives, and the richness and variety of black culture, against the stereotypes and appropriation that permeate the mainstream. Artur works according to instinct. She does not overthink the photographs she takes, rather she captures the vibrancy and sense of community as and when she encounters it. By using the exhibition to create a space for the very community she photographs, Artur’s archive comes full circle. “When you come to the gallery, you’ll be in the presence of black London,” she says. “There’s no doubt about that.” Liz Johnson Artur: If You Know The Beginning, The End Is No Trouble is on show at South London Gallery, from 14 June to 01 September 2019

In the past 24 hours I have inhaled two books from cover to cover. I don't remember the last time I read a book in one sitting, let alone two! 'Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People about Race' (WINLTTWPAR) by Reni Eddo-Lodge and 'Trans Like Me' by CN Lester. I urge you to buy both and to read them one after the other like I did. These books - both published in 2017 by Londoners younger than me - have a lot of similarities. While written from the perspective of blackness and trans-ness respectively, they hold a mirror up to those of us who see our whiteness and our cisgenderedness as so normal, so unremarkable, so 'neutral' (sic), as to not actually be worthy of our own attention. In holding up this mirror they enable us to see - if we hadn't already cottoned on! - that racism (not blackness) and the gender binary (not trans-ness) are the real problem, and help us to see how these oppressions are STRUCTURAL (and what that actually means). Both manage simultaneously to offer an easy-to-understand '101' on (anti-)racism and gender (and, importantly, how these intersect with other forms of structural oppression such as class) and new insights for those of us who've been living and/or reading about this shit for many years. Both provide at least a chapter of well-researched British and international history from which I learned a lot. 'WINLTTWPAR' recounts the history of racism in Britain up to and including 'Brexit', while 'Trans Like Me' includes examples of the existence of non-binary genders throughout history and (to a lesser extent - a shortcoming of the book in my opinion) across cultures. Both authors share extensive reflections on their own intersectional feminism, and rejoinders to white feminism and trans-exclusionary radical feminism respectively. Both also offer some practical suggestions for being part of the solution instead of wallowing in denial, defensiveness or guilt. This week I've been thinking a lot about how when we live with structural privilege, we not only prefer to remain unaware of or actively to deny it, we also seek to discredit and close down those who stick their heads above the parapet to speak about and expose structural oppression. I had an experience of this just recently, which I'll talk about in a subsequent post. Below are some extracts that particularly resonated with me from these books. All of the following words are direct extracts, which I have typed here not to appropriate the ideas but to encourage my friends to BUY and READ and TALK ABOUT these books. 'Trans Like Me' by CN Lester 'Any person who has had to challenge or change the sexed and gendered labels placed on them at birth to honour their true selves can, by their own or others' volition, find themselves under (the) trans umbrella... (This can be) an uncomfortable place to be, filled with the fears society has about disruption, fitting in, danger and change. It is also be a place filled with unlooked for knowledge, new experiences, new perspectives, and unanticipated joy... This is a book about gender - how we all live it, how we think about it, why we do and think what we do.' 'Learning how to talk about trans people is not difficult... you just have to reflect back the words a person uses abut themselves. Wanting to be referred to in an accurate and respectful way isn't a trans-thing... I don't call my Jewish friends Buddhist. It's the same with trans people. Use the right names, use the right pronouns, and don't fall for the line that we're too difficult for our own good... I know many cis people that are so nervous about getting it wrong that they're scared to try to get it right, but it's OK to ask.' 'Something I am sure of is that accepting people outside of the gender binary has less to do with the idea of specific non-binary genders, and a lot more to do with working away from binary thinking in general. Not every - maybe even not many - people will want to designate their own gendered experiences as being outside of the binary. But working for a less binary world would not only benefit trans people like me: we would all be the richer for it.' 'A vital point, when considering sex, is one that has been made over and over again by scientists, philosophers of science, sociologists and historians of science: that we cannot divorce a singular, unified 'Science' from the broader cultures that create and sustain it. What we observe, what we think about what we observe, how we analyse our thoughts, what we pass on to others, are all shaped by cultural forces beyond our personal control... But we do not have to be philosophers to recognise how often we are misled by our own prejudices - and use those prejudices, in turn, to mislead others... We often talk about 'biological sex' using the examples we were taught in high school, and actively refuse the need to learn more and learn better.' '... To get access to treatment as an adult, you have to have known that you were trans since early childhood. But if you say that you're trans in early childhood, you're told that you're too young to know.' 'Being trans is often believed to cause mental illness, and mental illness to cause the belief of being trans. This becomes a way of dismissing trans people, of labelling us 'insane'... But it also prevents trans people from seeking help for genuine mental health problems out of fear that our trans-ness will be blamed, and our medical and social care withheld... It is not only that mental health care can be cut off for being trans, but also that transition-related care can be cut off for being mentally ill. Any sign that we are less than 100 per cent mentally well and adjusted - as though such a person exists - and access to hormones, to surgery, can be instantly denied... In the popular imagination any hint of queerness - inappropriately gendered behaviour - could function as a code for dangerous madness.' '(2012 research in Toronto) found that trans kids with supportive parents had an attempted suicide rate of 4 per cent, compared with a 57 per cent rate for trans children without that support.' 'If someone loves a certain image of you - an image which misses your true self - then the actuality of who you are will never be enough.' (HD: Amen to that.) 'The idea that trans women are fake women, that trans men are fake men, is one currently playing out in schools, prisons, the legal system, public life... It is an issue frequently dismissed as a simple difference of opinions... but it is no exaggeration to say that, at its worst, this question of realness can mean life or death to the most vulnerable members of our community... Nowhere is the fight over trans realness as openly vicious as in the current battle over access to public toilets. What began as a fringe concern - the dawning realisation that trans people exist and need to use gendered facilities just like everyone else - has stormed front and centre into the mainstream political debate... At the time of writing there has not been a single reported case of a trans person attacking a cis person in a public bathroom. Ever. Public bathrooms are, however, common settings for transphobic violence.' 'As a teenager, the supposed danger of gay and bisexual people was a regular topic of school debate; the majority consensus was that any teacher suspected of being gay shouldn't be allowed alone in a room with pupils and certainly shouldn't be allowed to supervise them in PE.' (HD: At my secondary school the head of PE was a very obvious dyke. She was quite strict but hardworking and perfectly fair. Kids said she was a man at the front and a woman at the back so that she could shag herself. The parents of one of my own classmates reported her for supposedly looking at girls in the shower; I was there in the same class and never saw her do anything of the sort.) 'Trans people are far from being the only people to have learnt how to find an unrecognised, liberating truth, in defiance of the pressure to court sameness and conformity.' 'Once you have the desire to see, the tools with which to focus, locate and describe, it is hard to stop finding new ways in which humans do and have done gender... (People) assume anything that is new to us is new to human society as a whole, and that if we don't see it reflected in history textbooks and in recent memory then it cannot have existed for long. But... a strict gender binary has never been able to hold the totality of humanity - not in the past, not in the present, and not in the future.' 'Trans people who are not men or women are just as subject to transphobic discrimination and oppression as trans men and women - but we continue to be dismissed as a tiny and unimportant group of fantasists.' 'In the public imagination, most trans people are assumed to be straight. It may be surprising, then (HD: not to me!), to learn that trans people are far more likely to be bisexual, gay or lesbian than cis people are. Anecdotally we know this, and we have known this for a long time. For myself, being genderqueer and being queer are intimately linked, calling back to the same need to resist limits on who I might be and who I might desire.' 'Contrary to the story presented in the film 'Stonewall', the Stonewall riots were the bubbling up of all the injustices borne by gender non-conforming people - trans women of colour, butch black lesbians, transvestites, femmes, sex workers, queens - the queer people who suffered most from police violence and societal rejection... Without their actions the modern gay movement, the rights enjoyed by gay people, would be unthinkable. And yet even then there were cis gay people, white people, trying to exclude the trans and/or gender non-conforming activists from the movement they themselves had made... Some of our modern history is ... a masterclass in excluding the most marginalised 'for the greater good' of the most privileged'. 'Part of being trans, of being queer - not all of it, not for all people, but part - is in the reimagining of what it is to be human. These are categories forged from the failure of refusal to acquiesce to majority rule. That majority rule requires nice, clear lines and limits, and so often we, who are fighting for acceptance, will try to stick to the same in imitation. Too often, all we do in doing so is hurt our own.' 'As Audre Lorde said, we do not lead single-issue lives. The idea of single-issue movements so often has the idea of 'neutrality' at its heart; an LGB cause where LGB means cis and white, a trans movement where trans means straight and white. But none of us is 'neutral'; some of us just have less pressure, less hatred to contend with than others.' 'I need feminism. I need it not because I am a woman but because, no matter what lens the world uses to see me through, I am subjected to gender-based abuses, founded on the idea that there is one, hierarchical, coercive gender system.' 'Trans people have been denied hormones and surgery for being gay, for being bisexual, for being too fat or too thin, for not moulding themselves into white Western presentations of gender, for being disabled, for giving the 'wrong' answers to intrusive questions about sex and masturbation, for not being in fulltime employment, for being married, for refusing to change their names, and for being intersex... Some trans people have to play the long game: give cis clinicians what they're looking for so as to be able to transition, and then have the space, the freedom, to present as is right.' 'According to some people the word ('intersectional') is too long, too divisive... 'intersectionality' is just a way of trying to make white cis women feel guilty, and naming the whiteness and the cis-ness of intersectionality's main opponents is identity politics gone mad... I am unsure why this kind of (intersectional) feminist process is still being fought over by some when it is an everyday practice for many.' 'Gendered oppression is so much more than a dualistic fight between women and men, and its cruelties extend beyond one form of discrimination against one group of people. Some are hurt far worse than others, but very few of us make it out unscathed. Instead of narrowing down our feminist needs and desires, we could open them up to everyone who has ever had a need to be free of gendered oppression, gender coercion, gendered limitations.' Please click here to read more about 'Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race'.

Los Angeles / Ventura Counties and virtually EVERYWHERE via Zoom Open Gateways to Healing, Transformation and Aliveness “Where might I see choice where I’ve never seen it before?” Katie Hendricks Imagine having immediate and continuous access to a treasure trove of life skills that generates deep connection with yourself and others. Darlene assists you in becoming powerfully current with your life. Step into a new level of mindful living animated by conscious choice and deep presence. Darlene uses her skills as a Certified Big Leap Coach as well as a Certified Guided Imagery Therapist to access internal wisdom which opens gateways to healing, transformation and aliveness. Clients say that they feel free to discuss anything with Darlene and are inspired by her playful and loving spirit. Email ImageryDar@gmail.com to schedule a complimentary 30 minute discovery session. * PRESENCE * CONNECT * PLAY * BREATHE * MOVE * LOVE Breakthrough Coaching Intensives I’ve worked with Kathlyn & Gay Hendricks since 2000, taught their most advanced workshops, and among peers and clients, I’m considered one of the most profound and potent teachers and coaches of the Hendricks work. I currently offer coaching intensives, in which I travel to where you are, move with you in your world, and give you a powerful reflection of who you really are, at your core. I am a master at sustaining attention on your essence, and helping you receive what’s magnificent about you. This happens at such a deep level that your nervous system is profoundly altered, and many old issues drop away without you having to work at it. All of us have dreams for our lives that we haven’t been sure we can live up to or pull off – and some don’t let themselves dream big because of that uncertainty. When clients walk through this doorway with me, they find themselves ready and fully capable – that they are a match for their dreams, and that their visions and next steps come easily. - (773) 623-9527 Conscious Design by Danielle I combine my passions, of interior design, health, and conscious living, in coaching individuals to create conscious spaces, lives, and bodies. I took my first training with Katie in January 2012 and jumped right in by joining the Leadership and Transformation program a few weeks later. I love coaching individuals, who are excited to take the next step in transforming their lives. I use my gentle power to coach individuals to step into increased aliveness through their actions, spaces, and bodies. Advisor to Conscious Leaders I have been a trusted advisor to over 700 organizational leaders worldwide and am the co-founder of the Conscious Leadership Group. My passion is to help organizations create conscious cultures that allow for greater collaboration, innovation, and well being. I also work extensively with YPO/WPO forums and chapters, providing retreat facilitation and forum moderation. Clients say they value my clarity, compassion, ferocity and playfulness. I’ve summed up much of what I have learned from Gay and Katie in my new book, The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. I am a master at helping people find their Purpose, Presence and Sexual Intimacy with their partner. I am also an insightful coach who inspires people to lead their lives to the fullest. As a certified relationship coach, I have led individuals and groups to a higher state of knowing both themselves and the people in their lives. My grounded way of being allows people to feel and step into their own power. Mentor to Gamechangers I teach executives to develop radical personal awareness and lead from their deepest truth. My passion is supporting leaders and their organizations to shift toward living and leading from Presence, inspiring a culture of authentic communication, collaboration, creativity and vitality. I regularly lead YPO/WPO retreats and forums worldwide and am a facilitator with the Conscious Leadership Group. Clients say that I create environments of trust where the truth can be spoken, opening the way to clarity. I have also been called fiercely loving, playful and direct. 3 reasons why you would want to work with me: 1. You are tired of your codependent strategies in relationship. You want to be your true, fully expressed self AND be an opening for your partner to be his/her true fully expressed self. 2. You want to learn whatever you most need to learn so that you can transform your habitual reactions (trigger) and live a more joyous, harmonious and present life with your partner. 3. You want to expand to your full potential in giving and receiving love! Here is a testimonial from a past client: “Our work together has COMPLETELY shifted the dynamics in my relationship. I used to feel triggered often, not heard, misunderstood and pretty shut down. All of it had made a negative effect on my self esteem and even my belief that I could have the kind of loving, connected intimate relationship with my partner. Everything has changed since then. I can now ask for what I need without creating emotional drama. I feel heard and listened to. We are uncovering parts of each other that after 9 years we didn’t know were there! It’s phenomenal! I recommend this to all couples who are looking to support themselves with powerful consciousness tools for deepening their relationship.” In Service to Authentic & Embodied Relationship Long Beach, California - (562) 272-5856 Imaginationships Relationship Counseling “I just finished a session with Joni and wanted to let you know about what it’s like to be coached by her. I feel so gotten. She has me so excited about all the things I don’t know about myself yet. She taught me so much and yet I feel like I made the discoveries myself. I consider myself very intelligent and didn’t see how any one else could help me change my life. Joni knows how to create change. She’s an expert on relationships and showed me how much power I had to create exactly what I wanted in my relationships. I dreaded going initially and couldn’t wait to go each week after that. There is nobody more surprised by that than me. I just didn’t know how lost I was. Joni has been a precious gift to my life.” Scott, July 2011 Michele and Dean Life, Breathing, and Couple-to-Couple Relationship Coaching In their dynamic coaching, Michele and Dean share practical tools that will awaken who you truly are, inviting you to create harmony and joy in your life and relationships. You’ll learn to shift old patterns that no longer serve and create helpful habits that support your best life. Couple to Couple Coaching: Thriving relationships are one of the greatest joys that we can experience. Whether you want to enliven your relationship or want assistance moving through challenges, our couple-to-couple approach will support you in creating conscious connection so that you can create solutions and enjoy the richness that a relationship can bring. Life, Fitness and Breathing Coaching: Michele will assist you in awakening essence by opening to possibilities and being real. Dean is a dynamic circulator of energy who offers breathing and fitness coaching that will awaken your whole body vitality. Clients say that Michele and Dean’s authenticity and playful connection inspires them to create positive changes in their lives Transformational Relationships for Work and Love I work with inspired leaders to help them create fulfilling and playful lives and workplaces through the tools of conscious leadership. Clients grow their self-awareness, interrupt unconscious patterns and create practices for personal transformation. These new ways of being bring joy and boost trust and resilience for creative thinking and collaboration. My clients know me as grounded and direct and an empathetic listener who challenges them with humor and compassion. I’m a certified Hendricks’ Big Leap Coach, a graduate of the Hendricks’ Leadership and Transformation program, a certified Conscious Leadership Group coach and am trained in the Enneagram. I live in the San Francisco Bay area and work with individuals and couples virtually and in person. I also lead live workshops for teams. Big Leap Masterminds for conscious entrepreneurs and Conscious Leadership Circles for deep dives are forming now. More at www.megdennison.com Ojai, CA 93023 - (805) 798-0781 - (805) 426-9494 Art Durand is a master at bringing forth the multidimensionality of a person! With the assistance of his camera and his genius provocateur, he explores with you all of your selves that have been waiting to be fully revealed.His love and appreciation ultimately opens the one in front of him into his or her magnificent self to be acknowledged through photos. Clients say the gifts that come from the photo shoot itself are equally as valuable as the beautiful and diverse images they receive. His mission is to use the art of photography and life coaching to awaken the master within. I’m a Catalyst for Curiosity and Beneficial Change I support people who are ready to create clarity in their lives about what they want — and how to get it. I will teach you techniques in body-centered consciousness, which will free up your perception, attention and creative choices so that you may live a fulfilling and self-chosen life. I cultivate my own willingness to venture into the unknown in a way that opens up new creative thinking for myself and those around me. I own and share who I am — including the parts I haven’t figured out yet — creating space for others to show up exactly how they are. Meghan and Erika Based in Nevada City, California (virtual coaching available internationally) - Text: 831-430-6367 LGBTQ+ Coaching for Lovers and Individuals We are wives to-be and founders of the “Lesbians In Love” podcast. We offer online courses and relationship coaching for lesbian, pansexual, bisexual, transgender and queer womxn, and non-binary beings, to cultivate the relationship skills needed so that you can create lasting, passionate, love. Let’s explore together who you were before the world told you who you needed to be and discover what you want to create for your future while learning new embodied coaching practices to support you on that journey. Book a free consultation if… - You want to create a relationship that grows from your desires rather than running on adrenaline and default patterns. - You’d like to live a life that feels more abundant, pleasurable and playful, whether in relationship or solo. - You’re struggling with repeating challenges in communication and connection, and you are ready to discover how much joy you can create. - You are in the midst of big change or big choices, like coming out, deciding to get married, get divorced, make a move or expand your family. Somatic Psychotherapist and Life & Relationship Coach It takes courage to step into the life you imagine and make it a reality. I assist those who want to shift their lives and move through life and life transitions more consciously. With my assistance you increase your awareness of yourself on a deep level, gain clarity on your path, create conscious and loving relationships, and make conscious changes in your life with ease. I am passionate about sharing ways to tap into the body’s knowing and our being’s natural capacity towards healing and wholeness. From this place, you feel, hear and see yourself clearly and will be able to manifest what was previously unimaginable. Those who work with me let go of unconscious strategies that are causing pain and suffering. Through somatic experiential explorations incorporating mindful awareness, the path to lightness of being is a wondrous journey. MFC48079 & LPC337 Sydney, New South Wales, Australia - Instagram: Kerry Gaudry Presence based transformational coach I delight in presence-based relating and coaching. The space between revealing the unknown. Life itself facilitating and urging us forward to fulfill our true potentials. I love to experience clients unwinding challenging patterns and expanding into their most joyful life. The most common thing I hear from people is that they feel better after being with me. My sense is that this is because of my ability to listen empathically and with sensitive awareness. I have an insatiable curiosity about how life seems to bring us the experiences we need to facilitate growth and transformation. I follow whatever is emerging in the moment and use which ever facilitation processes seem most aligned and inviting for clients – often body based, intuitive and sometimes even fun. Studying with Katie and Gay transformed my life – re-awakening my love of play and movement, and igniting my creative expression. I love expressive arts, nature, writing and spending time with friends. I have a background in paediatric medicine and visual art. San Diego, CA I have a passion for working with young women (teens through 20’s), guiding them to find their unique voices, exude self-confidence, and move beyond self-limiting stories into creating wildly joyful and successful lives. As a life coach, my approach is a combination of fun, compassion, intuition, and the use of deeply transformative tools and techniques for making big changes. I have a wealth of coach training and experience; I am a Certified Big Leap Coach through the Hendricks Institute, a Certified Relationship Coach through the Relationship Coaching Institute, a Certified Addictions Recovery Coach through Being True to You Life Coaching, and a Certified Holistic Health Coach through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I look forward to being your ally on the journey of personal transformation! Want more joy? Imagine embracing ease as a way of life and sharing it with those around you. Imagine creating the life you know you deserve, the reason you came here for. Take a deep breath into open space; as you read these line, notice a simple opening. Time to take the leap. Where ever you are, you have the perfect opportunity to open to a whole new level of being, yep, right now. It is Nicola’s joy to share this journey with you. Nicola started working with the Hendricks in 2000 and uses their tools every day in classes, workshops and in her daily life. She is a life coach, a songwriter and a teacher in Santa Barbara California. Call and lets explore the possibilities further. Listen to a song written and played by Nicola HERE. Senior Trainer/Master Coach and Game Changer Choice points, crossroads and even (what look like) crises are rich opportunities for conscious change. As a Master Game Changer, I provide an integrative approach, and super nourishing space, that supports you in discovering and navigating easeful bridges from where you are to where you most want to be. In our work, you will develop your own mastery, while also being generously and creatively supported. My approach assists you in accessing your own body intelligence, deep wisdom, and passionate clarity. Our collaboration will uproot those pesky limiting beliefs with focused awareness, deep care and humor so they loosen their grip. All this creates the space through which fresh possibilities emerge. Together we create sustainable, practical changes that support your evolutionary process, while mastering the skills required to live a fabulous life. Currently Available in California, Colorado, Idaho and Portland, with additional locations being scouted. - (805) 729-0066 The Radiance Process The Radiance Process is a graceful, evolutionary pathway to wholeness founded by Drs. Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks. Now facilitated by Hendrick’s Master Coaches, each provider powerfully carries this work forward using their unique and deeply caring genius. The Radiance Process is facilitated in warm water by two masterful coaches offering generous guidance and support, and invites sometimes life-long limiting patterns to resolve through ease. The purpose of the process is to clear up whatever might be interfering with the full flow of one’s creative expression, nourishing relationships and the deeply felt experience of being welcomed, loved and supported, being all of who you are. San Francisco, CA 94121 - (415) 216-7612 I am life coach living and practicing in San Francisco. I use movement and breathwork to facilitate self awareness, paradigm shifts, and behavioral changes that allow my clients to easefully express their full potential. I specialize in the radiance work that addresses issues around initiating projects and relationships, nurturing ideas and relationships, and connecting joyfully with your successes. I work with couples and with individuals by phone or in person. Fear Responder Coach What we feel scared of is actually the sacred within us and that we are within, calling us to be so much greater than we’re used to being that we no longer recognize ourselves… and so we feel scared. It’s time to love yourself just as you are because the planet needs your unique creative expression. If your life is changing and calling you to expand and step up as All you are.. and you feel scared, let’s talk. LIKE my facebook page https://www.facebook.com/ScaredToSacred/ and PM or comment, or email me at email@example.com . Genius Coach & Author Philip Johncock (www.johncock.com) coaches individuals and facilitates groups in generating health, wealth and success. His popular online and teleconference courses include Genius Course Online (www.GeniusCourse.Net), Conscious Living Booster Course (www.ConsciousLivingCourse.com), Grant Writing Basics and Locating Funders (www.GrantsAcademy.com), and Tantra At Home (www.TantraAtHome.com). He has authored over 12 books that inspire greatness and cover such vital topics as sex, money, integrity and life. Some of these include The Sexual Ecstasy Workbook, Dream-Making to Billions, Power of Integrity and Book of Life (www.FunUnlimitedInc.com). He is a Ph.D. candidate in Ethical and Creative Leadership with two masters and two bachelors’ degrees. Yelena Joy MD Transformation Leader, Radiance Process Facilitator I create a space where energy and medicine meet to catalyze transformation in a way that brings forth rapid growth and empowerment. I have a unique ability to assist you in creating the easiest and most efficient path to your goal. I deliver clear and precise feedback and support your transformation in a welcoming easeful way. Using an integrated Mind-Body-Spirit approach and a variety of body-centered methods, I invite you to step into your full magnificence. Whether you want to manifest a healthy body, satisfying loving relationship or transform your work life you can expect in depth, playful, loving facilitation, and experience vivid shifts. I evoke exceptionally deep transformation with ease and loving magic. Funtrepreneur, Pot Stirrer, & Possibility Seer My mission is to help social change agents – people working to make the world a better place – kick ass and have a great time doing it. I co-founded The Social Change Agency with my partner, Christine Marge, to bring the amazing tools and techniques that I have learned through my training with Drs. Kathlyn & Gay Hendricks to movers and shakers in the non-profit sector. My unique genius is in leading large-scale change, creating space for every member of your team to bring their whole selves to work, and in encouraging leaders to take risks. I enjoy working with clients who are willing to step fully into their creativity and power. I facilitate strategic retreats and provide one-on-one coaching to key leaders. I am available by skype, phone, and in-person for strategic retreats. PRACTICAL TOOLS, MAGICAL RESULTS Jody’s skills are grounded in decades of experience in international business yet customized for you with intuitive, improvised solutions. Often playful in a way not often seen in former bank VPs, she brings instant wisdom and practical ease to every aspect of your life. Jody invites the revealing of your truest self through transformational coaching, by matching your clothes to your essence, or suggesting inspired life-easing changes. Sometimes the smallest tweaks have the greatest impact, opening the way to experiencing your most joyously engaged life. “The 4-5 hours I have spent with Jody have had more of an impact on me than anything in my entire life. What I put into operation has an impact immediately.” A.Macia, CEO With her vast knowledge, she excels at assisting you in matching your world to who you are and who you aim to be. Give yourself the gift of Jody’s exquisite attention to address your key life issues and/or get your wardrobe pared down and paired up in exciting new ways. English or French.15-minute to one-day sessions. Kris and Meenal Kelkar Ventura, CA and Anywhere (via Skype or FaceTime video) Are you experiencing electricity in your relationships? Can you say the vulnerable thing that needs to be said in the moment? Do you feel like your relationships are strong enough to withstand anything? We have been together for 30 years. For the last 10 years we have been on a path of conscious relationship. We coach and teach individuals and couples to create vibrant, alive, electric relationships. If you are curious about what you might learn about yourself and what it takes to spark your relationships with electricity, honesty and intimacy, contact us for a free 1-hour exploratory session where we will help you get in touch with your desires, how you will know when they are met, and what holds you back. We will then make you an offer of how we can best help you get what you want. Susan Kistin, MFT Certified Hendricks Coach and Licensed Therapist Want your life to be different? Then you will have to do something differently! I absolutely love assisting people to experiment with new ways of responding to life. So they can make the profound shifts they want. I invite bone deep, personal revolution. For profound kick-ass evolution! Using refreshingly playful, embodied activities that work at the level of the nervous system, so permanent change can happen. You’ll find me engaged, vibrant and interactive in your sessions. Gently, consistently and with humor, I show you a whole new set of skills for crafting your transformation. I bring my rich experience of twenty-five years as a therapist. So, do you want to have fun while expanding into the most exquisite positive experience you can have in life? In a context of friendly curiosity? Ready to enter the vast field of your unique wholeness? Come for a complimentary, half hour coaching session to see if I’m a match for you. Available in person, by phone, Skype or FaceTime. Do you want to wake up every day feeling excited and energized about your life? I love working with clients who are ready to move fast, willing to go deep and believe in the possibility of positive change. I enjoy supporting people in creating greater happiness and fulfillment in their lives by learning how to take responsibility for their current situation and come up with action steps to create the change they desire. My unique ability is to act as a catalyst to ignite positive change. I have a lot of experience in supporting people in finding their purpose as well as releasing any blocks that are preventing them from achieving their true potential. I’ve changed my own life so dramatically that it has inspired me to share these tools with others so that you, too, can have the life of your dreams. In addition to corporate workshops and speaking engagements, I currently offer one-on-one coaching (via phone, skype or in person) as well as group programs and retreats, which I find to be the most powerful combination to ignite transformation in a short period of time. To learn more about my programs, visit www.akoyapower.com. Vanessa has been studying the Hendricks work since 2008 and has found it to be one of the most profound tools for change. To schedule a *Free 30 minute strategy session over the phone with Vanessa, send an email to firstname.lastname@example.org with the subject title “FREE Session – Hendricks Referral”. Los Angeles, California - (213) 808-6527 Facilitating community Transformation I work with change agents from every sector who want to discover their unique gifts and create radical transformation in their communities. I lead an initiative called Home For Good, a 5-year plan to end chronic and veteran homelessness and create a connected and abundant Los Angeles. IT’S WORKING! If you’re eager to shift the context in your community from isolation to connection, from scarcity to abundance, reach out to me. I’d love to work with you and your team to discover your gifts in service of creating the community you really want to live in. San Francisco, CA 94044 - Phone: (650) 355-1249 - Mobile: (415) 699 6319 Chief Authenticity Officer & WonderWorker Anna has worked in corporations for the past 20 plus years. She launched her own consulting company in 2003 called WonderWorks Consulting. Her vision is to support employees, leaders, boards and organizations in becoming “WonderWorkers” doing the work they are individually and collectively here to do. She and her partner in WonderWorks are passionately mission driven supporting big ideas to become reality. WonderWorks specializes in Founder, Partner, Oragnizational consulting with a focus on: – Leadership Development for WonderWorkers – Strategic Planning – Succession Management Consulting She volunteers her time with the Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream initiative a non profit organization who’s mission is changing the dream of the North – from consumerism to creating; an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, and socially just human presence on the planet as the guiding principle of our time. San Francisco Bay Area, California - (781) 267-8811 Relationships are a soul contract to expand your consciousness. If you would like support navigating the relationship ride, I can coach you individually or with my partner Juna (profile below). What’s unique about us is we do not support you from a context of “relationship experts.” What is far more interesting for us is to connect with you and your partner from a foundation of authenticity, where we consciously listen to what’s true for you and intimately share our own relationship discoveries. For an example of our coaching style, I invite you to visit our relationship blog www.dailyrelationship.com to view 60+ videos where Juna and I share our most intimate relationship discoveries with the intention to be of service to other couples. If you are ready to take the leap into conscious relationship, we are ready to work with you. Hugs – Justin Intuitive, Life & Relationship Coach – Have you been feeling stuck? – Are you going through a transition and don’t know how to move forward? – Do you want to gain powerful tools & step forward with clarity? – Are you desiring a life fully aligned with your purpose & pure essence? I am an Intuitive, as well as a Life & Relationship Coach. I use my intuition to laser in on the heart of any issue you bring to our sessions. From there, I offer you tools and steps to resolve and alchemize that which most wants your attention. My intuitive sessions are skillfully woven with the Hendricks Institute’s whole body coaching techniques and somatic experiencing. My unique gift is my ability to make personal growth not only sustainable, but deeply enriching, rewarding and fun. I have been offering intuitive sessions for over 10 years. What brings me infinite joy is working with people who desire to expand their capacity for greater love and positive energy in all aspects of their lives. I work with individuals as well as couples via phone, Skype or in-person. - (510) 558-0405 Transform Your Relationship Since 2007, I’ve helped dozens of women get clear whether to stay or go in their relationship. They uncover their answer and apply their personal power to take action. Hendricks whole-body methods have been key to my own success. I am certified, also, by the Co-Active Training Institute and CRRGlobal. You have the courage to seek clarity. You are ready for change, even if you can’t imagine how. You are NOT willing to sacrifice yourSELF. One client said, Changing a relationship that wasn’t working felt impossible to me. Janet helped by giving me a structure to explore my feelings… push past my self-imposed limits, and make my own decisions… A weight has lifted, I am happier and I see more of the beauty in everyday life… I highly recommend Janet to anyone sitting on that fence, ready to make a change in their relationship, but not sure how to manifest it. Visit janetparks.com to schedule a complimentary Clarity Conversation. I’ll listen deeply and share my reflections. We’ll co-design an action step to move your quest forward. Merry Parrish MA, MSS - Congruent Heart Heart-Centered Life Coach My coaching invites clients to find their source of joy and freedom by aligning with and honoring their heart’s calling. I create a fun, safe and accepting environment for clients to discover who they are and what they want to accomplish. My clients are encouraged to awaken to and expand into their own creativity, aliveness and well-being. They learn how to use their inner resources and wisdom to live a life that is congruent with their heart. I offer coaching to individuals, couples and groups and it may include movement, sound and artwork. Los Angeles/Culver City, Southern California - Skype: hpoliak My specialty is guiding people in discovering and creating new solutions through invitations to embrace what is current. By combining learning with play, I support them in following through on their actions, and ensure there is a safe space to have fun and collaborate. My coaching bridges direct experience with easy-to-learn skills that support turning towards greater possibilities. I enjoy, appreciate and love working with people who are willing to develop themselves while creatively playing. My location is the West-side of Los Angeles, and I coach in person one-on-one, or via skype or telephone. Crystal Dawn Rios Enter a living laboratory where we co-create experiments that cultivate authentic play and personal transformation. By tuning into your you-est you, discover the artistry of feeling feelings! People float out of the lab (my office, skype, or the telephone), after a coaching session looking and feeling like they just received a massage, more comfortable in their own skin, more open to receive and give love, and better able to relax into a thriving life. I love sharing this body of work because it works. It helps my wife and I navigate the waters of our relationship. And, I appreciate the discovery and growth that has become my evolutionary path. San Francisco Bay Area, California - (626) 354-9338 When it comes to growth and transformation, your day-to-day actions are where the rubber meets the road. It’s one thing to have big dreams, it’s another make them come true. That’s where BeCurrent comes into play. BeCurrent is a simple and powerful methodology (incorporating several Hendricks principles) to organize yourself, so that you spend your time in ways that are aligned with where you want to go. Learn more at www.becurrenttoday.com Business Coaching, Dress for Your Future, Permanent Prosperity My intention is that every client know and trust their beauty and genius, their choices and expressions: that they have the Heart of their Message, the Soul of their Style and the Art of their Presentation. Through Soul Vision, Natural Marketing Style, and Dress for Your Future you will master your message, your style and your presentation. Through business coaching you will master the power of Permanent Prosperity. Welcome! Jihad Alex Sakhnini Based in Los Angeles, CA I work with executives and teams from some of the largest companies around the world, teaching communication, relationship and process improvement skills that create billions (yes, billions) of dollars in bottom-line results. I also offer one-on-one coaching to a select group of individuals who want to dive deep, and are ready to create similar bottom-line results in their personal lives. If you are up for the challenge of growing into the biggest version of you you can be, give me a call. If we choose to work together, you will be signing up for a world of surprises and a hell of a lot of fun. Novato/Marin Cty, CA 94945 - (415) 899 1032 - (415) 302 5922 “Our sessions with Steve were the watershed turning point of our lives” ~ Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks. Steve Sisgold is one of the best facilitators of change I know” ~ Kenny Loggins. “I found my ‘missing link’ in my sessions with Steve” ~ Magot Anand. Individuals and couples welcome. Certified in BCT and Relationship work Results guaranteed! Southern California Area & Virtually Anywhere - (949) 342-4569 Advisor to Exceptional Leaders, Group Facilitator, Re-Invention Master Anney is a master of creativity, intuition, and manifestion. She gently but firmly guides business and entrepreneurial leaders through transitions in life, business and consciousness. She blends her extensive business and life skills with her passion, using strategic and practical tools to help people get their creative projects and businesses out into the world. Anney is highly skilled at helping to bring into light the rich creative essence every individual has within them, and her direct and integrated approach ignites quick transformation. Working with Anney, as reflected by many clients and peers, is “where the rubber meets the road.” As Gay Hendricks says, “If you want to get something done, Anney’s your gal.” She recently co-authored the book Beyond Ego giving her framework on how to be a conscious leader while getting things done. If you are ready to up your game, access your creative genius, and get it out into the world, contact her. Anney and her husband, Brett, live in Orange County with their daughter and their furry children (pets). Southern California Area and Phone/Skype Anywhere - (949) 274-9741 Life and Relationship Guide Brett Smith is a lover of learning and of inspiring expansion in others. He loves to utilize his humor when guiding his clients through emotional and sometimes uncomfortable growth. As a coach, he likes to draw on the most difficult parts of his life and the calm he found in the center of each of them to show people how there is a possibility of beauty and joy in our darkest times. Through working with the Hendricks Institute, Brett has discovered a deeper, and more profound way of living; one in which he loves the parts of himself he used to dislike; one where he enjoys powerful connection with his wife and daughter, and plays at growing and deepening those connections. Brett’s Transformational Magic Power stems from his actually living through those things he coaches people on. The value of working with someone who has truly ‘been there’ cannot be over-emphasized and learning to love where you are and where you have been becomes exponentially easier when you can laugh about it. Brett thrives on working with men and women individually and with couples when in partnership with his wife and co-founder of The Smith Connection, Anney Smith. Self Esteem and Relationship Coach – For those who lack confidence, are unable to realize their dreams, or feel unworthy – For those who feel stuck in relationship patterns – at work or at home – For those wanting to live a life they love Sessions with me are full of discovery, play, and movement. As a yoga instructor and meditation practitioner for over 20 years, consciousness, movement, and body-wisdom are my passions. In a welcoming and loving atmosphere, I support you in becoming the person you want to be. I help you to unearth and unlock the habits that keep you stuck and teach you tools to shift into new patterns of creativity, joy and aliveness. You’ll gain increased clarity about your vision and create simple action steps towards manifesting your goals. “I am convinced that in just one meeting with Robyn, I gained more insight than I would have from years of therapy! Her gentle, clear guidance helped me see issues I’ve been struggling with for years through a completely new lens. Earth-shattering approach.” – Nicole, mother and business owner Julia Snyder, MA, CPT Love Your Body! Today, it brings me great joy and delight to be your ally, as we place your wellness into the spotlight! As your wellness coach, I will assist you in connecting the dots between who you are now, who you want to be, and to take incremental weekly steps that will enable you to succeed in reaching your goals in a fulfilling…enjoyable…and perhaps even playful manner. We’ll befriend your body’s intelligence along the way adding to your insight, effectiveness and ALIVENESS! Working as a team, we’ll keep your motivation high, as we’ll transform any obstacles you encounter into stepping stones. We will “use it all” to your advantage, in support of your upliftment, growth and learning! Let’s get started! Call me for your free introductory session. “ Julia is an incredible listener, with a unique ability to discern what is heartfelt and meaningful. She has an ear for “ah-ha moments.” Her compassionate and uplifting spirit brought joy into each of our sessions. I have already accomplished my first set of goals with her methods….” —Michelle Sain, Realtor Sex for YOUR Body I am an advocate for women’s sexual fulfillment. My work challenges long-standing misconceptions about women’s bodies and offers a revolutionary sexual framework that inspires and ignites women—and brings everyone more fulfillment. I am a Stanford-educated writer, certified Sex Coach, and emerging authority in women’s sex and sexuality. I have helped thousands of people reclaim sexual passion and connection. San Clemente, CA - (801) 319-3035 Breakthrough Alchemist and Business Mentor Christopher works powerfully with clients committed to creating transformational results in their personal lives and leadership roles. He doesn’t pull any punches. If something isn’t working, he works directly with you to uncover the core issue and resolve it using proven, conscious processes. Christopher positively impacts: • Overall productivity of a leader’s time & energy • Creative flow in personal and team relationships • Core conflicts quickly and effectively resolved • Adaptability for authentic & sustainable innovation Christopher is a certified Hendricks Institute coach and a successful business owner. He has trained and worked alongside some of the world’s most respected leaders for more than a decade. Gina M. Velez Global, residing in Capitola, CA - +1.831.688.0822 or +1.831.325.1711 Inspirational Relationship and Business Coach You’ll come to me when you want to know how good your life can really get! As a Certified Relationship and Life expert, I’ve led singles, couples and groups towards living healthier, richer, fuller lives beyond fear. I’ve witnessed life-changing transformations (including my own). I’ve helped hundreds of couples THRIVE! I guide my clients to envision new pathways by integrating the concept of play. I’m also a Scleroderma survivor and an inspirational speaker for the Arthritis Foundation. As a veteran business owner and engineering consultant I’ve designed and manufactured thousands of electronic products into the global market. If you’re interested in branding new products or tightening any corporate loop holes then let’s talk!I’ve been studying; and applying Hendricks Institutes teachings since 2006 and it has been the most profound tool for change. Enneagram, Gestalt, GTD Method and other proficiencies have increased my reservoir of knowledge. Visions of Success’ agents excellence, tailored towards inherent wholeness and firsthand mastery. “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined” -Henry David Thoreau I’m here to be a catalyst for you to discover what truly motivates you and to recognize what you want most deeply and to experience the journey there as easy and fun. The needs and wants within you are easily reachable when you get out of your own way and tap into the deep reservoir of essence, creativity and wisdom inside: My coaching creates a roadmap that allows you to be more effective in your life, business and relationships. My method is intuitive, playful yet direct, I listen generously, and offer techniques and practices and that you can use in real life. I coach people and groups to experience themselves as empowered individuals using skills to provide creative, practical & fun solutions to increase emotional and body intelligence. Let’s dream up a plan for your most amazing year ever and put it in to action! I’ve been working with Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks since 2006, and am a graduate of the LAT program and a certified conscious living coach. I also hold a Ph.D from the University of Cambridge, UK. Nancy Thiel Voogd Are you feeling stuck in your creative process? Wondering what it is that you want to do? Curious about how you can bring joy to your everyday life? Come play with me and we’ll explore, using the exquisite wisdom of your body and my ability to sensitively listen and reflect back to you what I’m seeing in a way that you can hear and feel your power, your beauty, the gifts that you bring to the world that you’re not even really aware of. You can also take advantage of Triple Spiral Labyrinth that I use at my home in the Santa Cruz Mountains in tandem with the body wisdom tools I’ve learned from Katie and Gay Hendricks. In-person coaching with me and the labyrinth is a powerful way to unwind old stories (I’m not good enough, nobody loves me, everybody leaves me), and invent new stories (the sky’s the limit here in terms of inventing new stories) in a profoundly impactful, yet seemingly simple and easy way. Santa Monica, CA - (612) 360-3184 Possibility Guide (Individuals/Couples/Teams) Chad is an intuitive, inspiring and playful body-wisdom life coach who assists individuals, couples, children and teams in creating and experiencing greater vibrance, abundance and ease in their lives. Utilizing his heartfelt curiosity, sensitive listening and intuitive skills as well as his Hendricks and Acting training, Chad creates a space that fosters learning and growing while enjoying great fun.

Hello everyone. Welcome back to my channel. My name is Zachary and I have a special guest today. I always get questions about the Politecnico di Milano fashion program on Instagram and Facebook. And today, I actually have a fashion designer , actually on the show itself. Bryan, would you like to briefly introduce yourself? What inspired you? Of course…what motivates me. Wow. Hi, my name is Brian Bachman. I am from Chile. I'm 25 years old and I'm doing a double degree at Politecnico for a master's degree in Fashion Systems Design. Undergraduate courses are a little different, but I'll be happy to answer all your questions. So first, if you want to follow me, follow me on Instagram @Designerboy420 and TikTok. Any questions please dm. Also, follow Bryan on Instagram. what is your @? I'll put it in the description box. My @ is my name. Brian Bachman. He'll put it here so you can search for me. Also, my online link is in my Instagram and description. So you will find me. I hope so… DM me. Follow this person to private message him, follow him. Check out his beautiful fashion designs. Now I'm going to give Brian the floor so he can explain to you the portfolio he has applied to Politecnico. And some new things he's doing now. OK Welcome to my column. So first of all , what you need to know about the portfolio is that you don't actually need to apply for the MS in Fashion Systems Design like a fashion portfolio because he is a multidisciplinary master. So I have classmates who study environmental design, interior design, engineering, and I also have a lot of fashion design and fashion design students, and I have studied Politecnico before. So essentially a mixin class. But yes, this is the first thing you need to know. You don't need a fashion item in your portfolio to apply for Politecnico or possibly one. I think one so they can see and maybe one you can do what you have. I only have it in this portfolio and I think a fashion depend is actually more of a more theoretical fashion item. So I'll tell you later. Well, first of all, I put the projects I did at the University of Chile in the interaction that I studied in Chile until the design I studied was more like service design or integration design. We understand these methods and apply them to different design projects. So every project is different. But it has methods like these and design methodology. So we have data visualization projects and information design projects. As you can see, participation is also a tragedy in Chile for children and education. with different communities as well as brand identity projects. And I post a lot and not a lot… but since you have I think we have a page limit. This way you can show. So I also put some editing items I know about, maybe you'll align with the guru or what they're looking for. Well, I also think the last item I put into the portfolio is because they remember the first thing they want to see, and the last thing in the middle is more of a filler. So it gives a sense of what you are doing. So the real breadth, if you really wanted to show it, it would be in the first and last , and the last four units are my fashion projects , it's a collection of three clothes, and the democratization that sparked about childhood. So this is really a non-binary clothing item. But I did it because I did it during the pandemic, and I'm at home. So we, we, we, we did, um, we were allowed to sew things, but so I just did sketches, but in that project, because this project was more of a survey or research theory theory project, I think it was . OK And then there is, well, in general, my portfolio is about whatever they do from the various projects, but each project has a point of view that I also like to apply in fashion. So, so I think that's what I really want and really want to show is my point of view. The design world is not only in the fashion world. The things I don't like are there. Do you have? How do you say they read the first page? how to do it. Looks like the original. Page? Introduction page. Yes, I mean, it's not me. I don't like it, but I need to turn it down a bit , because I mean, maybe it's turned down for you, but it's kind of crazy for me right now. Maybe, I don't know, make it more minimalistic , because the important thing is to show the product. But I think if you look at the other pages, it's really minimalist , there's not a lot of stuff, because I really want to show the images there and then on the project itself. So don't overdo the graphics because I don't think they care too much about that. If you are applying for the Master of Graphic Design Graphic Design course, I think this will be more important. But it's also important to have a nice portfolio. And the stuff in there is like some projects that I'm really not passionate about anymore , I'm going to put other projects more into fashion-related projects. But actually I don't really like it. I think that's enough to get in. So I think it works for the project. The project I've done because I've done it for a semester, I'm in the second semester of the first year, the first semester We have this course, it's a fashion design studio. We developed this program in our studio. It's about a collaboration between what they call Sleep Brand , like it was a really successful brand, maybe in the 60s, 70s, longer now, or it wasn't very popular. So you have to choose a collaboration for that brand too. We make it boring, it could be an existing fashion brand saying I'm the only band and ours this. It's really good because it's really free and you can choose whatever you want. So I started by picking the group task I liked to be choosing a designer. They have a list of designers and people on the list of designers. If you have to choose a brand or designer, you want to work with a team of five, six or seven. Then I thought you would look into your research on this designer. When you have it, it features what makes them special, and then you let everyone do their own collaboration. So it's actually a very personal piece, and I really like it because I think it's really like a personal project. So cooperate. So, our brand of choice is Rudi Gernreich , he's really something from the 60's and 70's, he created monokini and it caught on. It's a big part of the plaid pattern, and, like, a full bodysuit with a knitted sweater. So I applied all these design elements in my collaboration with New York , and I really liked Björk as a musician, as an artist, and I found her to be really inspiring. I also really like her aesthetic, her point of view. I think that's my point of view as well, like I've experienced the experimental approach to fashion. These are also like human and non-human things. So I really like it. Basically, we have to make something like a capsule collection, and depending on the collaboration is the number of sketches you have to make. I drew, uh, 15 sketches, I think. Let me count 15, 15 sketches, we, you have to pick a sketch, a sketch that you do with the professor, and then you're going to develop it in the lab. Well, Politecnico has these, well, huge labs. It also has three labs, uh, we need to cut where we all know. So you really know you can really do whatever you want out there. And there are a lot of similar textile print shops around campus, so you can actually make all your collections for us there, and then for us back to the project you have to go, you have to make a prototype and then develop that prototype A complete garment , a video book about the brand, then the Reborn brand and a photo. So it's a very complete project with a lot to explore, learn and apply. All, all, all you know, all you know, all you learn. You can apply it to this project. Well, the materials I use in these projects, well, the materials I used in the knitting lab one night. So I learned how to use a knitting machine, and I knitted a full body onesie out of merino wool. I can also wear a wool garment, but it's like a fabric made of wool. It's not like and it's not like you 've achieved the cover thread of the fabric. I print on that fabric, a pattern I designed. Basically that's it. Also, I crocheted a ski mask out of wool , a balaclava, uh, a lot of people need to wear it. I really like braiding word uh, mixing it with other things. So uh, that 's the main material I use in the project. It's going to be a bit pricey because you have to do everything yourself. Animals and materials are fabrics and materials are a bit expensive , as opposed to my country, so yeah, when you come here, they think you have to have some money to put into your project. But there's something special about this project that is me, my roommate met us, we were friends , and we came here together, uh, we, he used to be a model for all projects in Chile. Uh, he's not an official model, but I think he showed, uh, so it was really nice to do this project with him. He's the model I measure for him , basically the outfit for his clothes, and we have the ability to shoot a er book and studio in Milan. There are many studios in Milan, as well as many in the universities on campus. You're going to have a huge, huge, huge, uh, photography studio. Well, you can take all the photos and videos , I booked another studio because the one on campus was booked, everyone was booked for exams and exam week, everything was booked. So you have to keep that in mind. Well, if you want to use the, the, and photography lab, I think that's what they call it. I remember , yes. If you have any other questions about my portfolio or my experiences , you can add me. I will be more than happy to answer all your questions. OK Thank you, Brian, for this. I want to ask you some of my dream questions about fashion projects. Only a few can get an idea, so we're going to ask some questions that I've been getting from you guys. So the first question I get from a lot of future fashion students is whether the technology is more experimental or more technical. Or definitely technical, I think the first project I'm talking about is kind of experimental because you can do whatever you want. Then everything is technical from there. They look at your prototype. You have to do three prototypes until they're satisfied, well, so I think it's really technical and really professional experience. Like it has to be good. They see this, so it has to be good. Everything has to be perfect. And then the next question I keep getting is about how much time you spend on projects, is it something you do in class, you're not there, or are you always in the studio or always at home. all the time? It's a slow process at first because you say, well, it's just a dress, and then I don't really need to do that much, I'll have time. But when you realize you have to do the book, you have to bring the book, you have to take pictures, you have to take videos. Well, you actually have to finish the dress. For me, knitting takes a lot of time, well, learning how to use a machine. So I think I've been in the lab for the past two months , almost every day I can. Our next question is, before you came to Polytechnic, did you have a background in sewing? Do you have to have sewing experience before you can participate in this program? Well, I have no experience. I sew things. You are sewing something. No, sell stuff. Does self-study pay off? So what is Spanish? OK So with. Self-study, self-study. idea. Well, I forgot to pronounce it. Sorry. language disability . Yes, I am self taught. So I watch how-to-sew videos on YouTube, but it's really an experience, so. But I really, really recommend learning how to sew , how to make patterns before coming here. And because they don't spend much time teaching you. They want you to do this project. So I mean, they sure, well, they're helpful if you're really not that good , and if you're not from fashion , they certainly don't expect them to be perfect. Perfect I don't know anything about sewing, But well, yes, it's really useful to learn and read about it. Well yes, I always learn from YouTube sewing so you can do it. The last question I and I keep getting is that this is also a question I have about industrial design. are you gay? Do you think fashion design school is worth it so far? Wow. Well, I think so. Like every job you search for, they, they ask you about your job is worth it . No, I'm sorry again, I think it's really worth it because the fashion industry, they always ask about your degree, a lot of us are doing masters here, like I think a graduate degree isn't enough for a job maybe in Here all the jobs I've seen on Linkedin, they're asking to have a guru like that and a background in fashion, but I think if you have a guru that can help you, I'd say if you're from a different country , you're in a different country experience. OK, I think this is helpful. I haven't found a job yet because I don't have time to look for a job , but the good thing about this program is that you have an internship so you actually have a semester now you can do an internship, my friend said it's not hard to find. So I hope if that's true, I'll let you , and I'll keep in touch with you. perfect. perfect. And, well, I guess that's all our problems. Thank you so much for watching my video. I am truely thankful. I can subscribe to my YouTube channel. This shows that you guys like the videos I post. I really try to do something that helps people, especially the designers who come to Milan. Follow Bryan on his Instagram to see his amazing portfolio and all the different projects he's done. Also follow me on my Instagram and TikTok so you can see the different projects I'm working on. Well, I didn't think about it. You should have a TikTok. You have, I think. Well, until next time, maybe you will see our collaboration. Oh yeah. Maybe…surprise…surprise. New York's next big fashion brand. OK All right, you guys, we'll be talking to you soon. see you….

Despite the onslaught of anti-LGBTQ+ bills that flooded state legislatures in 2022, less than 10% actually became law. A recent report from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) found that only 29 of the 315 anti-LGBTQ+ bills proposed last year passed. The report also noted that 24 pro-equality bills became law in 2022. It also found, unsurprisingly, that trans and non-binary people (mostly youth) were the most targeted group, with 149 bills aimed at this community. 17 bills targeting trans youth passed into law last year, HRC noted. Another trend was “Don’t Say Gay” bills, with 70 filed and seven becoming law to restrict discussion of LGBTQ+ and other marginalized communities in the classroom. While HRC celebrated the great news that LGBTQ+ activists fighting these bills have been largely successful, HRC pointed out the devastating effects that even one anti-LGBTQ+ law can have, in addition to the mental health effects LGBTQ+ people experience by the mere proposal of so many hateful bills. “These bills are terrible public policy, and we are also deeply cognizant of how every harmful anti-LGBTQ+ bill that is signed into law has a devastating impact on the lives and well-being of LGBTQ+ people, particularly children,” said Human Rights Campaign Senior Vice President of Policy and Political Affairs JoDee Winterhof. “The legislative assault and hateful rhetoric towards our community has also led to more stigma, discrimination, and ultimately, suicide and deadly violence – particularly against the transgender community. As we continue our fight for LGBTQ+ equality, this report underscores that equality is the winning side of this issue.” “Despite the increasing number of bills filed nationwide, advocates and activists on the ground were able to beat back the majority of this legislation,” added Fran Hutchins, Executive Director of the Equality Federation Institute, in a statement. “We know the mere introduction and discussion of these bills further fuels anti-LGBTQ+ stigma nationwide, resulting in violence against our community. It’s more important than ever to focus our attention on protecting LGBTQ+ people in the states, where the work is hard, but the impact is great.” The report also called out Alabama for passing “the most anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-transgender legislation in recent history. ” At the tail end of its legislative session, the Alabama legislature passed a series of anti-LGBTQ+ policies, including criminalizing parents who provide gender-affirming care for their kids. Despite their many losses in 2022, Republicans haven’t shown any signs of slowing down their vendetta against LGBTQ+ people. So far this year, more than 100 bills have been introduced in at least 25 states by Republican lawmakers to restrict trans rights, from sports and bathroom bans to hormone therapy restrictions and fines for “misusing” pronouns. Lawmakers are also broadening proposed bans beyond trans youth. In Oklahoma, a new bill seeks to bar all gender-affirming care for individuals up to 26 years old. The bill targets healthcare providers and says anyone who violates the rule could face felony charges and have their medical license revoked. In North Dakota this month, a Republican lawmaker introduced legislation that would fine people $1500 for using pronouns that differed from a person’s biological sex. That bill was rejected by the state’s senate judiciary committee.

10 resources and communities for queer, trans and non-binary creatives The endurance, community and value of queer, trans and non-binary people in the creative industry is stronger and more impactful than ever. With that in mind, we’re sharing 10 resources for LGBTQIA+ people, all with an underlying theme of creativity. Whether you’re looking for inspiration in archives and zine fairs, moral support from meet-ups, or simply wanting to learn more about ‘herstory’ beyond Drag Race and Stonewall – we hope there’s something in here for you. Since 2016, Queercircle have aimed to create opportunities for the public to access and engage with LGBTQIA+ arts and culture. Alongside ‘in conversation’ interviews with artists such as Bones Tan Jones and Adham Faramawy, their website also have a ‘toolbox’ of interesting articles and resources, including our very own Opportunities Board! They’ve also recently opened a physical space in North Greenwich. Established in 2019, Lesley Magazine has been helping queer and trans womxn and non-binary people across the UK stay up to date on must-know topics within the community. The zine is constantly posting events, opportunities and general promotions on their Instagram, including open calls for other zines, and grants to help queer creatives of colour expand their practice. Lex is an app where queer women, non-binary people and trans men can write newspaper-style personals looking for friends, dates and community. However, it can also be used to connect with other queer creatives around the world. You’ll find everything from photography and art models searches to zine open calls – just write a personal, and chances are there’ll be at least one person who’s also interested in your creative endeavours. Grrrl Zine Fair Founder Lu Williams has been running their feminist library and zine club for over half a decade, and has even made their own zine, Grrrl in Print, documenting feminist zine makers from the collection. Having been put on hold since lockdown, they’ve now re-started their tours and clubs, with new dates to be announced soon. Black and Gay, Back in the Day Newly-created by journalist Jason Okundaye and activist Marc Thompson, this Instagram page delves into the history of Black queer people, from the 1950s to today. Have a browse while listening to their companion playlists on Spotify, including a re-worked playlist of the soundtrack to television drama, It’s a Sin. Other queer-focused archives on Instagram worth a look at include @takweer_, @lesbian.archives and @glitter_archives. Pride of Arabia Pride of Arabia is a social support network and platform centring LGBTQI+, South West Asian and North African people, migrants and POC who are navigating their identities and finding community. While not strictly arts-based, they recently held their own performance event at the Southbank Centre and are about to release their own design manifesto. Be sure to also check out the plethora of resources on their site, including a free library with a section dedicated to design. We Exist London We Exist is an organisation that wants to provide more spaces for trans people to take up space throughout London with their work and ideas, as well as discussing issues affecting the community. In the past, they’ve given over 40 trans and non-binary artists studio space in collaboration with the Koppel Project, and are also set to release their own self-titled book about self expression. The Outside Project As well as having a 24/7 shelter for homeless and houseless queer people, and a refuge for queer people facing domestic abuse, the Outside Project have run a community centre in Clerkenwell for the past two years. In that time, they have become home to many community groups and creative projects. They also hold their own coffee morning, Cafe Queero, in Bermondsey, for queer people aged 16+ who are facing or have faced homelessness. Queer Youth Art Collective Founded by artist Fredde Lanka and art therapist Susy Langsdale, Queer Youth Art Collective is a youth group for LGBTQIA+ 18 to 26 year olds with a common interest in the arts. Having been online-only since the pandemic started, they’re returning to in-person events every Sunday alongside their URL sessions, with their autumn term starting on 5th September. Liverpool-based organisation Homotopia have held the UK’s longest running LGBTQIA arts and culture festival since their establishment in 2004, with John Waters and Jinkx Monsoon on the bills in previous years. Currently, they’re holding an event that they call ‘Liverpool’s Queer Summer’, with exhibitions and events going on throughout August, and a queer creative meet-up being held every third Thursday of the month. Please note that this isn’t an exhaustive list of resources for LGBTQIA+ creatives. We recommend looking at Stonewall’s “What’s In My Area?” directory, as well as their list of QTIPOC-focused organisations and organisations for LGBTQIA+ people with disabilities for more support. Written by Lyla Johnston

Deray, Brittany, Clint, and Sam discuss Puerto Rico’s indefinitely delayed financial relief, environmental effects of urban living, genetic mutations worth testing for, and the LAPD’s use of undue force against the homeless. DeRay talks to Alphonso David, who is the first person of color to lead the Human Rights Campaign. LAist: One in Three Times The LAPD Used Force In 2018 It Involved A Homeless Person Newsweek: Puerto Rico’s Access to Billions in Disaster Aid Continues to be Delayed The New York Times: Beyoncé’s Dad Has a Mutation More African-Americans Should Be Tested For E360: Can We Turn Down the Temperature on Urban Heat Islands? Brittany: So we might not agree on everything, but I think we can agree that we could all use better sleep. Listen after last week and getting married (exhilarating time, but you definitely do not get any sleep that week, I’m still trying to catch up), getting a great night’s sleep is easier than ever. Thanks to the world’s softest sheets brought to you by Boll & Branch. Everything Boll & Branch makes is designed with your comfort in mind. From their 100% organic cotton, sSignature soft sheets, sheets would start out luxuriously soft and get even softer over time, to their cozy throws and their plush towels. DeRay: Boll & Branch products have thousands of five star reviews. Our sheets are even loved by three U.S. presidents. With Boll & Branch, you can feel good about your good night’s sleep because people are at the heart of everything they do. From the farmers who grow their organic cotton to the people who sleep on their sheets at night, they want you to love your purchase so they offer no risk, 30 day trial and free shipping, but I doubt that you’ll want to send them back because once you sleep on their sheets, you’ll never want to sleep on anything else! Brittany: To get you started right now, our listeners get $50 off [00:01:00] your first set of sheets at bollandbranch.com, promo code PEOPLE. Go to bollandbranch.com today for $50 off your first set of sheets. That’s B O L L and branch.com, promo code PEOPLE. Bollandbranch.com, promo code PEOPLE. DeRay: Hey, this is DeRay and welcome to Pod Save the People. On this episode. We’re joined by Alfonzo David, the first person of color to lead the human rights campaign. Alfonzo: The work of the human rights campaign is to achieve full equality for LGBTQ people. We want to make sure that LGBT people are treated equally in all facets of their lives. DeRay: And then it’s me, Brittany, Clint, and Sam with the news. Brittany is married y’all, Brittany Packnett Cunningham on the episode. Let’s go. Brittany: Hey y’all. It’s the news. This is Brittany Packnett Cunningham, @MsPackYeti on all social media. Sam: and this is [00:02:00] Sam Sinyangwe @SamsWey on Twitter. Clint: And this is Clint Smith @clintsmithiii, aka best singer at acapella at Brittney’s wedding. DeRay: This is DeRay at D R A Y on Twitter. Brittany got married, Brittany got married, Brittany got married – Clint: Brittany got married. What a wedding. Brittan: I did! Oh my gosh. It was so amazing to have you all there. Pod Save the Bride was in full effect. If you all didn’t know, obviously, you know, I got married, but I got married in new Orleans, Louisiana, which is mine and my now husband, Reggie’s favorite city at our favorite place, studio B, which is an incredible warehouse full of black art and poetry and history. And, uh, it is not a traditional wedding venue. So we had to basically invent that thing from scratch. We had to bring in carpet and air conditioning, and sound system and we had a little snafu with the song on the first dance. But, um, [00:03:00] our incredible village as Clint was referring to, was ready to be there and to pick up the Slack. So we’re actually waiting on the official footage of it so that we can share it with people. Cause it was like such a magical moment that as cell phone video will just not suffice. But we were serenaded to by 200 folks for our first dance and I couldn’t have imagined anything better. It was the best day ever, ever, ever. Clint: It was really one of the best things that I’ve, I’ve seen at a wedding. We are at the age where we’re kind of like in perpetual wedding season. And I go to a lot of these now and the vast majority of them are wonderful and lovely. And, but this was like, ‘cause everybody was looking at the DJ and we were like, “Is this a dramatic pause? What’s going on?” And then — Brittany: People thought it might’ve been planned and I was like, no, this is very not planned. Clint: And then. I don’t remember who started it, but it was just, it just turned into this incredible, incredible moment, like the whole song, like start to finish. Everybody hitting every note, every melody, every ad lib. And I was just like, Man, I love us. Like that was [00:04:00] cause at some, at another wedding, people would have been stressed. You’d have had — Brittany: And the fault was my own. Like I sent the DJ a really long email and our DJ was incredible (shout out to DJ Rockaway) and then this very long email I sent him about the vibe you wanted to create, I completely forgot to put in the name of the PJ Morton song, “No Ordinary Love,” that we had originally picked, but the song that our village picked for us and started singing instead is actually the first song I ever sang to Reggie at karaoke. So it ended up having significant meaning, and nobody knew. It was perfect. Clint: And the song was SWV’s “Week,” which if you’re not a 90s RnB head, you should listen to. I’ve been listening to that song on repeat for the last week. Brittany: So has my mom! Clint: A lot of good memories. Brittany: It was an absolutely magnificent day. So grateful to everybody who made it out. Everybody who sent a warm wish, a congratulations, we are full up on love and feeling overwhelmed by it all in the best way possible, so yeah, it was a great weekend. RnB Sunday was definitely a success. Clint: And we should say Brittany’s wedding was incredible, [00:05:00] but there was a loss last week, we lost a representative Elijah Cummings, who in a moment where our politics can feel a cynical and fractured and continue to feel like it always lets us down. This is a, a man who was a son of sharecroppers, who had this remarkable interview. He did with 60 Minutes, Where he talked about how he got sworn in, uh, in the halls of Congress, and his father was like, “isn’t this the place that slaves built?” And he was like, “yes, sir.” “isn’t this the place where they used to call us three fifths of a man?” He said, “Yes, sir.” “Isn’t this the place where they used to call us chattel?” He said, “Yes, sir.” And they talked about how seeing his son being sworn into Congress was this incredible reminder of what could have been possible, had state-sanctioned apartheid in this country, not held him and millions of others back. And, um, he’s a giant and we lost him too soon. Age 68. Um, so thinking of his family at this time, can’t imagine what they’re experiencing. [00:06:00] DeRay: Cummings is my Congressman. He has been a Congressman almost as long as I’ve been alive. He’s been in Congress for 23 years. We all grew up knowing Elijah Cummins. The name, the person, and it’s important to remember, you know, I am reminded that his legacy is much deeper than holding Trump accountable.But thank God he did that until his last breath, as his wife said. But he did so much for the city of Baltimore that he was actively involved in city politics. He was present. He was around, you know, he was elected in 1996 special election. And then he won every election thereafter. And he was just, he was president, you know, he was not just a Congressman who phoned it in Baltimore. And you know, in Baltimore, he actually represented a little bit of the city and a little bit of the county. So it’s a sort of interesting swath of people that he represented and he did it well. It’s a big loss. And remember: Cummings was young, you know, 68 is young. So I hope that the rest of that [00:07:00] generation can live long lives and full lives. And he definitely lived a full life. Clint: So for my news, I want to talk about an important piece that was written in the New York times by Erika Stallings, who is a lawyer and a breast cancer gene awareness advocate. And she writes about how Matthew Knowles who’s the father of Beyonce and Solange, as we all know, recently announced that he had been told he has breast cancer caused by the BRCA-2 gene mutation, and that is children as a result have a 50% chance of inheriting it. So BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 are gene mutations that can elevate a carrier’s lifetime risk of developing breast cancer up to 72% compared to a 12% lifetime risk among the general population. And they can also elevate a carriers lifetime risk of ovarian, pancreatic. Or prostate cancer along with melanoma. Although he had a family history of breast cancer, Mr. Knowles had never been referred to genetic counseling or testing to evaluate his risk of a BRCA mutation. And I bring [00:08:00] this up, not because it’s Beyonce, his father, but because it provides us with an opportunity to talk about something that’s way too common with black Americans and specifically black women. So black women are substantially less likely to undergo genetic counseling and testing for BRCA mutations as compared to white women, even though research suggests that the rate of BRCA mutations is higher among black women than it is for white women. Researchers at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Florida found that among young breast cancer patients who met the national guidelines for receiving genetic counseling, only 37% of black women had discussed it with the provider, compared to. 86% of white women and just 36% of black women receive testing for BRCA compared to 65% of white women. Another study showed that only 58% of black women who were eligible for genetic testing under the national guidelines receive testing as part of their routine care. Although there haven’t been many studies published with regard to BRCA men, there was a 2016 report that found that among men diagnosed with [00:09:00] prostate cancer, black men may be more likely to have had the BRCA- 1 or -2 gene mutations than their white counterparts. And this is personal to the author who was 29 years old when she was tested and discovered that her mother had passed down a BRCA-2 mutation to her and, as a result, she made the difficult decision to have a preventative double mastectomy, which shrink her risk of developing breast cancer from 80% to less than 5%. And a famous example of this, I think is Angelina Jolie, who made a similar decision when she realized that she was carrying a gene that put her at high risk for breast cancer. And even if a person decides not to get a double mastectomy or do what the author has done, there are MRIs and mammograms that you can get every six months that can help detect cancer at an early stage when it’s more treatable. If black women and men aren’t receiving genetic testing, they’re potentially missing out on the chance to catch breast cancer early on, which is crucial because this is when you have a higher rate of survival as compared to later on. And so, you know, it’s personal for the author. [00:10:00] And it is personal for me. I have several women in my family who have been diagnosed with breast cancer, and this is something that is relevant to an enormous number of people. Brittany: So being a woman in a family where women have a history of breast cancer, this one really strikes home.My maternal grandmother, my grandmother, Sharlene, passed away of breast cancer when I was just a baby. Um, my mom’s sister has So battled breast cancer twice. Reggie’s mom is a two time survivor of breast cancer. Um, and so knowing that we are now talking about and thinking about having children one day, we’ve of course been having a conversation about genetic testing so that we can go into this with eyes wide open as much as possible. What we’ve also been talking about — our family histories and knowing that breast cancer has. Significant occurrence in both of our families is something that we’re thinking a great deal about, both in terms of the children that we hope to have and the lives that we hope to lead lives [00:11:00] that are hopefully as healthy and as long as possible. I learned how to do a breast self-examination a long time ago. My mother wanted to make sure that I knew how to do that, that it was something that was in my repertoire and that even before doctors were telling me I needed to do it, that I knew how to do it for myself, that I knew how to raise my arm in the shower and get that done. And I knew what to look out for if I needed to follow up with a doctor. Um, we plan on pursuing genetic testing when things slow down a bit so that we can get this information. But it is significant here, as you shared Clint, um, to remember that breast cancer doesn’t just occur in women, but that it occurs in men, as well. And when we think about the history of black people in the medical profession and all of the ways in which our bodies have been tested and experimented on without our permission, we think of the story of people like Henrietta Lacks, who has literally helped. Save the entire world and only got credit for that as of late in the last few years, because the story was finally written about the ways in which things from her body were used, um, without her [00:12:00] knowledge to create life-saving medicines for other people. And when we think about the history of black men being injected with syphilis and not knowing, uh, so that scientists could test the effects of STIs on the human body. When we think about this history, we have to understand why so many black people in particular, especially of a certain generation, are hesitant to walk into a doctor’s office and to ask for testing voluntarily, let alone to have a relationship with doctors. And then you add all of those barriers to access and the various obstacles that people face with not having strong enough health insurance. We know for a fact that black women and black men are not being tested nearly enough for the things that can take our lives. So Clint, I’m glad that you brought this up, and not only as a woman in a family full of survivors, but as a black person who wants to see us live our best lives. DeRay: So Clint, happy you, uh, have you brought that up? So one of the things that I didn’t know before you brought this up is that men diagnosed with breast cancer have a [00:13:00] worse survival rate, and they actually don’t know why. So this is actually a reminder that they need to be more studies about breast cancer as it manifests in men that they’ve not been enough. So people know that there’s a worse survival rate. But. Unclear why. The other thing is that the average age of diagnosis for men is much later. So the average age of diagnosis for men is around 64 a and about 51% of the diagnoses occur between the ages of 50 and 69. Only 15% of men get a diagnosis before the age of 50 so much older. And again, the research is not really clear on why some of the researchers. It’s sort of suggesting that it’s because men, as we all talked about, don’t get tested until late. It’s also that the research is really unclear about how to scale testing in so many places, and it was just a reminder that until we study the gamut of people who are impacted by a host of things, our solutions will always be misapplied. And this is one of those ones where we know that breast cancer men might be [00:14:00] rare relative to women. But still present, and that there’s enough technology and enough information out there that if we plan correctly, we can actually get in front of these issues so that people can live healthy, long and full lives. DeRay: Don’t go anywhere. More Pod Save the People’s coming. Living healthy is about more than just eating right. It’s about ridding potentially harmful chemicals wherever you can from the substance detergent you use to the cloth you use to wash your face. And if this sounds a bit daunting, let me introduce you to Grove Collaborative. Grow collaborative is the online marketplace that delivers all natural home, beauty and personal care products directly to you. They take the guesswork out of going green. Every Grove product is guaranteed to be good for you, your family, your home, and the planet. So my favorites: I love mrs Meyer’s hand soap, you know, and sometimes I go to the store and can’t always find it, but I don’t have to go to the store anymore because the Grove Collaborative has it. Grove delivers all of your home essentials right to your front door and with Grove, you don’t have to shop at multiple stores because everything’s in one place. They have the best selection of natural home and personal care products, things from my house [00:15:00] for a family, for the dog, even some personal things. Brittany: Their site is so easy to use. They offer recurring shipments and they deliver everything right to your front door so you never have to worry about running out of things and having to take a sudden trip to the store. I trust Grove to only recommend the best. I love that they always have my back and they’ll have yours, too. Join half a million families who trust Grove Collaborative to make their homes happier and healthier. Plus shipping is fast and free on your first order. For a limited time, when our listeners go to grove.co/people, you will get a free, five piece fall gift set for Mrs. Myers and Grove, free shipping and a free 60-day VIP trial. For a limited time only, you can choose from bestselling fall scents like Apple Cider, Acorn Spice, Mum and Pumpkin Spice, exclusively sold at Grove. Go to grove.co/people to get this exclusive offer. Grove.co/people. Brittany: We all love to refresh our snack chores. I’m not [00:16:00] saying I have a snack drawer, but I’m not saying I don’t have a snack drawer. When was the last time you refreshed your sock drawer? If you can’t remember, it’s probably time for an upgrade. DeRay, you can’t remember, can you? Deray: I cannot. Brittany: See, look at it. Hmm. Get it together. Well, Bombas socks are made with comfort innovations like arch support, a seamless toe and a cushioned foot bed. All socks speak for super comfortable. They come in hundreds of colors and styles, making them perfect for men, women, gender nonconforming folks, and kids. I love the fact that you can buy super dope-looking socks that are also comfortable and that also have a philanthropic mission behind them. Like this checks all three of the boxes that I care about when I go shopping. Bombas has a new line of Merino wool socks that are made from soft, warm, and naturally moisture wicking, Merino wool designed with all of Bombas’ classic comfort features. DeRay: From keeping dry on your morning. Run the staying comfortable in your offices’ freezing air conditioning, Bombas socks are ready to work as hard as you do. And you know, it’s nothing worse than wearing [00:17:00] the wrong socks. When you work out, it is gross. And for every pair of socks you buy Bombas will donate a pair to someone in need. Bombas is what you daydream about. Buy your Bombas at bombas.com/people today and get 20% off of your first purchase. That’s B O M B A S.com/people for 20% off, bombas.com/people. Sam: So my news is about the LAPD. In particular, data that’s recently been made available by the LAPD on use of force shows that a third of all use of force incidents last year in 2018 by the LAPD were against folks who are homeless. This is a huge, huge number. So of the 2,146 total uses of force in 2018, 698 involved a homeless resident, and that that is actually an increase over time. So in 2017, it was about 28% of the total use of force [00:18:00] incidents involve somebody who was homeless. 2018 is 34% I wanted to talk about this because, first of all, there are few cities that actually report data in this way, that actually track whether or not the person that forces used against is homeless. And for the cities that do report it, it’s usually a pretty wild number. So just a couple of weeks ago, Dre and I were in Portland talking about issues having to do with the police union contract there and across the country, and there was a moment in that presentation where we cited data from the Portland Police Bureau website that showed that 58% of the people who Portland police used force against were homeless. The mayor didn’t even know that statistic, apparently, because he tried to push back and say that the statistic wasn’t accurate, but it turns out that that’s just on their website. But I wanted to talk about this because for cities across the country, particularly in LA and other places where we’re seeing a broader issues with a rise in homelessness, a rise in the price of [00:19:00] housin, that police use of force, police, arrests of homeless people are also on the rise, and much of this disproportionate police contact is not being tracked in cities across the country. And again, as you said DeRay, without having the data, the solutions can often be misapplied. Clint: So something I’ve been thinking about with regard to homelessness is this model called “housing first.” And it’s essentially this idea that prioritizes providing permanent housing to people experiencing homelessness and thus ending their homelessness and serving as a platform from which they can pursue the rest of the things that they need to in order to improve their quality of life. And this approach is largely guided by the idea that people need basic necessities like food and a place to live before they can deal with their substance abuse issues, before they can deal with their fines and fees from the government, before they can deal with, you know, a range of issues that are part of the ecosystem of poverty, which is not how a lot of other things that are tied to fighting homelessness or tied to getting people in [00:20:00] homes, that’s not how a lot of them work. A lot of them are conditional on drug tests, um, which people end up failing. So you know, whether it be substance abuse, whether it be a range of other issues that might prevent you from accessing some of these programs that make having a home contingent on these other factors. Housing first says, actually, it’s not contingent on anything. You get to live here and then figure out the other parts of your life, because this is a fundamental part of what it means to be a human being. And a lot of the cities that are trying this are still in the early stages, but, but I think the impulse is right. People need a place to live, and it shouldn’t be contingent on anything except for the fact that you are human, as it should be the case for health care, as should be the case for food, as should be the case for education. And so I hope to see more of that, and I hope that we continue to get more evidence about how this is working and where. DeRay: You know, it’s interesting when we think about incarceration, about 95% of the people who are incarcerated in state prisons are released back to their communities. The vast majority of people who are incarcerated at any level — federal, state, [00:21:00] local — the majority of people are released back into society. And what’s important about that is that if you believe in rehabilitation, even if you don’t believe in rehabilitation, the hard fact is that people who have been incarcerated will be your neighbors, they will be parents at the school that your kid goes to, they will be your colleagues, like people, I have served time and they will be members of society again. So when you think about the homelessness rate of people who had been incarcerated, it’s really shocking. So according to the Prison Policy Institute, people had been to prison just one time, experienced homelessness at a rate seven times higher than the general public. But people who have been incarcerated more than one time experienced homelessness 13 times higher than the general public, which is really wild. And the absence of a home means that you actually can’t really take advantage of services and people want to service first. They want to like put you into an addiction service and puts you into all these types of services, counseling, but you can’t really get [00:22:00] to counseling if you don’t have a place to sleep. You can’t adequately get to a host of things if you are always worried about like where you physically will be and especially when you’re with your family. So this made me think about the way we talk about rehabilitation or the way we talk about a re-entry to society, and what does it mean that in cities like LA or in Portland, that half of the use of force from the police is actually geared towards people who are homeless? You’ve seen this happen time and time again, that the city actually has a responsibility not only to help with housing, but not to harass people. And this shows that even in cities like LA that prides itself on having a homelessness plan, and Portland is also a city that prides itself on being really thoughtful about homelessness, part of the way that we see they’re managing the issue of homelessness is actually to harass people who are homeless. Which is not a solution. Brittany: Puerto Rico. Here on the mainland, too many of us are forgetting to talk about it. So here at Pod Save the People, we are [00:23:00] absolutely going to keep bringing it up. I do not speak Spanish, so forgive my lack of an accent because I don’t want to keep butchering it over and over again. But this time I want to take an overall look at the health and the healing of the Island. As a reminder, we here at Pod Save the People never let people forget about the historical context that leads to modern circumstances. So Puerto Rico remains a colonized island of a Latinx and Afrolatinx people who lack proper congressional representation or economic support. And it, as we have seen in the last few weeks, have had a whole lot to say about it in the streets and on social media. So two articles came out this week reminding us exactly how, after these historical choices by the U S and in the wake of two hurricanes, frankly, Puerto Rico is currently fairing. The short version is not well. This is of course to say nothing of the incredible, resilient, creative people who call it Puerto Rico home. But the economy of Puerto Rico has not only not recovered, it has been progressively getting worse. [00:24:00] So Forbes recently reported that from 2012 to 2017, Puerto Rico’s economy has been, and I quote, “plummeting like a stone,” end quote. The U S Bureau of Economic Analysis is the office that is responsible for collecting and creating the datasets that allow us to have a full picture of what’s happening in the country. But this same office has only now just begun to actually create a basic GDP analysis of Puerto Rico. Like I’m not an economist, and we definitely all know that, so there were definitely things in this report I could not understand. But here’s what I do understand. In one year, 2009 during the Great Recession, the GDP of the U.S. dropped about 1.8% and during that time, we received massive injections of government spending to prevent even more decline during that single year, But in Puerto Rico from 2012 to 2017 the island’s consumer spending dropped by an average of 1.8% year over year, which essentially means that there was much more damage, happening, more deeply, far [00:25:00] faster, and more often than the U.S. overall. And to boot, the kind of cash injections that Puerto Rico most certainly needs now following the back-to-back devastation of hurricanes, Irma and Maria, that money still has not arrived. The U.S. government has promised billions with a “B” in aid to Puerto Rico that continues to be delayed. Housing and Urban Development still has yet to indicate when it will release the funds. That is an absolute violation of the law. Congress outlined that that money has to be distributed immediately. Puerto Rico is still waiting on an $8 billion check from the U.S. government just to fix the things that were most recently broken. Still far more is owed for the things that this government has broken over generations. So I wanted to talk about it today because frankly, almost nobody else is doing it. Clint: I’m reminded of when the hurricane was happening and the economy was already in a free fall from the recession and has continued to be, people were sending out tweets and on TV and all of this saying, like how can we allow this to happen to [00:26:00] American citizens? Like, don’t forget that these are American citizens. And I think that that is important. I think it is important to remember functionally and civically that Puerto Ricans are American citizens. That is what they are. And I think there are actually a lot of people who either don’t know or forget or choose not to believe that. I’ve been thinking a lot about the ways that our sense of empathy is often contingent upon sort of arbitrary natures of birth and circumstance. And while this is something that we should care about, regardless of whether or not these are American citizens, our empathy and our desire to see the people on this island and have a better life and have all of the things that people should have to live successful, upwardly mobile lives, the same way that like whether somebody has a house should not be contingent upon whether or not they addicted to opioids, whether or not someone deserves assistance, whether or not they deserve empathy, whether or not they deserve to be mourned, and whether or not they deserve our attention should not be contingent upon an arbitrary line that was drawn in the sand. And that is in large part what countries are. [00:27:00] And I think that as we think about Syria, even now, like so many of us, forget that again, but for the arbitrary nature of birth and circumstance, any of us could have been in very different positions. And we should always remember that. DeRay: Another thing that’s going on with Puerto Rico that I think has been off of most people’s radar is that the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case about Puerto Rican oversight. The oversight board in Puerto Rico was appointed by the federal government and 2016 because of the financial crisis in Puerto Rico, that panel is responsible for restructuring about $120 billion of the debt in Puerto Rico because Puerto Rico went bankrupt. And there’s a lawsuit that was brought by one of the creditors and a labor group challenging the authority of the labor board. So there are seven members on the labor board and their legal claim is that the panel violates the U.S. constitution because they weren’t confirmed by the Senate. And it’s a huge case because if the Supreme court says that [00:28:00] the panel is not legitimate, then it has the potential to undo all the work that has happened so far to restructure the economy in Puerto Rico. So there are people on both sides who are nervous, but I wanted to bring it up because I had no clue the Supreme court was hearing in case that has a potential to really restructure the way the rebuilding is happening in Puerto Rico right now. The news reports about the case being heard in the Supreme court right now suggests that the court is going to side with keeping the board, but we will see. DeRay: My news is about an interesting study that came out and the top line is that the research found that 92% of cities that were historically redline are warmer than their neighbors. And what’s interesting is that we talk about climate change a lot, and we talked about in the pod before about the way that climate change impacts communities of color more than it impacts other communities, but this is a new study that came out and there was a researcher, Shondes, Professor Shondes, who was essentially going around and looking at cities to try and [00:29:00] map like what the heat was looking like in places, and I never thought about solutions to heat being like a whitewashing black asphalt or roof surfaces, adding more trees for shade, making sure developers vary the Heights of new buildings to increase the air flow and manage the sunlight. And then opening public air conditioned spaces are some of the findings for that. That was interesting. The work also show that places where lower income people often work also experience higher than average temperatures, which I thought was interesting. They just did a big study in Portland and Portland was one of the places where the industrial areas by Portland’s rivers are places where lower income people work and they are warmer than other places. But they’ve mapped currently 24 cities in the United States and worldwide, from Albuquerque to Hong Kong to Doha in Qatar. And the last thing I’ll say is that they looked at places like Richmond and in Richmond’s hottest areas, they found a concentration of poverty and of nine one one calls for heat related [00:30:00] illnesses. So I thought this was fascinating to bring up. I thought it was interesting from just like a proving something that people had said anecdotally, but also thinking about what solutions look like. And I had never thought about like the coloring of buildings, the way buildings cluster and building heights as being a solution around climate change. Sam: Yeah. This is wild. Like I had not connected the dots between red-lining and poverty and climate. Right? And that literally the temperature that you feel in your community has been impacted by structural racism. I mean, we talk about how nations in the global South are being impacted by climate change to a greater degree. We talk about how communities like Puerto Rico have been impacted by climate change and have been denied the resources to address it. But this is like a micro-level climate change, right? Even in the same city, you’re experiencing almost two different climates because [00:31:00] your environment has been so devoid of green space. It has been constructed in ways that are contributing to warmer temperatures. Yeah. It just blew my mind reading this. Clint: Yeah. In one respect, this is incredibly intuitive and speaks to everything that we know about climate changes that it impacts black and Brown and poor communities first and the most. I appreciated the way that we were thinking about solutions and, and something that came up in sort of adjacent reading that I did to this was thinking about what it would mean to paint urban roofs, to paint them white. And there’s some research that’s talking about how the darker the surface, the more heating there is, and that makes sense.And that fresh asphalt reflects only 4% of sunlight compared to as much as 25% for natural grassland and up to 90% for white surfaces like fresh snow. And some researchers say that you could help lower extreme temperatures by up to two or three degrees Celsius by creating lighter, land surfaces. What would it mean if we just [00:32:00] everybody painted their rooves white? You know? I mean, obviously a better solution would be like state-sanctioned solar panels and things like that. And sometimes I have these moments where I imagine what our world would look like if Jimmy Carter had stayed in office for a second term. We had this person who had solar panels on the roof and like, you know, that’s in the 80s. What would the world look like now if we had had that type of leadership when they’re things weren’t as bad as they are now. DeRay: That’s the news. Hey, you’re listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned. There’s more to come. Brittany: Did you know that Harriet Tubman was the first woman to lead a military expedition in us history? She commanded 150 black troops and freed over 750 and slave people, not the first black woman, not the first person from the South, the first woman, and there’s so much more about Harriet Tubman’s extraordinary life that every single American needs to know, needs to love and needs to learn. This fall, Focus Features is releasing Harriet based upon the thrilling and inspirational life of the [00:33:00] iconic American freedom fighter. DeRay: Starting Cynthia Erivo, Leslie Odom, Jr. and Janelle Monae — boop, boop, boop — that’s quite the cast, y’all, and directed by Casey Lemons. Harriet tells the extraordinary tale of Harriet Tubman’s escape from enslavement and her transformation into one of America’s greatest heroes. Her courage, ingenuity, and tenacity, free hundreds of enslaved people and change the course of history forever. Harriet presented by Focus Features is in theaters, November 1st, tickets on sale now at harrietfilmtickets.com. It’ll definitely be something to talk about. Definitely something that we’ll learn from. See you there. DeRay: And now my conversation with Alfonzo David, the president of the Human Rights Campaign. Affonso thanks so much for joining us today on Pod Save the People. AD: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. DeRay: Now. We met at one of the blackest events in the country, at Essence Fest not too long ago. And since then you are the president of the HRC. Can you talk about why, why the HRC? You’ve done so much [00:34:00] a lawyer, a professor, you worked in the governor’s office in New York. You could have done a host of things. Why the HRC. Well, the HRC, the Human Rights Campaign is the world’s largest civil rights organization that works on behalf of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people. And at this point in my life, and at this point in my career. I thought it was important to fight on behalf of this specific community, and particularly given where we are with the federal administration, fight for this community that has been under so much attack and make sure that we can fight a way to equality. The LGBTQ community has a history of fighting for change, and I think at this point in our culture and our history in with the federal administration, I wanted to make sure that I use my talents and my time to advance the cause [00:35:00] for justice and that this is where I thought I could spend my time and do it most usefully. DeRay: Now before I have a couple more questions about the HRC actually have more than a couple, but a couple of, just so you know, simpler. You grew up in Liberia. How has that, how has that informed your understanding of what’s possible of a racial justice, of identity, and of the politics of identity? What was that like? AD: Well, you know, I, I, you’re right. I grew up in Monrovia, Liberia, my, both my parents were born in Liberia. They came to the United States for school and had me, left when I was a year old and I grew up there for 14 years. I had a privileged existence. My father was the mayor of Monrovia, which is the capital city. My uncle was the president of Liberia, and that privileged existence exploded on April 1st, 1980 when there was a military coup and my uncle was assassinated and my father was put in prison for about 18 months. We were [00:36:00] placed under house arrest as a result, And hat experience, traumatic as it was, really informed my trajectory in life, and it informed my work. It informed my philosophy and my perspective on democracy and how important it is for us to fight for it. You know, when you grow up in the United States, and this sounds a little bit like a judgment, but when you grow up anywhere where, you know, democracy in some cases can be taken for granted, um, you don’t fully appreciate the risk of not engaging, the risk of not fully, uh, engaging in your democracy. The risk of not voting. I hope that many people at this point realize that not voting and not engaging in the electoral process has resulted in one of the worst presidents in our history, Donald Trump, and Mike Pence. And it’s certainly my personal view and the view of the Human Rights Campaign, and I believe other organizations that this federal [00:37:00] administration is effectively eroding our democracy. They have taken steps to effectively remove protections that exist from marginalized communities, and they’ve created a paradigm where we’re fighting each other when we actually should be working collectively to support our country. So my experience in Liberia furthered my viewpoint and my vision about why it’s so important for us to engage in our democracy. And as it relates to racial justice., you know, this country has been struggling with racial inequality for a very, very long time. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do within the LGBTQ community, but we also have a lot of work to do in all of our communities. DeRay: And most of you by then can know the HRC even if they don’t know the Human Rights Campaign because of the blue sticker with the yellow quality side. How do you describe the priorities or the work to people both in the [00:38:00] community, in the LGBTQ+ space, or people who want to be allies? Like what is the work? AD: The top line is the work of the Human Rights Campaign is to achieve full equality for LGBTQ people. That means equality in employment, equality in housing, equality in credit, equality in education, equality in public spaces. We want to make sure that LGBT people are treated equally in all facets of their lives. That’s the goal of the Human Rights Campaign. How do we do that? We work to ensure that we promote and elect pro-equality candidates, elected officials who will advance legislation to support LGBTQ people and all marginalized communities, including people of color. We also work on drafting legislation on the federal level as well as the state level to try to advance equality. And again, a variety of [00:39:00] different spheres. We work in the public education outreach space, where we go to different communities to educate them on why it’s important to stand up for equality, educate them on some of the experiences that LGBTQ people face. And finally, we work in the courts. We filed Amicus briefs. The Human Rights Campaign at this point is a plaintiff in a lawsuit where we are suing the Trump administration for denying transgender people the right to serve this country in the military. So we use a variety of tools to advance the mission of full equality for LGBTQ people. That is what we do. DeRay: I wanted to talk about the HBCU program that the Human Rights Campaign runs. What is that? Is that program new and what’s the goal of the HBCU? I think it’s, the HCBU Summit? What is the goal of that work? AD: Yes, so this is “historically black colleges and universities,” the Human Rights Campaign as launched an initiative where [00:40:00] we are identifying the next wave of LGBTQ leaders, and we are going to historically black colleges to identify those leaders, to provide them with resources and skills that can help them become the next set of leaders. Unfortunately, we’ve seen within our community, the black community, which I’m a part of that, you know, homophobia is just as prevalent as it is in other communities, and we have to allow people to be who they are and a part of the challenge is when you go to an historically black college, we want to make sure that those kids, if they are gay, if they are lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or queer, we create an environment and provide them with tools to succeed and not only to succeed at that university or that college, but to succeed after. DeRay: How has it been received on campuses? I do think about what you said about homophobia within the black community being, uh, being [00:41:00] strong in, and some of it is that people just aren’t having these conversations about identity or aren’t having them Instructure ways or with people who, who know the content well. How have you seen the first summit? How is it received? Do you think that this is going to be a long term program within the Human Rights Campaign? AD: Yes, it is going to be a long-term campaign in order for us to change the hearts and the minds of community members that have had a certain viewpoint and it’s strongly held. Look, I think within the black community and other communities, religion and sexual orientation and gender identity are intertwined. Uh, you know, it is very easy for someone to say, well, I can’t accept you as being gay because the Bible tells me I can’t. I’ve heard those comments for years, but the reality is I interpret the Bible differently. And even if you want to take that approach, just to appreciate the collateral consequence that it has on these young people. You know, the suicide rate for [00:42:00] transgender people of color is at 47%, meaning 47% of transgender people of color attempt suicide at some point in their lives. We should sit with that statistic and understand what it means when we are out there targeting people because of who they are. And we can’t do it under the guise of religion. So the HSBCU program is something that we are committed to working on is the program we’re committed to advancing. And the feedback has been positive. I think we still have a lot of work to do because we have to change hearts and minds. We have to get people to see us as human beings. This is not a choice. I did not choose to be gay. This is a part of who I am and every single other person that I know who self-identifies as LGBTQ, it is not a choice. And when we get to that point where all marginalized communities and all general populations can appreciate that, I think we will get to the place that we need to get to. DeRay: [00:43:00] And then what about, you talked about the trans community, we know that this is another year where so many black trans women specifically had been murdered. What can we do about it? I know there are a lot of people who share the stories online, a lot of people who express the outrage, but they don’t know how to end it. What would you say to those people. AD: I would say to those people that I have the same frustration when I heard about the, the murders and I heard about the numbers, and I’ve enlisted my team to come up with a meaningful framework to try to address this issue. And also it’s not only with respect to, you know, violence, it’s also employment and making sure that we provide resources to a community that has been marginalized and forgotten for a very long time, both within and outside of the community. So I would tell people to, to keep hope alive, that we have to work collaboratively on coming up with meaningful solutions. And those solutions are [00:44:00] going to be unique to certain communities because, you know, the violence that we’re seeing in each community, what is. really driving it? I have my opinions, but I think we can come to a place where we create meaningful solutions in those communities so that we can provide the support to the transgender community that they need. DeRay: I want to talk about Trump, but. I feel like the world is talking about Trump all the time. I wanted to know what’s different about this role than the other roles you’ve had. So you have done so much. This role seems very different than the work you’ve done day-to-day before. How have you seen in the first set of months in this role, how has it been? What is different about being in a role like this in the past roles that you’ve taken on? AD: Well, uh, that’s a really good question. I think one of the main distinctions here is I’m serving now as a principal for an institution and organization and in fact, some would say a movement, and that comes with a different set of [00:45:00] responsibilities and challenges. Uh, serving as the Chief Counsel for the Governor of New York, I was responsible for every single legal decision that was made in the State of New York, whether to Sue, whether to settle: what type of pieces of legislation we would support that, what types of public education campaigns we would launch. That’s very different than being in a chair where you have to come up with solutions to problems that are systemic facing a community that is nationwide and global. The Human Rights Campaign is not only limited to doing work within the 50 States in the United States, we also do work globally. And so the scope of this role is much broader than the work that I’ve done before. The tools that I’ve been able to refine over time, I will be able to apply in this role, but the scope is certainly different. DeRay: And what do we do about Trump? You know, you’ve been very vocal about this administration being a nightmare for [00:46:00] LGBTQ people. It has certainly been a nightmare for almost every marginalized group of people in the country. What do you say to people who are like, he is literally causing havoc every day in our lives? How do you help people make sense of the idea that we can do something? AD” My, my objective is to mobilize people and make sure that they exercise their constitutional right to vote. We have a fundamental right to vote that unfortunately many of us do not exercise. We’ve seen that for decades. When you look at the rate of people that actually vote, it pales in comparison to other countries, and we have to remind people that this is their fundamental constitutional right and they need to exercise it. The failure to exercise that right to vote means that Donald Trump is in office today, and we [00:47:00] cannot allow that to happen again. So my goal is to make sure that we mobilize people so that they understand and appreciate how important this election is. If we do not vote, if we do not get Donald Trump out of office, we will lose at least two generations. I mean that because he will be in a position to pack the Supreme court with ideologues that will vote in such a way that it will be to the detriment of racial minorities and other marginalized communities. So we have to wake up, we have to be focused, we have to mobilize and vote. And registering to vote is just part one. You also have to exercise your right to vote when it’s raining outside. You have to exercise your right to vote when it’s snowing. You have to exercise your right to vote when that line is so long that you might be late to work. Because that’s what is going to take. We know about voter suppression in certain [00:48:00] parts of the South and other parts of this country. We know that racial minorities and other marginalized communities have been targeted. We need to make sure that people wake up, they understand that it’s going to be a struggle, they understand that line is going to be long. Bring your umbrella. Bring your jacket and make sure you stand in line to exercise your right to vote so we can get him out of office because simply registering is not going to be enough. DeRay: And what about voter suppression? There are a lot of people who would say that this wasn’t a matter of people not wanting to vote, but in so many places they couldn’t vote. AD: Well, part of it is public education, making sure that we create an infrastructure where people know who to call and when to call. I don’t mean to keep on highlighting the South, but we hear a lot about voter suppression in the South, uh, where, you know, we need to do a better job of making sure that people know where to go and when to pick up that phone. And we also need to have the resources to provide them with the [00:49:00] support. You know, the Leadership Committee for Civil Rights, uh, Vanita Gupta, a very good friend of mine is running that organization and they have launched an initiative with a variety of organizations to make sure that people understand the importance of the right to vote. I’m going to be doing a lot of work in that space as well, working with the Human Rights Campaign and making sure that LGBTQ voters understand the importance of their right to vote, but it’s going to be a combination of factors that we will have to use to make sure that people exercise their right to vote. DeRay: What are the issues that are top of mind to you when you are thinking about 2020 and the election, what are the things that people need to be paying attention to when they make a decision on who they support and when we think about what we need to undo that the Trump administration has done? AD: How much time do you have? DeRay: You know, it’s hard. The one of the things about Trump is so interesting is that he’s in the news so much. But so many people [00:50:00] don’t know the specifics of the damage. They just know that there’s a lot of damage until it hits them. AD: Yeah. I mean, it depends on which community you’re talking about because he is attacking so many marginalized communities and so many issues that we should care about, ranging from climate change to, you know, race discrimination, from LGBTQ discrimination to, you know, transgender issues in the military. The Supreme Court is hearing a case, and this case raises a fundamental question of fairness and equality, and the question is whether employers can discriminate against employees and prospective employees based on their sexual orientation and gender identity. Most people would say [that[ employers should not deny you a job because you’re gay, employers should not be able to refuse you a job because of your gender identity or expression. And that is how federal law has been interpreted for decades [00:51:00] that employers cannot discriminate based on someone’s gender identity and sexual orientation. The Trump administration has taken a different view. Their view is [that] employers should be allowed to discriminate. So if I go into a job interview and it comes up in the job interview that I’m married, or that I’m gay, or that I’m transgender or that I’m bisexual, the employer could deny me that job and there would be no consequence. That is the Trump administration’s position — there should be no protections under federal law. And the sad reality is in 30 States in this country, there is no protections under state law. So if you remove that federal protection, what you’re effectively doing is saying that millions of people in this country no longer have the protections that they have been accustomed to. That is just one example of what the Trump administration is doing. Another example is, they are advancing a set of regulations that [00:52:00] say if you are a federal contractor and you do business with the federal government, you should be able to discriminate based on sexual orientation and gender identity. They’re also saying under the Affordable Care Act, which President Obama was responsible for advancing, they’re saying under the affordable care act, we should be able to discriminate against you based on your gender identity and expression, meaning be denied health care. Those are just three examples in the LGBTQ space, but there are many others. They’re looking to change the regulations on housing so that you can effectively deny housing in ways that you cannot deny housing to people. Now they are effectively trying to erode all of the protections that exist for marginalized communities. That’s what people should understand. DeRay: As we come to a close, one of the things I want to ask is there a lot of young people identify as queer or [00:53:00] non-binary or trans who are trying to figure out what can their activism look like, what do they do? They see the world is falling apart and they are trying to figure out like what their role can be. What do you say to people when they ask you, “Hey Alfonzo, like what can I do to make a difference?” AD: It depends on what your skills are, but you can start with volunteering. It’s not that complicated. You can sign up to volunteer. You can sign up to provide resources and support to organizations that don’t have those resources and support. We can make sure that you use your skills to provide assistance to people on the ground that need it. We are in the fight of our lifetime. This next election will determine whether or not we save or lose two generations of people. And if you’re looking for opportunities to engage, we have more than enough. You can volunteer in whatever state you’re living in, and we can utilize your skills. If you’re focusing on communications or you’re focusing on organizing or you’re focusing on [00:54:00] education or you maybe, you want to provide legal support or accounting services, whatever it is, we have the need for, because we know on the other side of the fence, we have a federal administration that’s effectively demonizing people that don’t look like them and they have resources that we don’t have. So to the extent people want to get involved, they should contact theHuman Rights Campaign. If we can’t take advantage of your efforts, we will certainly be in a position to refer you to people who can, because we need to work as a coalition, we need to work collaboratively to make sure that we advance this movement for change and that we actually succeed, because we have to get beyond the talk and we have to make sure that we engage in action and that we succeed over the next few months, because we cannot afford to lose. DeRay: This is one of the questions that I ask everybody is what do you say to people who are like, I tried everything. I emailed, I [00:55:00] called, I voted. I stood in the street. I testified, and the world just hasn’t changed in the way that I was told it would. What do you say to those people, the people whose hope is being challenged in this moment? For those, I would say if you’re sick and tired, take a break, but don’t quit. We cannot afford to quit the struggle for equality. Yes, the struggle is hard. Yes, the struggle takes time. Yes, sometimes we are disappointed. Take a break, if you’re disappointed, take a break, if you’re tired, but please don’t quit, because we need to make sure that we have all of the bodies that we need to achieve equality. And again, nothing worth fighting for is easy. We know that from our history. And we have to remind ourselves of that as we run up this hill to seize back our country, run up this hill to achieve equality, which is something that we have to get. DeRay: What’s a piece of advice that you [00:56:00] gotten over the years that stuck with you? AD: Well, there’s two that come to mind. One is I clerked for a federal judge after law school, and he said to me, “All too often, people arrive at conclusions with too little evidence.” He was the great judge, Clifford Scott Greene, who passed away a number of years ago. “All too often people arrive at conclusions with too little evidence.” The second for me is “never forget your capacity.” Never failed to appreciate how much capacity you have and always remember to dream and fully realize that capacity. DeRay: Well you continue to be a dear Friend of the Pod. Thanks so much for doing Pod Save the People and I will see you in person soon I hope. AD: I look forward to that. Thank you so much for having me. DeRay: Well, that’s it. Thanks so much for tuning into Pod Save the People this week. Tell your friends to check it out, make sure to rate it wherever you get your podcast, whether it’s Apple podcasts or somewhere else, and we’ll see you next week. [00:57:00]

As celebrations of women’s achievements have grown over the years, so have calls for more action towards a more equal world. This year, we somberly approach another milestone – one year since COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic. While the virus has affected people of all genders, women, girls and non-binary people have suffered disproportionately. We need to act now to ensure decades of progress on women’s rights, poverty reduction and resilience are not lost. But this time, instead of acting on our own, we need to staunchly back up the leadership that has always existed in local organizations, in local communities, and in women leaders. Around the world, stories of hope and inspiration over the past year have frequently featured women leading the way through the pandemic. Our collective front line-first responders, providers, caregivers, activists and leaders-predominantly comprises women. Several studies have found that COVID-19 outcomes are more positive in countries led by women in part because of their proactive and inclusive approach. An August 2020 study found statistically significant fewer deaths in US states led by women governors, again citing that women leaders placed greater value on a culture of inclusion. The power of women’s leadership is often undermined by our failure to ensure her basic rights and priorities. Women who lead in Canada do so because they have access to safety, to health and to dignified work. And more women from all backgrounds in our communities would lead if they had greater access to these basic rights. The power of women’s leadership transcends borders-especially in this time of global solidarity. This year, when we celebrate women, we must support their leadership. We must seize this moment to build a world that is more equal. Because that world will be a better one -for all of us. Barbara GranthamPresident & CEO, CARE Canada All women need to be safe from gender-based violence, with spaces and programs that prevent and respond to violence against women whether in the home, workplace, or community. For many women, lockdowns, curfews and economic downturn have confined them with their abusers, driving huge increases globally in gender-based violence and forced childhood marriage. Women and girls have become part of a “shadow pandemic” where legal and social protections have taken a back seat to health enforcement. To be healthy, all women and girls need to be able to make decisions about their own bodies and have full access to sexual and reproductive health services. While preliminary analyses indicated that COVID-19 poses a greater risk of severe illness and mortality to men, women face multiple health risks beyond the biological impacts of COVID-19. As 70 per cent of the global health care work force, women have too often responded to the pandemic with insufficient protection. All women also deserve meaningful, safe and dignified work that is equally valued. We must remove the burden of unpaid care. This unrecognized and undervalued work has dramatically increased during the pandemic, amounting to a double workday for those women who manage to keep their jobs. Women need access to skills, knowledge and resources to earn a safe and fair living. We need to advocate against discriminatory laws, policies and systems. Helping her access basic rights and support will unlock women’s leadership - but it doesn’t stop at her. We need to engage men and boys as powerful allies in speaking and acting in support of her rights and her leadership.

Two NYC Comics Breakdown the Whitewashing of the Ghost In The Shell Movie On March 31st the internationally celebrated media franchise known as Mobile Armored Riot Police in Japan, finally makes it’s big screen debut in the states. If you love anime or manga you already knew the name and probably, the story. In the book, author Masamune Shirow explores the possible consequence of technological advances on the nature of human consciousness and identity with the story of fictional counter-cyberterrorist organization Public Security 9. Leading Public Security 9 is the fearless and inimitable hero Major Motoko Kusanagi. As far as comic books and manga in general go, Motoko is arguably one of the strongest female protagonists to date. First published in 1989, Major Motoko quickly became an icon. She’s everything a female superhero should be. She’s strong, takes no shit, kicks ass at her job, and never lets men walk all over her. So what’s the problem? So what’s the problem? The film adaptation is being accused of whitewashing. While the series is set in 21st century Japan, Scarlett Johansson was cast as Major Motoko. Some may argue that Major Motoko is a cyborg but she’s also a cyborg meant to blend in with Tokyo’s other citizens. The more likely reason is that white lead actors and actresses tend to bring in bigger box office earnings. Once again, we’ve put profit over people and authenticity. The film comes at a time when the internet is finally providing a much-needed voice for the Asian American community. With viral hashtags like #NotYourAsianSidekick, Asian American’s from all walks of life are finally getting the chance to be heard. Two NYC comedians Chewy May and Jes Tom recently spoke out about this latest example of whitewashing with a touching video that illustrates just how lasting the affects can be. The sketch went viral with close to 200,000 views on the original YouTube link alone; not including the views from write ups on high profile publications like Buzzfeed and Perez Hilton. Not only is Broke-Ass Stuart debuting the brand new comic seen above by artist David Chiu; commissioned and written by Chewy May; we also got to catch up with the two performers to get a more personal view of their powerful short. As people who work in the NYC performance arts scene is whitewashing something you’ve experienced firsthand? Jes Tom – This is not exactly whitewashing, but related: one of the first acting jobs I ever did, I signed on before I saw the script, because it sounded like a cool project with a lot of other Asian actors. I got on set and realized too late that it was one of those scenes where a white-passing action hero slaughters like 20 Asian people (& I was one of them). That day I learned a real lesson about how people will misuse Asian actors if we’re not careful. Chewy May – I think that the whitewashing and yellow facing of Asian Americans goes hand in hand. It‘s so common to see white comics make fun of Asians using some hacky accent. It makes me feel like my opinions and perspectives are not valid to them. I remember when I first started performing one comic even flat out told me, “Asians aren’t really successful in comedy.” Do you find your ethnicity makes it harder to get booked on non-niche shows? JT– As a Non-binary Trans-Asian American comic I get a lot more work on “niche”/queer/community shows (where I perform among musicians, poets, drag acts) than I do in the comedy circuit. They’re just two different scenes with really different people in them. I will be real though and say I experience tokenism even within niche comedy shows — like being the only Asian comic on an LGBTQ-themed show that has booked multiple white, Black, & Latino comics. CM– I don’t think it’s necessarily harder to get booked, but I do feel it’s harder to get as much respect as other performers. As an Asian American comic it feels like people are expecting me to do accents or make fun of the fact I’m Asian instead of just giving the audience a unique perspective on common issues. How did this project come to fruition? JT – Chewy approached me with the original idea for the video after reading a rant I wrote on Facebook about the whitewashed cast of Ghost in the Shell and then we worked together to fine tune the concept. As far how I got cast, it’s kinda funny: Part of it was that we wanted to give the narrative a sense of temporality, to show that Asian American people experience erasure at every point of our lives, and that this is a thing that has been happening for years. So when we determined we’d need an adult version of the protagonist– well, I’m a diva, so I was like, “I’ll do it!” CM – Yup, Jes wrote a facebook post about Scarlett Johannson being cast as Major Motoko and it gave me the idea of coming up with a video illustrating the affects that whitewashing has and will continue to have on little girls. I brought a rough outline of the concept to Jes and right then and there we began collaborating on the final script and started planning the shoot. Jes came up with the idea of the little girl growing up and so we just used them as the older version — no need to put out a casting call. Do either of you have any experiences from your own childhood that reflect the same message as the video? JT – The thing that sucks is that I’ve had so many of these moments that it’s hard to choose which one to mention. The first that comes to my mind is finding out when I was 17 that the movie 21 (about MIT students counting cards in Vegas) was based on a true story about an Asian professor and Asian students. The people who made 21 justified whitewashing the story by saying they included an Asian character — a side character named “Choi,” – he doesn’t even have a full name. In that moment I fully realized how far American mainstream media will go to erase us even if it’s out of our own history. CM – Yea, I don’t think there’s one particular instance. You just don’t see Asians in the forefront of American stories. We’re always pushed into the background with the least lines and half the time, they’re simply portraying stereotypes anyway. I know that you’ve gotten allot of attention for the video, and with success comes haters. What do you find is the most common online troll sentiment? JT – That Motoko’s body is canonically European which completely misses the point of the video. We’re not talking ABOUT Ghost in the Shell specifically; we’re simply using it as one example in a long history of whitewashing. Maybe if whitewashing Asian characters & stories wasn’t the status quo, it would be okay (or at least less bad) that ScarJo is playing Motoko. But it is the status quo, so it’s not okay. CM – What really surprised me is that the video is being called racist or even ‘anti-white propaganda.’ People can be oblivious to the identity issues of people of color. They may not have even noticed that Asians are usually cast in supporting roles if any so how can they empathize with how that might make someone of our ethnicity feel? Hollywood subliminally uplifts white people and downplays people of color so now that we are speaking out about it, I guess it‘s suddenly some new ‘anti-white propaganda’ or something, which is just ridiculous.

Happy Pride Month! Today is the first day of #PrideLibrary21, and our first prompt is TBR, so I’ll be sharing my reading plans for the month! I’ll mostly be active on my Instagram this month, but I do want to write a few blog posts as well for this challenge. Want to know the prompts? You can check our introduction post! Reading It Queer I’m hoping to exclusively read queer books this month, and to help me achieve that, I’m joining Eloise @ Eloise Reads‘s readathon, Reading It Queer, again. The readathon takes place throughout the entire month of June, and the goal is simply to read queer books. There are 9 reading prompts which I’m hoping to complete, mostly by catching up on eARCs. Here’s my TBR for the readathon: - Sapphic MC: Britta Lundin – Like Other Girls - Achillean MC: Alison Cochrun – The Charm Offensive - A Non-Fiction or Memoir: Trans and Autistic – Noah Adams & Bridget Liang - Author of Colour: Schuyler Bailar – Obie Is Man Enough - A Genre You Don’t Normally Read: Jenn Burke – All Fired Up - Published Before 2018: TJ Klune – How to Be a Normal Person - A Book With Any Colour From the Pride Flag On It: Justin Myers – The Magnificent Sons - Trans or Non-Binary Author: Penny Ames – For the Love of April French - A 2021 Release: Isaac Fitzsimons – The Passing Playbook I’ve also made a physical TBR of queer books I would like to read this month: - Torrey Peters – Detransition, Baby - A.M. Strickland – In the Ravenous Dark - Maggie Tokuda-Hall – The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea - Greg Howard – Middle School’s a Drag - Courtney C. Stevens – Dress Codes For Small Towns - Anna-Marie McLemore – The Mirror Season - Miel Moreland – It Goes Like This - Jennifer Dugan – Some Girls Do - Destiny Soria – Beneath the Citadel - Maria Ingrande Mora – Fragile Remedy What are you hoping to read this month? The books you chose sound amazing! Hope you enjoy them. I’m not sure what I want to read, but I’m excited to read One Last Stop! LikeLiked by 1 person

John and Harold bicker like an old married couple. I love it. To sum up the last two episodes - John: I want to do a thing. Harold: I would rather you not do the thing. John: Too late. ~WE’RE TRENDING IRRELEVANTS~ I thought this day would never come Excuse me while I go cry in the corner More promo pics for SE403, Wingman ~ Everyone goes to the Batcave (from Spoiler TV) OMG I’m in love with the Subway Batcave!!! It loos very military, actually! I’ve been in offices that look like that. Aww look at POI. Not bad. :D Sarah Shahi is just having too much fun period with her Person of Interest role. The new place has some rules. And the number one rule is: Kevin D. Williamson, Asshole of the Day for September 30, 2014 Imagine being so “pro-life” that you think a woman should face the death penalty for aborting a fetus. Imagine being so, so “pro-life” that “logically” you think the doctors and nurses who abort a fetus—even to save the of a mother—should face the death penalty, too. Imagine having thought it through so much that, like National Review writer Kevin D. Williamson, you even have your preferred method of “pro-life” execution—hanging—already decided. Worth noting: Williamson writes for a publication that likes to bill itself as: “America’s most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion.” Keep that in mind when you read the moronic Kevin D.Williamson-penned bullshit the National Review is now publishing. Williamson’s latest article was his attempt to respond to a Lena Dunham blog post encouraging women to vote. His piece, “Five Reasons Why You’re Too Dumb to Vote… (Reason 1: You get your politics for Lena Dunham)” prompted a quick backlash. Things started rolling downhill faster when Williamson began explaining his penis-based expertise to, among others, Charles Johnson of the blog Little Green Footballs on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Green_Footballs/timelines/516292560310923264 NOTE: Tea Party Cat and I hadn’t started Asshole of the Day back in 2012 when Williamson told women to vote for Mitt Romney because his male-producing sperm was superior to Barack Obama’s, which only produces girls. And Williamson lost out to Rush Limbaugh on August 13, despite calling a 9-year-old black boy a “primate” in another National Review piece. That means this is his first, well-deserved appearance as Asshole of the Day. Full story: Talking Points Memo Harley is a gift from God. This is why Harley is like my all time favorite! Why did they leave out the best part of this scene?; The character development of Harley is probably one of the better things DC has done with their characters. Queerness, to me, is about far more than homosexual attraction. It’s about a willingness to see all other taboos broken down. Sure, many of us start on this path when we first feel “same sex” or “same gender” attraction (though what is sex? And what is gender? And does anyone really have the same sex or gender as anyone else?). But queerness doesn’t stop there. This is a somewhat controversial stance, but to me queer means something completely different than “gay” or “lesbian” or “bisexual.” A queer person is usually someone who has come to a non-binary view of gender, who recognizes the validity of all trans identities, and who, given this understanding of infinite gender possibilities, finds it hard to define their sexuality any longer in a gender-based way. Queer people understand and support non-monogamy even if they do not engage in it themselves. They can grok being asexual or aromantic. (What does sex have to do with love, or love with sex, necessarily?) A queer can view promiscuous (protected) public bathhouse sex with strangers and complete abstinence as equally healthy. Queers understand that people have different relationships to their bodies. We get what it means to be stone. We know what body dysphoria is about. We understand that not everyone likes to get touched the same way or to get touched at all. We realize that people with disabilities may have different sexual needs, and that people with survivor histories often have sexual triggers. We can negotiate safe and creative ways to be intimate with people with HIV/AIDs and other STIs. Queers understand the range of power and sensation and the diversity of sexual dynamics. We are tops and bottoms, doms and subs, sadists and masochists and sadomasochists, versatiles and switches. We know what we like and don’t like in bed. We embrace a wide range of relationship types. We can be partners, lovers, friends with benefits, platonic sweethearts, chosen family. We can have very different dynamics with different people, often all at once. We don’t expect one person to be able to fulfill all our diverse needs, fantasies and ideals indefinitely. Because our views on relationships, sex, gender, love, bodies, and family are so unconventional, we are of necessity anti-assimilationist. Because under the kyriarchy we suffer, and watch the people we love suffering, we are political. Because we want to survive, we fight. We only want the freedom to be ourselves, love ourselves, love each other, and live together. Because we are routinely denied that, we are pissed. Queer doesn’t mean “don’t label me,” it means “I am naming myself.” It means “ask me more questions if you curious” and in the same breath means “fuck off.” At least, that is what it means to me. Page 1 of 575

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Reader Q&A: Do I or Do I Not Have Gender Dysphoria? Edits made July 2018 Welcome to the another installment of READER Q&A on the darahoffmanfox.com | Transgender Education & Resources website. This is a regularly featured segment in which I share with you conversations I’ve had with readers (as well as watchers of my YouTube series ASK A GENDER THERAPIST) in which they ask questions and I do my best to answer them. Let’s get to the question… (edited for length) I’ve been questioning my gender for around a year now. I’m not sure if I am transgender or not, and I needed some advice on whether or not my experiences/feelings were that of gender dysphoria. Ever since I was a kid, I had the hunch that something was different about me… I remember I made this one doodle titled “diagram of a naked woman” (its contents were self-explanatory) and I made fun of the curvaceous female anatomy, unaware of my pubescent destiny. Girly pink dresses grossed me out, but so did ratchet skater boy attire. I never said “I’m a boy” or tried to pee standing up, which is the main reason that I excluded being transgender as a possibility for me. I always saw myself as kind of genderless. Sure, my parents would want me to be a “good girl” and all that, but I just sort of agreed because I didn’t know there was anything else I could have been. (As) I listened into the puberty education video for girls in health class, I didn’t think puberty would apply to me. Yeah, sure, I was told I was going to be a “lady” someday and bleed out of my vagina and grow a nice pair and get fertile childbearing hips, but I didn’t really believe that. I thought I was somehow exempt from the female puberty. When I started menstruating, I had a constant, subtle, unnerving confusion. I got that “wait, what?” feeling as I finally realized my anatomy. I always felt that my figure wasn’t inherently mine, but I felt that since I couldn’t really change it to what I envisioned, I’d have to make do with wearing my baggy clothes. (In high school) I was the black sheep in my all-girl’s school: from personality to gender expression. I went through a phase where I wanted to lose weight in order to achieve what I now realize was a more male-appearing figure. Every guy I dated or danced with, I tried to out-man them. I insisted on driving, paying, leading the dance. After I went to prom with a guy, I knew I wasn’t cut out for the dating scene; I liked girls better anyways. But even in the butch lesbian community, I felt like an outsider, even though I fit the definition to a T. High school was also the time I started expressing androgynously. But when I put on my masculine clothes, I looked in the mirror and was disappointed because I didn’t look like a guy, just a girl in guy’s clothing. The first time I bound my chest down, I squeezed myself with an ace bandage until I was flat. I threw on a shirt, looked up in the mirror, and almost cried because I looked so complete, so me. My first thought was “Oh, so that’s what was wrong”, and I spent the rest of the night euphoric, now that I looked like me. The part that topped it off was when I used makeup to contour and highlight my facial structure from soft curves to masculine angles. I still keep those selfies, and I feel so whole and happy when I can present as male, or even androgynously. And now, fully post-pubescent, this body is here for good. Looking back, when I started dressing masculine, I felt so incredibly complete. That happiness when presenting as male made me realize that I wasn’t happy being female before. Someone asked how I would feel if I could never change my body, if it would stay female like this for the rest of my life. The second she said that, my heart dropped into my stomach, the dread just overcame me. And when I put on my masculine clothes, I expect to see someone male or androgynous in the mirror, but I’m taken by surprise every time I see my reflection–a girl in guy’s clothes. It’s like my figure ruins how I present myself. I know this sounds very much like dysphoria, but I still have doubts. I was never an inherently macho person, never wished I had a penis, never had all-male friends, never had that trans narrative. When I compare myself to the guys that have these experiences, I doubt myself for ever thinking that I might be trans. And at this point, I just don’t know anymore. I’d appreciate any advice or opinion of my possible gender dysphoria. Thank you so much. Firstly, I want to assure you that the question on your mind is one that I hear more often than anyone else: “Am I Really Transgender?” which can sometimes also be known as, “Do I really have Gender Dysphoria?” Right on the heels of that is usually, “Just how bad is my Gender Dysphoria, and what should I do about it?” Although the final answer is yours and yours alone to conclude, I’d be glad to offer a few thoughts to you on this. E—, you may feel silly, weird, or “crazy” for having to ask yourself these questions. But keep in mind, there are a lot of people out there who are quite comfortable with their assigned gender at birth. In fact it really doesn’t even occur to them to think about it. The fact that you are asking yourself these questions means that, on at least some level, you might have Gender Dysphoria. Let’s look at one of the “official” definition of Gender Dysphoria, as stated by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). (Gender Dysphoria) is broadly defined as discomfort or distress that is caused by a discrepancy between a person’s gender identity and that person’s sex assigned at birth (and the associated gender role and/or primary and secondary sex characteristics). Let’s break this down into a few steps. 1. You were assigned the gender of “female” at birth. Are you completely comfortable with this? From what you have describe in your email, I’m going to guess your answer is “no.” 2. The next question to ask yourself is, “Why am I not comfortable with this?” There are some people who feel fine being seen and known as the gender they were assigned, because their minds and bodies match that gender (think of it as it being a coincidence that their genitals happened to match their felt sense of gender). But that doesn’t mean they don’t struggle with the gender role expectations that have been placed upon them, and that they might desire to reveal either more masculine or feminine qualities than they already have been. There are others who experience a definite disconnect between the gender they were assigned at birth and the gender they really experience themselves to be. And there are others who feel a disconnect that is more moderate in its experience. The two strongest indicators of this discomfort is the level that someone feels by how they are seen socially (i.e. in your case you are seen socially as a female), and the level of discomfort someone feels with their physical body and the way it functions (i.e. you having a physically female body, including going through menstruation). Another indicator that is a little more difficult to figure out, but still very relevant, is the way you think and feel. Feeling like there’s something “not quite right” about the way you process information, experience emotions, respond to sexual thoughts, etc. Check out this image that @CassieBebop was inspired to create after reading this blog post: 3. To what level or degree of discomfort do you experience the areas mentioned in #2? That’s right, there are countless ways that someone can answer “yes” to the question, “Do I Have Gender Dysphoria?” That’s because every individual is different. If it were a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the worst, you might place your body dysphoria close to a 10, while your social dysphoria may be a 7, and your “mental discomfort” score might be more like a 5 (just throwing out numbers here). Bottom line is, there is no “right or wrong” way to be trans, or to have Gender Dysphoria. It covers a very wide range! That includes your question about whether or not you have Gender Dysphoria because you haven’t fit into the “typical male stereotype.” There are many, many experiences of what it means to identity as male in this world. There are also many different trans-narratives out there, and yours is just as valid as anyone else’s. It also sounds like you were raised in somewhat of a “genderless” home, which means you may not have noticed extreme gender discomfort as a kid. The fact that your discomfort became more noticeable during puberty is of more importance to note. Remember, be careful about comparing yourself to others—doing that too much will stand in the way of you finding your truth. Comparison is the thief of joy. – Theodore Roosevelt Let’s sum things up. From what I hear you saying in your email, you feel strongly that you do not identify, nor want to be identified, as female. How far towards the “male” side of the spectrum will you end up wanting to go? Take it a step at a time, and pay close attention to how it feels as you move farther away from female and more towards male (keeping in mind there is an entire nonbinary spectrum as well!). Eventually you’ll find your “sweet spot.” 🙂 Before I go, here are a couple of additional resources for you: How Do I Know if I’m Transgender? is a video I made that gets more into the process of getting closer to figuring this out Matt Kailey wrote a great post regarding this topic on his blog Tranifesto called “Gender Uncertainty is Stressing Me Out!“ Not All Transgender People Have Dysphoria—And Here Are 6 Reasons Why That Matters by Sam Dylan Finch Trust your instincts, E—, and seek out support from those who understand and encourage you. All the best, Heather BrewerDecember 8, 2014 at 4:47 PM I really appreciate that you’re able to share this conversation. The unpacking of the exploration and needed processing of this question is so important. It’s not black and white, but very complex and unique to the person doing the exploring, as well as their contexts. Thank you for holding that space. And for the reminder to not compare. “Comparison is the thief of joy!” You rock, Dara. Dara Hoffman-FoxDecember 8, 2014 at 8:48 PM Thanks for your comment Heather, it means a lot to me coming from a fellow therapist! DrusilaMay 21, 2019 at 8:58 AM I felt the same way as Dara felt..and your response has really made sense to me .Thanks so much, EmmaDecember 9, 2014 at 7:55 AM What a brilliant question to share with your readers! To E, I want to say that your experience is a lot like my experience, just in the reciprocal sense. It took me a long time to realize that what I was experiencing was gender dysphoria and to fully realize my transgender nature (you can even read my experience two posts ago entitled “This Trans Voice: The Truth Will Set You Free”). Since accepting that I was suffering from gender dysphoria I now know what I can do to alleviate that suffering, which is why I’ve decided to make the transition to female so that I may better express my gender identity. I think it’s good to note that Gender expression is something that is 100% an individual experience and although we like to think that there is a true male or true female gender (as in a spectrum with two finite end points), there are really as many genders as there are people to express them. Not every male or female (even cisgender ones) will express their maleness or femaleness the same way and even if you try to nail down what exactly is female and what exactly is male, your list of attributes might vary significantly from anyone else’s list. As such, I believe the true liberation from gender dysphoria is to express yourself in whatever way feels good and right to you. You don’t have to meet anyone’s expectations except for your own. You don’t have to fit anyone else’s criteria for what transgender means because gender and it’s expression is always subjective to the person experiencing it. Your transgender experience may be very different from another’s but that doesn’t make it any less legitimate. At least, that’s the way I see things. Dara Hoffman-FoxDecember 9, 2014 at 10:01 AM Excellent commentary Emma, thank you! J.D.March 10, 2015 at 2:42 PM This story could have been mine (except I’m asexual), especially: “But when I put on my masculine clothes, I looked in the mirror and was disappointed because I didn’t look like a guy, just a girl in guy’s clothing.” I don’t try to present as male but my clothing choices are more suitable for a male body and the reflection is always a bit of a shock because it doesn’t fit the mental map of my body that I feel as I move. Growing up in the ’70s and ’80s I didn’t know there was anything outside the gender binary and I didn’t think I could do anything about it although I often thought I wanted the T&A “amputated”. A few months ago I learned about non-binary people and transitioning to something more neutral. Boom! I knew that fit me without a doubt. I can look back and see dysphoria at every stage of life after early childhood. I have spent countless hours since fall reading and remembering and analyzing. While I’ve come up with many ways other people might question if I have dysphoria (“Why do you have long hair?” “Why do you participate in a female sport?”), I haven’t had a single thought that I would be better off if I don’t transition. In no way has 30 years of my adult life been better for having a blatantly female body and in a lot of ways it’s been worse than it could have been. Dara, you are giving excellent guidance. E–, it’s up to you what you do but don’t doubt your ability to decide your path in this. JulianaOctober 25, 2015 at 6:49 PM “the reflection is always a bit of a shock because it doesn’t fit the mental map of my body that I feel as I move.” That’s exactly how I feel!!!! The image in my head is so different from the one I see in the mirror and sometimes I get so frustated because I think that I’ll never look the way I want to look. I don’t indentify as male, but I’m not so sure I’m 100% female. I get very sad and angry and confused sometimes. RaeJanuary 12, 2016 at 3:00 PM E- and J.D., Yes! Like you, J.D. I grew up in the 80s and there was not much information about being non-binary back then. For years I have not been very comfortable dressing “girly.” My mom dressed my sister and I in cute little dresses and I liked being flouncy and froo-froo, liked sparkly things. Purple is still my favorite color. However, I always disliked the attention. I just liked the way the fabric and lacy things looked and felt. It was more about my own personal experience of the clothes, than how they looked on me. When I was a little girl, due to media and movies, I thought being sexy was having curves and wearing sexy clothes. So, when I was 5 I thought that’s what I wanted to look like when I grew up. However, I realized as I got older I felt my body was not masculine enough–rather too feminine. Since I was about 8 or so I liked to dress in jeans and a t-shirt more than in frilly clothes. Especially after puberty I realized that I envied male bodies, their small hips and flat stomach and flat chests. So, when I looked in the mirror my idea of what I should look like did not match and it made me so upset. I just looked like a girl in guys clothes! I still have this frustration. For years I thought that I was just insecure about being a sickly, scrawny girl that boys didn’t like. Nobody ever flirted with me or anything. So by the time I was 8 years old or so I had decided I’d follow the “If I can’t beat them, join them” theme. I didn’t want attention as a female, anyway. However, I did really want to be “liked,” I wanted someone to find me special, and I felt so upset and left out. So in my teen years I thought I was just being boyish because of that. It wasn’t until I got older that I realized that there was more to it. I realized I didn’t want to be overtly male, so much as less female. Thus, I have tried to be more androgynous, short hair and more neutral clothes. Somewhat baggy clothes to cover up my large chest and curvy hips. I want to wear vests and other things, but they just don’t look right, since my chest is so big when I bind it it just looks weird. I was rather upset a few years ago when I realized how jealous I was of my best friend and his slim, lithe, lean-muscled build (not too much muscle, mind, but still there, still masculine–just not overtly so, overly huge, barrel-chest and whatnot). As an adult, the past few years, I have seriously considered whether I was transgender. However, I do actually still like sparkly, frilly things. I have just denied that part of myself for a very long time. I have had to look at myself, really look, and be honest. Having done so, I am even more confused. I want a male body, even to the point of wanting a penis sometimes, yet I am very giggly and girly in my personality! I also WANT to be female and act female-sexy for my life-partner, dress all cute and stuff. But they are the ONLY one that I want to feel so attractive for–nobody else should be looking, much less appreciating. 🙁 I’m so confused!!! How can I possibly want to be both? I can’t identify as either male or female all of the time. For years I have said I am a human being, that’s how I want people to see me. My parents don’t understand how I can not want to be pretty and dress nicely, when people often tell me how attractive I am, how much of a “knock-out” I can be. They know how uncomfortable it makes me and they want to understand because they love and care about me, but it’s just incomprehensible to them. Unfortunately, I can’t really explain it myself. J.D., like you I am on the asexual spectrum. I discovered the term over a year ago that I am demisexual. I have also heard about non-binary, besides androgyny. I have always been quirky and a bit strange, but only as an adult have I realized how non-normal I really am in some things. Now I have words to explain things to myself and others, but I still don’t know where I fit. If *I’M* so confused, how in the world can my family and friends NOT be even more confused?! WHAT THE HECK AM I?!! Based on this e-mail and response, I guess I have struggled with dysphoria for nearly 30 years, I just didn’t have a word for it. I’m also quite heartened to see that even though my issues and self-awareness don’t match other people’s, I shouldn’t keep comparing myself to others. Instead I should keep searching in myself for what is the true me. Thank you, to E- for being brave enough to ask, thanks to all of you who have commented, this has been very eye-opening and helpful, and thanks to you, Dara, for being here and providing information. I was so glad to discover your site last month. J.D.January 14, 2016 at 12:24 AM I had top surgery last August and it has made me enormously more comfortable in my own body. Highly recommended for anyone who wants it after careful research and consideration. RaeJanuary 14, 2016 at 10:30 PM J.D., believe me! I have been wanting top surgery for over 10 years. I have indeed seriously looked into it. However, I knew I couldn’t afford it as a graduate student. Then later I didn’t think my reasons were sufficient. I’m not always 100% sure I want to be all male. 🙁 From what I had read the past few years, you have to have proof, or so I thought. I am QUITE delighted to hear that in the new 2011 WPATH version 7 we can transition to non-binary, and in so-doing have top surgery! 🙂 EmmaApril 2, 2018 at 8:11 PM you might be bi-gender! or you probably have figured things out! NatalieMay 1, 2015 at 4:57 PM I love these! So interesting! If only Norway’s gatekeepers were as open as you… I also realised my mind dysphoria is at a ten O_o AquaJuly 3, 2015 at 4:35 PM I was called a Tom Boy all through childhood. Puberty sucked because I wasn’t being or becoming feminine enough. I still played roughly, and skateboarded (by myself, of course…and still do…I learnt to enjoy being alone and wandering around at night). Some boys liked me, some didn’t. I VERY RARELY ever came CLOSE to being the ultra feminine women and girls in the media. That disturbs A LOT of women, trans or not. As for the boys and then men? No problem there. At all lol If one started hinting I should get in a dress, I just dumped them. Plenty of males in the world. I will always be ME. If that’s being called a tomboi by some catty bitch or fundamentalist, if it’s being confused as lesbian, if it’s being otherwise a ‘let down’ to Others: so be it. I simply don’t have time in MY life to spend addressing the bigotries in theirs. I mean, it’s not like I’m going to be FRIENDS with some superficial moron. I am naturally tall, tend towards broad shouldered and muscular, have a decent sex drive: but do I ‘look male’,even with long hair? Yep. Sometimes. Whatever. I have thought and wondered about GRS, but the costs and side effects seem over-whelming and stressful. Adding that to an already complicated life seems a bit too daunting. I’m still dealing with previous traumas that went on for years (no, not sexual abuse…lots of bigots ‘go there’ if you’re more masculine than feminine and it pisses me off, because they don’t care or wonder about the OTHER abuses I actually DID endure!) You can publish this post if you want, but I don’t want to be contacted by anyone. It can be overwhelming as I also have cPTSD and am autistic. I just want everyone to know: YOU are YOU…HOWEVER you choose to present yourself. In fact, the less you think of yourself having to ‘present’ to anyone, the happier you may come to be. And you have just as much right as,anyone else to be happy.So,fuck ’em. Seriously. They don’t matter. BTW, I have no idea if I qualify as Trans. I tried to go to a T party once, but a few looked at me funny because it’s also obvious after a glance I’m a woman and not in transition like many of them were….so, I left because it’s just one more ‘group’ that I don’t ‘belong’ in MelanieJuly 13, 2015 at 6:49 AM Thank you for this article. I’m just coming to the point where I am accepting that dysphoria is what has been plaguing me for my entire life – I’ve always known ‘something’ is different about me, and I’ve learnt to just not express myself and keep it all bottled inside. Sometimes all this intellectualizing the issue only makes it harder to communicate with an open heart – as a libra and very logical person, I’m about done with being rational – I’m ready to spew a rainbow and be dammed what shade hits you (although that’s not true at all – I care WAY too much and am way too sensitive to how my emotional output reflects off others, and I sacrifice my own emotions for just a few hours of peace way too often). I feel like an actor in my own life, now I just want desperately to be present and let my genuine self shine. Been crying a lot in private lately, and I’ve recently come to accept what is bugging me. I’m so afraid to share this side of me, and to let it out, and afraid of rejection – any advice for how I can approach and talk to my wife about this? FYI – we don’t have kids, she wants them, but I am admittedly terrified of fatherhood – what if my child is just like me, I don’t want to pass on this feeling of being cursed? what if I have a son who is a macho-man dude-boy who I really will not be able to relate to? I am sure my wife has knowledge of my level of discomfort in life, I love her dearly, and I know she wants me to feel happy and healthy – but based on various hints / cues / discussions we’ve had I don’t think transgenderism is even in the spectrum of her radar. Just trying to find a route of this maze in my mind to open sharing with my wife. I want to share all this and my tears with her, but I am both terrified and confused – I mean, like this article’s topic what if in fact I am not transgendered, just mentally ill / depressed / bi-polar or something? Once the words are out they cannot be put back inside my head…. Sorry for rambling, and advice GREATLY appreciated. Dara Hoffman-FoxJuly 13, 2015 at 1:53 PM If you send a message to me through https://darahoffmanfox.com/contact/ I can see about getting someone on my volunteer staff to assist you. It may take 2-3 weeks before I can respond. 🙂 Mark L ClaytonJanuary 10, 2018 at 2:50 PM I feel your pain opening up your deepest darkest secret to the one person that you love is quite scary my advice take her out on a nice date wait till you get home and ask her for help then just be honest she’ll either accept you or she won’t but at least the lying will be over I truly hope she accepts you for you and really loves you for you but you have to love you for you Tyrell HartSeptember 22, 2015 at 2:14 PM Do you happen to know any gender identity therapists around Sarasota or Tampa, Florida? Dara Hoffman-FoxSeptember 27, 2015 at 9:56 AM This looks like a helpful link! RoswaldSeptember 22, 2015 at 2:38 PM Thank you for this, I’ve been struggling with gender dysphoria lately without actually being aware of it being gender dysphoria my whole life, since coming out as transgender it’s opened up the world to me again, I’ve always felt betrayed by my body for a function which is not how I see myself mentally. This has reassured me, knowing that what I have been and currently am going through is recognised and isn’t something else truly helps me deal with it and move one step closer to being able to carry on without it stopping me from living. JulianOctober 20, 2015 at 12:34 PM I think about mind dysphoria a lot. I feel pretty genderfluid, but I’d rather just be male. Sometimes I feel like being female is a mask, one that extends all the way to my thoughts. Sometimes I just feel like me inside and sometimes just like me outside too. I definitely felt weirder on the pill even though I was put on it because my mother suspected that there was something weirdly hormonal going on and I was depressed but on the pill I just cried more. I have trouble being myself, like I’m all masks, and some of that I can work through in therapy, but I feel like I’m playing a part. I used to act as a kid and I felt really like myself when I got to play male parts even though I wasn’t really sure about it at first. I don’t want to be physically female in relationships or socially either. I used to be attracted to women but I don’t even feel comfortable solo in my body sexually and I don’t want to be desired as a woman. I feel like I’m trapped inside the body of my mother. I can barely function. I’m afraid that I will never be able to physically transition because I’m not mentally well. I don’t even know if I should. I feel like a crazy cis woman who’s making this shit up. And I spend so much time thinking about this shit that I am afraid my marks will drop. I wish I could stop caring about gender. I don’t think men are one way and women are another. I just feel off in so many ways. I tried to socially transition once but I felt I had to perform to others expectations and other people were caring about my gender too much. Maybe I should see a gender-related therapist as well? It takes a long time for me to trust a therapist though. Also, I like your site a lot. Dara Hoffman-FoxOctober 24, 2015 at 5:53 PM I very strongly suggest you find a gender therapist hon! You need someone to talk to about this so you don’t have to beat yourself up anymore. There is an answer that makes sense for you and you deserve to find it out! I know it’s hard to open up to someone new, but I say it’s worth a shot. You can interview therapists as well to make sure you are comfortable with them. Good luck! This explains A LOT. - Empty Closets - A safe online community for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender people coming outNovember 8, 2015 at 5:35 PM […] This explains A LOT. I hope this is finally it. Basically in past threads I have said some of the following statements: "Sometimes I feel even more female than many gays who are more effeminate than me." "I feel like a man, but I don't feel man enough." I have also kind of identified a patter in my behaviour: 1. I am confused about my gender. 2. I get to the conclusion that I'm a man. 3. I get too happy and start acting feminine. 4. I feel bad about myself and I see/do something that makes me question again. 5. I go back to questioning and the cycle repeats. Then, I was looking at a thread in which this picture was posted and I immediately felt identified: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wU04OdIso1…in%2Bscale.jpg I knew about body and social dysphoria, but I think I have neither of both, so I didn't know why I was having such internal conflicts or why I was relating to the trans community. Mind dysphoria: Discomfort someone feels when their thoughts and emotions are at odds with their sense of identity. This explains a lot of things about why I'm feeling this way, why I couldn't reach a conclusion and why I have these intrusive thoughts. I identify as a man, but my thoughts and emotions say otherwise. So that's why I doubt myself. My personality works very much like a woman's. It's not a battle between my body and my mind, it's a battle between my mind and my mind. When I wake up I like waking up as a man, but I do it in a very girly fashion so that's where the conflict starts. I see videos taken of myself and hate the things I do with my hands and the words I use, it all sounds girl to me and I don't like that. I like being a bit sassy but when i get too excited I disgust myself. This is just another example, I know colors are not related to gender: "There are many women who are obsessed with having everything girly and pink, I'm a man because I am obsessed with having everything blue and masculine… but actually, that's not true, most men don't care about those things, so in reality my behaviour resembled more the one of women's than men's." I tried looking more in depth into mind dysphoria but there isn't much information about it. I just found the photo, a thread, and an article that mentions it. This revelation "revelation" made some things clear but it also generated many questions: What is the difference between mind dysphoria and "self hate"? How can I get over this mind dysphoria or "embrace it"? Do you have any other thoughts or advice? Thank you for all the love and support you've shown me since I joined!!!!! Links: What is mind dysphoria? Reader Q&A: Do I or Do I Not Have Gender Dysphoria? – Dara Hoffman-Fox […] BethanyNovember 20, 2015 at 2:07 AM I found this in Google search when pondering questions about life. My situation is a lot different than this persons but I ask some of the same questions to myself over and over And over again. Honestly it sucks to always be questioning yourself. I wish someone would just give me a straight up yes or no. After reading part of this I believe I may have gender dysophia. One day about 7 months ago I woke up and thought I’d look better as a boy, that I should cut my hair short like I did in highschool for different reasons. It was so random it caught me by surprise. I started wearing baggy clothing and buying clothing my bf describes as something a lesbian would wear. So I pondered the thought of being a lesbian. But I knew I wasn’t. I’m bi/don’t care. Anyway, after a while I just kind of chucked myself into the category of gender fluid but that didn’t really quite describe it. After 4 months of waiting I cut my hair short and I was instantly happier. My bf was not…but I’m not going to get into that part of all this… I asked a transgender person about 2 weeks ago if he thought I was trans and described to him in detail what I was feeling and he agreed that I was probably trans and started helping me out to understand all the trans stuff. The thing is I’m happy with my assigned gender. I like my parts being female for the most part… I wouldn’t mind a binder but bf wouldn’t approve. My mind calmed itself for the first time in months of confusion and I was actually happy for a little while. After the initial wtf is wrong with me shock went away. After a few days I told my bf and he flipped out. Then ignored it and a few days ago flipped out again and yelled at me saying I was just a tomboy. Since he’s in college for psych and he said he was looking this stuff up because it bugged him. I felt extremely sad. During the first arguement we had he said I don’t want to date a boy and I almost lost my shit. For a few years now Ive been playing little mind games in my head and have been referring to myself as a guy. Based on this am I transgender? Can I be transgender but feel like I’m in the right body? Do I have body dysorphia? I also found this other thing online while looking this up that said something about derealization disorder and read the symptoms of that. More than half of those symptoms I’ve either said out loud to myself or to others. Do I have that? Ever since I was little I haven’t really had a good grasp on gender. I grew up with 2 brothers and didn’t wear clothing that was stereotypical for little girls 100% percent of the time. And that went on untill I was 14 and I realized it wasn’t OK to walk around your house when your brothers are home wearing just a bra, underwear, and pants. So idk how that fits into all this. I didn’t know how to just ask you questions on the site. And I don’t have any money to pay you or anyone else with. I’m a broke college student in need of advice and direction and no ones really helping me out here. I don’t feel I can really talk to anyone about this I don’t feel like they’d really understand I don’t feel like I understand it. It’s driving me crazy. So I’m asking you on a comment board. I live in MA. Alright that’s all. Thanks for reading. Sorry for posting it this way! MareenaJanuary 12, 2016 at 1:38 PM Great article. I wanted to add that their are genders outside male/man and female/woman: genderqueer, gender fluid, non-binary, and agender to name some of the more well known ones. Here are some links with more information for anyone interested: ARJanuary 13, 2016 at 4:07 PM Thank you posting this. It’s given me a lot to think about. I guess my big hang up is the “discomfort or distress” end of the definition. For most of my life there was such a big disconnect between me and the idea of gender that it never occurred to me that it was strange to consider oneself to be agendered. I would tell people ‘I just am.’ I had male days, I had female days, but most days I was neither. I knew the cause, my body didn’t produce the right hormones. In my late 20’s I got on the right medications–these days I joke I am an artificial female because I feel like a woman as long as I remember to take my hormones–but this has always just been my normal. I’m not transgendered because I was born with female genitalia but I have to take hormones to feel female. Reading this though has given me a lot to think about. I have a very hard time considering not connecting to a gender to be a disorder (aka the psychiatric profession calls gender dysphoria) or that I might fit under the definition. I think there might just need to be room for people in our society for people who aren’t their genitalia but aren’t ‘distressed’ by it either. PashaMay 10, 2016 at 2:36 PM wonderful post that came in very handy as i was doubting myself and asking, how come i feel like a woman and at the same time am comfortable with my male body? JROctober 6, 2016 at 2:13 PM You’re response in all honesty to this should have been “If you think you might have Gender Dysphoria than you should consult a psychologist” Gender Dysphoria is something you are diagnosed with and they check the severity of it and prescribe an appropriate treatment for it. Currently one of my friends is undergoing said treat. All she’s doing is dressing as a female to see how that makes her feel because they are trying to figure out if she should start transitioning Dara Hoffman-FoxOctober 7, 2016 at 10:54 AM Gender Dysphoria can indeed be used in a diagnostic sense, but there are also those who use it as a way to describe their experience, regardless if they have been diagnosed as such by a professional. In the end it’s not up to the professional to tell someone who they are and how they experience themselves. Certainly the diagnosis is necessary for letters of support (at least for now), but the term Gender Dysphoria is available for anyone to use for their description of themselves, if they so chose to use it. G_J_HFebruary 7, 2017 at 9:32 PM It took me about 5 months after dad died to relize i was, different. But i only found out i truly wanted to be a girl 2 years later. It then took me abother 2 1/2 years, and i now relize that ive had GID for 8 whole years without knowing!! Im glad i could read this post to understand, my mind is 11 out of 10 a girl, its stange looking in the mirror as “E_” said, because everytime i see this male face i feel an inner sadness, like i know ide be happy if i saw something more pretty? More girly at least. sometimes i just wish i was born a girl!! Joe_or_JoApril 15, 2017 at 3:19 PM I turned 50 years old last August. I am male and grew up with an absent father who still essentially lived with us but was always at odds with my mom. I am the youngest of four children and the only boy. I was sexually abused by my cousin at age 8. I do not know the specifics because I have either blocked it out or over 36 years of recreational drug use has just killed my memory altogether. Apparently our moms walked in on me going down on him (age 10). The reason I drop that so glibly is because I am not sure I was ever in the closet. I have the dreaded “do I sound gay” voice my whole life and forcibly tried to deepen it when answering the phone because it would piss me off when someone would think I was my sibs or my mom. I had wild dreams of sexuality by the time I was 12. By 13 I was dressing up as female and sneaking into the city and pretending to be a girl. I was caught and frankly my 13-18 year old life was a war with my family that included getting a boyfriend when I was 16 and moving in with him. I have always crossed my legs and just been an effeminate man. i was attractive to no one and desperately wanted attention. So I sexualized my behavior and learned to substitute sex for love and am still there today. I have never been in a relationship and do not form close bonds with people. I think I am transgender and possibly headed toward surgery. For three years now the thought has been growing more and more. I am very unhappy as a male and don’t want to end my life as an unhappy man who is alone and always confused about why. Also I am terrified of what I will look like as a woman…its vanity, I get that, but I am still scared as all heck. toruJune 2, 2017 at 10:08 AM I just happened to be reading the comments on this page and I felt very identified with the latest comment. I am under 18 and I was also sexually abused by my cousin when I was way more younger. I can’t tell how old I was because I still have many lapses of memory about that time in my life. The thing is, that I have never told anyone before because I was scared, and still am to bring that out and I have no proof that it happened. At the beginning of this year, I started to question my gender identity and I still am. In fact, now, I am seeing a gender therapist aproximately once a week. Still, I got this question running through my head. What if my body dysphoria is caused by this abuse I suffered when I was younger? I am extremely confused and I don’t know what to do about it. Should I tell my therapist about it? Thank you Dara, Dara Hoffman-FoxJune 3, 2017 at 10:41 AM Good timing, I just created a video that should help with this: EttinaAugust 6, 2017 at 3:06 PM Could LW be nonbinary? Mark L ClaytonJanuary 10, 2018 at 2:07 PM Stuck between honesty and my wife came out to my wife of 12 years 6months ago that I was having issues with my gender. She was not happy and felt like our whole life we made togerher nothing but a lie. Gender identity issues I’ve been with me my whole life and dressing up was something I only did in private and hid it from everyone she was at first really mad then a little supportive but told me I needed a therapist to help find my true self it worked I finally stopped lying to myself and accepted that I was made this way. And made the decision to go forward not backwards and stop hating myself. Then she said this is all crap and its a choice you are making to choose being a woman instead of her as she is not a lesbian nor bi she told me to be honest with her about everything and I was now she wanta me to stop and go back to repressing my feelings . how do I be honest with her and myself and repress my true self all at the same time. It was hard but dooable to repress my true self before I accepted me. Now if feels like a house is on top of me I want to be my true self but I also want my wife to not totally abandon me she is my best friend and our marriage was about as close to perfect as u can get now she says she feels nothing for me and everything we had was fake I know I can’t go backwards and need to go forward any help with trying to save at least my best friend out of this as I’m sure our marriage wont last long I can accept that she doesnt see me as a man but dont want to loose her as my best friend I do love her and dont know what to do tomMay 10, 2018 at 6:29 AM I’m transgender (ftm) and have a crush on a girl who still sees me as a female. what do i do? Xaviar QuallsJune 28, 2018 at 3:04 PM This actually made me feel wayyyy better cause i always did wish i had a penis or that i was a boy and when i started puberty and got tits and periods i was miserable and i hated it and i tries to dress and act like guys but i still liked pink and flowers and dresses and makeup just not my gender, i keep questioning if im really trans but then i think “do i want to be female my whole life” frick no if i had a choice id grow a dick and chop my tits off but i cant. I have like a feminine attitude (like the stereotypical gay dude) but i feel expected to be hyper masculine when i trsnsition. INFO 200: Blog Post #3 – Emily Goes to iSchoolSeptember 23, 2019 at 10:41 AM […] CassieBebop & Hoffman-Fox, D. (2014). Reader Q&A: Do I or do I not have gender dysphoria? [Online image]. Retrieved from https://darahoffmanfox.com/do-i-have-gender-dysphoria/ […]

By Lambert Strether of Corrente. Bird Song of the Day Long-tailed Potoo, Amazonas, Brazil. “Recording without noise filter. If you want to hear the bird’s song more clearly, I uploaded the same recording with the filter in the same list.” I like all the night sounds; I wish I could have visited Amazonia. Have any readers? “But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51 “Here’s food for thought, had Ahab time to think; but Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels.” –Herman Melville, Moby Dick “So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles “Joe Biden expected to issue first presidential veto in anti-ESG vote” [Financial Times]. “Joe Biden is on course to issue the first veto of his presidency after two Democratic senators sided with Republican lawmakers in opposing a White House rule that allows fund managers to consider environmental, social and governance factors in their investment decisions. Jon Tester, a Democratic senator from Montana, on Wednesday afternoon said he would join fellow Democrat Joe Manchin in voting to roll back a US labour department rule that allows retirement plan fiduciaries to include ESG considerations in their investments. ‘At a time when working families are dealing with higher costs, from healthcare to housing, we need to be focused on ensuring Montanans’ retirement savings are on the strongest footing possible,’ Tester said in a statement. ‘I’m opposing this Biden administration rule because I believe it undermines retirement accounts for working Montanans and is wrong for my state.” “See No Evil” [Harpers]. Gitmo, which Obama didn’t shut down, after promising to, and Biden did not shut down, after not promising to: [Mansoor Adayfi:] As you know, Guantánamo was created out of the legal zone, out of the legal system. Torture was the mechanism of Guantánamo. Torture, abuse, and experimenting on prisoners. We went on a massive hunger strike in 2005. And there was force-feeding. It was torture. I saw a fucking handsome person come in and he said, “I’m here to ensure that you are treated humanely.” m[Mike Prysner:] It was Ron DeSantis? [Adayfi:] Yes. And, “If you have any problems, if you have any concerns, just talk to me.” We were drowning in that place. So I was like, “Oh, this is cool. This person will raise the concerns.” But it was a piece of the game. What they were doing was looking for what hurts us more so they could use it against us. In 2006, when DeSantis was there, it was one of the worst times at Guantánamo. The administration, the guards, all of them were the worst. They cracked down on us so hard. When they came to break our hunger strike, a team came to us. The head of the team, he was a general. He said, “I have a job. I was sent here to break your fucking hunger strike. I don’t care why you are here. I don’t care who you are. My job is to make you eat. Today we are talking. Tomorrow there will be no talking.” The second day, they brought piles of Ensure and they started force-feeding us over and over again. [Prysner:] For those who don’t know, Ensure is a thick milky nutritional shake mainly marketed on daytime television to elderly people. It is very hard to drink. [Adayfi:] Yes, and Ron DeSantis was there watching us. We were crying, screaming. We were tied to the feeding chair. And he was watching. He was laughing. Our stomachs could not hold this amount of Ensure. They poured one can after another. So when he approached me, I said, “This is the way we are treated!” He said, “You should eat.” I threw up in his face. Literally on his face. [Prysner:] Ron DeSantis? [Adayfi:] In his face. Yeah. This won’t get traction, of course (and plenty of people will say “Good for DeSantis!”). But worth a read. “The Democratic Insider Who Fought the Trump Administration” (interview) [Douglas Letter, Pro Publica]. Review of some of Letter’s cases. Letter: “One is the census case. The Trump administration illegally attempted to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. And during litigation, lots of evidence was put in the record that they were doing so for a very bad purpose, which was to keep down the count of Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans. So we joined a batch of states and others who were challenging the validity of that. I argued before the Supreme Court, and it’s an interesting opinion. The Supreme Court ruled in our favor, upholding the lower courts, and wrote a fairly narrow opinion but one that is quite meaningful. This was the first time that the Supreme Court had ruled that it did not trust the explanation given by the executive branch. The lower courts had held that the executive branch had acted in bad faith in making it seem like there was a valid justification for doing this. And the evidence showed that that was not true — that the Commerce Department folks who are in charge had asked the Justice Department to basically cook up a rationale. The Supreme Court affirmed and said that the citizenship question had to be stricken. I was very proud of that.” “‘Panic station at Fox News’: how the Murdochs agonised over Trump’s loss” [Financial Times]. The deck: “Details of network’s handling of US election denialism explode into public view via Dominion lawsuit.” More: “Denver-based Dominion was catapulted into the limelight when the Trump campaign claimed its devices fraudulently awarded votes to Biden. In its lawsuit filed in March 2021, the voting machine company said those allegations were amplified by conservative news outlets, particularly Fox News, which gave them ‘a prominence they otherwise would never have achieved.’ The evidence — consisting of depositions and hundreds of internal company communications harvested during legal discovery — shows that Fox for months agonised over how to handle Trump’s election denialism. The December email to Scott came after Murdoch and his eldest son Lachlan, Fox chief executive, received a panicked text from Paul Ryan, former speaker of the House and a Fox board member. ‘We are entering a truly bizarre phase of this where [Trump] has actually convinced himself of this farce’, Ryan wrote as he urged Rupert and Lachlan to do the ‘right thing’ and broadcast a ‘solid pushback’ of the lies. Rupert asked Lachlan to call him to talk it over, noting Trump had ‘sounded really crazy’ that weekend in Georgia.” • Trump had the wrong theory of the case (and I don’t know why he latched on to electronic voting machines. Vulnerable as they inherently are, like all digital devices, but you still have to show the vulnerability applies in particular precincts. Now, if Trump had blamed the spooks, the press, and social media for suppressing the Hunter Biden story — and what’s sauce for Clinton’s emails is sauce for Hunter’s laptop — he would be looking pretty good right now). “The Antiwar Conservatives Rise” [Rod Dreher, The American Conservative]. “Y’all know I’m sitting here in Budapest, agreeing with Viktor Orban and the Hungarian government that we need to be pushing hard — very hard — for peace. The Hungarians don’t have any love for the Russians, and have consistently and correctly condemned the Russian aggression. But they also don’t think the Ukrainians are God’s gift to humanity (ask them about how Kyiv treated the ethnic Hungarians of far western Ukraine before the war), and they do not want Ukraine to drag all of Europe into a catastrophic war. As with so much else, American conservatives are now trying to catch up with the wisdom of PM Orban. I hope they catch up before it’s too late.” “Florida bill would require bloggers who write about the governor and legislators to register with the state” [NBC]. “A Republican state senator in Florida has introduced a bill that, if passed, would require bloggers who write about Gov. Ron DeSantis, his Cabinet or state legislators to register with the state. Sen. Jason Brodeur’s bill, titled ‘Information Dissemination,’ would also require bloggers to disclose who’s paying them for their posts about certain elected officials and how much. ‘If a blogger posts to a blog about an elected state officer and receives, or will receive, compensation for that post, the blogger must register’ with the appropriate office within five days of the post, the legislation says. It defines ‘elected state officer’ as ‘the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, a Cabinet officer, or any member of the Legislature.’ Failing to register would result in a fine of $25 a day, and the penalty would be capped at $2,500 per posting, NBC affiliate WFLA of Tampa reported. The bill says the bloggers’ reports to the state ‘must include’ the ‘individual or entity that compensated the blogger for the blog post, and ‘the amount of compensation received from the individual or entity.'” • Stuck pig squeals. Maybe I should be reading more Florida blogs. Can readers suggest any? nNo Kossacks, please! “New bill would eliminate Florida Democratic Party” [WESH]. “Spring Hill Republican Senator Blaise Ingoglia has filed SB 1248, which would be called ‘The Ultimate Cancel Act.’ While it does not mention the Democratic party’s name, it would direct the Florida Division of Elections to ‘immediately cancel the filings of a political party, to include its registration and approved status as a political party, if the party’s platform has previously advocated for, or been in support of, slavery or involuntary servitude.'” • Owning the libs…. Democrats en Déshabillé Patient readers, it seems that people are actually reading the back-dated post! But I have not updated it, and there are many updates. So I will have to do that. –lambert I have moved my standing remarks on the Democrat Party (“the Democrat Party is a rotting corpse that can’t bury itself”) to a separate, back-dated post, to which I will periodically add material, summarizing the addition here in a “live” Water Cooler. (Hopefully, some Bourdieu.) It turns out that defining the Democrat Party is, in fact, a hard problem. I do think the paragraph that follows is on point all the way back to 2016, if not before: The Democrat Party is the political expression of the class power of PMC, their base (lucidly explained by Thomas Frank in Listen, Liberal!). ; if the Democrat Party did not exist, the PMC would have to invent it. . (“PMC” modulo “class expatriates,” of course.) Second, all the working parts of the Party reinforce each other. Leave aside characterizing the relationships between elements of the Party (ka-ching, but not entirely) those elements comprise a network — a Flex Net? An iron octagon? — of funders, vendors, apparatchiks, electeds, NGOs, and miscellaneous mercenaries, with assets in the press and the intelligence community. Note, of course, that the class power of the PMC both expresses and is limited by other classes; oligarchs and American gentry (see ‘industrial model’ of Ferguson, Jorgensen, and Jie) and the working class spring to mind. Suck up, kick down. * * * “Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez might have violated House rules with Met Gala gifts, watchdog says” [USA Today]. • It was dumb when she did it, and now it looks even more dumb. The complaint: 🚨BREAKING: The Office of Congressional Ethics has released a statement in which they say there is "substantial reason to believe" AOC "accepted impermissible associated with her attendance at the Met Gala in 2021" that violated "standards of conduct and federal law." pic.twitter.com/cR215TfY6J — Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 2, 2023 Rot in the Nevada Dems, unsurprisingly: This memo comprises talking points that Judith and her team are using to justify her re-election. Not only is it pathetic for her to stand behind numbers so woefully substandard, her team does not give the indication that they know any better (2/8) — Nnedi Stephens (@naijaluv409) March 2, 2023 Presumably the party chair will be re-elected… Realignment and Legitimacy “Dark money and special deals: How Leonard Leo and his friends benefited from his judicial activism” [Politico]. “A network of political non-profits formed by judicial activist Leonard Leo moved at least $43 million to a new firm he is leading, raising questions about how his conservative legal movement is funded. Leo’s own personal wealth appeared to have ballooned as his fundraising prowess accelerated since his efforts to cement the Supreme Court’s conservative majority helped to bring about its decision to overturn abortion rights. Most recently, Leo reaped a $1.6 billion windfall from a single donor in what is likely the biggest single political gift in U.S. history. Fundraising reports for 2022 have yet to be filed but spending by Leo’s aligned nonprofits on his for-profit business in 2020 and 2021 demonstrates the extent to which his money-raising benefited his own bottom line. And it shows how campaign-style politics — and the generous paydays that go along with it — are now adjacent to the Supreme Court, the one U.S. institution that’s supposed to be immune to it.” • Ka-ching. Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). • Readers, we seem to hovering near 28 of 50 states. Could those of you in states not listed help out by either with dashboard/wastewater links, or ruling your state out definitively? Thank you! (Also, apologies to anybody I have missed; please leave the link in comments again). Resources, United States (Local): CA (dashboard), Marin; CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NM (dashboard); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OR (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (dashboard); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater). Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada). Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC, Vancouver (wastewater). Hat tips to helpful readers: Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, Joe, John, JM (2), JW, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, otisyves, Petal (5), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, tennesseewaltzer, Utah, Bob White. (Readers, if you leave your link in comments, I credit you by your handle. If you send it to me via email, I use your initials (in the absence of a handle. I am not putting your handle next to your contribution because I hope and expect the list will be long, and I want it to be easy for readers to scan.) • More like this, please! Total: 1 6 11 18 20 22 26 27 28/50 (56% of US states). We should list states that do not have Covid resources, or have stopped updating their sites, so others do not look fruitlessly. Thank you! Look for the Helpers * * * Finding like-minded people on (sorry) Facebook: Thought I'd add this here in case anyone is interested. Places to find people who "Still Covid" in your area & online: https://t.co/T4ND4XbrpF & https://t.co/sP5wq4fAw5 You can also search on FB "Still Coviding ____" & see if there's a specific group on your area. — Adriel Rose (@adriel_rose) March 1, 2023 “Covid Meetups” [COVID MEETUPS (JM)]. “A free service to find individuals, families and local businesses/services who take COVID precautions in your area.” • I played around with it some. It seems to be Facebook-driven, sadly, but you can use the Directory without logging in. I get rational hits from the U.S., but not from London, UK, FWIW. Covid Is Airborne “Estimated Airborne Decay of SARS-CoV-2 (virus that causes COVID-19)” [Department of Homeland Security (MinNYC)]. “Use the sliders to select the UV index, temperature and relative humidity of interest. Information on how long SARS-CoV-2 would be expected to remain stable in aerosols (airborne) will be displayed in the table below. Users can find the environmental conditions for a specific location by accessing general weather resources online.” • This is brilliant. It’s also screaming out to be an app — and integrated with 3Cs. “Confronting Medical Misinformation” [Coalition for Trust in Health & Science (KLG)]. Their version of you do you: “All people have equitable access to the accurate, understandable and relevant information necessary to make health choices and decisions.” • KLG writes: “Notice the procedure masks instead of masks that work…head hits desk.” Speaking of misinformation: If these people must be performative, could they at least model masking technology that… performs? The About page, fortunately, has no red flags, except for lack of funders, but this looks like a pretty low-budget operation to me. “CSIS officer fired for complaining publicly about agency’s lack of COVID-19 masking” [Global News]. Canada: “A Canadian intelligence officer has been fired for speaking publicly about what he felt were inadequate COVID-19 policies at CSIS headquarters during the height of the pandemic. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service dismissed Gary Vos Smith for giving an interview to Global News about the lack of mandatory masking at the agency’s building in Ottawa. A disciplinary committee found that Vos Smith had acted ‘in an inappropriate manner,’ according to a termination letter he received from CSIS director David Vigneault on Nov. 16, 2022. The letter, obtained by Global News, also said he should have known his actions ‘could pose a notable risk to the organization as a whole and from an identity management perspective.'” And: “[M]any [CSIS employees] were unable to work remotely because of the secretive nature of their jobs. Some complained about inadequate health and safety protocols, and hundreds signed a mass grievance in February 2021, complaining about the lack of physical distancing at headquarters and weak policies on workplace masking. Vos Smith was the only one to do so openly.” • Our spooks are either more disciplined, more delusional, or…. already have good ventilation, as elites do. “Antihistamines and azithromycin as a treatment for COVID-19 on primary health care – A retrospective observational study in elderly patients” [Pulmonary Pharmacology & Therapeutics (kareninca)]. n = 84. “Between March and April 2020, 84 elderly patients with suspected COVID-19 living in two nursing homes of Yepes, Toledo (Spain) were treated early with antihistamines (dexchlorpheniramine, cetirizine or loratadine), adding azithromycin in the 25 symptomatic cases. The outcomes are retrospectively reported…. Given the low fatality rate observed in our patient population, this treatment protocol merits immediate consideration for the treatment of COVID-19 and future evaluation in randomized controlled clinical trials, taking into account the probably decisive role of antihistamines, which was the only treatment most of our patients received.” • Alert reader kareninca says that Claritin is in her protocol because of this study. (Claritin is an anti-histamine, although with different active ingredients.) On the origins debate: In the debate about whether Covid came from a lab or a wet market, I’ve always come down hard on the side of it coming from organising society as an economy. So that keeping coffee shops and travel agents solvent takes priority over sheltering from a lethal virus. — Henry Madison 🦠x0 (@RageSheen) March 2, 2023 Looks like “leveling off to a high plateau” across the board. (I still think “Something Awful” is coming, however. I mean, besides what we already know about.) Stay safe out there! BioBot wastewater data from March 2: For now, I’m going to use this national wastewater data as the best proxy for case data (ignoring the clinical case data portion of this chart, which in my view “goes bad” after March 2022, for reasons as yet unexplained). At least we can spot trends, and compare current levels to equivalent past levels. ☆ NW ☆ Covid Emergency Room Visits NOT UPDATED From CDC NCIRD Surveillance, from February 25: NOTE “Charts and data provided by CDC, updates Wednesday by 8am. For the past year, using a rolling 52-week period.” So not the entire pandemic, FFS (the implicit message here being that Covid is “just like the flu,” which is why the seasonal “rolling 52-week period” is appropriate for bothMR SUBLIMINAL I hate these people so much. Anyhow, I added a grey “Fauci line” just to show that Covid wasn’t “over” when they started saying it was, and it’s not over now. From the Walgreen’s test positivity tracker, published March 3: -1.0%. Still high, but at last a distinct downturn. Death rate (Our World in Data): Total: 1,146,630 – 1,146,142 = 488 (488 * 365 = 178,120 deaths per year, today’s YouGenicist™ number for “living with” Covid (quite a bit higher than the minimizers would like, though they can talk themselves into anything. If the YouGenicist™ metric keeps chugging along like this, I may just have to decide this is what the powers-that-be consider “mission accomplished” for this particular tranche of death and disease). Tech: A recipe for beating Twitter’s “For You” algorithm: I put together a hypothesis about Twitter's For You algorithm and have used it twice now to get a tweet over 1,000 retweets (which is something I haven't been able to do since last November). *Very sad man who pays for Twitter voice* Here’s how I did it… — Ryan Broderick (@broderick) February 27, 2023 What I notice is that “For You” adheres much more closely to what I actually want to read than their previous algo did, and for better or worse, actually includes a lot of accounts I follow (and would therefore expect to find in the “Following” Tab). Tech: “Your Ring camera features are about to change, and not in a good way” [Tech Radar]. “Starting March 29, smart home brand Ring will begin requiring users to purchase a Ring Protect Plan for its devices as it’s placing several currently free features behind a paywall. On that day, owners of either a Ring doorbell or camera(opens in new tab) will lose access to Home and Away Modes on the official app and Amazon Alexa without a subscription. Home Mode(opens in new tab), for those who don’t know, deactivates in-house sensors so people can move freely inside while keeping the ones outside a residence activated. Away Mode fully secures a house by arming all sensors and having the cameras constantly record; great for people who want to keep an eye on things while away. So as you can see, Ring is going to be charging people to use two of the more basic features.” • Let the enshittification begin! Tech: “Amazon pauses construction of second headquarters in Virginia” [CNBC]. This is the building shaped like a giant screw. “The move comes as Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has taken steps to curtail expenses across the company in the face of slowing revenue and a gloomy economic outlook. That’s led the company to announce the largest layoffs in its history, totaling more than 18,000 employees. Amazon is also reevaluating its real estate portfolio and sunsetting some projects.” Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 48 Neutral (previous close: 56 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 60 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Mar 2 at 1:40 PM ET. Groves of Academe “Commentary: Go ahead and major in English. You’ll be fine!” [Los Angeles Times]. “Then there are the humanities majors. These are the people who couldn’t tolerate the idea of business school but somehow ended up with a sales job anyway, and who, while working quietly at the computer, decided most NFT art is unbelievable garbage [it is] and that ChatGPT is already boring [ditto]. We are discussing you today.” And: “Professional exile is the predominant experience of English majors today, who live like passport-holders from an ailing nation on a long-term visa — you have a book in you, but it’s not clear it will ever come out.” Or several. Finally, Arendt, DuBois, Homer: “The immeasurable value in encountering any of these writers — or spending time with any serious creative, intellectual or spiritual work — comes from cultivating the radical subjectivity that is our birthright as humans, the burden we carry for all time. Observation, testing and replication can and will build faster jets, better medicines or more capable AI. But where do rights come from? Whose history should be taught about the founding of the United States? What’s good prose, and who’s just a blowhard trying to show off? What immortal fire connects Johnny Cash with Kendrick Lamar? You don’t need to be an English major to ask any of these questions. You just need to be a seeker. But the humanities can help you look.” “The Left Should Defend Classical Education” [Jacobin]. “[Roosevelt] Montás goes beyond the usual human capital arguments — reading Plato will help you get promoted at McKinsey! — making the case that college is not just about making a living, but also making life worth living. In advocating the canon for all, Montás is arguing for a more egalitarian model of schooling than our current one, which too often reserves liberal arts as a luxury for the few, while the working class is supposed to be grateful for a vocational education and a pile of debt. (Let them eat STEM!) Montás argues that the great books should be incorporated into every course of study, even the preprofessional. Montás is a voice in an ideological wilderness here: We don’t see many on the Left making the case for classical education. On campus, the student left tends to oppose these kinds of core courses as a stance against Eurocentrism, patriarchy, and racism, and much of the academic left agrees. But there is no reason why great books courses can’t be diverse; Montás devotes chapters in his book to African (St Augustine) as well as Indian (Mohandas Gandhi) thinkers. In any case, it’s anti-intellectual to reject ‘dead white men’; we would miss out on thousands of years of literature and philosophy, and thus, centuries of truth-seeking and inquiry. As my Brooklyn College student was suggesting, too, the culture we live in today has been formed by these works (without them, we don’t even know what an Achilles’ heel is). College administrators often reject great books programs to avoid the culture wars they inspire and out of professed commitment to ‘student choice,’ which sounds progressive but is just another way of reducing education to customer service.” “The Art of the Shadow: How Painters Have Gotten It Wrong for Centuries” [The MIT Press Reader]. “In many cases, the rules of physics that apply in a real scene appear to be optional in a painting; they can be obeyed or ignored at the discretion of the artist to enhance the painting’s intended effect. Some strong deviations, such as Picasso’s skewed faces or the wildly colored shadows in the works of the Fauvist school, are meant to be noticed as ingredients of the style and message of the painting — they serve communication purposes. On top of that, an alternative physics operates in many paintings, one that few of us ever notice but is just as improbable. These transgressions of standard physics — impossible shadows, impossible colors, impossible reflections or contours — often pass unnoticed by the viewer and do not interfere with the viewer’s understanding of the scene. Because we do not notice them, transgressions of physics reveal that our visual brain uses a simpler, reduced physics to understand the world. Artists can endorse this alternative physics precisely because these particular deviations from true physics do not matter to the viewer: The artist can take shortcuts, presenting cues more economically and arranging surfaces and lights to suit the message of the piece rather than the requirements of the physical world. In discovering these shortcuts or strategies of image compression, artists act as research neuroscientists or as visual hackers, and we can learn a great deal from tracing their discoveries.” • Fascinating! I think the shadows under the bridge are OK: Claude Monet, Waterloo Bridge, Sunlight Effect, 1903 #museumarchive #europeanart https://t.co/oPahOXrLUc pic.twitter.com/mX7PvVzM7p — Claude Monet (@artistmonet) March 3, 2023 “Huge New Study Shows Why Exercise Should Be The First Choice in Treating Depression” [Science Alert]. A meta-study. “Because individual studies have looked at such a wide variety of physical activity types, intensities, population subgroups, and comparison groups, it may be difficult for clinicians to make sense of evidence suggesting physical activity is beneficial in the treatment of mental health disorders. So [clinical exercise physiologist Ben Singh from UniSA] and his colleagues at UniSA conducted a broader type of study called an umbrella review, to evaluate how all kinds of physical activity affect depression, anxiety, and psychological distress in adults. An umbrella review examines a collection of reviews rather than individual studies to provide an overall picture of what existing research says about a specific subject. Put simply, it provides ‘umbrella’ coverage of all the evidence on a topic. The research team extracted all the eligible studies published prior to 2022 from 12 electronic databases. Overall, they analyzed 97 reviews that included 1039 trials with more than 128,119 participants. When comparing the effects of exercise to those of usual care across all populations, they found that exercise improved symptoms of depression, anxiety, and psychological distress 1.5 times better than talk therapy or medication. ‘We also found that all types of physical activity and exercise were beneficial, including aerobic exercise such as walking, resistance training, Pilates, and yoga,’ says Singh.” • Here is the original. After looking at that horrid Cochrane study, I really don’t want to regard meta-studies as unproblematic, so maybe readers can dig into the methodology. “Meet the men paying to have their jaws broken in the name of ‘manliness'” [GQ]. “In 2019, Ali started hanging out on Looksmax.org, an online forum in which men strive to achieve their “aesthetic potential”. Looksmaxing is a facet of the manosphere, that swamp of online communities that’s often a potent mix of toxic masculinity, men’s rights and misogyny. There, one can encounter a whole array of influencers, from pickup artists and provocateurs like Jordan Peterson to self-proclaimed misogynists like Andrew Tate. The manosphere is dominated by “red pill” ideology, which references the scene in The Matrix when Neo chooses to take a red capsule instead of a blue one and, in so doing, see the world as it truly is. To be “redpilled” can refer to any unsettling awakening; in this particular context, it describes an understanding of society in which modern men have become disadvantaged by a feminist power shift that leaves them unable to find sexual partners. Women, meanwhile – or so the distorted logic goes – can take their pick.” • Hence, “jawline fluidity.” “The Weird (and Wired) Truth Behind What’s Really in Coca-Cola” [Eater]. “By the early 20th century, cocaine’s popularity had stirred up a powerful opposition movement, which linked the drug with delinquency and madness — particularly in the South, where racist fears that the drug was leading Black users into crime led to the first American bans of the drug. Following suit, Coke’s then-president, a devout Southern Christian named Asa Candler, decided to make a change to the drink’s secret formula. He insisted on keeping the coca leaf, so that Coca-Cola still contained coca — but he switched to ‘decocainized’ coca leaves, with all traces of the drug removed. The newly formulated ingredient would be combined with kola nut in a powder given the mysterious cover name ‘Merchandise #5.’ Coca-Cola might have taken the cocaine out of their drink, but the company still needed to source coca leaves, which became more and more challenging. By 1914, the American federal government had officially restricted cocaine to medicinal use. So, as the government began debating an official import ban, Coke sent its lobbyists into the fray, pushing for a special exemption. Their fingerprints are all over the Harrison Act of 1922, which banned the import of coca leaves, but included a section permitting the use of ‘de-cocainized coca leaves or preparations made therefrom, or to any other preparations of coca leaves that do not contain cocaine.’ Only two companies were given special permits by the act to import those coca leaves for processing — one of which was Maywood Chemical Works, of Maywood, New Jersey, whose biggest customer was the Coca-Cola company.” • And still is. I wonder what “decocainized” means in practice…. “Young People and Enthusiast Cars Are Saving Manual Transmissions” [The Drive]. “Manual cars reached an all-time low market share in 2021, consisting of less than 1% of new car sales, according to J.D. Power figures. Since their 0.9% floor, there has been a rebound. Sales rose in 2022 to 1.2% and now in 2023 manual cars consist of 1.7% of the new car market. That represents a year-to-date rise of 12.2%… The evidence says fans of the stick shift aren’t dying out, either. Half of the buyers of manual Acura Integras were between the ages of 18 and 46. Likewise, a quarter of new MX-5 buyers are 18 to 35. In short, there are small but solid indications that the stick isn’t dead yet.” And: “The resistance to performance for performance’s sake and electrification altogether is growing, though, and not necessarily in a reactionary anti-environmental way.” Perhaps it’s resistance to the digital? Norfolk Southern Toxic Train Bomb: “In a growing petrochemical hub, the East Palestine derailment triggers ‘an uneasy feeling'” [Grist]. “[T]he [controlled burn] didn’t go quite as planned. A towering, bulbous cloud of black smoke erupted from the train in the explosion and then spread over the surrounding area like a pool of oil, where it hung in the low atmosphere for hours and hours. Experts have attributed the smoke’s stubborn refusal to dissipate to a weather phenomenon called an inversion, where warm air that rises into the atmosphere after a sunny day traps the cold air coming off the ground as night falls. “The smoke that was supposed to stay up started banking down a bit on the area,” [fireman Chris] Laderer explained.” • Couldn’t they have checked for an inversion? What’s up with that? This whole piece is well worth a read. Seems like Appalachia is a lot like NOLA, and not just because of petrochemical disasters. “What Norfolk Southern’s History of Accidents Say About the Company and Industry” [Cleveland Scene (Carla)]. “Derailments litter the past five years of Norfolk Southern’s accident reports. To be fair, most of those incidents are relatively benign: Nothing spills, nobody gets hurt. Still the frequency of these incidents is hard to miss. Axios noted that in a recent earnings call executives acknowledged accidents are climbing. The Dispatch recently reported that Norfolk Southern is near the top of major rail companies when it comes to accidents per million miles. Speaking on background, one former conductor said Norfolk Southern doesn’t have great reputation when it comes to safety. A consultant with significant experience in the industry said among the big four railroads, Norfolk Southern isn’t as bad as Union Pacific, but it’s still pushing the bounds of safe operation.” “It’s Not Only Doctors. Hospitals Are Burning Out Janitors, Too.” [Peste]. From October 2022, still germane. “Burnout is something that happens to a worker when they are overworked and underpaid. But such circumstances are de-emphasized in the very term “burnout,” which, you’ll notice, does not emphasize the material but the psychological. A worker is supposed to find meaning. Pay, benefits, time off, and health care are secondary. But the least well-paid workers, those with demanding jobs just as essential as clinicians, don’t even get the psychological support. Physicians joke that their employers tend to emphasize the psychological as a treatment for burnout – resilience, yoga, pizza parties – and not, say, more pay or generous sick leave. But janitors and food service workers (who are often contracted out to hospitals, not direct employees) don’t even get these psychological benefits meant to distract from material needs. Healthcare institutions, governments, and lay people at least make an outward show of respect for doctors and nurses. Witness the rituals of applause and pot-banging in many cities at the outset of the pandemic, and the banners, now a little sad and worn, praising “health care heroes” that adorn many a hospital lobby. Too few are praising the people that make the medical centers run.” • And who are as at risk medically as HCWs, if not more so, and more at risk socially. Prices rise because firms raise them: He told investors: “We still have several CPGs (Consumer Packaged Good companies) that are trying to pass through costs more than probably their inflation.” In other words, they're choosing to raise prices beyond the amount inflation is driving up their costs. /2 — More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) March 2, 2023 News of the Wired “A Three-Dimensional Taxonomy of Achievement Emotions” [APA PsychNet]. “In line with current definitions (e.g., Scherer & Moors, 2019), we view emotions as multicomponent changes in an organism’s psychophysical system that occur in response to events or situations important to the organism. These changes can comprise affective, cognitive, physiological, motivational, and expressive-behavioral components. For example, anxiety before an exam typically includes nervous, uneasy feelings (affective), worries about possible failure (cognitive), physiological arousal (physiological), impulses to avoid taking the exam (motivation), and anxious facial expressions (expressive behavior). Each of these components can involve multiple processes, such as physiological arousal comprising processes triggered in the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. Following “critical” emotion theories that question classic conceptions of emotions as hard-wired affect programs (Moors, 2017), we contend that these processes are coupled in probabilistic ways and can vary between and within persons. For example, behavioral expressions of emotion vary more across persons and cultures than previously thought (Barrett et al., 2019). As such, emotions are best viewed as affective episodes that include multiple, loosely connected changes in a multidimensional space of component processes. However, the patterns of these changes are not arbitrary. Instead, some patterns are more likely to occur in response to specific events. These prototypical patterns make it possible to distinguish between different emotions, semantically represent them in language, and use verbal self-report to assess them (Fontaine et al., 2013). Given the flexibility of the multicomponent patterns that we call emotions, we believe it is best not to view them as categories defined by clear-cut boundaries, but rather as prototypes representing families of similar patterns (see Russell & Barrett, 1999, for a similar view).” “Lichen Latte, Anyone?” [JSTOR Daily]. “[A] few centuries ago, lichen were welcome medicaments in the ancient and early modern apothecary…. [L]ichen still appears in our alimentary routines. According to the authors of Urban Lichens: A Field Guide for Northeastern North America, ‘usnic acid harvested from lichens is often used as an ingredient in all-natural toothpaste and deodorant’ for its antimicrobial properties. But DIY apothecary beware: the compound can be toxic in higher doses, and lichens sequester pollutants like heavy metals from the air that could reappear in homemade brews. Better, perhaps, to appreciate the versatility of lichens from a relative distance.” • So, no. Contact information for plants: Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) find out how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. From JL: JL writes: “A wild Dendrobium display in the late afternoon sun. We first discovered these high in our tangerine trees — they appear to be quite adept at propagating themselves.” Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the annual NC fundraiser. So if you see a link you especially like, or an item you wouldn’t see anywhere else, please do not hesitate to express your appreciation in tangible form. Remember, a tip jar is for tipping! Regular positive feedback both makes me feel good and lets me know I’m on the right track with coverage. When I get no donations for five or ten days I get worried. More tangibly, a constant trickle of donations helps me with expenses, and I factor in that trickle when setting fundraising goals: Here is the screen that will appear, which I have helpfully annotated: If you hate PayPal, you can email me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, and I will give you directions on how to send a check. Thank you! Don’t do the blog if you can do the slog in Florida, man. “Notice the procedure masks instead of masks that work…head hits desk.” Respiratory virus shedding in exhaled breath and efficacy of face masks This study found that coronavirus aerosols and droplets were completely stopped by a surgical/procedure mask when used as source control. > This study found that coronavirus aerosols and droplets were completely stopped by a surgical/procedure mask when used as source control. When the masks are gappy? I don’t think so. In any case, checking the Abstract shows that you’re wrong: Obviously, “reduced detection of coronavirus RNA in respiratory droplets” ≠ “completely stopped.” Other problems with the study will doubtless occur to readers (like it only applies to symptomatic, e.g. coughing, individuals, not asymptomatic, simply breathing, hence the very WHO/CDC-inflected fudge of “respiratory droplets” instead of “aerosol.” So there are a couple of problems with your comment: 1) Lying is bad; 2) Assuming our readers are stupid is also bad (since many of them will check the link, as I did). I think you have a bridge you need to be under. Go away. There might be better sites than these at more local levels, but they’re at least official; I couldn’t find anything wastewater related from a quick search. Also, it feels like Brave’s search got worse…and they’re throwing Google-esque garbage at the top of searches more, of course using “AI”. Alaska dashboard: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/af2efc8bffbf4cdc83c2d1a134354074/ Alabama dashboard: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/6d2771faa9da4a2786a509d82c8cf0f7 Arizona dashboard: https://www.azdhs.gov/covid19/data/index.php Arkansas dashboard: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/633006d0782b4544bd5113a314f6268a/ Awesome, thank you! I have not been able to find any local stats in Iowa, but I’ll keep trying. I put these in the comments a few days ago, I guess they were missed: Oklahoma also has one of these arcgis things I think Wyoming had stopped wastewater monitoring but might be planning to start again sometime this year: https://www.citizensvoice.com/news/coronavirus/wvsa-collecting-wastewater-to-test-for-covid-19/article_93575337-8f1d-5182-bb01-9ed983b12a6f.html (if you look at this page in reader view you get the first sentence of the article saying 2023) It looks like West Virginia might just be sending data to the CDC: Possibly likewise for South Dakota: I also found this crop of data sets but haven’t tried to look at what specifically they are because all these state government website UIs have started to hurt my brain. I looked at this too, and I can’t make head or tail of it. It doesn’t seem comprehensive. Re: Amazon pausing HQ construction I don’t have a stock chart handy, but I will wager that the year when Amazon ran their HQ sweepstakes, shamelessly getting cities and states to shower them with tax breaks, corresponds to the peak in Amazon stock. Peak Amazon stawk price, so far, was 2021 and the HQ swindle was launched late 2017. 2017 stawk price – $40 2021 – $190 ish Today – $94 Its a money loser at the moment despite the grotesque subsidies wrangled from the peasants. Expect the Amazon begging bowl to be shoved in our faces. They have already put out the notice that they are on the hunt for moar loot from the MIC and bought a pill mill recently. Whip cracking sadists may as well put that Ring on Bezos finger. They have earned it. Does raising prices beyond the level of inflation constitute price gouging? Who would do such a thing? 1. Generally no, although some states are considering legislation that limits the amount of price increases (saw something on this for New York the other day). 2. People who want the cover of external events to hide their profit seeking. How do prices get set initially? An entrepeneur simply decides how much he wants to “gouge”.. and the market either buys or doesnt buy his product. And that becomes an iterative process every year/month/whatever. He can raise, lower, or keep his prices the same. What inflation does really doesnt matter except that it hides what is going on and can make it harder to plan Rather then worrying about treating the symptoms — the government would be better off treating the source: combatting monopolies. Thats the real reason these companies can continue to raise their prices (and lower wages) regardless of what inflation does I’m old enough to remember windfall profits taxes. A rational capitalist. Corruption breaks capitalism and gives it a bad name, but in theory if there is a shortage and prices rise then a sane producer charges what the market will bear and reinvests some of his windfall profits into increasing his supply until prices come back down and it ceases to be profitable to do so. Then there is usually a glut and prices crash. It’s an annoying process, but turning shortages into gluts is arguably the main strength of the invisible hand of the market. Bad price gouging usually comes from monopolies or people who can manipulate markets, and is usually decried by the government when there is a sudden shortage but the government doesn’t want to pay full market price for stuff so they would rather implement price controls and have people do without. To my understanding, anyway. Registering bloggers who write about government officials. Proposing a bill that would outlaw the democrat party. Are these supposed to be harbingers of what the gift of a DeSantis presidency would present to the nation? > Are these supposed to be harbingers of what the gift of a DeSantis presidency would present to the nation? That seems to be the general idea. Sort of a “Florida Man” concept, but amped up. Indeed. The possibilities are legion. Was it not said that we should fear or guard against a Trumpian without Trump’s shortcomings? A question arises . . . . if the election presents us with Biden/harris versus DeSantis/whomever; are there people who hate the Democrats so much that they will vote for DeSantis/whomever in order to own the Democrats? Let us remember, someone will be the President. There is no way we can prevent a President from existing after the election. So does it matter whom that President will be? Au contraire! There are several ways to “…prevent a President from existing after the election.” Just look at the cases of Lincoln, Garfield, Harding, Kennedy, et. al. I meant legally. If we get to the point where various people and factions decide they can prevent President after President after President from existing . . . . then society itself may get too violent for decent mainstream normies like myself to survive in it for long. If we reach that point, my only hope would be to go gray and hide all the way. I’m with you on the Grey Man Strategy. Florida Grey Man seems to be a contradiction of terms. Oh well, I “grew up” in Miami. I said it numerous times, to numerous people, when Biden scuttled into office. I said “If you think Trump was bad, wait till you see Trump plus a brain!” Everyone ignored me as they were too busy celebrating the fall of the Trump and the heralding of a new Golden Age. Too many online solons compare “Creepy” Joe Biden to the Scarecrow in ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ This is pure deception. The real ‘Wizard of Oz’ character “Creepy” Joe resembles is the Tin Man. He has no Heart. His Senatorial, Vice Presidential (where he specialized, naturally enough, in vice,) and Presidential record proves it. Umm . . . . what we are seeing now is a horrible hybrid of Clinton plus Obama plus half a brain. A real live ” ManBearPig” . . . . half Clinton, half Obama, half brain. Trump plus a brain would be DeSantis. That would be a sight to see. But not in DC, hopefully. Umm, that’s my point. DeSantis is a sentient Trump. Biden is a child sniffing zombie. I don’t know about that. Trump had a knack for understanding what middle America is worried about and distrusts and saying the “right things” at key moments that made PTB uncomfortable. For example, he is the only serious politician openly criticizing the bipartisan warmongering and the waste of resources that could be used for people here, like in East Palestine, OH. DeSantis never struck me as someone who has a visceral understanding of the what makes middle America tick: he always seemed to me as more of a poser, someone who puts in a show, whom the Left thinks is like Trump for superficial reasons, but not someone who convincingly “gets it.” (In fact, a smoother version of Rick Santorum, in a way.). Horrible sight just entered my mind (if not at work and don’t know what Santorum was redefined as then look it up on urbandictionary) Trump will always be linked to Obama. As Obama’s most significant legacy. The Trump Presidency also marks the beginning of a new era. When Trump was elected it showed just how deeply the rot had spread. I thought immediately of this passage by Tacitus the Elder: Welcome as the death of Nero had been in the first burst of joy, yet it had not only roused various emotions in Rome, among the Senators, the people, or the soldiery of the capital, it had also excited all the legions and their generals; for now had been divulged that secret of the empire, that emperors could be made elsewhere than at Rome. I was telling friends to watch out for the next one, because Trump would be followed by someone far more disciplined, ruthless and driven. Now that the rot had been shown to be so widespread and pervasive. We are truly living in interesting times. I think one thing that people miss is that both Obama and Trump sold the same product, albeit in a totally different manner. Both ran on some version of “Hope and Change” because both understood that a large chunk of Americans were tired of conventional politics, wanted to see something change, and were hoping that someone from outside the politics might be able to get something done, but would not vote for usual politicians. (And everyone else would automatically vote for the party candidates no matter who that might be) They were both similar, too, in being swallowed up, willingly or otherwise, by the conventional politics in DC and failed to deliver on their promises. Yet, both were, ironically, still saner than others. I am thankful to Obama for not creating a worse mess in Middle East than he did (although he still caused, or, at least, abetted a lot of problems ) and I am thankful to both Obama and Trump for not starting a crisis with Russia, among others. Trump was remarkably quick and competent when providing relief early on in the Covid era. After the 2+ Biden years, both Obama and Trump look like paragons of competence and sanity, to be honest. > They were both similar, too, in being swallowed up I don’t believe that Obama was in any sense “swallowed up.” He was a con artist from jump. Remember Citigroup picking his cabinet? Remember his inaugural, that happy time, when he suddenly switched from “hope and change” to austerity? I give Trump credit for the occasional spurt of genuine feeling, although usually quickly suppressed. That Obama s.o.b. was cold, cold, cold, all the way down. Still is. > Was it not said that we should fear or guard against a Trumpian without Trump’s shortcomings? Believe It: A DeSantis Presidency Could Be Even Worse Than Trump The New Republic. I linked to this the other day. Thank you for the Harpers’ article on DeSantis, Lambert. It truly shocked me. I thought he might be an OK choice for a Republican. No longer. You cannot be decent if you have been involved in torture. > You cannot be decent if you have been involved in torture. Rules out a lot of people when you think about it. Yes, it certainly seems like it. I remember reading that in Ceaucescu’s Romania, that every typewriter had to be registered and a “typeprint” was kept of every registered typewriter at Security Central. I suppose the digital equivalent would be forcing the registration of every computer and every personal digital device at Security Central. Obviously a better political party than “Democrats” is needed. People who seek relief through such a better party, if they can build one, need to accept the basic fact ahead of time that replacing the Democratic Party with something better will mean several decades of Republican Party Rule in the meantime, with no promise of anything ever coming after. Such people should absolve themselves of guilt, regret, remorse, etc. if their several decades long “better party experiment” leads to DePermaSantis type rule forever and forever. Sometimes the attempt just fails. Do not give up “Hope.” It is possible that both legacy political parties in America collapse within a few years of each other. It has happened before. Think, oh, Whigs and Democratic-Republicans into Republicans, and old style Jacksonian Democratic-Republicans to Democrats. > I remember reading that in Ceaucescu’s Romania, that every typewriter had to be registered and a “typeprint” was kept of every registered typewriter at Security Central. Pikers. In this country, we have Machine Identification Codes for printers. Fear and loathing leaving Las Vegas, or how I learned to love getting to Interstate 40 Dateline: Denny’s in Searchlight Nevada, where Hwy 95 goes from 75 to 55 to 45 to 35 and 25 mph in an awful hurry and officers of the law lie in wait for offenders to be shown the error of their ways along with revenue enhancement possibilities, for what I was told by my waitress were Las Vegas cops with a few years left before retirement and they drive from LV & back daily to have an easy job at a speed trap. There was a cashier and 1 waitress for the entire restaurant, and couple cooks in the back. It was the only game in town aside from a drive through McDonalds and I wanted a sit down meal, so after the cashier went through the line of 6 people paying, she finally got around to me, and asked if I wouldn’t sit at the counter instead? I pointed over to the empty 6 or 7 tables, and asked why not one of those, and she relented allowing me to have one all by my lonesome, and took a wet rag and cleaned the table but didn’t bother to wipe off the wet, and for whatever reason there were no paper napkins or towels to be found, and hunting down the wiper, she begrudgingly allowed me to have a dry surface by wiping it down once again. I expected the waitress to be more haggard being the sole bread winner for the restaurant, but she was ok with it, more income possibilities she said, with a wink. As I ate my avocado bacon burger combo, 3x vehicles were stopped for speeding just outside the window, that’s about $1500 worth of revenue, versus my crummy expenditure of $15 @ a shitty Denny’s in Searchlight. Did you see any bats? Assorted thunder lounge lizards, but no bats. Filmed at my local Denny’s. They keep a signed photo of Jack on the wall. There used to be a really good seafood restaurant on a short pier jutting into the Biloxi seaside we used to frequent. It had a signed photo of LBJ sitting at lunch with some of the patrons and workers lined up behind him. An example of a real “meat and potatoes” politico at work. The place was bought up be a casino developer that only cared for the property. The restaurant is long gone while a gaudy as all get out ‘cheap’ casino shines it’s splendiferousness across the waves every night. Alas, the casinos here on the Mississippi Gulf Coast have terrible taste in food prep and delivery. The locals joke that the installation of a Mickey D’s or a Burger King in one of the gambling palaces will be a definite sign of “The End of Days.” I’ll pass on your report to Denny’s corporate headquarters which is a mile from where I sit. I used to eat the Grand Slam sometimes when I lived in Atlanta and found it abundant if not all that good. We also once had a Shoney’s in my current town where, I am told, they would sear your burger with a heated wire to make it look grilled. But we also had one of the very first Hardee’s and those tiny burgers really were charcoal grilled. I can still taste them, along with the milkshakes. And re speed traps, there are reportedly some very shady ones in Texas. In Arizona they dropped the movable speed cameras after a couple of the operators got shot. >“Huge New Study Shows Why Exercise Should Be The First Choice in Treating Depression” Agreed. The catch is, can the depressed person work up the energy or motivation to exercise? That can be difficult. If he or she is able to manage it it is, imo, an effective treatment. On the other hand and somewhat strangely, exercise seems not to work for anxiety. In fact, it seems to make it worse. Maybe something to do with a raising of the metabolic rate. The trick with anxiety, again imo, is to lose one’s self in a mind-absorbing and -distracting activity of some sort, such as reading, writing, crafts, home repairs, etc. In a nutshell: Exercise for depression, distraction for anxiety. I speak from personal experience only. If the environment and one’s schedule permits, planning and digging a garden might be a “one activity fits all” kind of thing. > If the environment and one’s schedule permits, planning and digging a garden might be a “one activity fits all” kind of thing. Wholly agreed. Fortunately, I have never had major depression, but in my experience depression is immobilizing. The first rule is to get moving, and the direction or purpose doesn’t matter. Gardening provides good stimulus to get moving, either out of duty to take care of the plants, or because a task must be performed at a set time, like getting seeds in the ground, or watering. Depression is also highly correlated with chronic pain – I know from my own experience that my worst pain days are those when I’m most depressed. Asking a depressed person to do something tiring and painful – exercising – is not realistic, not without assistance. If you live alone? Fuggetaboudit. Intense exercise is unpleasant when you’re dealing with panic attacks in particular. Is my heart rate elevated because of exercise or am I having a panic attack? Then you actually have a panic attack! Rise, repeat! Good comment. I too have found that depression is enhanced by a lack of activity, and that anxiety is right brain going crazy, so do something left brain. Would broadly agree with comments above. In my case, running is/was my anti-stress treatment. Unfortunately, a knee injury prevented me from dealing with some very stressful work & life events and it has definitely been a tough time, especially in December/January. I do believe that discipline – had I been able to run – would have gotten me out the front door, but I might be wrong! I hope to eventually resume running now I have had an operation – walking just doesn’t do it for me – but it’s early days yet. At least forty years ago, my mother told me that a friend of the family was being treated for debilitating depression. The doctor told him to walk three miles in any direction, then turn around and walk home, every day. The prescription worked. Re “jawline fluidity.”–in her autobiography Jane Fonda said that before one of her first movies the studio wanted to extract her back teeth for better cheek bone emphasis. She said no. She also said Dad was mean. Meanwhile the Daisy Mae fashion look is still at large in the neighborhood. Maybe both genders are eager to attract–as it always was. Nevada Dems, isn’t that the pro Sanders democrats that took over Nevada, and the old guard first looted the treasury, then resigned en mass? If so, then whatever lack of structure the current leadership is denounced for, was the intended result from the old guard. And criticism from the old guard should be read in that way. Just so we keep in mind what the fight is about. Author of the tweets studiously avoids saying what should be done to improve things. One person raises the stripped funding in the comments and is immediately attacked for criticizing a non-binary black person, while the actual content is unaddressed. > One person raises the stripped funding in the comments and is immediately attacked for criticizing a non-binary black person, while the actual content is unaddressed. Dear Lord. Completely hopeless. It seems like the identity hierarchy (properties are apparently additive) will be added on to the gerontocracy… > Nevada Dems, isn’t that the pro Sanders democrats that took over Nevada, and the old guard first looted the treasury, then resigned en mass? Correct. That was the [genuflects] Harry Reid faction, Reid being known for his wisdom and discipline. Of course, from the Oregon Heath Authority: Hmmm, I guess we’re supposed to get a lifetime of medical appointments scheduled for the next month. Or something else? What “protective measures” can we take? At least there’s a clear list of who doesn’t count, good to know. Just a drie by comment. It struck me the other day that the order to destroy the Nordstream pipelines was an illegal order. The power to make war resides in Congress and the senior military who were involved in this plot were certainly aware that Congress was “Out of the loop” and that War had not been declared on France, Germany, Switzerland or Russia. The Oath is to obey the “Lawful Orders” of your superiors. I won’t be holding my breath waiting for the head of SOCOM to be grilled under oath about this crime, but it does make it crystal clear that the senior US Military and both houses of Congress that they are the human equivalent of the tools you buy at Harbor Freight. Cheap and disposable. Wasn’t one of the things about the Vietnam war that Congress authorized the president to make war without a formal declaration of same? Or was it just that instance in history? And maybe that is why they needed to have a third party included, to allow for a different hand on the trigger for plausible deniability. Still, it is a nice reminder that for all the hoopla about the POTUS election the formal role is as the executor of the will of congress (there is also the presidential veto but that can be overruled). Wowser, that GQ article is something. I do recall a similar article that discussed the bone lengthening process and that sounded really unpleasant and painful. And of course, an expensive option. Breaking your jaw to reset your mandible and maybe do a little chin configuration? Yikes. Not for me. Just not going to do it. Makes me think instead of the Fight Club scene, where the Norton character just thoroughly bashes in Jared Leto’s face to a pulpy bloody mess. Or really any number of boxing films where the eyes are swollen and all manner of blood covers the face. Thank you, Lambert, for the softballs. “To be “redpilled” can refer to any unsettling awakening; in this particular context, it describes an understanding of society in which modern men have become disadvantaged by a feminist power shift that leaves them unable to find sexual partners. Women, meanwhile – or so the distorted logic goes – can take their pick.” The problem that I have with this sentence is that it is true. Yep. Saw this with more attractive friends. Their apps blow up. It’s insane. These people live in another world. Certainly makes a difference; We know from studies that more attractive people get more promotions, are considered more trustworthy, smarter, and so forth. I remember once seeing from time to time a very attractive blond young woman named . . . well, we won’t worry about that. One find day I saw her with someone who looked like a fat bald little Woody Allen without the charisma. They were obviously a couple. My thought was . . . ” well, it must be love.” Many years later, while at a salt-water-aquarium hobbyists conference in California with a friend, I started chatting with a statuesquely spectacular beautiful tall blonde young woman. After some talking, she said something like ” well, my boyfriend should be coming out of the presentation pretty soon now.” Uvv course. I just assumed the boyfriend would be a 6 foot four inch Southern California surfer beach god dude. In fact the boyfriend was skinny, very uncharismatic seeming, pimply, about 14 years old looking. My first thought on being introduced, well hidden behind my smiling poker face was ” Oh! My! God! THAT’S the boyfriend!?” So you just never know. Given the number of people in the world, there’s bound to be some variation. Nonetheless. I would have thought that the article was written by a woman. It is actually written by a man. However, the article is written in a way that women find acceptable. GQ is run by women, so said Kevin Samuels before he died last year. Richard Reeves, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, has been making the rounds to promote his new book about the crisis facing men and boys. In his opinion the ideas discussed in this GQ article are dangerous to society. The problem is men cannot find sexual partners. Men take to the internet for answers. They encounter this curious set of ideas. Here is the problem: Rollo Tomassi and Wheat Waffles are right. Its no secret that i’ve had a crush on My Kevin (since ’07) as he crushes it as Speaker of the House, getting a lot done. When Kev goes to Taiwan he promises to abide by the One-China policy and will only use a salad plate in Taipei. Why am I, along with the janitors, increasingly burned out? Let me introduce you to another lesson in Big Pharma Methodology…………….The smell just exudes from the journal pages. This “landmark” article came out in the NEJM this week. All the usual ooohing and aaahing in the med Twitter verse. In brief, kidney stones are a fairly common issue – and one of the tenets of the Standard of Care – and also found in algorithms and guidelines everywhere – is putting patients on a diuretic called HCTZ in hopes of decreasing the incidence of stones. I am not going to bore anyone with the biochemistry but the theory was that this drug helped to prevent further kidney stones going forward. A bit of history. The drug HCTZ has now been generic for decades. When it first came out it went under the trade name of HYDRODIURIL. It was indicated only for hypertension and edema. All those years ago, Big Pharma did a few very lackluster studies to show efficacy in decreasing kidney stone incidence. This would be “off label” but big bucks are involved in getting doctors to prescribe DAILY pills for anything, on or off label. Very soon, this practice became standard operating procedure – and as I said before long, it was the standard of care. HCTZ was included in all of the major guidelines and algorithms. Because it was the standard of care, failure to use it could be a liability issue. Here is the problem. More than three decades ago, I did one of my intern conferences on this very subject. I discovered that the original trials of using HCTZ for stone prevention were uniformly poor in one way or the other. There was no good evidence to continue doing this in any way until appropriate studies could be done. Everyone in the room agreed. And furthermore, during my entire career, whenever this came up in conferences, the same conclusion was reached. And yet it continued to be the standard of care for decades. Until, all of a sudden, BOOM now this paper comes out. And an actually well-done trial ( there are a few quibbles) is done – and AMAZING – the drug does nothing. Questioning minds would immediately ask – WHY NOW? We have been using this drug for decades? Well, a quick call to old students of mine “in the know” reveal that there are 2 different drugs in the pipeline that are going to be coming out in the next 12-36 months that are going to be used to decrease kidney stone incidence. And they will likely cost hundreds of dollars a month. This is Big Pharma’s way of clearing the runway. “We know and have known this stuff really did nothing for decades, and thank you for your support and billions of prescriptions, but now we must torpedo HCTZ to make way for big blockbusters…WE ARE SAVING LIVES!!!!” And within weeks, HCTZ will be badmouthed and scrubbed out of existence for this indication to make way for the new ones. Keep the lucre flowing. I have seen this same thing so many times in my life. But please note….The indications for a majority of drugs used in medicine today are just at best flimsy. Avoid pills. Do everything you can with your diet, exercise, and lifestyle to avoid the pills in the first place. There are literally hundreds of examples I could list, just like this one, where there is at best tenuous evidence for pharma intervention. But SCIENCE!!!!!!!…… Again, this is an example of Evidence-Based Medicine at its finest. We have known for decades HCTZ did virtually nothing – and have not only NOT used it – but the professional societies and leaders have pushed it with algorithms and guidelines. We really need a reset in the worst way. Absolutely and thank you. My masters and PhD were so heavily rooted in so called evidence based medicine. Even “current paradigm based methods” like n-of-1 trials never took off. (Too costly for public health bodies.) Problem for us is that if these better trials had been conducted we’d know about the variance of outcomes and suddenly big pharma doesn’t look so good. > Avoid pills Of all kinds. > WHY NOW? Always a useful heuristic! @IM DOC. Thank you, this info will have a ripple effect at UC Davis medical center for several reasons. I have been on HCTZ for years because kidney stones run in my family. I have had them and also have Osteogenesis Imperfecta which complicates things. I’m one of their more exotic therefore closely followed patients Need to have yet another chat with my kidney specialist. He is a great doc by the way and saved my life last year. Ana in Sacramento File this under crypto or under the bezzle. Either one likely applies. Formerly a topic of a post, on this bank receiving advance funding via one of the Federal Home Loan Banks. Silvergate Capital is looking to be on rocky ground. Good to hear that manual transmissions in cars are being saved. I do my part to help, and a significant factor of my decision to drive manual is economic in nature. In my experience and from reading and hearing about automatic transmissions, the manual ones require less and cheaper maintenance than automatic ones. Other reasons to drive manual: It provides an actual override over sudden acceleration issues, like some automatic cars experience occasionally. I can always disengage the engine entirely. Apart from the most modern and advanced automatic transmissions, manuals tend to have better fuel economy. A manual transmission is no fun in stop & go LA freeway traffic, I felt as if i’d blundered into a Jane Fonda Carobics class: ‘Give me 863 more leg lifts, feel the burn!’ I hear you! Did that for many years. They also save on brake pad wear and tear in my experience since you don’t have to ride the brakes to slow down. I hate driving an automatic car since I always feel very disconnected from the car. Great point about the brake pads that I hadn’t thought about. Makes total sense. Agreed on feeling disconnected too. It’s interesting… with manual you get to choose whether to disengage the engine, while with automatic the car gets to decide whether to disengage you. I drove a 2020 Honda Civic, bought new in July 2000, with a manual 5-speed and did not change the break pads until I gave it to my daughter as a second car and had the pads changed along with the belt and hoses. In 2018, 130,000 miles. The savings in brake pad wear are in exchange for increased clutch wear. According to my mechanic anyway. I prefer a stick, but they are dear and difficult to come by. My reasons # 1 and 2 for a manual is you can perform a rolling pop the clutch jump start and for driving in snow. > The savings in brake pad wear are in exchange for increased clutch wear. That depends on how engine braking is used, and I try to minimize it or when downshifting matching the revs to the speed of the car before releasing the clutch. Whenever I have a coast down opportunity that’s what I do. Shift to neutral and coast as far as possible then a light application of the brakes slows me to the appropriate speed or to a stop. Letting the brakes warm slowly with light application makes them last much much longer than rushing up to the car in front and slamming the brakes on. I am on my second gen 6 Honda Accord (1998 – 2002) with the four cylinder, five speed stick and the first one went to the junkyard at 300,000 miles with the original clutch, still running good but rusty. Tires last almost forever too. If all cars were built like those, the manufacturers would go broke and mechanics would have almost nothing to do. I can agree with that. My first 3 Saabs were 5 speed manuals. Never had any transmission work done on any. I admire anyone who who musters 300K+ miles from their auto. You can also jump start them fairly easily unlike an automatic which needs to be going 35 MPH or more. Electronic ignitions may have changed this but I have not had the need to do that in 35 years or more. Good to know as well, thanks. I love my manual 2006 VW GTI and hope to keep it running as long as I do! And manuals require more alert driving it seems to me, more engagement with what is, afterall, an essentially dangerous venture every time one is on the road. Florida drivers are nuts. I visited vis a vis reading Candice Millard’s: The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey She’s a masterful storyteller, and what a tale! More from the American railroad “burn pit”: Leaked audio reveals US rail workers were told to skip inspections as Ohio crash prompts scrutiny to industry In the industry I’m in, this is a maintenance strategy called “run to failure”. Our managers wanted to do it, but we had to point out in many areas it literally broke the law, and in other areas it was exposing the company to very high risk of accidents and major equipment failures resulting in factories getting damaged and/or stopped. But I’m not surprised that the railroads do this, it’s probably one of the means to implementing PSR. So hey, rejoice for Wall St and American CEOs! Live near a railroad? Worried about that railroad strike that Biden had to squash? Relieved he did it? Then you too helped those railroads achieve HUGE PROFITS by your volunteering to be a chemical burn pit! > In the industry I’m in, this is a maintenance strategy called “run to failure”. If indeed that’s the case, I’d say that people like Buffet (who owns BNSF) are betting on the Jackpot, and extracting all the value they can before that happy sequence of events. In fact, one might think the whole country is being run to failure. The exact same thought had crossed my mind. And maybe reflects old thinking. Does a giant pile of crap make one better prepared for the Jackpot? Or does it just put a giant target on your back? I’m not sure. Curious how the Fox vs Trump issue will play out. Murdoch prides himself on not backing losers.He pretty much controlled New Labour so don’t see him controlling Democrats in USA as difficult. Looking forward to 4th and final season of succession…. Isn’t the tweet on the Nevada Democratic Party is coming from a centrist who at the very least is siding with the people who actually caused the “rot”? Progressives surprisingly took over the party several years ago and the outgoing corporate friendlies took all the money they had on hand with them, which then has the consequence of the official now progressive-run party having much less reach. To me, the really worrisome factor is that the vast, vast majority of the contacts were digital, not physical. I missed this detail. As 2024 heats up — and it’s only March 2023! — I really need to invest more time in the Politics section. Gee, I’m pretty disappointed in the senator, too. Is what she did worse than building a grassroots movement and then pulling the rug out from under it? Here’s a thought: many of those passionate, hopeful volunteers that knocked on doors for Bernie and donated many $27s that they couldn’t really afford… are unhappy and embittered by what has transpired, and have dropped out of politics. Or at least the part that aspires to reform the Democratic party. Here’s a blog read, at the very least, by attorneys in civil law offices of North Florida. It has a liberal with a capital L perspective, IMO. (In the event that I didn’t stick the link landing, it’s floridapolitics.com.) I fixed the link. It should have looked like: which the comment toolbar will help you do. Click the “Link” button. Paste in or enter your URL*. Press OK. Your “open tag” will appear in the comment, with the cursor positioned after it. Type in your text (here, “Florida Politics”). The cursor will now be positioned after that text. You will observe that the toolbar will have changed to “/Link”. Click it to enter the “close tag”, and your Link is complete. This is quicker and easier in the doing than in the telling. The general concept is that a “link” is not simply a URL, but an anchor (“a” is for anchor) in the text, and the text selected inside the link indicates the topic covered by the URL in some way. NOTE * The URL should look exactly like it looks in the example. The Link dialog “helps” you by pre-populating the URL field with “http://”. If you paste your URL after that, you will end up with a URL with two “http://”s, which is broken. To avoid this, do a Select All in the field, and then paste in your URL over the existing “http://”. “Meet the men paying to have their jaws broken in the name of ‘manliness’” ‘While Redpillers believe that they can attract a partner by triggering women’s supposed subconscious desire for an “alpha” mate – through money or so-called “game” – blackpillers believe those who don’t meet a certain threshold of attractiveness don’t stand a chance.’ Those blackpillers may have a point. There are plenty of women on dating sites that will not consider a man if he is less than 6 feet tall – a small percentage of the population – as well as having a six-figure salary which is also a smaller amount of the population. Having a strong jaw line comes right out in the image for a profile hence this being a desirable trait. And character? That is merely an afterthought. The phenomenon of women, and is it only women?, setting unrealistic standards of “attractiveness” for their dating pool reminds me of the old therapist’s joke: “Never date someone you meet in a Therapist’s waiting room.” Err…what was The Matrix about? I thought it was a bit obvious. I mean Trinity has short hair. That’s film code. And the whole bit with the names. I think he says my name is Neo. This movie is lit, but it had less subtlety than an episode of Star Trek. Perhaps this subject has been covered before but I know there are a number of people here who enjoyed the old COLUMBO TV series of the ’70’s. My wife pushed me watch a series on Peacock that is very similar in style, at least the protagonist’s manner and speech. It is called Poker Face and the main character is not a detective but someone who can tell when someone is lying. She gas not yet referred to her wife but her delivery is eerily similar to Peter Faulk’s. The writing is burdened from the politically correct atmosphere of Hollywood but the acting is fairly good. The ninth and final episode of the first season aired last night and I would enjoy hearing if anyone else has noticed the similarity. I haven’t watched it, just heard second-hand from someone who also hasn’t watched it yet. But, the way it was described to them was that there was a crime at the start, up to ~30 minutes, where you see the perp and victims and how it all happened; then afterwards the main character comes in. They immediately drew the connection to how Columbo episodes go, and put it on their list to watch. I don’t have streaming services, but it does pique my interest, I love Columbo! That was the penultimate episode. Next week is the final. Great show. Natasha Lyonne is fantastic in it and each week has a “special guest star”. Even the opening credits are an hommage to the Sunday Mystery Movie format of so long ago. Highly recommend. Now bring back McCloud. And McMillan and Wife. Those were good TV. Interesting tidbit about air travel and military vessels in the West Pacific: The Art of the Shadow: How Painters Have Gotten It Wrong for Centuries” I actually went to art school for a couple of years, and one of the requirements was a “Physics for Artists” class, which ended up being one of my favorite all-time classes. At first I wondered why, since other requirements covered color science and perspective, but it was extremely helpful. And yes, we covered how to plan shadows from one or more light sources, and also covered things like capturing motion accurately…. For example if you wanted to paint a ball rolling off of a table at one of its mid-fall points in an accurate or believable manner…. Or, if you did want to mess with it and make something more surreal, you could do so in an informed way. Re: Red pill and manly men with broken jaws. This is a joke right? I didn’t think anyone surprised by the Wachowski siblings. Just waiting on a blue pill punchline. Lambert > Takin’ ‘er easy for all us sinners? If this is a metaphor for “chllin’ in the great beyond” … then let me provide some numbers with which you may abide … It’s stunning to see both the Politico article and the BofA article it links to avoid the word “death” … so of course, I had to look up COVID deaths by age, and I happened across this CDC site: Provisional COVID-19 Deaths by Sex and Age – CDC Data Sets The data in the table is cumulative from 1/1/2020 to 2/25/2023. The second-to-last column is interesting, and measures “Pneumonia, Influenza Or COVID Deaths”. An interesting grouping to be sure – ostensibly a confirmation that the CDC sees COVID as a purely respiratory affliction – but for us tape-watchers who care more about the deleterious effects of COVID on the immune system … well … one has to ask why so many people in the prime of their lives are dying from the flu in the last 38 months. In any case, I did the math – counting up that penultimate column to include ages 18 to 64 gives us 755,922 – three quarters of a million working age people have been lost to COVID, Pneumonia or Influenza since the start of 2020. That’s almost 38% of the 2M workers the authors say are missing. I guess that’s not a big enough “chunk” for them … Lawmakers Clamor for Action on Child Migrant Labor as Outrage Grows So liberal Democrats preside over the largest increase in childhood poverty in history, but what generates. moral outrage is child labor of non-American children. Good to know! And the outrage is justified, but it’s quite an interesting blindspot the Times and liberal Democrats have, with regards to American kids going hungry. Re: DeSantis, Guantanamo, torture The bit in the article where Adayfi says that while guards were torturing them the guards would only say the word “eat” instantly called to mind for me the “Circle of Sh_t” section in Salo / 120 Days of Sodom with the repeated yelling of “Mange!”

Oftentimes, you don’t need to experience people judge otherwise official techniques. Transition are any tips you are taking to express your own intercourse term, such as for example switching the pronouns. You don’t need to possess pulled any medical stages in your own change in order to be covered by so it legislation. You are able to the toilet that suits their sex www.besthookupwebsites.org/tr/datemyage-inceleme/, predict your businesses to discover the gender, and you may availableness intercourse-certain social properties. So you can improve your gender towards the good passport and you can driving permit most people will only need an email off a physician. Which is what’s so frustrating regarding a number of the newest mass media debate – certain trans rights conversations going on today go for about one thing currently oriented and you will included in law. One thing that reasons an abundance of problem and you may discomfort for particular trans people is getting the brand new sex on the delivery certificate altered. This process is one thing that’s ruled because of the Gender Detection Operate 2004. The us government (The united kingdomt & Wales) stored a public visit with the reforming the new Act inside the 2018 and you can composed its effect into the 2020. Most viewpoints served full reform, together with de-medicalisation, non-binary detection, and you can a simplistic, cost-100 % free processes to possess getting a sex Detection Certification. But, the federal government felt like only to reduce the commission getting making an application for a sex Detection Certification, and to move the applying processes online. You can read Stonewall’s effect here. The new Equality Act 2010 protects individuals suggesting to go through, was undergoing, otherwise possess gone through a system of ‘reassigning their sex’ off discrimination based on ‘intercourse reassignment’ Non-binary some body are not already recognised during the laws. Among other things, it indicates they want to select from ‘male’ and ‘female’ with the official documents eg passports and you may driving licences. Although not, an optimistic 2020 Work Tribunal governing reported that non-binary and genderfluid people could well be shielded from discrimination in 2010 Equivalence Operate. This view would-be input help future official conclusion. Currently, to have an excellent GRC, trans individuals have to locate a health analysis off ‘intercourse dysphoria’ A gender Detection Certification (GRC) try a document which allows specific trans guys and you can trans women to get the right sex on the delivery certification. This can create life easier regarding things such as getting married, otherwise having your demise filed respectfully. The procedure of providing an effective GRC are subject to brand new Gender Detection Operate (GRA) 2004. It is very dated, that is a stressful, dehumanising and you will traumatic procedure for the majority of trans individuals undergo. Have a tendency to this really is of a gender Label Medical center, while the latest wishing minutes for a primary meeting are different anywhere between 1-five years. Trans someone also have to reveal he’s lived in its ‘obtained gender’ getting at least 2 years, event research including letters addressed on it and photo of themselves from the situations, to try to persuade a panel of individuals who they will never fulfill that they are trans. Within the England and Wales, when they partnered, the person as well as demands the fresh consent of its mate ahead of they is just do it. This may exit trans some body involved within the abusive or handling items. The government went a public appointment to the reforming the fresh Sex Detection Act, which finalized on . Lots and lots of anybody become involved, with the most away from participants support a beneficial demedicalised processes thus one trans anyone would not you need a doctor to diagnose him or her that have sex dysphoria. Regardless of this, the federal government generated few changes towards the GRC procedure. In the past, trying to get a great GRC costs ?140. Inside 2021, this fee was shorter so you can ?5, plus the application processes enjoys moved on the web. However the techniques stays medicalised and dehumanising to own trans some body, whom still need to ‘prove’ they are whom it is said he’s.

Jim And Sasha Allen’s Spectacular Run Concludes During ‘The Voice’ Semifinals Hometown stars Jim and Sasha Allen’s journey on the NBC singing competition The Voice ended on Tuesday, December 7, to the disappointment of many dedicated fans and their coach Ariana Grande. The father-son duo soared through the competition, which began with their Blind Audition performing John Denver’s song “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” which aired September 21. On October 18, viewers saw a montage that included their duet of Stevie Wonder’s song “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours” with contestant Sophia Bromberg for the Battle Round. The Allens were selected as the winner of the battle by Grande and moved on to the Knockout Round that was broadcasted November 1. For the Knockouts, they sang Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros’ song “Home” and were up against contestant Manny Keith. They won the knockout and went on to be part of The Voice’s Top 20. For their first live performance on the show, on November 8, Jim and Sasha covered The Beatles’ popular song “Hey Jude.” Sasha also mentioned after the performance that he had been recovering from laryngitis. Their talent and perseverance not only impressed the coaches, but also America and they were voted in to the Top 13. On November 15, Jim and Sasha sang “Your Song” by Elton John for Dedication Week. They dedicated it to their family member Stephanie who passed away at the age of 26. Edmond Town Hall hosted its first free viewing party of The Voice that Monday night, so local fans could watch the show on the big theater screen together. The support for Jim and Sasha extended beyond Newtown, and America voted them into the Top 11 contestants. The Top 11 Live Performances took place on November 22. Since it was Fan Week, Jim and Sasha’s supporters were the ones who selected them to sing “Have You Ever Seen The Rain” by Creedence Clearwater Revival. That night, Edmond Town Hall hosted its second free viewing party and reporter Taylor Kinzler, of CT Live, was on site with a film crew to capture the excitement of the evening. That footage went on to air live before Jim and Sasha performed. On November 23, the father-and-son duo did a group performance with coach Grande and their teammate Holly Forbes. They sat around a campfire on set and sang “FourFiveSeconds,” by Kanye West, Paul McCartney, and Rihanna. Later that same night, Jim and Sasha were thrust into the Instant Save Challenge after being in the bottom two contestants. They performed “I Won’t Give Up” by Jason Mraz. The song proved to be the right option to showcase their skills, as they were saved and continued into the Top 10. On November 29, the Allens performed the rhythm and blues (R&B) ballad “Stay” by Rihanna featuring Mikky Ekko. It was selected by Grande as part of The Voice’s Challenge Week where coaches picked songs for their artists that were considered outside their typical genre of music. After America voted that night, the following episode’s results revealed that they had made it through to the semifinals with the Top 8 singers. Semifinal Live Show On Monday, December 6, Jim and Sasha took part in the semifinal live performances. During rehearsal, Grande pointed out that their music has been charting on iTunes [Apple Music]. She said how the achievement “speaks volumes,” to which Jim finished her sentence, saying, “to our coach!” Grande disagreed and said that it spoke volumes to their hard work and how “beloved” they are. She praised them for their semifinal song selection of “Mrs. Robinson” by Simon and Garfunkel, as it had never been sung on the show. “This is my favorite thing I’ve ever heard,” Grande said when they finished rehearsing. Grande recommended that Sasha consider playing guitar with his dad in addition to singing. Before the duo performed live, Jim shared, “We would have never gotten here without the love and support from the people that are closest to us,” including his wife, Maddy. Sasha agreed and specifically cited his girlfriend, Brynn, as being a huge supporter of him personally, musically, and artistically. Jim and Sasha’s live performance kicked off the night. They sang together with Jim on guitar and an impressive light show behind them. Then, midway through the song, Sasha leapt off the stage and hustled over to Grande, who was in her coach’s chair holding his guitar. Sasha took the guitar, headed back to the stage, and finished the song playing alongside his dad – just as they had during their Blind Audition. At the end of the song, host Carson Daly joked that Sasha has “the most talented guitar tech of all time.” Coach John Legend gave feedback first and pointed out that it is so nice to see them so comfortable on stage. He complimented them for picking the “perfect song” and that it “was so comforting to watch.” Coach Kelly Clarkson said she enjoyed how they switched off with the harmonies. She also pointed out that The Voice’s musical director, Paul Mirkovich, was singing along with them during the performance. Clarkson added how that it is something she has never witnessed in all her eight seasons on the show. Grande told Jim and Sasha, “We love you much more each time, because you continue to showcase such amazing musicianship and perfect harmony and amazing vocals, but also there is such a specificity to what you do. It’s nostalgic and it’s warm and it’s so full of love and it’s infectious. I would love for you to be in the finale.” In addition to the Top 8 singing their solo song, each artist in the competition performed a 90’s duet with another contestant on December 6. Jim and Sasha were partnered with Coach Blake Shelton’s team member Lana Scott, who is considered the main country artist of the season. The trio sang “Hold My Hand” by Hootie and the Blowfish, which was released in 1994 – a whole seven years before Sasha was born in 2001. Jim shared, “I love this song. This song came out a few weeks before my wife and I eloped, and we got to hear it on the radio. It was really sweet.” For that live performance, Jim sang and played mandolin in the center of the stage. Sasha and Lana sang while also moving, feeling the music. A light fog covered the ground of the stage and the light show behind them had large text that read, “Hold My Hand.” When the camera panned to the judges, Clarkson could be seen standing and dancing to the music, and at the end Shelton was on his feet applauding. On Tuesday, December 7, it was results night, where the four artists that received the most votes would automatically go on to the finale. The remaining four singers would then have to compete for the Instant Save for the fifth and last spot. Between live performances by coaches John Legend and Blake Shelton, as well as other musical acts, host Carson Daly declared who America had saved. The suspense built with every round of announcements. Before the third set of results, Daly asked Sasha, “What moment will you always remember from your time on the show?” “Well, Ariana, you have helped me through wardrobe malfunctions, laryngitis – the list goes on and on – but my favorite moments with you have nothing to do with this show or you being our coach,” he said. “You are just my friend and I love you. I adore you. Every moment and memory with you I will always hold so special to me. I think you are such an incredible person, and I wouldn’t want to be here without you. I think you’re the greatest. Sasha added, “Trans rights. Shout out non-binary people. And I love you, Ari.” After that, Daly observed, “And … Ariana is crying.” It was soon discovered that Jim and Sasha would be going to the Instant Save Challenge, along with Lana Scott, Joshua Vacanti, and Jershika Maple. The latter two singers are both on coach Legend’s team. For the Instant Save, the Allens sang “Rich Girl” by Hall & Oates, which had coach Grande on her feet dancing during the performance. The father and son fed off each other’s playful energy and were constantly smiling at one another, appearing to be having fun in the face of such high stakes. Clarkson was the first coach to comment after they sang and said, “Anytime you have a show, I want to come.” Grande, with emotion in her voice, said, “You just bring such an amazing and irreplaceable, like, necessary energy to the show. You have so much light. It is so infectious, and it would be a calamitous mistake to not have you in the finale. Please, everyone, vote for Jim and Sasha!” In the last few moments of the show, Daly let each contestant in the bottom four have a few seconds to talk directly to their coaches should they leave that night. With a smile, Sasha said to Grande, “Ten seconds? Ten seconds can never, ever, like – I adore you … You’re the greatest. I’m going to be crying to you in two hours saying everything I can’t say in one second. It’s done. I love you so much.” Grande responded that she is not saying goodbye to them and joked that Tuesday’s – elimination nights – are “the worst days ever.” She went on to say, “Thirdly, I think the best gift of this whole thing has been meeting you. Thank you. I love you. It’s been an honor.” When the Instant Save voting was closed, Daly announced that America had saved Jershika Maple, meaning Jim and Sasha’s time on The Voice had ended. To stay up-to-date on Jim and Sasha Allen’s musical journey after The Voice, follow them on Instagram @JimAndSasha. Watch The Voice’s two-day finale on Monday, December 13, and Tuesday, December 14, at 8 pm. Reporter Alissa Silber can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.org.

- This event has passed. As You Like It at La Jolla Playhouse November 16, 2022 @ 7:30 pm - 5:00 pm An event every week that begins at 7:30 pm on Tuesday and Wednesday, repeating until December 11, 2022 An event every week that begins at 8:00 pm on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, repeating until December 11, 2022 An event every week that begins at 2:00 pm on Sunday and Saturday, repeating indefinitely An event every week that begins at 7:00 pm on Sunday, repeating indefinitely Featuring a cast of trans, non-binary and Queer performers, Christopher Ashley and Will Davis’s re-imagined As You Like It is a celebration of limitless love and humanity. In Shakespeare’s classic romantic comedy, Rosalind and Orlando meet by chance in court and have an immediate connection. When they are both banished, fate brings them together again in the Forest of Arden. Far from the restrictions of court life, we find ourselves in a vibrant new world, where identities can be fully explored and romance can blossom in multiple forms. This bold and beautiful production inhabits a wonderful, ‘gender-ful’ world – a sensuous place that embraces the full spectrum of gender possibilities. Evoking the heady experience of falling in love, and underscored by heart-thumping live music, there are no boundaries in As You Like It, just endless complexities, infinite love and the joyful expression of true selves. Love is in the air!

Customers will be able to identify themselves as male, female, undisclosed or an unspecified “X,” corresponding with the gender listed on their passports or identification cards, the airline said in a news release. Travelers will also be able to select the gender-neutral title “Mx.” during booking and in MileagePlus customer profiles. “United is excited to share with our customers, whether they identify along the binary of male or female or not, that we are taking the steps to exhibit our care for them while also providing additional employee training to make us even more welcoming for all customers and employees,” United’s Chief Customer Officer Toby Enqvist said in a statement. Last month, several other major airlines, including American, Delta, Southwest, Alaska and JetBlue, also indicated that they are in the process of adding non-binary gender options to their booking channels, the Associated Press reported. United’s announcement Friday was met with praise from advocates for the transgender and non-binary community. Gillian Branstetter, a spokeswoman for the National Center for Transgender Equality, applauded the airline for adding gender options “that are reflective of the diversity of their passengers.” “Non-binary people face unnecessary, invasive, and discriminatory scrutiny by airlines, airports, and security services alike,” Branstetter said in a statement. “These changes by United and other airlines is in line with the growing number of states who offer gender neutral designations on IDs and is an important step toward ensuring safe and smooth travel for all passengers regardless of their gender.” In rolling out these changes, United said it has also launched employee training initiatives with the help of the Human Rights Campaign and the Trevor Project, an organization that focuses on crisis intervention for LGBTQ youth. The initiatives include teaching employees about preferred pronouns and other aspects of LGBT competency in the workplace, United said in a statement. A growing number of states and jurisdictions — including California, Minnesota, Oregon and the District — have begun offering gender-neutral options on identification cards. In Maryland earlier this month, lawmakers advanced legislation that would add the state to the list. In the fall, the District’s public school system became among the first in the country to allow families to select “non-binary” on their child’s enrollment forms. But in other states, similar efforts have been met with controversy and resistance. Earlier this month, Indiana’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles announced that it would have a third gender option for driver’s licenses. But a week later, state lawmakers voted to make it more difficult for Indiana residents to change a state-issued ID, requiring not just a physician’s note but also an amended birth certificate that corresponds to the person’s new gender, the Indianapolis Star reported.

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I usually start my speeches to women’s groups by teasing, “ This will not be a roast of the pale, stale and male good old boys club…as much fun as that would be. ” My speeches and workshops aren’t glorified stitch and b*tch sessions, designed to malign male colleagues. They’re substantive strategy sessions to help women advance in their careers and connect with one another. While I have ample anecdotal evidence and survey data that demonstrate this content is effective, the policy nerd in me isn’t comfortable making that claim without longitudinal research that demonstrates its impact over time. Fortunately, we have it. Research recently published in the Harvard Business Review found that well-curated women’s conferences can increase both attendees’ income and optimism. By working with the Conference for Women, researchers Michelle Gielan and Shawn Achor sought “to test the long-term effects [sic] of uniting women”. When comparing attendees to people who registered but had not yet attended (the control group), attendees were twice as likely to receive a promotion within a year of the conference and were three times as likely to get a 10%+ pay increase. Beyond the financial benefits, 71% said that they “feel more connected to others” after attending and 78% percent of attendees reported feeling “more optimistic about the future.” Achor’s research demonstrates why these data points matter. Social connection is the greatest predictor of success and happiness, and optimism can create a “happiness advantage,” where nearly every business and educational outcome improves as a result. Not bad, right? So why is it so difficult to convince our bosses and colleagues that these conferences are worthwhile? In a word, bias. Men ask my clients questions like, “How’s your little girl group?”, as though these high-powered female attorneys are rehearsing to be the next Spice Girls (no shade to the Spice Girls). “What do you talk about – boys?” “Who brings the rosé?” Men go to conferences all the time, and particularly in male-dominated professions, it’s mostly dudes talking to one another and networking. Why is it trivial when women do it? This bias appears when “The same action is interpreted as business-oriented by a man and frivolous by a woman,” according to Joan C. Williams and Rachel Dempsey in What Works for Women at Work. They go on to playfully comment, “Joan likes to refer to this as the assumption that women are little bits of fluff.” So what do we do about it? 1) Invite men to attend. Some of the derision women’s conference face is about discomfort with current shifts in power balance or uncertainty about what’s happening behind closed doors. Whether they attend or not, it’s less threatening and more inclusive to people who are gender non-binary when these events are open to all. 2) Share the data. The research in Harvard Business Review substantiates the value of these conferences. As Shawn Achor wrote, “This research shows that cynicism regarding women’s conferences and initiatives is unfounded, unconstructive, and uninformed.” So next time you want to attend, show your boss the evidence, and, if your boss is a man, maybe invite him to come along. After all, who doesn’t like rosé? Lelia Gowland helps women negotiate and navigate their careers. She’s a sought after speaker and writer on workplace dynamics for women. Learn more at gowlandllc.com. Women En Mass Female mass tort attorneys meet in Aspen, CO for Women En Mass (WEM)

Types of Grants & Criteria TYPES OF GRANTS This grant is available to women and non-binary human rights defenders and organisations in Asia and the Pacific in order to respond to their immediate or time-urgent needs for security and well-being. It is intended for a person or organisation experiencing a threat or in case of emergency, crisis or risk due to their defence of women’s rights and human rights. It is also available for time-urgent needs for well-being such as psycho-social counselling, treatment for trauma, or medical assistance. This grant is available to women and non-binary human rights defenders and organisations in Asia and the Pacific who – on their own or in collaboration with others – seek to implement an initiative, including an unanticipated opportunity, that would contribute towards resourcing resilience for women’s human rights and human rights activism. Available Grant Amount For each grantee, UAF A&P provides grants of up to USD $5,000 only. Subsequent applications from the same defender or organisation will be considered on a case-by-case basis. Please remember that the application must respond to either ONE of the grant types, and should meet its corresponding criteria. When to Apply We accept grant applications in any language, 365 days per year. We will respond to your request within 72 hours. However, proposals in languages other than English may require additional time for translation. How to Apply Apply online HERE OR; UAF A&P ONLY recognize Protonmail for email, and Signal for messaging. We encourage applicants and grantees to use these channels because of its encryption capabilities, and for other security and privacy reasons. Please send us your application and queries through the following email addresses: - For grant application and inquiries, please send it to email@example.com - Delivery of Funds Once a grant has been approved, the amount requested is usually delivered within 1 to 10 days. - UAF A&P's Advisors UAF A&P’s grant-making is informed by our roster of regional and country advisors whom we rely upon to assess recommended applications. Final decisions are communicated to each applicant after we have received endorsements from advisors. - Requirement for Grantees All grantees are required to submit final report on how each grant has been spent. Each application will only be shared with UAF A&P’s advisors or trusted contacts (as needed). We respect and value the confidentiality required by any applicant, particularly in contexts where security is a concern. UAF A&P DOES NOT FUND - Cisgender males or Cisgender male-led organisations or networks; - Individual requests without endorsement by an organisation, established community or established network affiliation or an UAF A&P advisor; - Activities or projects for humanitarian crises or natural disasters; - Activities or projects focused on development aid or charity assistance; - Projects or activities that are part of the regular programmes of an organisation; - Regular operating budgets and/or bridge funding (to fill a funding gap). Non-binary is an umbrella term referring to individuals whose gender identity and/or gender expression are not exclusively masculine or feminine, male or female — thus, are outside of the gender binary and cisnormativity. UAF A&P uses this term to encompass androgyny, polygender, genderqueer, gender fluid and a-gender individuals. Cisgender Males are individuals who identify as male and who were assigned male at birth.

Dating apps are weird for everyone. Of course they are: you have to distill your entire personality into a 500-word character box and three selfies. For non-binary people, though, dating apps – which are often designed around the gender binary – can be complicated, and sometimes even downright exhausting. In recent years, some apps have attempted to make their platforms easier for non-binary people. Tinder started experimenting with allowing users to choose from nearly 40 gender options back in November 2016 (ranging from transfeminine to agender and pangender) before fully rolling the feature out internationally as of July 2020. Hinge and Bumble, too, have introduced multiple gender options over the past two years. Such updates haven't always been plain-sailing for those who aren't cis. In 2019, Pink News reported that trans users were repeatedly being banned from Tinder after updating their gender to “trans”. This appeared to be because potential matches were reporting them for no reason, and many trans users at the time claimed to receive zero response from Tinder when they attempted to rectify the issue. Tinder’s response to Pink News was fairly non-committal. “We recognise the transgender community faces challenges on Tinder, including being unfairly reported by potential matches more often than our cisgender members,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “This is a multifaceted, complex issue and we are working to continuously improve their experience.” Often, there are further roadblocks for non-binary people using these apps. On Tinder, Hinge and Bumble, after selecting your gender, you are then asked whether you want to be included in searches for “men” or “women”, which effectively forces you to decide anyway. Tao, a non-binary person, says that being asked what gender they wanted to be shown alongside “pissed me off so much!” They downloaded Hinge because it had been recommended to them by their queer and genderqueer friends. “But then I saw this question. It’s such a weird way of asking, in essence, what genitals do you have.” When VICE reached out to Hinge, they said that this was an issue they were working on, stating: “We absolutely understand your concern about non-binary users being able to tailor their potential matches based on their gender,” they wrote. “At the moment, we are working on building a refreshed matching experience that will create a more inclusive, enjoyable and safe experience that will ultimately lead to meaningful relationships.” Many non-binary people decide not to disclose their gender on apps at all, instead selecting “man” or “woman”. This can be for a variety of reasons. Izzy, who is also non-binary, says, “I don’t want that to be all that someone focuses on. I’ve come out to people, then they sometimes spend the entire night asking me every question under the sun about my identity. People see you as the educator, but I don’t have the energy for that. I just want to chill.” Julian, who is genderqueer, also chooses to not initially disclose their gender identity on most platforms. “I'm not scared as such, but I act reserved in case it puts people off,” they explain. “Luckily, I tend to match with people who seem sympathetic to trans and non-binary people anyway. If I see any social cause in their bio I’m like 'OK, you seem reasonably woke, that's reassuring, you’re probably not a dickhead.” Even on apps intended for the LGBTQ community, non-binary people can often feel like an afterthought. Grindr markets itself as the world's largest social networking app for “gay, bi, trans and queer people”. However, in practice, Grindr feels geared towards the gay male community. You can enter custom options for gender, but are unable to filter users in this way. Instead, you are able to select “tribes” – including “Otter”, “Bear”, and “Twink” (words typically used by gay men to describe body types and hairiness). The only “tribe” that describes gender identity is “trans”, without any specific reference to non-binary. Some trans people find the “tribe” function useful, particularly for finding other trans users. But, as Julian points out, it’s a feature that has a lot of potential for abuse. “I think the way that people go on Grindr specifically to look for trans people [can be] predatory. I had someone ask me if I would cross-dress and let them fuck me. First of all: I don’t cross-dress. Second of all, I’m not going to let you fetishize me. They didn’t seem to respect me as a person, they just tried to objectify me.” I’ve personally had negative experiences on Grindr, too. I state in my bio that I identify as non-binary, but still receive a lot of messages starting with “Hey, man”. I understand that the app is mostly used by cis gay men and that in my pictures I am masc-presenting, but it only takes a moment to read a bio. Upon telling people that I prefer not to be referred to as a “man”, many people who at first seemed keen would either go quiet, block me, or in one particularly horrible case, threaten me with sexual assault. Such threats were disconcerting to receive on Grindr, as I could see that it had been sent from someone who was only 400 metres away. The app is fairly unique in that you aren’t required to match with someone before messaging them, and it's easy to see how far away people are from you. This makes it easier to find potential hook-ups, but it also drastically increases the potential for abuse. When two in five non-binary people have experienced a hate crime or incident in the space of a year, these threats can feel very real. Many non-binary people have found alternatives to traditional dating apps altogether. Izzy hasn't been using apps at all: “The way I’ve connected with people is by joining online groups. I’ve joined a queer sewing group, I’ve joined a non-binary, well, it’s not really a therapy group but it kind of is,” they say. “I’d rather do stuff that’s structured instead of aimlessly talking to people on apps. I find it’s easier to talk to people because we have something in common.” Julian has had some success on a smaller LGBTQ platform called Taimi, where you can specify if you’re trans, intersex or non-binary, as well as whether you are looking for other trans, intersex or non-binary people. “It was marketed to trans users saying ‘Are you feeling let down by Tinder?’” they say. “I feel more confident on there because it feels like a community. It feels like people who use this app will not be transphobic or queerphobic.” One dating app, Lex, started out on Instagram as a modern take on “personals”, where queer people – lesbian and bi women especially – would anonymously submit ads in the back of mags for partners. The IG page proved so popular that they decided to create their own text-based dating app for “womxn, trans, genderqueer, intersex, two-spirit and non-binary ppl for meeting lovers and friends”. Arden, a non-binary person, has had really positive experiences with Lex. “Using dating apps specifically for queer people allowed me to just be myself,” they say. “Other apps always felt so binary and categorised, but on Lex, it’s more about being my authentic self.” It might be impossible to create a totally flawless dating app that caters to every single person and community of users. But as dating apps like Taimi and Lex show, it's not exactly difficult to make an app user-friendly, safe and welcoming for non-binary people. Not everyone's romantic lives are built entirely around two genders. So why should our dating apps be? VICE also reached out to Tinder, Grindr and Bumble. At the time of publishing, all have yet to respond.

Alice spent most of her teen years locked in a second floor spare bedroom, kidnapped by a man she never names. Deprived of her adolescence, the young woman is largely left to figure out how to be an adult on her own once she escapes. Alice wants to make friends, but her lack of social skills is an obstacle. By guest critic Jo Trainor “There aren’t many feminine girls who like Doctor Who, Sherlock Holmes, and vintage motorcycles.” This line comes after protagonist Peter has met Blue, a non-binary waiter stroke artist, and is trying to explain to his friends why he’s interested in Blue. His friend Sara says this infuriating phrase as part of an explanation as to why Peter has been attracted to tomboys in the past and so might still fancy Blue if they turn out to be male. Peter responds by saying that he doesn’t really respect women who dress in a feminine way.

Fenty Beauty is getting all kinds of praise for being inclusive thanks to its 40 shades of foundation, particularly among those with dark skin tones who have a hard time finding a brand that represents them. But now women with albinism are sharing their reviews of the beauty line to prove just how revolutionary the brand really is. Albinism is a relatively rare genetic condition where there is little or no melanin pigment in the skin, hair and eyes, leaving them very pale, according to Mayo Clinic. Krystal Robertson is a woman from Mississippi who has the disorder and has a hard time finding a foundation that works for her. After trying the Fenty Beauty Pro Filt'r Foundation, she excitedly shared her review on Instagram. "@fentybeauty I'm freaking out!!! #110 #PerfextMatch 😂💯💯💯 #WhatSkin!!!!" she gushed. "Rethinking all the times I ended up orange 😀😀😀 its a new world great job @badgalriri 😍😍😍😍 #AlbinoMatch 😍💯." Robertson's photos prove that Fenty's foundation in colour 110 is the perfect match for her skin tone. And as Glamour notes, 110 isn't even the lightest shade available, which is truly remarkable since it proves the brand is true to its word when it preaches inclusiveness. At the launch of her beauty line earlier this month, Rihanna told reporters that her goal was to represent women of all shades. "In every product, I was like, 'There needs to be something for a dark-skinned girl! There needs to be something for a really pale girl! There needs to be [something for] someone in between!" the 29-year-old said at Sephora in Times Square. "There's so many different shades ... You want people to appreciate the product, and not feel like, 'Oh, that looks cute — but it only looks good on her.'" Riri clearly impressed Robertson with her line, as the Mississippi native shared another positive review in a private Facebook group. "I had a small freak out today," Robertson wrote. "My neck and face finally match each other ... I'm albino I have no pigment so it be hard to get a nice match... always end up orange." Rihanna took notice of this and shared a screenshot of the review in her Instagram story. Robertson isn't the only person with albinism who has praised Fenty Beauty. Frey Prevett, who identifies as non-binary and is from the U.K., also shared a lengthy review on social media saying the beauty line has a "pretty damn good shade range." After trying out foundation colour 100, which is the brand's lightest shade, they wrote, "This is the first ever foundation I've had that matches the colour of my neck!" In the comments, Prevett also shared a swatch comparison of other brands' lightest shades. The image showed a stark contrast to Fenty, as many of the other brands were still quite dark (and orange) for Prevett's skin tone. The fact that Rihanna calls her Fenty line "a new generation of beauty" is so on point, since she is representing people of all colours in a way that no brand has before. In an interview with PopSugar, Robertson attested to this and even noted how Riri's beauty line has brought people together to celebrate diversity. "It actually means the world that she not only made diverse shades for all women of colour, but she brought us all together," Robertson told the site. "When I was in Sephora all the women were doing their swatches and complimenting each other — all skin tones — and giving advice." Way to go, Riri! Also on HuffPost:

Cara Delevingne Pencil On Paper Reddit Cara Delevingne, known for her acting and modeling career but also has some lesser-known facts that make her stand out even more. From her struggles with depression and body image as well as her explorations into the world of sex toys and her openness about her pansexuality Here are 10 fascinating facts about the multitalented Delevingne. Troubles with Depression and Body Image Despite her beautiful appearance, Cara Delevingne struggled with depression and insecurity about her body during her teenage years. She was ridiculed for her small chest, and began menstruating later than other women, being called “frigid” and “flat”. At the age of 15 depression slowed her down and she was forced to drop out of school. In an interview with BBC she discussed her time in which she stated, “I hated myself for being depressed, I hated feeling depressed, I hated feelings.” However, Delevingne came from a extremely wealthy family and everyone thought she must be happy by default, but they did not understand her mental state. Homophobic in her Youth Cara Delevingne was unable to comprehend her sexuality as a child in a world that did not discuss it. For a while she found the idea of same-sex relationships to be disgusting and considered herself homophobic. In an interview with The Guardian, Delevingne said, “I know I’m the luckiest girl in the world, I understand all this and I wish I could appreciate it. It’s just that there’s something dark inside me that I can’t shake.” Delevingne is a pansexual who loves the person, regardless of gender or gender identity. She explained that this means that she might be attracted to non-binary and transgender individuals. When she spoke to Variety, Delevingne said, “However an individual identifies, whether it’s a ‘they’, a ‘he’ or a ‘she’, I fall in love with the person – and that’s what it’s about. I’m attracted to the person as such.” Marriage and Relationships In the year 2019, Delevingne got married in Las Vegas to actress Ashley Benson However, they soon split up. She has also been romantically linked to actress Michelle Rodriguez and singer Miley Cyrus. Her public display of her sexuality has received both support and criticism. Threats from the Film Industry Delevingne had to face opposition from producer Harvey Weinstein, who threatened her career if she did not conceal her sexual orientation and seek out an appropriate male companion to serve as an “cover”. Yet, Delevingne didn’t listen, and she continued to be open about her sexuality and relationships. Business with a Sex Toy Company Delevingne is a part of a business partnership with a toy company for sex and tests the products herself. She’s candid and open about her participation in the business, and sees it as an opportunity to spread the message of sexual health and freedom. Secret Vaginal Tunnel Delevingne has a hidden vaginal tunnel in her villa it was a gift from a close friend. The tunnel was made by an artist and is an image for female power and liberation. Delevingne recently entered the realm of NFTs by creating a video of her dancing in the hidden vaginal tunnel of her home and selling it as a special digital collectible. This showcases her bold and unflinching attitude, as well as her willingness to experiment with new ideas and challenge boundaries. Despite some criticisms of her acting ability she has continued to pursue her love of acting and has appeared in several films and TV shows, including “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,” “Suicide Squad” and “Carnival Row” It’s evident that she’s not confined by the opinions of others about her abilities and talents and is constantly challenging herself. Inspiration and Role Model Delevingne’s story is an inspiration for many. She has been transparent of her personal struggles as well as her progress towards self-acceptance, she is an example of how to be honest with oneself regardless of what others might think or think. She has spoken out about mental health, body positivity and inclusion and has used her platform to speak out for communities that are marginalized. Her actions show that it’s not necessary to know everything and that it’s okay to be unique and different. Cara Delevingne began her career as model at the age of 10, when she joined Storm Model Management. She soon became famous and was soon an one of the top in-demand models in the industry as she walked for the most prestigious designers such as Burberry, Chanel, and Fendi. She’s a model of what it takes to go from a model to a brand, and also how to establish a name for oneself in the fashion world. Delevingne is also well-known for her charitable work, she has been a global ambassador for Women’s Cancer Research Fund and actively supports mental health charities and organizations such as The Samaritans and the National Alliance on Mental Illness. In addition, she has donated to organizations that fight against discrimination and racism. Delevingne can also be regarded as a performer and she has released several music videos and songs. She also has collaborated with various artists such as Pharrell Williams. Social Media Influence Delevingne has a strong presence on social media. She’s known for her candid posts and relatable content which has allowed her to cultivate a large fan base and a loyal following of supporters. Model and actress Delevingne has successfully transformed from being a model into an actress and has received praise for her performance in films like “The Face of an Angel” and “Tulip Fever”.

Unfortunately the mainstream media doesn’t always give us enough of a platform to go into detail on the important issues affecting our community, but over the years Jonno has also agreed to longer-form in-depth interviews on a range of topics, which you can find via the links below. Please note the dates of the interviews, and remember that a lot can change in a few years, so Jonno’s views and policies on some issues might have shifted a bit over time. (Please email us at [email protected] if you notice any links on this site that are no longer working, or if you’ve recorded a long-form interview with Jonno in the past that’s not listed here and you would like us to add the link.) Jonno is happy to make time for podcasts that already have an established audience, particularly on topics that haven’t been covered much in the past or where the political landscape might have changed recently. Get in touch with our office by emailing [email protected] or calling 3403 2165 to arrange an interview time. Kristin Perissinotto & Hannah Ferguson 22 Apr 2021 This podcast discusses housing, renters rights, the ethics of owning an investment property, and the lack of diversity in mainstream politics. Jonno talks about the power of collective action, and shares his thoughts on term limits for politicians and how the job has changed him. Chilli D (aka Marta Abraha) 30 Mar 2021 In this podcast, Jonno discusses their early career and life in Brisbane, what multiculturalism means, and how we can make this city more inclusive. Rory Pope & Bram Chapman 25 Feb 2021 This conversation centres on Jonno's focus on making Brisbane more sustainable, equitable and democratic, and addressing the negative impacts of gentrification and speculative property investment. He discusses unsustainable, profit-oriented over-development, and how residents should have more say over how their city changes and evolves. Dan Rennie 06 Nov 2020 Dan Rennie speaks to newly-elected local Greens Member for South Brisbane Amy MacMahon and Councillor Jonathan Sri about the recent election win in the crucial seat of South Brisbane and their plans for the community. Nichola Burton 23 Oct 2020 Jonno discusses the impact of the lockdowns on the Creative, Arts and Entertainment industries, government responses, and how the Gabba Ward Office has been trying to support these industries. Michael Williams 18 May 2020 Michael discusses with Cr Sri about the success of the Greens in the Brisbane 2020 elections, radicalising politics and the possibility of a vacancy levy. Jessica Reynolds 16 Jul 2018 In this podcast, Jessica chats with Jonno about his career and the role of politics in the development of the city. Matthew Antoniolli 20 Jun 2018 People Who Are Politicians is about finding out about people....who happen to be politicians. This podcast interviews Cr Jonathan Sri about his path leading up to him getting elected and what he's up to in council. Chris 7 May 2018 This podcast Jonno unpacks local issues that led to the Vulture St cyclist die-in action, background to "die-ins" as advocacy tactic and his explanation for recent Brisbane protests: Are Controversial Road Safety Protests Helpful? May 2021 update: Council’s Asset Services team have gotten back to me with the proposed layout of the Kangaroo Point dog off-leash area ('DOLA') in James Warner Park. Hopefully the diagram is relatively self-explanatory. The dotted yellow line shows the approximate alignment of the fencing for the dog off-leash area, which will have a size of approximately 1070m2, at the northern end of James Warner Park. I understand the standard fencing height for dog off-leash areas is 1.5m. The space to the west of the DOLA fencing (demarcated with a dotted green line) will be planted up with more trees and understorey vegetation, to expand the densely vegetated area and the amount of sheltered habitat space available to native wildlife. I think this is a pretty good outcome, because it clearly demarcates which part of the park is intended for dogs, while also expanding the amount of densely-vegetated habitat area for curlews, snakes etc. In the proposed layouts, there are two access gates for DOLA users, one towards the southern end and one opposite Wicklow Street. I’ve also asked the council officers to plant up a garden bed along the front fence of the DOLA to partially screen the fencing. There’s quite a significant setback to the footpath and the roadway. Council officers tell me they won’t need to remove any existing trees to accommodate the fencing, but as part of the project will remove one smaller tree from the park which they say is already dead. You'll see that the fencing alignment is slightly angled to avoid some of the larger trees. The arborists are pretty happy about getting more space to plant more trees on the western side of the dog off-leash area. Planting up more of the park with garden beds and native vegetation also means council won't have to spend as much money on mowing. Council officers are recommending that the area under some of the existing trees with denser canopies in the south-east part of the DOLA should be covered with a porous rubber surface, which allows rainwater to penetrate through to the tree roots, but also protects the tree roots from erosion and damage from dogs. They’ve used a similar approach for the New Farm DOLA, which helps stop the space under the trees turning into a dustbowl. The council workers will hopefully be able to adapt the existing metal rails at the ends of the space by attaching new chain mesh fencing to it, rather than removing it and installing an all new fence. If you have any general feedback on the proposed layout, feel free to email [email protected]. If you have specific questions about the design, such as about the porous rubber surfacing that they want to use to protect the tree roots, you can email [email protected] This image shows the rubber surfacing council uses underneath trees in the New Farm dog off-leash area Previously - March 2021 Here’s an update on the proposed dog off-leash area (DOLA) for the northern end of Kangaroo Point. We’re now on the verge of locking in the location, which was effectively a choice between the northern end of CT White Park, or the northern end of James Warner Park. The results of our consultation seem to suggest that James Warner Park is the community's preferred location. Given that the project has been a little more controversial than most minor park upgrades, I thought it would be worthwhile to set out as much info as possible on this one webpage to help residents understand the decision-making process so far, and how we’ve ended up here. I thought in the interests of transparency I should publish an update about this. As you might know, we’re using our online voting platform more often to guide my decision-making about a range of local issues, from footpath upgrade budget allocations, to the best location for local facilities like dog off-leash areas, to which locations we should support for proposed new footbridges. Our online voting system has to strike a tricky balance. Some online surveys and voting systems (including most of the ‘official’ surveys that Brisbane City Council runs) have very little effective protection against duplicate voting, meaning that survey results can easily be stacked and distorted by a few people. Other systems go too far in the opposite direction, requiring multiple two-step authentication processes and making online voting so inconvenient that you end up with such low participation rates that the results aren’t worth relying on. We need enough checks and balances to guard against people gaming the system and fraudulently casting multiple votes from duplicate accounts, but we also don’t want to create too many participation barriers. People should be able to jump online and vote without having to provide heaps of personal information and wading through endless forms. In the past week or so, we noticed someone was trying to create dozens of fake accounts to cast multiple votes (apparently in the St Lucia footbridge poll). The names and email addresses were made up and the phone numbers provided were fake. We’re now deleting all those accounts on mass (at this stage it seems like roughly 60 accounts all up), including the fraudulent votes those accounts cast, which will lead to a bit of a shift in the running tallies for the bridge polls. Our process has been: - System operators use basic pattern recognition to identify a list of accounts that appear suspect - We send an email to each of those accounts advising that we suspect they are fake and giving the creator a chance to reply to confirm that they are actually a real individual - We call phone numbers to double-check whether the numbers are real and match the names provided Once we’ve gone through this process, we suspend the accounts and hide their votes. If any of those accounts eventually get back to us and say “Actually I’m a real person, please don’t delete my vote!” we can restore the account once we’ve asked a few more questions to confirm their identity. This helps us guard the integrity of our polls and helps us feel more comfortable about relying on the results. If we see multiple attempts to create fraudulent duplicate accounts going forward, we might look at reintroducing two-step email authentication as an extra protection, but we’re mindful that people who feel they have high stakes in the result of a poll will always try to find new ways to skew the results, so we’re using a wide range of checks to protect integrity. How much weight do we give to an online vote? I should add that generally speaking, the more legitimate votes a poll attracts, the more weight we tend to give the result. This is proportionate to the decision in question. For example, if 200 local residents cast a vote on which park a dog off-leash area should be built in, we consider that a reasonably representative sample size for a decision of that magnitude, and will be heavily guided by the result, whereas if only 200 people participate in our online poll about the best location for a $150 million footbridge project, we will pay some attention to the result, but certainly won’t treat it as binding. There are still a range of legitimate arguments against relying too heavily on online voting, including the fact that poorer people, older people, and those with less education might be significantly less likely to participate. But no form of consultation is perfect, so ultimately our approach is to rely on a wide range of engagement and feedback processes, including face-to-face forums, doorknocking, small group facilitated discussions and the more traditional phone calls and letters (in addition to online engagement) so we can get as balanced a picture as possible of public sentiment, given our very limited resources. Like all city councillors in Brisbane, our Gabba Ward Office has control over a $34 000/year grants budget for local events and projects (this has been cut drastically by the LNP in recent years - it used to be $75 000/year). Officially, this program is called the Lord Mayor’s Community Fund and you can find the grant rules at this link. If you're thinking of applying for a grant from my office, please give us a call on 3403 2165 first. With 45 000 residents living in the Gabba Ward, as well as hundreds of community groups and amazing local projects that deserve support, you can imagine that competition for local grant funding is very tight. So in addition to the grant rules set by BCC (which include the usual criteria like ‘must be a not-for-profit project’ etc.) here are some additional elements that my office looks at when we’re weighing up which applications to support. These are not hard-and-fast rules, but general guidelines that help us decide where we allocate our very limited grants budget, given that we always receive far more eligible and worthy applications than we can afford to support. 1. Prioritise smaller, local, unfunded or poorly-funded groups over bigger, better-funded organisations One advantage of our Gabba Ward grants program is that it’s quite flexible and quick at turning around money. It can even be accessed by unincorporated community groups that might not have the capacity to chase private sector funding or to apply for and acquit larger grants from other bodies. So as much as possible, we like to prioritise money going towards smaller groups that aren’t receiving any other government or corporate funding. We very rarely provide grants to larger charities and NGOs because they are better placed to tap into other funding streams. Opening celebration of the Tongan Language School in Highgate Hill 2. No schools or tertiary education institutions There are so many primary schools, high schools and higher ed institutions in our electorate that even if we just gave each of them $1000 a year, that would chew up at least a third of our grants budget. We take the view that education should be fully publicly funded, and we don’t want to let the state and federal governments off the hook for their funding shortfalls by cannibalising our local community grants budget. Generally speaking, unless there’s a very clear and significant benefit to the wider community for a school-based grant application, we simply adopt a consistent refusal to all grant requests from schools. It’s a bit ruthless taking this hard line, but at least it allows us to be consistent rather than picking favourites between different schools around the ward. We do, however, allocate a small chunk of my office budget (which would otherwise be spent on printing and office supplies) to buying raffle prizes (up to the value of $100) to donate to various school P&C fundraisers. We have also in the past provided grants to help establish new extra-curricular schools, such as buying books and resources to help the Tongan community kickstart a new language school in Highgate Hill. 3. Prioritise participatory events that get more people actively involved There are so many events and festivals around my ward that we simply can’t afford to financially support them all. There are dozens of gigs and concerts literally every week. So rather than giving money to some gigs and not others, we prioritise events that involve a higher degree of crowd participation, whether that’s dancing or group singing or collaborative art-making. This aligns with our philosophy that arts and culture should be inclusive and participatory rather than passively consumed. There’s nothing wrong with a concert where a few people perform and a large audience just sits or stands there watching. But we’ve chosen to prioritise our particular local grants budget towards events that blur the distinction between performer and audience member, where everyone becomes part of the event or project. This includes big participatory festivals like Kurilpa Derby where everyone is co-creating the event, as well as smaller communal events that include open mics and jam sessions or community art projects (e.g. where someone is funded to facilitate a community group to paint a mural, as opposed to just directly paying one individual artist to paint a mural). 4. Prioritise skill-sharing and capacity-building Similar to above, we also prefer to prioritise projects and events where organisers are mentoring others and sharing skills and knowledge with more people. So for example, we’d rather fund an anti-racist poetry workshop where experienced writers are teaching younger people of colour how to write and perform poetry, as opposed to just paying two or three experienced poets to perform their existing work. If people are learning or refining valuable skills as part of the project, we see that as a better use of grant funding than simply paying people to do something they already know how to do without passing that knowledge on to others. If we’re choosing between two otherwise-similar projects or events, we’ll lean towards the one that can demonstrate that less-experienced volunteers are being mentored to step up into organising roles and getting the opportunity to learn from others in their community. The same is true in terms of how money is used for events. Rather than covering the costs of renting the same equipment again and again for multiple events, we don't mind providing one-off grants to help organisations buy equipment (as long as it's going to get used regularly). For example, there have been a couple of occasions were a group has asked if we can pay for them to rent a PA system for a particular event. Our first preference is to simply loan them one of the PA systems we have here in the office, that non-profit community groups can borrow for free (contact us on 3403 2165 if you have questions about this), but if the event organiser is putting on multiple events throughout the year, and is open to sharing their gear with other groups, we might offer to give them a slightly larger grant to simply buy a PA system of their own. This focus on capacity-building also means we tend to avoid giving grant funding to projects that are purely charitable with no real focus on system change. While we definitely recognise the value of providing direct and immediate material aid, we don't think it's the best use of this particular grant budget to simply buy stuff to give to people in crisis. It would be easy to spend our entire grants budget every year on donations to emergency food programs. But this doesn't actually address the broader systemic failures and injustices that lead to people going without healthy food, nor does it increase the capacity of community organisations to meet people's needs on a sustainable ongoing basis. Our goal is to empower community collectives to develop networks of mutual aid and support, with resilient funding models that are not overly dependent upon a local grants budget that could be cut further at short notice. 5. Citywide events should seek mayoral funding Being an inner-city electorate, the Gabba Ward hosts a lot of ‘citywide’ events that don’t necessarily have a strong direct connection to our local community. While we do try to support some of these cultural events with a little bit of funding, we generally encourage them to apply directly to the Lord Mayor’s office for support. While each of BCC’s 26 wards has its own “Lord Mayor’s Community Fund” budget of $34 000, the Lord Mayor himself also has a separate budget of $34 000 (plus access to a bunch of other pots of money), and we think that’s where the money should be coming from for events that happen to be held in the Gabba Ward but aren’t otherwise connected to the Gabba Ward. So hopefully all that gives you a bit more of an idea of how we like to allocate our very modest grants budget. If you’re thinking of applying for a grant and have further questions, you’re welcome to give us a call on 3403 2165 to get an initial sense of what kinds of projects we’re more interested in supporting, before taking the time to formally submit your application via this online form. A volunteer crew at one of our verge garden planting days First Nations peoples have been sustainably nurturing and farming this country for tens of thousands of years. Prior to invasion and the arrival of British ships, there was no food crisis on this continent. Food sovereignty, including control over food production and distribution systems, is a crucial element of resisting and counteracting colonial imperialism and racist exploitation. The Gabba Ward office works within a settler government on occupied lands of the Jagera, Yugara, Yugarapul, and Turrbal Peoples. We pay our respects to the rightful custodians of these lands, and we acknowledge that many past wrongs and continuing injustices are yet to be rectified. Sovereignty was never ceded. This always was, and always will be, Aboriginal land. Background to the Project We were inspired by the spontaneous surge in local residents wanting to grow their own food as the COVID crisis emerged. At the same time we were contacted by local residents with a similar vision to our own, wanting to empower the community to grow healthy locally-grown food in public spaces that is not reliant on big corporations. So, at short notice our office swung into action committing some office resources and local grant budget to support a range of local community-led initiatives that we called the ‘Food Resilient Neighbourhoods’ project. As part of this project we were able to support the creation of edible verge gardens, seedling hubs, urban farms and community orchards. These community-led projects were not just a response to the COVID crisis but also a positive protest against the power imbalances, inequities and the resulting crisis (like climate change), that undermine secure access to nutritious food. Consequently our project was not only focused on producing food, but it was driven by a larger vision to participate in a reconstruction of our whole food system, based on principles of food resilience, food justice and mutual aid. Many of the projects also utilised principles of guerilla gardening, including the reclaiming of unused land and not waiting for ‘official’ permission, which often never comes. How secure is our food system? As the pandemic emptied shelves and supermarkets became bare, people became more aware of the inadequacy of our food supply systems and the corporate supermarkets’ inability to provide food security. It is not just overseas supply chains that are vulnerable to disruption, but also food that is grown in the northern parts of Queensland and then trucked down the east coast. As a result, and to prepare for future moments of crises, more and more people began to grow their own food, which meant that food seedlings were hard to come by for some months. What is food resilience & food justice? Resilience implies more participatory food systems, where communities can cope with the shocks and uncertainty facing food systems today. Food resilience ensures all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life. With a really large network of verge gardens, backyard gardens, community gardens and urban farms, we could potentially grow a lot of produce within the city core and make our communities less reliant on commodified sources of food production. Our project also embraces the philosophy of food justice. Food Justice envisions a food system that is inclusive, community-led and participatory, without the exploitation of people, land, or the environment. To achieve this means removing the structural inequities that exist within our food and economic systems. One of the first projects that got off the ground was a collective of 3 seedling hubs in West End and Highgate Hill. The seedling hubs are a space where residents can swap locally-germinated seedlings and seeds without having to go through big commercial plant suppliers. Germinating and swapping heirloom plant varieties helps preserve genetic diversity and prevents the homogenisation and monopolisation of seed stock by big companies that patent seed species for profit. Seedling hubs provide a perfect tool for networking with our neighbours and also fostering a connection to plants and growing our own food, which effectively creates more resilient and self-sustaining communities. This project has been set up by the residents themselves and our office has provided funds for the initial purchase of soil and seeds. We have three hubs so far: - Corner of Crowther & Victoria St, West End - Gertrude St, Highgate Hill - Rosebery St, Highgate Hill How to Participate - Participating in the seedling exchange is free and everyone is encouraged to bring their excess to share or swap with their neighbours. - Label any plants you bring along and please return pots and labels so the team can minimise costs and keep putting plants out. Give the Facebook Page a like and keep up to date with the project. We are keen to make the Gabba Ward notorious for having vibrant and lush gardens along the footpaths rather than just concrete or bare lawns; that’s why we are big fans of verge gardening. Planting up your verge is not just a great way to green your street, but it will also help create more shade which can improve walkability and reduce city temperatures. Verge space can be used to grow more fresh food locally helping to reduce food mileage, positively impact mental health and develop community resilience during times of crisis, such as the one we have been experiencing during COVID. Projects like this, that essentially reclaim or repurpose public space, are about reminding people that they can have control over their immediate neighborhood and that they do have a collective right to curate, and regenerate spaces. Brisbane City Council allows residents to plant out their verges and take care of this public space, as long as you garden with care for your neighbors, don't block pedestrian flows or parked cars and don’t intervene with underground pipelines. My office is happy to support a more creative use of this public space including the planting of fruit trees if residents plan out the planting and upkeep of the plants responsibly. As part of the planting project, we sponsored three rounds of verge planting days where residents planted out their verges. Crowther St Planting - March 14th 2020 Our first round centered on Crowther Street with 8 households planting over 120 seedlings in their verges. One of our visions was for this street to act as an inspiration to other local streets on how verge planting can transform the streetscape. We closed off the street for half a day and put on an unofficial planting party with BBQ, music and scooter races. The verge gardens have been blooming on Crowther street and we recommend you go there for a wander one Saturday morning and get inspired by the collective spirit of the residents to beautify their quiet West End street. One of the beautiful parts of this project was that the compost was supplied from the local community garden, it was compost created by the community for the collective benefit of the ward’s residents. Here is a great little video of the day, produced by Christine Schindler (on a voluntary basis). You can see more of her work here. Photos from Crowther St Planting Day Gabba Ward Wide (COVID safe) Verge Planting - May 30th & 27th June 2020 50 households across the Gabba Ward planted out their verges with free fruit trees, under-story perennial greens and herbs on two sunny Saturday mornings. We partnered with Jane St Community Garden who helped design and coordinate the project. Our office supplied Verge Garden Starter packs to each household of 2 fruit trees, 8 under-story seedlings, approx 150 litres of mulch and 200-300 litres of high grade organic soil. Jane Street Garden Coordinator Melissa Smrecnik, Gardening activist Morgyn Quin and the Gabba Ward staff created a template verge garden which could be easily adapted to any verge. The simple design was two focal fruit trees with 4 easy growing perennial greens and herbs around each of the trees. We produced an instructional video for our verge planters, which we hope will help other residents with their independent planting in the future. And some photos from the Gabba-wide verge plantings Three new urban farming projects have been established by a group of local gardening activists, with the support of our office. The gardeners are working collectively under the umbrella of Growing Forward Brisbane (Meanjin), a social movement which is about trying to reclaim government land that has been misused or abandoned. The collective has engaged a lot of local residents in learning about growing food, learning about community and learning about how to be more resilient in the face of pandemics and climate induced natural disasters. Growing Forward is about connecting to each other, and to the land that surround us, and also challenging systems that aren't serving us. The farms have been set up at the following locations. Message the Growing Forward Facebook page if you live nearby and would like to help caring for the veggies. - 250 Boundary St, southern riverside end (on abandoned State Government land). - Dutton Park hilltop, near the basketball court (on Brisbane City Council parkland) - Raymond Park, cnr Wellington Rd & Baines St (Brisbane City Council parkland) End of Boundary St Dutton Park Hilltop Another part of the project has been supporting initiatives to create community orchards of fruit trees planted in parks and other public spaces. In many places the earth is really diluted and dry and needs to be cared for in a genuine way. There's nothing that can do that as well as the roots of trees and the relationships between the microbiology of the soil. Trees have so many benefits for the environment and when they provide us with fresh produce it gets even better. Highgate Hill Park For sometime a small community orchard has been growing in Highgate Hill Park, looked after by a few volunteers. With our support this has now been upgraded with another 25 fruit trees added to the boundary of the park and sloping areas that are not used as open green space. We have about 35 trees there now. If you would like to help watering or nurturing this orchard please contact our office. We held a community planting day of over 20 local residents who planted approx 30 fruit trees, including avocado, mulberry and a few citrus varieties at Raymond Park, Kangaroo Point. The plantings are in coordination but also separate to the Raymond park urban farm. They are being cared for by a group of local residents. if you would like to get involved please contact our office or the Growing Forward FB page. We are doing what we can to support local composting to divert more waste from landfill. We are supporting residents to set up new household communal compost hubs to share with their neighbours. The best way to do this is through the ShareWaste system (see below). Composting is a great way to build an understanding of where our food comes from and reminds us our valuable our kitchen scraps can be in the composting and growing cycle. Home-based Composting Hubs / ShareWaste We already have about 16 households in the Gabba Ward open to receiving food scraps. We have surveyed the composters and they are really happy with using the ShareWaste system, but they need more people delivering their food scraps to their home composters. To contribute food scraps to one of these hubs, it’s simple: - Get on the ShareWaste website, register yourself, then - Find the closest home composter on their mapping system. Once you have found someone nearby - Send them a message to let them know you will be dropping off food scraps from time to time so they can manage the loads. - The composter will then send you their exact address details. To set up your own compost hub: - Once your compost system is set up in the front yard (easily accessible for drop offs), you can register with ShareWaste. - Your address is only given out by you individually to neighbours who message you directly through the site - so you can control how many people are delivering food scraps. - We may be able to support you with vouchers for free compost bins. Email our office on [email protected] Community Composting Hubs Brisbane City Council has partnered with a number of community gardens around Brisbane to help residents turn kitchen scraps into nutrients for soil. We currently only have one official BCC composting hub in the Gabba Ward - Jane St Community Garden, West End. It's a lot of work for the volunteer gardeners and as this is the only Community Composting Hub in our ward it gets a lot of food scraps delivered. Free Compost Caddies BCC are also providing free kitchen compost caddies to collect your food scraps at home and then take them to your nearest community composting hub. We have them available in The Gabba Ward office for collection. Just jump online and register for one via this link. The council registration system is only set up for larger composting hubs and we only have one in our Ward at Jane St Community Garden - so when you register via the website, just indicate that Jane St is where you will be dropping off your scraps. It's fine to use it as part of the ShareWaste program instead. BCC Home Compost Vouchers Brisbane City Council have recently set up a new compost rebate program. The program provides eligible Brisbane residents a rebate of up to $70 off the purchase of eligible composting equipment. Make sure you register first to get your voucher number before buying your compost bin, worm farm or bokashi, otherwise they won't refund you. Food Justice Resources: www.communitycentredknowledge.org/food-justice/food-justice-resources/ What is Food Sovereignty? (a Graphic): https://www.instagram.com/p/CHtppkzFuhx/ Sovereign Soil Farm in so called Adelaide: https://www.instagram.com/sovereign_soil_farm/ Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe: https://avidreader.com.au/products/dark-emu-1 Ron Finley: Urban Gangsta Gardener in South Central LA | Game Changers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7t-NbF77ceM&t=3s&ab_channel=UPROXX Foodshare - Get Building & Growing (Helpful Resources from a Project in Toronto): https://foodshare.net/resources/printable/ Mutual Aid (Big Door Brigade by Dean Spade): https://bigdoorbrigade.com/mutual-aid-toolbox/ Pod Mapping for Mutual Aid (by Rebel Sidney Black): Here Care Work by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha: https://www.akpress.org/carework.html Expressions of interest for various mural locations in the Gabba Ward close on Monday, 12 October, 2020 Instead of spending it all on concrete and bitumen, we’re allocating a chunk of my local public space upgrades budget towards paying artists to paint murals on toilet blocks and other walls. We’re looking at paying somewhere in the range of $5000 per mural depending on the size (this figure includes the cost of supplying your own paint and other materials). As part of the contract, artists will also be expected to take responsibility for applying water-proof and tag-proof coatings that are appropriate to the surface. We’re calling for expressions of interest/concept proposals to paint murals on toilet blocks in the following parks: - Raymond Park, Kangaroo Point - Musgrave Park, South Brisbane - Davies Park, West End (new, larger toilet block) - Orleigh Park, West End (large toilet block near children’s playground) - Kangaroo Point Cliffs Park (bunker-style toilet block on Lower River Terrace) Check out the recent works painted onto the Bunyapa Park toilet block in West End if you want some inspiration. We’re also seeking proposals/EOIs for undercover walls on: - Thornton St pedestrian underpass, Kangaroo Point - Vulture St underpass, South Brisbane (between Stephens Rd and South Bank train station) Only artists who can show proof of completing previous outdoor mural projects are eligible to apply. Artists will require a current ABN. We are particularly interested in mural concept proposals which are thought-provoking and address topical issues, and/or specifically respond to the surrounding local context of the proposed location. Murals will of course have to be appropriate for display in a public space (e.g. vulgar language or extremely violent imagery is unlikely to be supported). Innovative proposals to paint surfaces on the insides of the toilet cubicles are also welcome. To submit an EOI, please email [email protected] with ‘Mural Artist EOI’ in the subject line and provide the following: - name, phone number, address and email address - 2 to 4 photos of previous murals you’ve worked on - Contact details for a previous client who is willing to provide a reference (if you’ve never done paid mural work before, you could also provide a reference from an arts festival, arts organisation or lecturer/teacher/mentor who can vouch for your work) - 50 to 200 words describing the concept you have in mind for a toilet block or underpass – this can be specific to one particular location or a general proposal (you can write more and propose multiple concepts for multiple locations if you wish) - Nominate which site you are most interested in painting (we will assume that you are generally interested in paid work at any of the locations unless you specify otherwise) - (Optional) Further web links demonstrating your style and previous work Expressions of interest close on Monday, 12 October at 5pm. The final decision-making process for selecting artists will depend on the number of EOIs received. Once we have a clear idea of how much funding we can allocate, and what styles of artwork the council administration is willing to support, we will contact artists to put you in direct contact with council’s contracting team and go through the formal process of being listed as an approved supplier. Women, non-binary folk, people of colour and First Nations people are particularly encouraged to submit an EOI. Any questions, feel free to email [email protected] or call 3403 2165. This mural was painted in Bunyapa Park, West End by Neta-Rie Mabo under a previous round of this project funding. You can see more of Neta-Rie's work at http://instagram.com/mabolous Right now, many of us are forced to lead lives that are economically precarious and environmentally and socially unsustainable. We work long hours to pay the bills, while not having enough time to volunteer on meaningful community projects or enjoy the company of friends and family. Care labour is distributed unfairly and unevenly, and the reproductive work necessary to keep our communities strong is overlooked and undervalued. Many of us feel overworked, while more and more of us are unemployed or under-employed. This is a strange contradiction for our society to grapple with. Thousands of people are craving paid work opportunities, while many of those who are fortunate enough to have paid jobs are constantly stressed and dream of having more free time. It suggests there is something more fundamentally flawed with our dominant culture and way of life. As Australia enters recession, we need to consider a broader range of options for reimagining work and how we structure our lives. Many workplaces here on Brisbane’s inner-south side, both small and large, are shifting away from a 40-hour week. A 4-day ‘standard’ work week is becoming increasingly common. Depending on the field of work, this might mean going home earlier and only working from 9am to 3pm, 5 days per week. Or it could simply mean working from Monday to Thursday with a 3-day weekend. Or both! As a local councillor, I am allocated two full-time ward office staff to assist me in my work. We’ve split these two full-time roles into multiple part-time roles (some staff work 2 or 3 days per week while others work 4 days per week). This means my staff are better rested and less stressed, and have more time for care labour, recreation, study and even volunteering on various community projects. Many full-time employees find they prefer a slightly shorter work week, and experience a wide range of flow-on benefits (as long as they retain long-term job security). When large organisations shift away from a 5-day work week, this can also free up more job opportunities for unemployed residents. If we have well-supported and affordable housing, healthcare and education systems that meet everyone’s basic needs, it becomes possible to imagine a society where working 5 days/week in paid roles is no longer necessary. This in turn would free up so much time among residents that a lot of other community projects would be more viable. Not so long ago, it was considered normal for most people to work very long hours 6 days/week, with Sunday being the only day off. Strong advocacy, particularly from trade unions, led to the introduction of a standardised 8-hour work day and 5-day work week (at least in most wealthier nations). As we adapt to a new world beyond the shutdown, we need to go further and talk seriously about whether it’s time to shift towards a standardised 4-day work week. But to get to that point, all of us who currently have paid work need to be more diligent and disciplined about finishing on time each day, and not working overtime for free. Lately I’ve spoken to quite a few people who were working from home during the shutdown, and found that outside their traditional office workplace, they felt less pressure to work past 5pm. Of course, others (myself included) found that without a clear ‘home time’ we lapsed into working later into the evenings. I think as the shutdown eases, and many of us return to office environments, workers need to insist on finishing for the day at the time their contracts say they should, and resist the pressure to work overtime on a regular basis. We won’t be able to initiate a shift towards a 4-day work week if we can’t even maintain the current 5-day work week. Many Brisbane workplaces valorise and aspire towards a culture of working too long and too hard, which might serve to maximise profits for mega-wealthy rent-seekers, but isn’t necessarily in society’s broader long-term interests. So let’s start some in-depth conversations in our community and with our coworkers about workplace culture, workplace hours, and what would need to happen to shift our city towards a 4-day work week. Is it better for everyone to have the same three days of the week off? Or should the working week be staggered to spread around transport impacts and other demands on infrastructure? What kinds of government services and private services would still need to remain open and available at least 5 days per week, and what services could feasibly drop down to 4 days per week? If big employers like Brisbane City Council were to shift towards a 4-day work week (with a 3-day weekend from Friday to Sunday), would this prompt other private workplaces to also make the shift? What are the main barriers preventing smaller businesses from making this kind of shift? There are lots of questions to think through, so please talk about them with your friends and family! If you’re interested in further reading on this topic, this discussion paper is a good place to start. We’ve produced a compilation album of songs recorded during the shutdown by bands and solo artists with strong connections to the Gabba Ward on Brisbane's inner-south side (i.e. the suburbs of West End, South Brisbane, Dutton Park, Highgate Hill, Kangaroo Point and Woolloongabba). As of Monday, 28 September, the album is available for download at this link. The album is called The Art of Hibernation and features 12 tracks by: Kurilpa Reach, Bad Sext, Wheat Paste, Bricklayers, Kairos Twin, Machiniska, A Country Practice, Saateen, Sanfeliu, Cigany Weaver, Amy Jane and Lileth. 50% of sales revenue will go back to the participating acts (split evenly) and the other 50% will be set aside to pay bands to play at community concerts and non-profit events after the shutdown is over. Each soloist/band retains copyright and full ownership of their songs, and will be free to release the recorded tracks again in other formats/albums. This project was funded using $10 000 of our local grants budget, which was redirected from festivals and community events that couldn't go ahead due to the pandemic. We're extremely grateful to the crew at Chaos Magick Studios for putting so much time and energy into this project, and to all the artists who've been part of it. Original callout and further details of project: How to Apply AS OF MONDAY, 8 JUNE, APPLICATIONS HAVE NOW CLOSED 1. A 100-word bio (please mention a few genres/styles that you align most closely with 2. Up to 150 words about the song you’re recording, why you’d like to be part of this project, and why your act is an important part of the local music ecosystem on Brisbane’s inner-south side (no need to write a full 150 words if you don’t want to) 3. Two or three sentences or dot points touching on your connection to the Gabba Ward (e.g. “Two of our members live in Woolloongabba and one lives in West End. We perform regularly at local venues like The Bearded Lady and the Milk Factory.”) 4. Any relevant links to social media pages, websites or music videos (don’t overdo it) 5. If you have it, a link to a rough demo of the song you’d like to record (not mandatory) or at least a copy of the lyrics 6. Any suggestions you have for an album title (optional) 7. Email and a phone number that you will answer during business hours Applications must be received by 9am on Monday, 8 June. If you have any issues with the online form, send questions or email your application to [email protected] with 'Gabba Ward Shutdown Album' in the subject line. What the selection panel is looking for... Rather than picking ‘the ten best local bands,’ this project is about amalgamating a collection of tracks that reflect and represent the current state of local music in the Gabba Ward, and speak to the uncertain period we’re living through. We will be curating an album that features and celebrates a wide range of genres and musical subcultures, with the hope of representing the breadth and depth (and talent) of the amazingly varied musical ecosystem on Brisbane’s inner-south side. This means, for example, that we are unlikely to include three or four bands that all fit within the same narrow genre/scene. We're hoping to mostly feature songs that have been written recently or finished off during the shutdown, but we definitely aren't aiming for an entire album of songs that are necessarily directly about the pandemic. We’ll be trying to strike a balance between very new/young acts and slightly more established local bands. The album will hopefully serve as a snapshot of our music scene at the time of the COVID-19 shutdown, and help to celebrate and promote all the amazing music and performing arts projects that are bubbling out of Brisbane’s inner-south side. Diversity Targets for the Album as a Whole (similar to 4ZZZ Community Radio's Targets) - At least 50% of acts on the album should include at least one member who identifies as a woman or non-binary - At least 5% of the acts on the album should include at least one member who identifies as First Nations - At least 20% of the acts on the album should include at least one member who identifies as a person of colour/not white Eligibility Criteria for Participating Groups - Majority (more than half) of members currently live or have mostly lived in the Gabba Ward suburbs of West End, Highgate Hill, South Brisbane, Kangaroo Point, Dutton Park, Woolloongabba; and/or - Group/soloist can demonstrate a strong local connection to the Gabba Ward Recording and mixing will be handled by the Tanuki Lounge at 207 Boundary St, West End. We’re aiming to record in late June/early July so bands will need to make themselves available during this period. This project has a limited budget and time-frame, which means each group will only have a couple of hours in the studio for recording. Bands are expected to have a finalised, well-rehearsed track that’s ready to record, as we won’t have time for lots of experimentation and chopping and changing once inside the studio. Other Important Conditions The selection panel reserves the right to leave out a track from the final published album if the recording doesn’t match the standard of the other songs, but the act will still be paid $400 for their time in the studio and will still receive a copy of their recorded track to use as they wish. Acts can withdraw from the project at any time, and will be given an opportunity to hear all the other songs on the album before it is published and released. 50% of any profits from sales will be split among artists. The other 50% will be set aside to pay local performers at future community events and concerts, and will be allocated at the discretion of the Gabba Ward Office and the Tanuki Lounge. All acts included on the album will receive an equal share of any future proceeds from album sales, regardless of track length or complexity of the work. Tracks will be released online on a pay-what-you-can-afford basis, which means some residents will download them for free. Councillor Sri and the Tanuki Lounge will consult with all participating acts about the best online platforms for distributing the music, and before making any decisions to release the album in a physical format (e.g. CD). Selection panel members (all volunteering their time) - Nell Forster - Shannon Logan - Trina Massey - Morgyn Quinn - Jonathan Sri Other questions and answers I can record myself and don’t want to get paid. Can you squeeze me onto the album? We don’t want this project to become a random grab-bag of dozens of local acts. It’s intended as a curated compilation of high-quality musicians who will fit well together in a cohesive product. If we receive some really strong applications who just miss out on making the cut for the final 10, we reserve the right to offer them an unfunded place on the album at the selection panel’s discretion. Please just submit a standard application and make the case for why you want to be part of the project like everyone else. How and when will the album be released? We’re hoping to release the album online by late July/August, but we won’t rush the process. If there’s enough interest, we’ll also look at producing a physical album on CD or another medium. How are you guarding against favouritism? The volunteer selection panel has been chosen by democratically elected City Councillor Jonathan Sri. We’ve pulled together a pretty broad and diverse selection panel from within the local music scene. Inevitably, panel members will know and have worked with many of the bands who apply to be part of the project, but the whole group will have to agree on a final list of acts for the album. Just as with any festival or event lineup, we have to trust the people on the panel to make good decisions. Panellists won’t be entitled to any share of revenue from the album. Where’s the money coming from? This project has a total budget of $10 000, which is coming from the Gabba Ward local grants budget. Roughly half of that will go towards production costs including recording, mixing, mastering and studio hire, and the rest will go towards paying participating groups. This is money that would otherwise be spent supporting community events and festivals (most of which have been cancelled due to the shutdown). Why didn’t you just put the choice of bands to a vote? Because it’s not a popularity contest. Nor is it a talent contest. The goal is to produce a cohesive but diverse album that encapsulates the varied subcultures of our local community and the mood of our times. Isn’t the suburb eligibility criteria unfairly exclusionary of bands from other parts of Brisbane? Nope. The money for this project is coming out of the local Gabba Ward grants budget. Any of the other 25 city councillors around Brissie have their own grants budget and could run a similar project for their electorate. So if bands from other suburbs feel left out, they are strongly encouraged to approach their own Brisbane City Councillor for similar grant funding. Will there be other similar projects in the future? Yes, hopefully. Depending on how popular this is, we might take the idea further and record more bands in future if we have enough funding. More generally, non-profit community groups are always welcome to apply for grant funding through the Gabba Ward Community Fund so if you have an idea for a project with a broad community benefit that you’d like to run, don’t be afraid to reach out. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a few people have taken issue with my suggestion that Labor Senator Kristina Keneally’s opinion piece about immigration was advancing racist arguments. I shouldn’t need to start with this disclaimer, but: No, just because I’m accusing someone of advocating racist ideas or arguments doesn’t mean I’m saying that person is racist and horrible and ought to be ‘cancelled.’ All I’m saying is that in this case, the arguments Kristina is advancing are based on racist premises, tend towards racist outcomes, and will have the effect of legitimising and emboldening racism in Australian public discourse. The article is a good example of dog-whistling. When you drill into the detail, Keneally’s main points are more subtle than those of someone like Pauline Hanson. To suggest that the two politicians are advancing identical arguments would be disingenuous and intellectually lazy. But I do think she’s using language which is calculated to resemble Hanson’s rhetoric and win back One Nation voters. Kristina Keneally is not necessarily saying all migration is bad. And unlike Hanson, she doesn’t explicitly draw distinctions between people of different cultures and ethnic backgrounds. She is correctly suggesting that our current immigration and employment policy settings sometimes encourage employers to pay temporary migrant workers less than they would pay Australian citizens to do the same job. Depending on how you frame the issue, I also don’t think there’s anything wrong, in and of itself, with saying that offering migrants residency pathways and greater long-term stability is preferable to relying on such high numbers of temporary migrant workers. So why is it dog-whistling? In politics, how you frame and talk about a controversial issue matters just as much as the technical details of the policy position you’re actually advocating. Politicians often use vocabulary that’s layered with hidden meanings depending on the context (e.g. using ‘expat’ to refer to settlers from Anglosphere countries and ‘immigrant’ to refer to settlers from other parts of the world). Or they over-simplify complex concepts so their statements are vague enough to mean completely different things to different people. Dog-whistling is where you focus on a certain issue or use a particular phrase, knowing that some in your audience will infer a very different meaning. What you don’t make room to say matters too. Failing to acknowledge our recent history of invasion, attempted genocide of First Nations peoples, and White Australia immigration policies also obliterates relevant context that shapes contemporary migration policy debates whether we admit it or not. When Senator Keneally published an article with the heading “Do we want migrants to return in the same numbers? The answer is no” she knew a lot of people weren’t going to remember anything about the article beyond the headline. Such a phrase is clearly calculated to draw the attention and sympathy of xenophobes who are opposed to all migration. Similarly, writing that we “need a migration program that puts Australian workers first” carries a lot of hidden meaning for racists, and for new migrants. Many people of colour and First Nations peoples have learned the hard way that the term ‘Australian workers’ is frequently used as coded language for ‘white Australian workers.’ When Keneally calls for cuts to specific migration programs while saying Aussie workers need ‘a fair go,’ she knows many people will interpret her comments as suggesting that migrants themselves are a major factor behind the mistreatment and exploitation of Australian workers. This language deliberately taps into the racist and divisive strategies of certain labour movements in Australian history, where instead of arguing for better pay and conditions for all workers, some campaigns simply called for stronger restrictions to cap non-white workforces in order to benefit white Australians. Her choices of phrase invoke the same clichéd xenophobic mythologies that erroneously blame immigration for car-centric transport planning or unsustainable suburban sprawl. (Remember: cities with similar populations to Australian ones have smaller geographic footprints, more public green space and less intense traffic congestion, so blaming population growth is just letting the real culprits off the hook) It was possible for Kristina Keneally to write a very different kind of article while still making similar points. She could have written a piece titled “Let’s give temporary migrants permanent residency” or "Fair go for migrants" or “Start welcoming permanent migrants from Africa, Asia and South America - stop exploiting temporary ones” (ok so that third title is a probably a tad too long and cumbersome). She could have talked about the real factors behind why so many Australian workers are struggling – privatisation and outsourcing, neoliberalism, the financialisation of housing as a speculative commodity, Bob Hawke’s ‘Prices and Incomes Accord’ (which smashed the power of organised labour) etc. She could have highlighted that migrants and citizens all have a common interest in strengthening rules to protect temporary workers’ rights and prevent exploitation. Instead, she used a divisive framing to grab attention and appeal to the hard-right, thus creating political pressure for the LNP to adopt even stronger and harsher anti-immigrant rhetoric. When leaders dog-whistle like that, they normalise and embolden racism (and by the way, following this path still doesn’t help Labor win elections). Keneally was smart enough to know what she was doing. Anyone who defends her strategy and choice of framing is actually making it a lot harder to have the evidence-based discussions we really need to have about systemic racism, unfair employment conditions, temporary worker exploitation and migration settlement strategies. No matter how you say it, ripping off colonised regions is still racist Putting aside the dog-whistling, even the underlying substance of Kristina Keneally’s argument is based upon a racist and imperialist philosophical worldview. Australia has benefited from 250+ years of colonisation, British imperialism, American imperialism, and globalisation. We bully and rip off near neighbours like East Timor and Papua New Guinea to profit from stolen natural resources. We benefit from unjust global trade deals and military interventions (how many wars for oil have there been in the Middle East now?), and from the overcharging of international students who study here. We’ve exploited Aboriginal land and labour here on this continent, as well as workers from overseas. Our economy has grown thanks in large part to outsourcing and exploitation of overseas workforces and consumers. On top of all that, both the fossil fuels we burn and export, and the political pressure we apply internationally against stronger action to address climate change, are huge contributors to global warming and economic instability, which of course pushes more people to seek employment far from home. So in that context, for Keneally to argue that we don’t want young, unskilled workers from other countries, but we do want the richer, better-educated ones, is also extremely unjust and selfish. She wants the benefits of globalisation in terms of wealthy tourists, free-flowing capital, cheap manufactured products and lucrative resource markets. She wants the doctors and engineers that other nations have spent time and money rearing and educating. But she doesn’t want any of the lower-skilled migrant workers who are struggling to find work at home due to the same unjust global economic system that we are benefitting from. And she supports harsher, militarised border policing to keep them out. De facto White Australia? In practical terms, a range of factors including visa criteria, high application fees, sponsorship requirements, English language tests and embassy locations mean that on average, it’s (generally) much easier for white immigrants to enter Australia on pathways to permanent residency. Some experts have suggested that our humanitarian intakes also discriminate based on race, culture and religion. In that context, it’s problematic to argue for reprioritisation away from migration pathways that currently allow more people of colour into the country, while neglecting to also advocate for restructuring the systemic barriers that exclude non-whites from permanent migration pathways. Keneally’s motivations aren’t necessarily racist. I’m not suggesting she’s intentionally proposing to discriminate against people of non-European ancestry. But when we ask whether a certain policy or system is racist, it’s important we don’t get caught up focusing narrowly on whether individual decision-makers and advocates actually have racist motives. We must consider whether the overall system they’re supporting tends to yield differing results depending on a person’s culture or ethnic background. The policy changes Keneally is advocating for will have racially discriminatory outcomes unless they are accompanied by other changes that she has chosen not to advocate for. That doesn’t mean she’s racist. But the practical results of what she is calling for certainly would be. The difficult challenge of talking about migration policy in Australia is that it can’t be conveniently separated from discussions about colonisation, extractivism and imperialist globalisation. A lot of well-meaning Australians get frustrated when any attempt to start a conversation about migration immediately attracts accusations of racism. This is particularly so for many Greens, whose white fragility prevents them from recognising how sustainability arguments for limiting immigration can be inherently racist. The hard truth is that in settler-colonial countries like Australia, you simply can’t talk sensibly about migration without talking about racism. The two topics are inextricably linked, and leaving race out of the conversation – like you’re some kind of ‘objective’ scientist neutrally discussing populations and carrying capacities without acknowledging past and ongoing systemic racism – just tacitly reinforces racist norms. Yes, we do need to build alliances between Australians and migrant workers. We do need to reinforce common interests and fight against the corporate bosses who benefit by dividing and exploiting us. And if a Labor senator writes a shallow, divisive, harmful article that normalises and reinforces racism, we do have to call it out. This article has also been published on Green Agenda, an independent online publishing project that promotes discussion and debate of critical and contemporary green politics and philosophy... More and more residents have been asking for the stretch of Riverside Drive Parkland north of Jane St to become car-free. Riverside Drive is designated as public parkland, and it's unusual for so much space in a public park to be used for free car parking. Based on previous consultation, we have already asked council to remove all street parking to the north of the boat ramp, and are now exploring whether to remove the rest of the parking between Jane St and the boat ramp. Further consultation about the long-term future of the boat-ramp is also required, as the need for vehicles to access the boat ramp is in direct conflict with pedestrian safety. For now, we're asking whether residents support removing all parking (including boat ramp parking) or if you only support removing street parking on Riverside Drive but would like the boat ramp parking retained for now. If parking on Riverside Drive itself is removed, residents with limited mobility would still be able park at the end of Jane St or Hockings St in order to access the park. We can explore converting some of the parking on Jane and Hockings Streets into priority parking for people with a disability if necessary. If boat ramp parking is retained, this could also remain available for people with impaired mobility. The results of this survey will be published via Councillor Sri's website, email list and social media accounts. This survey is not a binding community vote, but will be heavily influential to the decision-making of the Gabba Ward Office (the more people who respond, the more weight the survey results will carry). For more info on our broader vision and strategy for transport in the inner-south side, check out this page. Data Use: We are collecting your name and contact details to help guard against duplicate responses and to inform you of the results of the survey. Collecting address details also helps us understand trends regarding whether people living in different neighbourhoods have different views about the survey question. Your data is stored in the dedicated database of Greens Councillor for the Gabba Ward, Jonathan Sri. Your name and contact details will not be shared with Brisbane City Council directly or with other third parties without your express permission.

The Bayesian Approach to A/B Testing Known for being less restrictive, highly intuitive, and more reliable, let's dive into the math behind the Bayesian Approach to statistical inference and find out why. The applications of A/B testing are age-old and spread across industries, from medical drug testing to optimizing experiences within eCommerce. But as the tools used to make informed decisions based on collected data continue to evolve, so too has the best approach. Once universally accepted, the Frequentist Approach to statistical inference in A/B testing scenarios is now being replaced by a new gold standard. Also based on the foundation of Hypothesis Testing, the Bayesian Approach is known for its less restrictive, highly intuitive, and more reliable nature. While Dynamic Yield has already written about our feelings on the matter, my goal is to dive into the numbers behind the Bayesians school of thought, performing the appropriate derivations where necessary. Founding Philosophy Of Bayesian Methods: In a Bayesian approach, everything is a random variable, and by extension, has probability distribution and parameters. In Frequentist, if we want to model the click-through rate of a group, we try to find its mean and its variance, which act as the parameters. And to find these parameters, we collect sample data, write down likelihood, and then maximize it with respect to the parameters. We go on to build confidence intervals around this Maximum Likelihood click-through rate to quantify the uncertainty around where the real mean would lie. In Bayesian, the real mean is a distribution, but the observations are fixed, which models real life behavior much better. To be more precise, in the case of a Bernoulli distribution, the probability mass function (pmf) is defined as: with π being the probability for clicking. Here, according to the Bayesian approach, π should also have a distribution of its own, its own parameters, etc. Mean Probability Distribution & its Parameters: To calculate the mean click-through rate, similar to the Maximum Likelihood mean value in a traditional A/B test, we try to solve for the value π in the below equation: Where X = the observed data. We apply the good old Bayesian conditional probability equation: Here, p(X) can be treated as a normalizing constant, given its independence from π. p(π) = probability of click before the experiment began – the prior p(X|π) = observed data samples – the likelihood p(π|X) = probability of click after observing the sample – the posterior Prior, Likelihood & Posterior Probability Distributions: We can calculate the p(X) value (probability of click-through) given the observed sample data is a product of prior and likelihood. Here, prior probability is the probability to click on a variation before any sample data is collected (this would be the historical average of an experiment, or in the absence of any data, can be equated to a uniform distribution), and likelihood, on the other hand, the probability distribution of the collected sample data. To solve this equation, we exploit a concept called Conjugate Prior. In Bayesian probability theory, if the posterior distribution has the same probability distribution as the prior probability distribution given a likelihood function, then the prior and posterior are called conjugate distributions. The prior is called a conjugate prior for the likelihood function. In our case, if the likelihood function is Bernoulli distributed, choosing a beta prior over the mean will ensure the posterior distribution is also beta distributed. In essence, the beta distribution is a conjugate prior for the likelihood that is Bernoulli distributed! Let’s see how exploiting this concept helps us solve the posterior probability for both continuous and binary variables. As we are dealing with a Bernoulli distribution, we only have to deal with one random variable (π). Assuming our likelihood function follows a prior-beta distribution: Also assuming the experiment begins with no prejudice, a beta distribution for the prior with α=1; β=1 would be a good starting point as beta (1,1) is a uniform distribution: Grouping the similar terms together: We can see the posterior is simply a beta distribution of the form: Which is the same as our prior probability distribution: Thus, confirming the conjugate priors concept for binary outcomes. To solve for a posterior probability for binary outcomes, the blueprint would be: - π ~ Beta (1,1): assume the prior distribution is uniform - Sample x1 - π ~ Beta (1+x1 ,1+1- x1): update the beta distribution to account for the sample observed data - Sample x2 - π ~ Beta (1+x2 ,1+2- x2) - Repeat from Step 2 In the end, we reach a beta distribution that progresses from a uniform distribution to a skinny, normal distribution. The following code, implemented in Python, will allow you to more easily visualize the progression, effectively demonstrating how the Bayesian probability changes over time as the number of samples increase from __future__ import print_function, division #! usr/bin/env python" __author__ = "SivaGabbi" __copyright__ = "Copyright 2019, Dynamic Yield" from builtins import rangev import matplotlib.pyplot as plt import numpy as np from scipy.stats import beta NUM_TRIALS = 2000 CLICK_PROBABILITIES = [0.35,0.75] class Variation(object): def __init__(self, p): self.p = p self.a = 1 self.b = 1 def showVariation(self): return np.random.random() < self.p def sampleVariation(self): return np.random.beta(self.a, self.b) def updateVariation(self, x): self.a += x self.b += 1 - x def plot(variations, trial): x = np.linspace(0, 1, 200) for b in variations: y = beta.pdf(x, b.a, b.b) plt.plot(x, y, label="real p: %.4f" % b.p) plt.title("variation distributions after %s trials" % trial) plt.legend() plt.show() def experiment(): variations = [Variation(p) for p in CLICK_PROBABILITIES] sample_points = [5,10,20,50,100,200,500,1000,1500,1999] for i in range(NUM_TRIALS): # take a sample from each variation bestv = None maxsample = -1 allsamples = for v in variations: sample = v.sampleVariation() allsamples.append("%.4f" % sample) if sample > maxsample: maxsample = sample bestv = v if i in sample_points: print("current samples: %s" % allsamples) plot(variations, i) # show the variation with the largest sample x = bestv.showVariation() # update the distribution for the variation which was just sampled bestv.updateVariation(x) if __name__ == "__main__": experiment() The progression of π over time can be seen as: While the binary variables cover events like click-throughs, some of the A/B testing is done on continuous variables such as revenue, order value, etc. We would follow a similar path as laid out for binary variables and exploit the concept of conjugate priors. But instead of working with a beta prior, we will now work with a gamma prior and normal likelihood function, resulting in a gamma posterior. For optimizing metrics that are discrete, such as the number of purchases, pageviews, and so on, we work with a gamma prior and Poisson likelihood. Again, resulting in a gamma posterior. Dynamic Allocation / Explore-Exploit Dilemma / Multi-Arm Bandit: Imagine you are at a casino and out of two slot machines, you pick one and win 3/3 times played. What would your next move be? Would you continue to play with the machine that has proven to win or try the other one? This situation precisely sums up the Explore-Exploit dilemma – the choice between gathering more data and maximizing returns, which we already described closely applies to A/B testing. In a traditional A/B test, because you assign a percentage of the traffic, there is no option to exploit the data, i.e. incrementally assign more traffic to the winning variation. Let’s see how this is accomplished in a Bayesian setting. In short, sampling completely takes care of the Explore-Exploit dilemma for us in a Bayesian test. Say you have distributed traffic randomly between two variations (blue and orange) and reached the following posterior probability distribution for both: As can be seen, the orange variation is clearly sampled much more than the blue variation. And how do we acknowledge this? The variance! We saw earlier that a posterior probability gets skinnier with more sample data, so given that the blue variation is still chubbier, we can conclude it is not sampled enough. At this point, if we decide to randomly sample two points, one from each variation, and compare them both, what are the chances the orange variation would be higher? If the sample from the blue variation comes from the right half of the plot, then it would have better probability to be higher If the sample from the blue variation comes from the left half of the plot, then it would likely be lower than the orange variation What happens if we decide on the variation to show next based on which has the higher value in this random sampling? → If the blue variation wins, it would then be shown next to the audience, furthering its sampling while also narrowing around a fixed probability for its true mean value. Here, we see two additional possibilities: Its final probability > orange variation’s probability: If the sampling is continued, the blue variation would continue winning Its final probability < orange variation’s probability: Orange variation would be sampled more and continue being shown → If the blue variation loses, the orange variation is shown Therefore, sampling takes care of the Explore-Exploit dilemma for us, always making the best decision on our behalf. Declaring a winner: Once the posterior distributions are mapped for the variations, to conclude a winner, you sample a large amount of observations. Hypothetically, let’s say you sample 1000 times from two variations and 999 times out of 1,000 you see the orange variation having higher probability: The probability that variation orange is better than variation blue will be (999/1000) * 100, which is 99.9%. At Dynamic Yield, we sample 300,000 times from every variation to calculate the Probability to Be Best (P2BB). Bayesian Wrap Up: Recapping everything that has been laid out so far: Bayesian A/B testing converges quicker than a traditional A/B test with smaller sample audience data because of its less restrictive assumptions. Achieving significance is ‘incremental’ by nature in Bayesian A/B testing. You can check the values at any time and decide to discontinue the experiment. Negligible chance of a false positive error. Explore-Exploit strategy in Bayesian testing does not leave money on the table. To conclude, the industry is moving toward the Bayesian framework as it is a simpler, less restrictive, highly intuitive, and more reliable approach to A/B testing. In fact, Dynamic Yield has made the move to a Bayesian statistical engine, not only for binary objectives such as goal conversion rate and CTR but also for non-binary objectives such as Revenue Per User. If you’d like to learn more about the issues presented in the Frequentist Approach, check out this blog post.

Hello, and welcome back to The Autistic Writer. I hope you’re all well. Before I get into the main part of this week’s blog, I have several pieces of good news on the personal front. First of all, I’m covid-free, and feeling much better. I’ve finally stopped coughing all the time, and I’m not seeing any lingering symptoms. I’m one of the lucky ones. Let’s not forget those who have died, especially those that were let down by incompetent government response to the pandemic. And of course, many people continue to suffer long covid, and new infections continue to rise. My next bit of news is that I have had a change of department in my day job. This has been a long time coming, and I’m so happy about going into an environment that is more autism-friendly. I’m really going to miss the people I worked with on my old department but, on the upside, my new colleagues are brilliant and I feel like I’ve more or less settled in straight away. Now for the really big news: I have had an offer accepted for a house! Regular readers will remember that I’ve been searching high and low for a new home after selling my house last year when my marriage broke down and living in a rented flat ever since. Well, I’m delighted I’ve had an offer accepted on this new house, and although there are still plenty of hoops to jump through in terms of mortgage, survey, etc, I’m feeling quietly confident. Yesterday, my son and I went to see the new Thor movie, Love and Thunder. Don’t worry – I’m not giving away any spoilers. But I will say this – I was disappointed. As you might already know, I have great affinity with the superhero genre, with my special love going to the Marvel comics of the sixties and seventies. I think the MCU franchise has been a bit patchy in quality, but this latest offering was a low point, for many reasons. It’s not the worst MCU movie, but I think you’ll enjoy it more if you go in with low expectations. Maybe I’ll do a proper review in a few weeks, when more people have seen it. Anyway, on with the autism content… When you first approach social media as an autistic person with the intention of joining in with the online autistic community, it can be daunting. Some people take tentative first steps, putting just their metaphorical left hand in and out, then their right hand in and out, but all too often, they exit altogether without completing the social media hokey cokey, because they don’t feel welcome. But other people put their left hand in, their left hand out, in, out, and before long, they’re putting their whole selves in, hokey cokeying around autistic social media like they’ve been doing it all their lives. Some people never put their whole selves in, never feel like they can, and end up leaving these areas of social media which, for many, are the only places they can interact with their autistic peers. I think of it as a hokey cokey because at some stage on autistic social media, you have to find a way to get your whole self in, or you’ll feel like your whole self is out. Yes, I’m talking about cliques on autistic social media. I felt uncomfortable approaching this subject, as it really is a minefield and people could easily get offended. So, let me make myself clear: I am not targeting any particular individuals or groups with the points I make; I am targeting a trend, and I am really trying to be constructive. I’m concerned that within autistic areas of social media, some autistic people feel they are being out-grouped. First off, I should say I do not personally feel I’ve been out-grouped. This is not about me. In fact, I’ve been in-grouped in ways I’m only just starting to understand. Secondly, I think a lot of the out-grouping is unintentional, and it’s important to remember that. The issue is this: Any method of grouping people together inevitably results in an out-group. This is unavoidable, and doesn’t necessarily have to be a problem. For a silly example, if we identify a group of people who like football, this creates an out-group consisting of people who don’t like football. Not a problem; some people like football, some people don’t. The problem comes when you try to identify a group of people, and then create a group that does not include all the relevant people. Example: a workplace creates a Facebook group for its employees, but only adds male employees to the group. This out-groups all female and non-binary workers, and would quite rightly cause outrage. This kind of outgrouping is happening to autistic people in online locations that purport to be for autistic people. Often the intention of the grouping is benign; there is talk of curated content, for example. But I see tweets and posts from autistic people looking to be part of the online autistic community who feel left out, ignored, and marginalised. It’s having a horrible effect on some people. And the thing is, social media outlets have content filters that making grouping totally unnecessary. For example, on Twitter, you don’t even need to bother with hashtags, you can just search for keywords for whatever content you like, and you can mute unwelcome content. Various social media outlets have tools that can be abused. I remember getting Facebook notifications that I had been added to groups that I knew nothing about. It was annoying and creepy. Twitter lists are also potentially creepy if abused, as anyone can add you to a list without your permission, and to get off the list, you have to block the host of the list, which seems an odd way to go about things. But it’s the reverse side of groups and lists that are most problematic: For many people, getting added isn’t the problem – it’s more a case of not being added. It’s about being out-grouped. But like I said, the intention of grouping or listing is often benign, so I don’t want to call people out, or anything like that. I just think that as a social minority, we autistic people don’t need to ringfence ourselves into even smaller cliques and thereby alienate each other. I’ve been added to lists on Twitter without being asked, and when I checked those lists before writing this article, I found they did seem to have some relevance – most of them were to do with autism content, with a couple of others to do with writing and blogging. Fair enough. But I don’t use the lists in any way. Like probably 95% of Twitter users, I just scroll through my feed looking for interesting tweets, or search specific hashtags or phrases to narrow things down a bit. One justification often cited for lists on Twitter is that the content will be relevant to a specific subject. So, if I look at a list containing solely autistic users, I would expect to see autism content. But it doesn’t work like that. Most autistic people I see on Twitter don’t only tweet about autism; they tweet all kinds of stuff. I tweet about football, politics, science, writing, superheroes, Twin Peaks, and whatever else takes my fancy. I will never put this blog behind a paywall. I want anyone, anywhere, to be able to access this content at any time. There are costs incurred running this website, however. So if you like what I’m trying to do here, please feel free to show your support with a small contribution via. I’m sure many people who create Facebook groups, or Twitter lists, or who aggressively moderate other areas of social media, have some reasonable explanations for what they do. Fine. What I’m saying is this: We autistic people are a social minority who often face exclusion, misunderstanding and out-grouping in the neurotypical world. When autistic people come to social media to interact with their autistic peers, and find situations that leave them feeling further out-grouped, then it shames us all a little. I considered asking the owners of some posts and tweets I’ve seen explaining how hurt and excluded they feel if I could screenshot them for this article. I decided against it. Some people are feeling deeply hurt from what I can see, and I’m not sure shining a spotlight on a few of them would help – if anything, it would group them together, so it would defeat the point I’m making. It’s not all bad news. I often see people announcing themselves for the first time as autistic on social media, and these posts and tweets are invariably met with a chorus of welcomes and congratulations. I just don’t want it to end there. We don’t need to split the online autistic community into cliques, intentionally or otherwise – we all need each other. That’s all for this week. Until next time, take care. You can find The Autistic Writer on all your favourite social media channels Why Do I Write This Blog? When I first found out I was autistic, I was a middle-aged adult and I knew nothing about autism. I quickly learned that there was a serious shortage of information and resources for adults in my situation. With this blog, I aim to inform about autism and autism-related issues as I learn, hopefully helping people who are on a similar journey of discovery. Like anyone who writes a blog, I want to reach as many readers as possible; if you like what I’m doing, please share it with your friends and followers. I will never hide this blog behind a paywall, but running the website does incur costs. If you would like to support, feel free to make a small contribution at BuyMeACoffee.Com. You might also be interested in David Scothern’s blog, Mortgage Advisor on FIRE, which covers a range of topics including mental health issues and financial independence. 2 thoughts on “Part 95: The Hokey Cokey” Darren, your blog will soon be added to our Actually Autistic Blogs List (https://anautismobserver.wordpress.com/). Please click here (or on the “How do you want your blog listed?” link at the top of that site) to customize your blog’s description on the list (or to decline). Judy (An Autism Observer)

Exercise is about so much more than being fit–it is also a life-changing way to ground ourselves in our bodies and to enhance our minds. By far the most liked posts that I have written since I began blogging have been my posts on the topic of health and wellness. So, even though I write more often about food or about kink and sexuality, it seems that more people are drawn to the content about physical well-being. That is intriguing to me considering this blog was born out of a desire to reconcile what it means to be non-binary and to live a successful and happy life. Is it that there are just more people interested in physical fitness out there than in food/recipes, or in mental health, or in kink? And such readers just skip the other stuff waiting for the nuggets on body wellness? For me, all of these topics are inseparable. Our bodies need nourishment through food, kink feeds and is grounded in our mental health, exercise helps our bodies and our minds be ready for the world we live in. We age. And as we age our bodies no longer behave with the same equanimity—we gain weight, we become less flexible, we get tired more easily, we don’t bounce back quite so fast, things don’t work quite so well. In other words, just to stand still, we have to work harder for it. But the path our bodies take, a kind of degradational gravity—age like water, pulls us downhill—is mirrored by growth in wisdom, mental equanimity, and enlightenment. Okay, this is not guaranteed. If you want this, you have to work for it. What might this look like? Growing self-confidence. Increasing patience. More niceness. Generosity. Balance. At least these are the things I have felt in my own life. How about you? Back to the body. My physical wellness journey was born of necessity—I had a physically and mentally punishing job that had me running two companies simultaneously, in different industries, and in different countries—indeed, on different continents. I was flying back and forth every two weeks and living in a constant fugue of jet lag. My body didn’t know where it was or when it was. Stress? Yes. On every level. Taking the first step towards exercise was an easy one—I knew that it was important at its most basic level, for survival. But I hated it. I hated running, the idea of running, the idea of going to a gym (something I still don’t do), and never really liked the whole cult of looking in the mirror. Knowing you need to do something is very often just not enough. [Baby steps into this world written here]. Enter non-binary. Body image has always been important to me. Feeling good about my body, how it looks, how it feels. What clothes I can wear. One of the consequences of my professional life was that I was not liking my body. What motivated me more strongly than anything else, was wanting my body back…wanting a body shape that I could relate to. I am still not there but being able to rock a pair of short shorts is deeply motivating. [Feeling good in exercise gear is a general social phenom]. What motivates you? What will it take? In part of her “disgust” round-up of my sexuality, my wife hates that I watch YouTube videos of women doing yoga, or exercise. [Blogged in part on this topic here]. I haven’t really gone into it with her, but I don’t watch them because I get off on them. These are my reasons: - The exercise goals are more often in line with my own (long and lean v. building bulk); - A non-binary FTM “lesbian”-leaning friend of mine described it as—“I don’t like her, I want to be her,” and I totally get that feeling; - I would rather sweat with women than with men—I don’t enjoy watching men work out. [I wrote about some of the people whose videos I watch here.] So yes, getting my body to a physical shape and working it in a certain way is massively helpful to me in providing motivation to go and exercise. But I realised recently that something has clicked, has changed, making exercise more than this. It has become a part of my way of life. It has become second nature. Rarely a day passes without me exercising. I love it. I need it. My body craves it. I don’t feel right if I don’t do it. Is this the endorphin high that runners talk about? Maybe. What do I get from it? A lot of mental benefits. For one, it clears out the noise in my mind and helps me focus. Second, it kills nervous energy and allows my energy to be more clean, pure—I hope that makes sense. I don’t mean in the sense of good or bad, but rather cleanliness in the sense of being of one kind…focussed, without ripples, flowing smoothly. It also puts me into my body. I learned from the book the Five Personality Patterns that my profile is characterized by issues of being in my body. That it is hard for me. I am also the “Vata” type in Ayurveda…”air”…which means long and lean, tall and slim, airy, cerebral, sometimes hard to keep my feet on the ground—and this Fall season is my season, the dry season. I wonder if this is what draws me so deeply to grounded people. People who are really comfy in themselves, in their skins, in their beings. So, in a way, exercise is a great way for me to manifest physically in a counterbalance to the weaknesses of my personality type. And of course, the health benefits are enormous. When we are feeling good physically, then we are happier in our bodies. Mistress is teaching me about intent…being conscious about everything we do. This is not as easy for me as it might be for you—it will take work. I draw a parallel to my interest in ballet, and to do ballet workouts. There is something so utterly graceful about how dancers walk and move, that it is deliberate, thought leads to movement. Moving from our skeleton, not from our muscles. And this too, is helping me get inside of my body, to take up residence. What am I saying? That exercise, physical workouts, are absolutely vital for maintenance of the body. Particularly as we age. It is also absolutely vital as a way to have a body shape that we are happy with and comfortable in. But this is not all. Exercise triggers mental processes that in themselves help us to come into our bodies. There are also mental processes which I am only beginning to be guided towards, which seem to be born from meditative practice, from yoga, from being more physically aware, and being intentional, that feed and enhance this body feeling. I wrote about touch here, and I think of touch a little bit like it being the reward system, or pleasure centre of being in the body. I have never been in my body in my entire life. I was born detached from it. This is exactly what the book the Five Personality Patterns describes. What’s happening to me? I am discovering physical joy for the first time in my life. And gosh, it doesn’t mean sex—and thank goodness that kink is being recognised as a form of sexual preference—it certainly is for me. It is so liberating to think that I can be inside my sexuality without having to ascribe to heteronormative practice where sex is foreplay, intercourse, and maybe cuddling. Sex for me can be an exploration of power and eroticism, physical touch, and yes, cuddling (the best part!). And maybe this door that is opening before me, one of physical touch, is one that will apply to all of me and one that I will be able to bring to the rest of my life. I certainly want to try. I’ll let you know how it goes with my S.O. when I see her next. Can I summarise it thus? Exercise leads to happy body feelings. Happy body feelings lead to comfort in self, and to more balanced mental processes. These factors create openness to touch. Touch grounds us in our bodies, and it is this very sense of groundedness which kicks off the process all over again. It is a virtuous circle. A happy by-product is getting to look good in a flouncy skirt, better still is the bounce in your step that comes from the joy of being in your body for the first time.

- Publish Date: Jul 19, 2019 Goal of the Project Our industry has come a long way in representing women in more diverse and authentic ways. But women around the world are speaking up to remind us that we’re far from done. 70% of women say they still don’t feel represented in the images they see every day. The goal of Project #ShowUs is to drive a more diverse and inclusive visual landscape through media and advertising. About Project #ShowUs Dove has taken action with Getty Images, Girlgaze and women everywhere to create Project #ShowUs – the world’s largest stock photo library created by women to shatter beauty stereotypes by showing women as they are, not as others believe they should be. The collection features more than 5,000 photographs of women and non-binary individuals from 39 countries and counting. No digital distortion, just an unapologetically inclusive vision of beauty. Every image is created by Girlgaze, a diverse global community of non-binary and female-identifying photographers. For the first time, every individual photographed has personally defined their own search descriptions or tags for their images, so they are is defining how they want to be seen, on their own terms. We invite you to view, license and use the photos in Project #ShowUs for your next project or campaign through Getty Images, the world’s leading creators and distributors of imagery. Every image licensed will support female-identifying photographers of the future and thus help grow the photo collection further, so that all media & advertisers can reflect the authentic experiences of more and more women around the world. Image: Deby Suchaeri/Getty Images

Here at WOMAN Means Something we believe that Bill C-16 destroys women’s rights, protections, and very identity under law. This is something that many feminists have warned about, but it seems that their voices have been overwhelmed by a popular wave of the well-intentioned who have not thought through the issue. Sadly, the victims of this uncritical and politically motivated ideology will not largely be men- it will be women and children. This article demonstrates why this is certain to be the case. The focus here is on female women, the 50% of Canadian society who are biologically female and “women” according to gender. As will become clear, I don’t personally accept this distinction, but I am happy to use this terminology for the sake of explanation and argument. Throughout the rest of this article, I will use female as shorthand for “biologic female”. The Relationship of the New and the Old The Human Rights Act isn’t the only mechanism for human rights in Canada, but it is important. Significant societal changes in Canada have stemmed from Federal Human Rights Complaints. Our current Human Rights Act has until now protected the rights of women under the term “sex”. The assumption is, or perhaps was, that a woman is nothing more or less than an adult female, and she ought to have protections and rights that pertain to her specifically. Under the prior binary category of “sex”, women/females were identified as a distinct group. Bill C-16 adds to the protected classes “gender identity or expression”. But what is left unsaid is how this new class(es) relate to the old class of “sex”. Under Bill C-16 there are two classes that pertain to what would have traditionally be called women’s rights. On one side we have sex, and on the other, gender. The question that ought to be asked is, what sorts of rights, protections, and freedoms belong to each category? Categories have no meaning if they cannot be defined. “Sex”, under Bill C-16, is defined, presumably, by biology; DNA, a female’s reproductive system, and other particularities of the female body. She cannot be discriminated against because she has this biology. And she ought to be protected on account of this biology. Men ought not abuse, cat-call, touch or harass females. It should be abundantly clear that biologic males do not exhibit the same kind of potential threat to other biologic males as they do to biologic females. If you disagree, simply ask a dozen females about their experiences of unwanted attention, advances, or abuse at the hands of biologic males. Gender identity is defined, says the Justice Department, as “each person’s internal and individual experience of gender. It is their sense of being a woman, a man, both, neither, or anywhere along the gender spectrum.” On the face of it, you might assume that this means that anything else that previously pertained to “women’s rights” before Bill C-16 under “sex”, but which will no longer be covered under the now more restrictive “sex” class, will be covered by this “gender” class. Hence some might argue that the class “woman” is still protected; there are now “woman’s rights and freedoms” in addition to “female’s rights and freedoms”. The Crux of the Issue This might possibly be true if there was some definition of what constituted “woman” under the category of gender. But not only is there no criteria for “woman” under the class of gender, Bill C-16 specifically legislates that woman can mean anything. But what almost all our officials and leaders are somehow missing is that if you say a particular thing means anything, you are thereby saying it means nothing. The importance of this cannot be exaggerated. This isn’t psychology or sociology, it is math and logic. Referents need to have something they refer to. Language must point to some reality. If I say to you, “I bought an armchair yesterday”, you have some idea in your mind of what I have purchased. The picture in your mind may be different than the reality, it may even be significantly different, but it will adhere to the general constraints of the category. You will not imagine a sofa or a bed, a jeep or a parrot. But if you and I have previously decided in our relationship and conversation that “armchair” can mean anything, the word will quickly fall out of use, because in agreeing that it can mean anything it loses all viability and usefulness as a category. This is precisely what has happened in social discourse. Ask someone, “can you define “woman” as a gender, not as a sex?” Most progressives and liberals will be completely tongue-tied. I will show later that the very idea of “woman” is disappearing in many “progressive” circles. I hope you are beginning to see the problem. Allow me to summarize before moving on. What used to be a single unity of sex/gender under law for female women, is going to now become two classes. But while “sex” is clearly defined biologically, “gender” is completely and obligatorily undefined. The Gender Problem for Female Women This creates two problems concerning the identities, protections, and freedoms of female women, some half our population. The first is that it will undermine the value and worth of girls and women everywhere. Whether it is right or not, we do not speak in public of “females”, or “biological females”, we speak of “girls” or “women”. The irony of why we speak this way is because we intrinsically know that women are not just breasts, hips and a vagina. They have value, worth, and attributes beyond their bodies and biology. But if we enshrine in law that “woman” has no distinct value or definition, we cut off discussion and celebration of these supra-biological attributes. Here’s the question that I would love to ask Prime Minister Trudeau and Sophie Gregoire Trudeau: do you teach your girls that it is great to be a girl? What do you tell them is great about being a girl? I sincerely believe that neither would answer that question publicly, and that doing so would be a death knell to their political careers, or at least to Bill C-16. Because to answer that question would be, for them, furthering a stereotype of women that goes against the subjectivity of their world view and of Bill C-16. Indeed, it is conceivable that to answer that question at all could be construed as hate speech. A similarly problem-inducing question would be to ask Mr.Trudeau, “as a self-proclaimed feminist, describe the group for whom you are advocating.” It can’t be done! Not under Bill C-16. Mr.Trudeau can have his feminism or he can have Bill C-16. He can’t have both. Here’s the sober reality. If we can’t answer these kinds of questions is it any wonder that female girls are struggling with depression, anxiety and low self-esteem? We are telling them, daily, “there is nothing particularly praiseworthy, celebratory, or valuable about you as a girl.” These female girls are looking up to us as a society, asking “what is valuable about me as a girl”, and not only do we have no answer, we are going to legislate that there is no answer! With, I am assuming, the best intentions, we will arrive at an outcome that is indiscernible from institutionalized misogyny. The Biological Problem for Female Women The second problem relates to the biological side, the class of “sex”. We do not have female (biology-based) washrooms. We have women’s washrooms (gender-based). We do not have female change rooms. We have women’s change rooms. Likewise, sports teams, camp cabins, homeless shelters, and transition houses are all based on gender and not biology. So then the question is; of the old rights, protection and freedoms of female women, which rights and protections are female, biology-based ones? I think you could possibly come up with a couple answers: the problem of employers hiring equally qualified men over women simply because a woman might get pregnant comes to mind. But isn’t it staggering the amount of the prior women’s rights which are placed in the “gender”, instead of “sex” category? In an opinion piece in the National Observer, Meghan Murphy of Feminist Current, says “Preventing discrimination is something most of us want to support, but incorporating notions of ‘gender identity’ and ‘gender expression’ into Canadian legislation is not a progressive step. In our desire to be open-minded and inclusive, we have failed to consider how this move poses a risk to sex-based protections for women and girls.” So who gets to decide which rights and protections are sex based and which are gender based? It seems that the answer is not female women, but male women, and those who support them. Consider the matter of women’s sports. Is it fair for a group of female women to compete against male “women” in high school or collegiate sports? We have already begun to see the challenges this presents under the far more difficult situation of genuinely intersexed individuals like Caster Semenya in women’s Olympic sports. And how will the Human Rights Commission handle rights complaints based on sex discrimination against sports organizations and programs when a female woman finishes in 3rd place behind two male women taking 1st and 2nd? You can’t pretend that Bill C-16 doesn’t pit gender rights against female rights. The above example pales in comparison to the seriousness of the matter of women’s change rooms or shelters. According to the Badgley Commission (1984), 1 in 2 women experience an unwanted sex act in their lives. The overwhelming majority of these will be by men, or to be more precise, males with penises, and who have done evil things with their genitalia. These females will be in various states of undress in a change room (a thing that can be unnerving even in front of your own sex), or fleeing violence by males in a shelter, and what is our message supposed to be to them when they see penises in their safe spaces? “Don’t worry, it’s not a “biology” thing!” The idea is beyond incredulous. It is horrifyingly insensitive and an undermining of female women’s basic protections. Again, Meghan Murphy says, ” Women’s spaces — including homeless shelters, transition houses, washrooms, and change rooms — exist to offer women protection from men. It isn’t men who fear that women might enter their locker rooms and flash, harass, assault, abuse, photograph, or kill them.This reality is often left unaddressed in conversations around gender identity. This reality is sex-based, not identity-based.” Janine Simon, who was raped as a child, says of chosen-gender change room policies, “Over and over again, women are told your abuse is not important, it’s not important to fund, it’s not important to protect. This is just one more way for us to know that our abuse doesn’t matter, that we’re not protected.” What happens when the Human Rights Commission starts fielding a bunch of sex-based human rights complaints from women who don’t feel safe, have become victims of voyeurism, or far worse? Just last year the University of Toronto had to backtrack on some of its gender-neutral policies after two instances of voyeurism were reported in bathrooms. Also last year a man dressed as a woman, Xingchen Liu, was charged with voyeurism in a change-room in Edmonton. In February 2014, Jessica/Christopher Hambook was jailed for preying on women at two shelters in Toronto. These are three of at least twenty substantiated accounts of males in women’s clothes taking advantage of women’s safe spaces to perpetrate criminal, violent, or sexual acts against women. Examples could be multiplied. Here is the question for someone who says that this kind of discussion is “fear-mongering”; how many unwanted sex acts to female women must take place before it isn’t fear-mongering anymore? You can’t pretend that Bill C-16 doesn’t pit gender rights against female rights. Especially not when female women, and sexually-abused female women, are saying it does. For me, the saddest part in all of this is to see how gender is crowding, creeping, and overpowering all the boundaries of female sex. Female sports should be a sex issue, but somehow it’s a gender one. Female bathrooms should be a sex issue, but somehow it’s a gender one. Female change rooms should certainly be a sex issue, but it too is a gender one. And it gets to the point where the most overtly biological things are subject to “gender” pressure and dissociated with sex. At periodpositive.com, a resource and education website on menstruation, they have a chart that explains how to speak of menstruation in an inclusive way. Instead of “becoming a woman”, educators should speak of “starting puberty”. Instead of “feminine hygiene products”, educators should speak of “menstrual products”. “Women’s health” becomes “reproductive health”, “mother and daughters” ought to be “parents and children”, and “women” should be replaced with “people”. This is because “calling attention to the uniquely female experience of monthly bleeding excludes young girls, post menopausal women, [trans, non-binary and intersex people], and women who, for myriad other reasons, cannot or will not bleed.” This is not parody, although a parody wouldn’t look any different. Neither is it funny. “Women” are being erased from even the most overtly biological aspects of their lives. “Women” just become “people”. Not only can we not tell a girl what is so great about being a girl, but we can’t even tell her that her biology makes her female! The end result of all of this is that the category that obligatorily means nothing (gender) is completely crowding out and extinguishing the category of female sex. And while I disagree with radical feminists about many things, I agree that this is nothing less than the erasure of women’s identity and idealogical rape. In the bold new world 248 Members of Parliament want to usher in, there is no more “woman”. The only thing we can say definitively about female women is that they constitute hips, breasts and a vagina. Maybe not even that. But WOMAN means something. WOMAN may mean something slightly different to me than to you. But let’s not legislate that it means nothing. We are on the precipice of doing just that, and female women everywhere in Canada will suffer the consequences.

Welcome news for east London’s beleaguered club scene. The London-based Shapes Collective, responsible for the Many Hands studio space and event space The Glove That Fits, has announced a new venue FOLD, which opens with a 24-hour launch party on August 18. The venue is described in the press release as a “collectively run audio-visual performance space and studio complex”, situated above a print factory on an industrial estate between Canning Town and Star Lane. With “24 hour access to the Jubilee line and London Overground” and a “tailored soundsystem (un)limited at 110db”, this might be what those mourning Hackney Council’s recent licensing legislation have been waiting for. FOLD’s programmers promise to provide progressive programming, with queer and non-binary collectives Homodrop and UNITI joining club mainstays Make Me, Dimensions and Body Hammer for their opening party. FOLD co-founder Lasha Jorjoilani also teased label takeovers from Ilian Tape, Clone and Pinkman. “The 24hr programme gives us a unique opportunity to surprise, challenge and inspire,” he adds. “Expect extended set times, obscure b2bs and a generally more expansive pallet of sounds over the course of one event.” The venue will also implement a unique membership scheme, whereby members can purchase padlocks and reserve personal lockers in the venue, with cryptocurrency accepted for all purchases on site. The club will also have a no photo policy. Additionally, there are five purpose-built music studios that artists appointed by the FOLD staff will have access to.

Well, I guess I'll start? I'm Charias, I'm 18 and non-binary (any pronouns are fine)! And I'm arthropod-hearted. So that's arachnids, insects and crustaceans. I'm pretty much the crazy bug person. Have been since I was nine or ten years old. For some reason, I find arthropods completely fascinating and I feel like I understand them on some level. I guess it takes a special kind of weird to empathise with a house fly, haha. I'm also questioning whether I'm reptile-hearted and/or black dog-hearted. I'm not sure my connections with those are strong enough to consider them heart-types. What else to say... umm, I like drawing and sometimes writing, reading stuff, playing video games and silly browser games. I'm also really terrible at introductions, if you haven't noticed already!

Auch am Kursort Oberwesel vereinen sich eine mittelalterliche Ritterburg, schmuckes Fachwerk und eine beeindruckende Stadtmaueranlage zu einer einzigartigen Kulturlandschaft. Kursdaten.06 -, kursstufen, a1 bis B2 für Anfänger nicht geeignet. Intensives Deutsch, kursorte, oberwesel, kursdauerRead more Our mission, we believe the quality of your relationships determines the quality of your life. IPhone Screenshots, description, we believe the quality of your relationships determines the quality of your life. Weve swiped leftRead more people is so important.". (5 episodes, 2003) TV Show Celebrity Big Brother 2001 Himself 34 episodes, 2018 TV Show Related Lists People with non-binary gender identities RuPaul's Drag Race runner-ups Australian female impersonators RuPaul's Drag Race contestants Pansexual people lgbt singers lgbt musicians from Australia Australian Idol participants Drag. The Bi Life will see a group of bi, pan and fluid singletons sent off to Barcelona to try to find love across 10 episodes. The Bi Life on E!, said Jenek. The Bi Life is set to premiere on E! Will you be tuning in? Details, first Name, courtney, last Name, act. So get ready to see the true stories of bisexual singles, who are the largest part of the lgbtq community but the least known. Help us build our profile of Courtney Act! Jenek will host the dating reality show The Bi Life, which premiers October 2018 on E! In Ireland and the United Kingdom. Jenek will also host the late-night talk show The. Want up-to-the-minute entertainment news and features? According to our records, Courtney Act is possibly single. Entertainment Televisions first foray into original commisions in the.K. Recent connections involving Courtney Act Follow WDW on Facebook. Act was one of the runners-up in season six of RuPaul's Drag Race. The group will live together, party together and help each other navigate the rocky road of bisexual dating as they observe and feedback on each others experiences. In 2018 we know that sexuality is fluid and sharing the stories and experiences, the laughter and the love making, of young bi people is so important. The single, "Rub Me Wrong was released in 2004, and peaked. Courtney Act, age 36 years, birthday 18th February, 1982, birthplace. Act, aka Shane Jenek, is already fronting.

- This event has passed. March 10 @ 12:00 pm - 7:00 pm GMT We are attending WOW marketplace and would LOVE to see you there! It’s a free event in London’s trendy Southbank Centre from 12-7pm Friday 10th, March 2023 Come and say hello and celebrate International Womens Month – it’s going to be an incredible day full of fun. Keep an eye on our socials for further details. “WOW Festival is back, and the WOW Marketplace returns ready for everyone to explore. Inside the Royal Festival Hall, this dynamic indoor Marketplace is curated by WOW to showcase diverse women and non-binary-led businesses and activist organisations. WOW festivals celebrate women, girls, and non-binary people, and take a frank look at the obstacles they face across the world. A riot of colour, community and mind-expanding conversation, there’s space for everything at WOW festivals, from the most challenging discussions to workshops that have you in fits of laughter. Free to the public, WOW Marketplace stallholders including Janet’s List, Tatty Devine, Path Financial and University of London will sell sustainable homeware, clothing and jewelry, showcase talent and offer demonstrations. Throughout the weekend, visitors can learn to mix music on Omnii Collective’s decks, listen to vinyl records with Shrubs and Dubs, learn to manage money with Women’s Budget Group, practice plant repotting with L’Appartement, experience indigenous healing arts with Black Mind; write a thank you card with Pushing Envelopes; and get books signed at Foyles. Charities including Level Up LDN, Global Girl Project, Women’s Environmental Network and Migrant’s Organise will be engaging visitors on a range of feminist issues that affect us all, such as the climate crisis, mental health, global education for girls, and, of course, gender equality.”

The Chinese internet remains an abstraction to many outsiders due to technical, cultural, and linguistic barriers, but the stakes of misreading the terrain are rising as China becomes an increasingly important market force. Behind the Great Firewall, China’s social platforms have evolved into an ecosystem that is significantly different from what we are familiar with in the West. How do we dig past both the novelty factor and our own assumptions towards a deeper understanding of these fantastic beasts? More Talks by Christina Your Project Deserves a Good Death TopicsManagement & Strategy Every project comes to an end, so let’s get better at planning for project... Stop Blowhard Syndrome A short essay that examines the opposite of impostor syndrome—blinding... Signal, Space, Structure: Designing for Communities of Interest A simple framework for thinking about building communities of... Convenient Friction: Observations on Chinese UX in Practice Silicon Valley’s vision of ultimate convenience is often one that’s... The Importance of Being Awesome TopicsCulture, Social Innovation “Without joy the Awesome Foundation would be the Cheap and Efficient Foundation,... It’s Dangerous to Go Alone In many industries, publishers can sometimes hurt unknown artists more than they... Discover More TalksMore talks Content Strategy at Facebook and Instagram TopicsCommunication, Culture, Design Strategy, Design Thinking, Product Development, Social Networks, Teamwork Speaker Jae Sung Soled Content Strategy NYC Meetup Panel 2.23 billion people log in to Facebook every... A Journey to Service Design TopicsCareer, Leadership, Service Design Speaker Megan Erin Miller One year ago I set out on a path to become a service designer. In my journey from... Thoughts on Vulnerability Speaker Audrey Crane Being a working mother has its challenges; doubly so when you're breastfeeding.... Speakers, Get Featured Get connected with event organizers interested in engaging women and gender non-binary speakers in design and tech.Sign Up Already have an account?Log in Know a great speaker? Let us know so we can invite them to be part of our directory and amplify their voice.Nominate them

In a way, this should be the most important argument. In many ways, people consider it the least. People are trans because they say they are trans. After all, who would know better than us? Will this lead to adolescent boys pretending to be trans to get into girls’ locker rooms, as the right persistently fear-mongers? It’s doubtful, for two reasons: 1. No-one wants to self-identify as trans. It’s social death. Trust me and anyone else who has transitioned. Not worth the risk to gain a view of something most middle-school students could find on the internet in five minutes. 2. It really isn’t hard to tell who is faking and who is for real. I can’t believe for one minute that teachers, coaches, etc, couldn’t sniff out a weisenhiemer without even trying. It’s literally their stock and trade. Is it so hard, really, to take gender minorities at their word? Are we really ready to classify a full 1%, or more, of the population as liars and manipulators? I expect the percentage of liars and manipulators is much higher than that, actually, but I can’t see why they would ply their machinations to lose half their family, their friends, and their career hopes. What benefit would there be to someone? The only reason people transition, often at great material and social cost to themselves, is to find happiness in their appropriate gender or lack thereof. People come out and live as trans because they have to. Instead of dismissing the countless personal testimonies and lives of trans and non-binary people throughout history as all being crazy or possessed by demons, how about we actually listen to trans people? Seriously, is it really so freaking hard to take our word? Are people’s worldviews so absolutely inviolable that there can be NO ACCOMMODATION WHATSOEVER for someone who doesn’t fit neatly into the checked boxes we’ve been brought up to view as sacred? What actual harm is done by this? And, no, being asked to question one’s black and white view of gender doesn’t actually harm anyone. Accepting someone different into our lives may actually enrich our experiences. Discomfort is not harm. Exclusion, homelessness, marginalization, and violence actually harm people. Those are common experiences people in the trans community often have, and they are killing us. So, below is my story. Or at least the parts of it which I believe demonstrate how hard-wired being trans – in my case having a feminized brain and male-seeming body – is in me. It was never a choice for me, and I nearly killed myself multiple times trying to ‘choose’ to be cis. Repression damages. The only thing that ‘cured’ me was transition. One of my first memories that something was different about me was when I was 8 or 9. Back then, many suburban households got a Sears catalog in the mail early every December. Hundreds of pages of glorified consumerism, geared to start us off with covetous hearts for the season of spending. When we were younger, of course, we would spend hours looking over the toy section, trying not to drool over the choices. Sometime in pre-pubescence, however, a few of my friends discovered the women’s clothing section. Underwear models were the closest many of us had been to porn in this sterilized environment, so my friends eyes’ popped out over hints of buttocks and breasts. Not me. I noticed the dress and shoe section nearby, and felt myself drawn inexplicably to that area. Yes, at the young, tender age of 9, I was already literally on a different page from my friends. Advertising is subtle and subliminal. Anyone who thinks that they are unaffected by advertising either 1. consumes none at all, or 2. is deluded. Corporations spend billions of dollars learning how to manipulate people subconsciously, and they don’t strike me as the type of people to go throwing money down the drain, mandated profit motive and all. It affects us all, and often in ways we don’t even perceive. Advertising geared towards women has always affected me. Advertising geared towards men never has. If something so subconscious called out to me as female, even while the rest of the world called me male, it seems likely that there is something to it. Please explain how subconscious leanings to identify as the ‘opposite’ gender could ever constitute a choice. To clarify: there was never anything weird or fetish-like about why advertising oriented towards women affected me, while male-oriented advertising did not. Some part of me simply reacted as if I were naturally part of the audience the advertisers were trying to capture. I suppose I am. A few years later, the same friends got their hands on some real porn. Safely in my basement, we’d sneak glances at what we weren’t supposed to. It never interested me, really. But in the back of one magazine was a serious story about a professor (at Yale! Right near where I grew up!) who transitioned from male to female. The article was surprisingly matter-of-fact and down to earth, not the sensational junk we see so much of these days. The second I read the word, ‘transsexual,’ my life was changed. Bells and whistles started screaming in my head. There’s a word for what I am. There are others like me. Maybe, just maybe, all was not lost. Others have transitioned, maybe someday…. I doubt many of the other boys had a similar reaction, had they been the least bit impelled to tear their eyes off the naked, forbidden bodies in the first place. Once again, I was literally on a different page from my peers. Others at this point might argue that this was the transgender lobby, corrupting young minds and convincing me and others to identify as something they were not. It was the first step off the straight and narrow, onto a path to the devil, or Sodom, or whatever. What a load of carp. Did I choose to react in this way to the article? Did I choose, somehow, to rebel against my parents and society by violating their precious gender norms? No, I did not. I have struggled with trying to accept this difference within myself. I went through years of repression, drugs, alcohol and other bad life choices, just to avoid being trans, to try to ‘choose’ to be a nice, white, cis boy like everyone thought I was, like everyone assumed I always was, like everyone assumed I always would be. Like everyone in my life, it seemed, somehow needed me to be and remain. In-freaking-violable, after all. Oh, I made my tries. No matter what, the trans thing was always there. Always. Perhaps one can label the following incidents as choices. They aren’t choices anyone not trans would consider, however, and they didn’t feel much like choices at the time. Yes, it was my choice to try and castrate myself at 13. Thirty years later, I can still remember the chain of logic that went through my head. I knew puberty was coming, and what it would entail, and how absolutely wrong it would be, and how it would ruin everything for me. I knew which organs would be responsible for this. And I was so absolutely desperate for it not to happen. The deepening voice, the facial hair, the lack of breasts… I couldn’t do much about the last item on the list. I knew cross-hormones existed, but in my nice, suburban Catholic home, I dared not name that demon. I could, however, do something about the rest. So, early in my teens I began wrapping my testicles tightly with string and elastic bands. I had read that ranchers in the historical Southwest used to castrate bulls that way. I left them on for hours, as long as I could take it. Any damage, any loss of circulation there would be a benefit, or so I reasoned. Was it a choice? I suppose so, but it seemed like the only reasonable choice available to me at the time, all things considered. I couldn’t tell anyone. (Side note here – societal pressure or ‘prayer’ doesn’t make it go away. It only makes individuals repress themselves for others’ comfort, often at great damage to the lgbtqia+person in question.) The feelings were clearly intrinsic to my being. I never chose feeling as if I were female in spirit, in mind, if not in body. I could only choose to accept it and become it. This was a first attempt. To my dismay, it didn’t work, despite many attempts. I couldn’t take the pain required to go all the way. So, eventually, puberty did hit, albeit delayed. Puberty was devastating, for all the reasons I predicted. Still feeling backed into a corner, being forced into a body and a life that was clearly wrong for me, I made another ‘choice.’ I made my first suicide attempt. I knew that my life would be either incurable sadness at not being who I was meant to be, or unending hate and bigotry. All the hate, ignorance, treating us as subhuman made very clear how society felt about people like me, as much then as now. And children, even from a young age, know. I walked to the medicine cabinet, and swallowed every aspirin I could find. I had heard somewhere that this would do it. I left my short note (“Don’t blame yourselves.” My last words were to be a lie. I wanted my parents to blame themselves for the rest of their lives. I was angry, and I didn’t know how to direct it.) Half an hour later, I chickened out and told my mom. I was 17. Emergency room, stomach pumped, and a well-meaning orderly leaning over me saying, “Don’t worry. Whatever it is, it isn’t that bad.” At that moment in time, I did not think it possible that there was a more ignorant person on earth. I expect my expression said as much. Why? Because it is, in fact, that bad. And it was even worse in the mid eighties than it is now. My ‘choice’? Become who I was, make some attempt at happiness, sanity even in this life, and risk losing my family, my friends, and any chance at making a living. If I were lucky, I could survive my own homelessness and whatever else came. Not too many other options back then. Except repression and misery. Which is how I lived much of the rest of my life, more or less. The drugs and alcohol helped deaden the pain of repression, and I was never fully repressed, anyhow. I always had long hair, or long nails, or shaved legs, or earrings, or something, ANYTHING. I would hoard women’s clothes whenever I could, dress up in private, feel guilty and try to ‘reform’ every few years by purging my wardrobe and cutting my hair, but it never worked, and it was never enough. I worked in caregiver jobs, I was the primary caregiver for all three of my children when they were young. It was a joy, but never enough. This, some people call a choice. I did finally transition, and I did finally find some joy and peace in myself. And I lost family, I lost friends, I lost a career, just as I had always feared my whole life. I do not believe I would still be alive had I not become my true self and taken the courage to live authentically. It was still the right choice, despite the loss and growing pains that transition entails. If ever it was a choice at all. I think not. I AM CAM (she/her)

Non-Binary Working Group - data collection for service provision subgroup minutes: October 2021 - Part of - Equality and rights Minutes from the meeting of the subgroup on 29 October 2021. Attendees and apologies - Dr Ben Vincent, The Open University (Chair) - Megan Snedden, Stonewall Scotland - Sarah Anderson, LGBT Youth Scotland - Katrina Mitchell, LGBT Health and Wellbeing - Vic Valentine, Scottish Trans - Jon Hunter, Equality Analysis Team, Scottish Government - Bruce Sutherland, Mainstreaming and Strategy Unit, Scottish Government - Non-binary community members - Paul Sloan, Equality Unit, Scottish Government - Chloe Coldwell, Equality Unit, Scottish Government - Oceana Maund, Scottish Trans - Non-binary community members Items and actions Welcome and introductions The Chair welcomed participants to put forward concerns or comments surrounding the meeting topic and opened by reading excerpts from comments sent prior to the meeting from those unable to attend. Requirements to disclose gender/sex to access services The group stated that being asked to provide data on trans data or sex can be a substantial obstacle for people due to formal barriers or other difficulties and fears. The group mentioned the difficulties of engaging with forms with only binary sex/gender options on sign-up forms such with fitness apps. They agreed that if service providers do not ask if people are non-binary, these barriers will remain. Most services ask unnecessary gender/sex questions and services should be supported to know when this is required and when it is unnecessary. Participants contemplated the work needs to be done with service providers to make them feel like these adaptations and recommendations make sense to them. An example was given to describe the level of specificity that would be preferred such as asking whether someone can get pregnant rather than if they are a woman, to avoid making assumptions based on gender. One member suggested that gender/sex questions be considered sensitively such as other questions regarding protected characteristics. The group wanted a non-binary option but also wanted to investigate why services need this information, stating that this should be unpicked further to ascertain whether this is a formality or necessity. They agree it is likely to be important in many situations but the purpose should be considered and asking for this information should not a default. The group suggested that recording pronouns could be useful but said that it was always better to just ask because these can change. Members discussed how the manner in which the question is asked should be considered. It also must be understood that willingness to disclose non-binary status may not align necessarily with how “out” someone is. In specific contexts, many people may not wish to disclose this information. The group questioned whether disclosing this information would offer benefits or only difficulties. One member argued that adding a non-binary option to a form would not be the end of the process stating that service providers must consider how people are dealt with and served throughout their interactions with the service after disclosing this information. The group mentioned that service providers assume service users must fit into one box. There is a great variety of what it means to be non-binary according to the way in which people transition or do not transition and the ways they present. Community members highlighted the difficulty in finding a code of best practice or gold standard for asking about gender/sex on service provider forms. They said that those less aware of these issues would not go looking for this information on the best sources, ie. Scottish Trans website, and often do not do this well. This topic is often explored in research contexts with an example phrasing of a gender/sex question being “Which gender do you feel best describes you? Check as many options as you like”. One member asked if the data collection discussion would cover education settings. They highlighted that SEEMiS, an administrative system used in schools, is a binary system for now and this has been worked on recently but no satisfactory conclusion or solution has been reached. Members agreed that it was important to attend to education as well as health as service provision areas, particularly as these are public services. The group discussed how organisations may be prepared for the disclosure of information regarding non-binary status, going beyond just asking the question. Members agreed that it would be beneficial for an explanation of the reasoning behind why gender/sex is being asked to be provided alongside asking these questions. Titles and health services The group felt the requirement to provide titles should be removed or at least be made optional and Mx should always be an option. The group found that, in healthcare settings, not only are gender neutral options missing from IT systems, but titles are intrinsically linked in the IT structure with gender so that only specific titles are permitted according to whichever gender was selected. The group suggest that the asterisks denoting a required answer be removed for title questions. Changing this in IT could be expensive but the group wants the Scottish Government to recommend a review of IT systems and how they create difficulties for service users in terms of inclusion. The group agreed that where titles and gender/sex data serve a useful function, they should be kept but where this is not the case, this should be dealt with regardless of price though this may be financially difficult. The discussions highlighted that the healthcare context is likely to be where people feel the most anxious. It was emphasised that the barriers faces by non-binary people are not just abstract ideas, but have real life ramifications in the way that people engage with services with one member giving the example of sex-specific blood tests being cancelled by lab technicians due to titles/gender labels conflicting with expectations. Furthermore, reminders for certain cancers which occur with specific body parts are tied to sex markers on the system. This could be solved by the asking of specific questions for specific information rather than gender assumptions. Information provided around name changes It was reported that Scottish Trans receives a high volume of enquiries about the name changing process and this is felt to be a difficult and confusing process. There is a general confusion on how to change your name in Scotland and the differences between Deed Polls and Statutory Declarations so a clear guidance document from Scottish Government on how name changes work would be useful. It would enable service providers to point to the Scottish Government document if people encounter difficulties accessing services when trying to update name/gender as the changing of a name is not a one-step process, with names also needing to be change individually across many services. The group suggested a step by step guideline. LGBT Health and Wellbeing agreed with this as they provide this service but both agreed an official SG set of guidance would help. Banking and financial services were highlighted as particularly difficult. LGBT Youth added that it would be good if the document contained guidance for professionals working with young people because the misunderstanding of young people's rights and concern about the reactions of parents/carers is often a barrier to name/gender change. It was agreed that any guidance should make specific statements to say that there is no age restriction on when young people can express desires about changing their name or gender with a service provider and they should be able to understand how their data has collected and processed, with the obvious exception of very young children. The group highlighted that all information about name changes is disparate and, recommending that the Scottish Government should provide a two-part document: one for transgender people wanting to change their name and one for service providers to remind them of the process. This would make a big impact of the day to day lives of people dealing with these issues. The group stated that Scottish Government information on this subject does not have information about deed polls and statutory declarations and the differences between these ie. UK laws and Scottish laws. They said that the gov.uk deed poll information website does not give info about enrolment of deed poll. In Scotland you may change your birth certificate name through National Records of Scotland but it would still have an original name as well as the new name and original gender on it too. The group said that this works for changing details with services but it is expensive and not very helpful. Equality impact assessments (EQIAs) The group discussed potential issues with those leading the EQIA processes not having the necessary understanding of non-binary issues to complete tasks. They questioned whether EQIAs are able to capture the needs of non-binary and transgender people, considering if individuals carrying out this research are always equipped to understanding or processing this data in a way that reflects the needs of non-binary people. The group agreed that it is important to ask questions and value lived experience beyond raw data, stating that individuals carrying out research must engage with people with experience and qualification. It was said that without this, data is not full and effective and it therefore informs policy inadequately. The group understood that the Scottish Government is promoting EQIAs across service providers and public bodies and there are a number of work streams, such as the Equality Data Improvement Project which started in the spring of 2021 and will run until the end of 2022. EQIAs often question effects on transgender people as a whole rather than measuring how policies have impacts on specifically transgender women, transgender men or non-binary people. The group asked, how can we understand the differences between people who share the same protected characteristic but will be effected in very distinct ways by policies? The EQIA team is looking at ways to move away from siloed thinking and grouping people by 9 protected characteristics, aiming to take a more holistic approach and understand nuances in order to emphasise and open up critical thinking. The group recommends that the Scottish Government create a guidance document to assist those in the process of changing their name. They suggest that this document includes information for both service users and service providers, including both legal information and practical advice. The group recommends that the process of updating IT systems be explored, particularly within a healthcare setting, in order to reduce the barriers faced by non-binary people in accessing services. The group recommends that, where titles are an essential requirement for registering with services, an Mx option be added as a minimum. There is a problem Thanks for your feedback

By Aqsa Mahmud Why are you doing this, someone asks, yet again. This question naturally arises from a first-time listener on hearing about the Townhall Dialogue Series, an initiative I recently helped launched in Washington, D.C. The Series seeks to create a safe space for American Muslims to discuss social issues that impact our daily lives and religious practices. It is not a forum on Sharia, and we consciously avoid theological debate. Instead, the Series is based on the premise that each individual is validated through his or her personal experiences and, by sharing our stories, we build compassion and greater understanding of our diversity. Three weeks ago we successfully hosted our second dialogue on the topic of gender entitled, “Curtain Call: The Gender Performance.” We encouraged participants to examine their past and share stories of how they learned about gender in a religious-social context. We then pushed the conversation to gender roles in our current personal relationships and environments. And, people shared their stories: sexual abuse morphing a person’s interactions with a particular gender; coming to terms with one’s homosexuality and re-defining traditional femininity; grappling with a partner’s request to be “more of a man,” which then launches a re-examination of interpersonal relationships; and the boxes of “male” and “female,” which becomes skewed when a person first meets someone who identifies with a non-binary gender. Vulnerability is the critical element and, after each dialogue, participants walk away somewhat stupefied. Some hug me and say how amazed they are to have shared such intimate details about their personal lives with strangers. They are struck by how easy it is to trust others to withhold judgment, be compassionate and honor their secrets. So why are you doing this, the person presses. Because I am tired of the rhetoric that my religion requires perfection, vulnerability is hazardous, and my problems are somehow “non-Muslim.” I am a Millennial American Muslim who, like many others of my generation, has found that our mosques and formal religious spaces have been overtaken by a mentality that to air our issues would mark us flawed in our Muslim identity. The emergence of the third space reflects the inability of the traditional mosque — its hierarchy and administration — to answer the needs of my generation of Muslims. We grew up familiar with the stories of the Prophet and his love for Khadijah, his first wife, who was significantly older and more financially secure than him. Yet when a young man professes to marry an older woman, he is discouraged by the leaders of his congregation, who envision a different model of “Muslim” masculinity. They warn him of her fading beauty and his inability to provide — emotionally or financially — for her needs. The stories of the Prophet describe a man who exhibits both masculine and feminine traits — his leadership on the battlefield is coupled with affectionate gestures and emotions. Our current religious schools and communities, however, rarely promote this definition of “manhood.” We are constricted to binary categories and narrowed models of what it means to be Muslim male and female. If this is the mentality of the formal spaces of my community, then my thoughts and spirituality do not belong there. The Dialogue Series is a third space providing the support for American Muslims grappling with issues that characterize the human experience. We are Muslims, and we have issues. We struggle with our personal dilemmas under the umbrellas of mental health, sexuality, classicism, racism and violence. The fact that I am a Muslim thereby makes my problem a “Muslim” experience. It requires a community response of support and understanding. Yet, we live under the veil of subtlety and silence, fearful of being marked “flawed.” For the longest time, our community has adopted a mentality that admission will leave us prey to a wake of vultures composed of our peers, elders and teachers. Ask me again why I’m doing this, and I will tell you that this is my act of worship through service. I am giving back to my community that which it is asking for: A formal space promising non-attribution and acceptance of the individual’s personal experiences as he or she struggles with societal pressures that naturally line the Muslim identity. The organizers and I believe in this initiative and the purpose it serves. When I look around the table (or the multiple screen shots during a Google hangout), I see the next phase of the American Muslim community: We are lawyers, entrepreneurs, part-time waiters, full-time mediators, policymakers and profiled bloggers. We are single, married, in committed relationships and struggling through the nuances of interpersonal communication. Some of us were born Muslim and others are in the first decade of our Islam. We are colored by South Asian history, Arab culture, mixed ethnicities and inter-faith backgrounds. We are sun-kissed Californians, Southern belles and Texan friendly and the real Jersey shore. We are the Millennial Generation’s American Muslims, and only recently have grown up to take our place in the religious paradigm. Our time is beginning. Aqsa Mahmud graduated from the University of Michigan Law School and currently resides in Washington, D.C. She is a co-organizer for the Townhall Dialogue Series (D.C.), a community initiative providing a non-judgmental space for American Muslims to address social issues affecting their daily practice. She has contributed pieces on religious-cultural topics for The Friday Times and The Express Tribune.

2022 in Review: A Look Up the Rabbit Hole As we enter the new year, it’s natural to take a step back to reflect on the events, accomplishments, and challenges of 2022. This reflection period gives us both perspective and appreciation for the phenomenal projects that were birthed into the Tezos ecosystem in the past 12 months. Today, we’ll explore the progress made within our grants program, Down the Rabbit Hole, highlighting milestones made by the grantees to expand the Tezos ecosystem to new frontiers. For those who are new to our community, Down The Rabbit Hole is a small grants program that supports ideas and projects that utilize Tezos technology to develop and ideate new products, applications, and blockchain tools — while simultaneously raising awareness of Web3 utility functions through educational or informational activities. Categories for the application include: industry exploration, proof of concepts, open source ecosystem development, community building and engagement, research and more. This grant program had a successful year in 2022. Despite being launched mid-year, it was able to award funding to 13 grantees totaling €47.600. These projects span a variety of industries — including Art Projects (Floodplains XYZ, Seeing/Unseen, Eschatonality, Blockchain Oracles in Physical Art Installations), Fashion Projects (J’adore DYOR, Showcase 3D), Educational and Community Projects (’no name projkt’, Visiblr, blkVlpha, ‘Curative!’), DeFi (ToDeFi), Dev Tooling Projects (Tezos One-click Faucet) and other (Autro). We are proudly sharing the stories of a few of our grant-funded projects, which have made a significant impact in the tech and arts communities. Our aim today is to inspire others to use their inventiveness to begin projects fueled by curiosity that will continue to expand the Tezos ecosystem to frontiers we never thought possible and beyond. Education & Community Starting with one of our main branches, Education & Community, a project that stands out is blkVlpha+, led by a team of PoC leaders from the arts and tech communities. The project aims to build a Web3 network designed to connect, educate and invest in trans, non-binary & women of color. The project demystifies the complexity behind Web3 adoption and helps navigate digital worlds with autonomy through community power. This project has not only achieved its intended goals, but has also had a powerful ripple effect — benefiting and onboarding a handful of members interested in joining the Tezos community. The team managed to host an Intro to Tezos NFTs, a Marketplaces and Minting web class, and a BIPOC & Allies Ecosystem Projects presentation, within a short two-month time span between Nov-Dec 2022. For 2023, they still have already hosted a Pitch Review and a Buy Party, and will continue to expand with more community-building events throughout the year. Stay tuned on Twitter! ‘Curative!’ by Michael Straeubig is another very promising initiative from our educational branch. This handy guide aims to help you to plan, curate, and organize your physical NFT exhibition. With practical advice and discussions about technology, art, and event issues, it also provides checklists and further useful materials. Built on the collaborative “4 Screens” pop-up exhibition in Berlin, it aims to encourage everyone to become curative and exhibit digital art regardless of background, budget, and available resources. Michael has been an active member of the despace community for a long time. By supporting with resources and making himself present at almost all of the community events, he’s a shining case of how a community-driven initiative can inspire members to serve as a guide for newcomers in the Web3 space, breaking down barriers and sparking the light of inspiration for creation and utilization of new technologies and use cases for Web3 tools and technology. Another captivating project is Visiblr, by Su-Zeong Fröhlich. Visiblr is the first intersectional project in Web3 for BIPOC in Germany (BIPOC goes for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color). Visiblr is an NFT Art and Social Project that seeks to bring blockchain technology and Web3 closer for millions of marginalized groups in Germany. The team is committed to social equality and strives for structural change. With Visiblr, they hope to create a world where all people have a seat at the table, making underrepresented groups literate in blockchain technology and Web3, and empowering them through a hands-on, open, and available experience. The team has already organized an event in Berlin, called Workshop4KIDS, where the community gathered with a welcoming infrastructure for kids and parents to learn, play and educate themselves on Web3 matters. More to come in 2023. Stay tuned! The ‘no name projkt’, by Hannah-Katharina Chabbani, also found great success aiming to onboard new participants to the ecosystem. ‘no name projkt’ was an IRL immersive onboarding experience and performance piece on Tezos organised in Berlin in November, at KW Institute for Contemporary Art. Aiming to educate on the possibilities of tokenomics and DAO using a practical show-and-tell approach, the “projkt” allowed access for 227 guests and 100 participants, onboarding them into a live construction site of experimental technology. Kicking off the Art category, a project that has made a significant impact: Seeing/Unseen, by Lauren Moffatt, an Australian artist working with immersive environments and experimental narrative practices. Seeing/Unseen is a decentralized app (dApp) accessible via mobile devices, which allows its visitors to view and/or interact with geolocated augmented reality sculptures. The sculptures are dynamically affected by environmental data that is streamed to them from the surrounding (urban) ecosystem via the blockchain. This project aims to connect people to the hidden ecosystems that surround them, while also creating an open-source dataset that could be useful to researchers — showing the wide reach and influence of our grants program. Floodplains XYZ, by Michelle Brown, is also a unique example of the community tendency to fall Down the Rabbit Hole. Michelle is a Brisbane-based new media artist focused on virtual and augmented reality storytelling in the digital space. With Floodplains XYZ, an interactive Web3-based 3D project, she aims to highlight the impact climate change has on weather and habitability while highlighting the clean and sustainable essence of Tezos. Michelle has undertaken a residency with despace berlin to focus on integrating NFTs into the experience and we cannot wait to see further updates! Another thought-provoking project born in DTRH is Eschatonality, by Noah Pred. A generative, interactive, audio-visual installation exploring the co-creative experience of time as an object expressed via meta-cultural systems. A shape-shifting monolith that emanates from the horizon, reacting fluidly to unique musical expressions. Audio and visual changes were triggered by tweets including the term “Eschatonality”, with corresponding Twitter handles appearing on the screen, inviting global collaboration in the process as it unfolds. So interesting, right? Noah’s project had a show-up at Refraction Festival at NFT.NYC and airdropped NFTs for people that interacted with the project (Objkt collection). It also had a final exhibition at despace, gathering the community together to connect, network, and appreciate the grantee’s amazing work. Last but not least, we wrap up 2022’s Art Projects with Blockchain Oracles in Physical Art Installations, by David Pettersson (Somatic Bits). This project researches the use of blockchain oracles in physical art installations. Composed of multiple parts, it utilizes the creation and evaluation of oracles (with different storage architectures) in the form of smart contracts, artist interviews, and research into past and current research literature. Prototypes have been developed and tested, and the thesis can be accessed here. 2022 was a year of innovation and experimentation in the fashion industry, as evidenced by the projects supported by our grants program. J’adore DYOR and Showcase 3D explored the development of emerging technologies in the design process, not only showcasing the creativity and ingenuity of the grantees, but also highlighting the importance of addressing pressing issues such as environmental sustainability and inclusivity in fashion. J’adore DYOR, by Paula Kühn, aims to be a Web3 & Fashion sustainability handbook. Paula is a Berlin-based fashion, textile, and 3D designer that found her way into the Web3 world in 2017. The project collects and comments on the use cases of brands and upcoming projects in the wider field of fashion and token engineering from a sustainability point of view. It’s meant to be the start of a navigation tool for brands and interested people to see what’s possible beyond the marketing and community-building strategies we’ve seen within fashion Web3 projects. Nuno Oliveira brings Showcase 3D: A fashion-forward and workshop event to the ecosystem. It’s a showroom showcasing up-and-coming talent within the fashion industry and their pathway for integration into Web3. The program begins their descent into the digital world by minting their NFT collection. Then follows with a free, 2-day, in-person workshop that’s open for all curious creatives to come through, learn, and connect. The goal is to onboard individuals into the community by minting NFTs of their work to a tezos-based marketplace, so they can begin their Web3 experience — learning along the way. DeFI & Dev Tooling & Music Since we have one of each, it made sense to keep those categories together in the ending portion of the Year Wrap-Up. We have ToDeFi, Tezos One-click Faucet, and Autro — all very different and very exciting projects that connect different universes. ToDeFi, organized by Lorenzo Schoenleber, is a new international conference purely dedicated to topics within decentralized finance. It’s set to be hosted by the Collegio Carlo Alberto and the University of Turin, and while it’s still under development, they already have support from various institutions, researchers and speakers with their sights set high. The conference will take place in Turin, Italy, on April 19, 2023.🚀 Tezos One-click Faucet, by Alexander Vanryssel, was created from one of those moments when you really need a tool as a developer, and you have no choice but to build it yourself. This project provides a one-click faucet for Tezos testnets. Autro, by Sam Counihan and Noah Pred, is our latest grant and revolves around the music industry. It aims to be an NFT-based License Management Solution, to help music makers who want to easily use, exchange, swap, and resell their music. All of these projects connect and disconnect inside the tunnels of the rabbit hole, creating the community that we are proud to call despace berlin. As we reflect on these projects, we can’t help but think about the future of this ecosystem. And we encourage our readers to do the same and share their thoughts and reflections. What stood out to you? What ideas did the projects spark in you? Down The Rabbit Hole is there for those brave enough to spiral down its wonders. Check it out on our website and apply your ideas to the waiting list.

Pride is all about celebrating queerness alongside your chosen family and local LGBTQ+ community. Typically, you and your crew would spend months crafting Instagram-worthy fits with festive hairstyles and shimmery makeup on deck. You'd agonize over who'd host the pre-game, how long you'd linger downtown, and what queer tomfoolery you'd get into afterward. Sadly, this year you're probably surrounded by unopened tubes of body glitter and unworn iridescent crop tops, thanks to COVID-19. If you're a newly-out person, and Pride cancellations due to the coronavirus pandemic have put a damper on first experience, you're not alone. There's a reason it feels so personal. Todd Baratz, a licensed psychotherapist and member of the LGBTQ+ community, says that celebrating Pride is important for both personal and political reasons. Queer people who've fought to overcome trauma related to homophobia, transphobia, and LGBTQ+ discrimination use Pride as a way to celebrate triumphing over these social and political obstacles. It provides an opportunity for queer people to express themselves in a freeing and empowering way, Baratz tells Elite Daily, which is "often the antithesis" of their lived experience. "Pride celebrates resistance to the oppression of heteronormativity and cis-normativity. At its best, it's a safe place to be celebrated as an individual, for an aspect of one's identity that can experience profound oppression and trauma," Courtney Watson, a licensed therapist whose practice focuses on queer and trans people of color, tells Elite Daily. "Someone's first Pride can be a reclamation of yourself from the shadows, and a celebration of being seen as you are." With this in mind, a newly-out queer person's disappointment as they miss what would have been their first official Pride is understandable. Alex*, 25, wanted to officially come out as non-binary this summer and start using both she/her/hers and he/him/his pronouns. He was set on celebrating in New York City, but because of the pandemic, the NYC LGBTQ Pride March and NYC Pride were both cancelled for the first time in the events' 50-year history. "Because I don’t see people and I'm not going out and about, I’ve decided not to [come out]. It sucks and it’s just like, I guess I'll wait until we have some normalcy," he tells Elite Daily. "I feel so disconnected from queerness and like I’m a teen again." Jess, 24, who's non-binary and bisexual, tells Elite Daily they wanted to attend NYC Pride in 2019, but ended up staying home. "I was feeling really confused about my gender and had recently moved to New York, and didn’t have any queer friends nearby for the first time since before I was out as bi," they say. "I felt lonely and was experiencing what I didn’t recognize as [gender] dysphoria." But 2020 was going to be different. Jess had made more queer friends and started dating a bisexual man. "Having that community and support system as I discovered my gender made me feel like I could once again experience Pride this time — fully as myself," they say. Pre-pandemic, Jess and their boyfriend planned to celebrate at both NYC Pride and Washington, D.C.'s Capital Pride. In March, organizers postponed Capital Pride and have yet to announce new dates. "It has been disappointing and frustrating to miss the chance to come out again and embrace myself," Jess says. While they haven't been able to attend any queer-centric Black Lives Matter protests following the killing of George Floyd, they have attended some smaller, non-queer-centric BLM demonstrations. "Although," they add, "Protesting police brutality and celebrating Pride are essentially the same thing." Pride month originated in response to police harassment and brutality against the LGBTQ+ community in New York City. A 1969 police raid on queer bar The Stonewall Inn led to six nights of unrest that today are known as the Stonewall Riots. The uprising was led by Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, a Black trans woman and a Latinx trans woman, respectively. Following the riots, more vocal, unapologetic gay rights groups like Gay Liberation Front formed — arguably paving the way for queer activism during the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and the decades-long push for marriage equality. New York City had its first official Pride parade on what was known as Christopher Street Liberation Day in June 1970. Fifty years later, amid the coronavirus pandemic, the queer community may not have its traditional Pride celebrations, but it does have an enduring spirit. Many celebrations have transitioned online. Capital Pride is hosting queer arts and education programming, and NYC Pride is holding a virtual rally on June 28. Likewise, Philly Pride and Portland Pride went virtual, and Boston's #WickedAndProud content is also available online. Still, it's understandable that logging on for a virtual event can make anyone feel discouraged. Alissandra, 25, a pansexual non-binary person who was planning on celebrating their first Pride in 2020, tells Elite Daily that while some events in their state of New Hampshire have gone digital, they "still feel pretty sad and isolated without an actual gathering." If you're a queer person feeling like Alissandra, there are still ways you can celebrate, even in the midst of the pandemic. Baratz suggests doing a deep-dive on queer history. "This may actually be more liberating than a parade," he says. "Queer people will be forced to learn about their queer family and the specific political history that exists within any marginalized or oppressed community — especially queer Black folks and Black trans folks." In that vein, you can also donate money to queer black organizations, like Black Transmen or The Marsha P. Johnson Institute. A socially distant Pride gathering can be another safe way to celebrate. Coordinate a Pride picnic for your friends. Drag those mesh body-con dresses and face jewels out to the park, and start brainstorming the perfect LGBTQ+ Pride Instagram caption now. Showing your Pride on social media and connecting with other queer folks on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok can all be liberating, celebratory options. Even though this year, there's no Diana Ross, Lady Gaga, or Hayley Kiyoko blasting from an ostentatiously gay float; even though the sweaty, glittery glory of a packed nightclub is temporarily on hold; and even though queer events at your local library, favorite brunch spot, or community recreation center have been tabled, that doesn’t mean you have to shelve Pride 2020. In fact, let this year remind you to cling to your identity and your history tighter than ever. Remember why you celebrate Pride, not just in June, but every single day. * Name has been changed. Courtney Watson, LMFT, therapist and founder of Doorway Therapeutics

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Confused by all the online tools analysing which party you align with best? Don’t worry, Hayden Donnell is here to help. With the general election only eight weeks away, New Zealand is suddenly drowning in quizzes. Everywhere you turn on the ‘net, there’s a new web exam testing your opinion on everything from Auckland housing policy to whether you are a terrible person want to put kids in boot camps, and aligning your answers with a political party. There’s good reason for the outbreak. One million New Zealanders didn’t vote in the last election and when polled on why, most said “because I didn’t do an online quiz telling me whether I’m a libertarian or a socialist”. But how do you pick the internet politics tool for you when there’s such a baffling array of choices on offer? How are you meant to make a decision when the quizzes appear so uninspiring and beige, with policies that probably won’t make much of a difference to your life, and besides all that, most of them are hypocrites, liars or secret alcoholics anyway? That’s where I come in. I’m going to judge the best Internet politics tests on offer this election. And I’m going to do it via the most accurate and exacting measuring tool in the world: the power ranking. 4) On The Fence On The Fence by Massey University and Design Democracy is innovative in that it lets you place your political positions on a non-binary sliding scale. Dragging the graph thing using your mouse is cool, fun and educational!. But the quizmasters still managed to create some weird dichotomies. For instance, do you want 60% more immigration and also 40% less immigration? Would you like to destroy the economy or the environment? I’m not a sage quizmaster, but surely these questions could’ve been phrased better. ISideWith.com is an overseas service that’s crossed the Atlantic Ocean in search of some New Zealand politics to analyse. It’s an extensive examination of every possible political position a person can hold. I thought and researched more during this web exam than I have during my journalism degree and journalism career put together. By its end, I had a PhD in political science and was able to compare and contrast the complete works of Karl Marx and Milton Friedman. I knew every single piece of legislation passed by Richard Seddon and the number of single malt whiskies drunk by Rob Muldoon in the Prime Minister’s office (14,738). Take it. It’s a lot. Of fun. Even the legendarily unhelpful youth blog The SpinOff is getting in on the ground floor of the quiz boom, hosting POLICY in conjunction with some Wellington braniacs. This tool is really useful despite no doubt being designed on a vintage typewriter at Fidel’s. It has a policy database that lets you mull over what’s actually on offer from various parties – a step up from quizzes that adhere to a strict “don’t ask, don’t tell” system when it comes to which policy aligns with which party. The only problem is that it can end up giving you results like this one: How can one person be so at war with herself? It must feel like being possessed by demons. How can she exorcise the 6% of her brain that belongs to Gareth Morgan? Please, there must be a way. 1) Political Compass Political Compass looks like what would happen if the DOS operating system had a baby with a folk club website. It hasn’t been updated since 2014 and still leads with a strongly worded statement on the TPPA, which used to be the most important issue in politics before “averting a Nazi nuclear holocaust” came along. There’s a “reading list” down the side on political ideologies, and a section that seemingly arbitrarily ranks where all the great classical composers sit on the political compass. The whole thing is wonkish and weirdly obsessed with classical music – just like undecided voters. At the end, you get to see where your opinions fit in a cool square that looks like the Windows 95 logo. What more could you want in a political quiz? Sorry Spinblog, you lose. The only criticism I have of all these tools is they perpetuate the illusion that people make political decisions based on evidence. I am the only person who makes political decisions based entirely on the evidence, and it just so happens the evidence points towards the need for a huge number of good things to happen to me and my friends. No-one else is that objective, and that’s okay. Emotions aren’t bad. Even though they motivate Nazi hate groups to march through the streets screaming about their pubeless pelvises, they also inspire people to fight for things like fairness. Humans are social animals and politics is social. It will never be untainted by our messy tribalism, no matter how much Gareth Morgan might want us to just start acting logically and kill all the cats. That’s why I’d like to conclude with this: a political quiz crafted with the perfect mix of emotion and policy. Can’t see the cool quiz? Click here to find out your political destiny. This content is entirely funded by Simplicity, New Zealand’s only non-profit fund manager, dedicated to making Kiwis wealthier in retirement. Its fees are the lowest on the market and it is 100% online, ethically invested, and fully transparent.Simplicity also donates 15% of management revenue to charity. So far, Simplicity is saving its 7,500 members $2 million annually. Switching takes two minutes. The views and opinions expressed above do not reflect those of Simplicity and should not be construed as an endorsement.

David Deal is both a brand and marketing thought leader. Here, this frequent Hypebot contributor shares his music industry forecast for 2022. Through David’s Accord, Founder and CEO of David J. Deal Consulting The Metaverse stands for Mega Business for Music The Metaverse has already made its mark on the music industry. In 2022, the metaverse will become an economic force to be reckoned with. The metaverse defined The metaverse is an interconnected virtual world where people live, work and play through digital twins such as avatars. The metaverse is already there in one form or another. Roblox and Fortnite have millions of daily active users who have been living the avatar life for quite some time. And many of the building blocks of the Metaverse, ranging from augmented reality to cryptocurrencies, exist in the digital world outside of the Metaverse. (You don’t need an avatar to use cryptocurrency, for example.) We often associate the music and the metaverse with Ariana Grande playing on Fortnite or The Weeknd doing a virtual gig on TikTok – well, not them, per se, but their avatars. Yes, the Rift Tour with Ariana Grande is part of the metaverse, and we’re going to see more gigs where avatars of musicians perform in immersive worlds (as holograms of deceased people have been doing in the physical world for years). But these types of experiences are only a small part of the metaverse. NFTs and Cryptocurrencies Strengthen a “Musical Middle Class” Something else is happening that is just as fascinating in the music industry, which will have a profound impact in 2022: the adoption of NFTs, digital currencies and cryptocurrencies, which are the building blocks of the metaverse. In the Metaverse, people and businesses use digital currencies to purchase things that include music, art, and real estate, and they can do so outside of the Metaverse as well. These assets are given unique value through a technology known as a non-fungible token, or NFT. Cryptocurrencies (a form of encryption-protected digital currency) and NFTs are enabling musicians around the world to create economic value at a time when they aren’t getting much feedback from streaming platforms, and touring remains under threat. by the persistent pandemic. By now, everyone who follows the music industry has heard of Grimes auctioning off a set of NFTs (featuring audiovisuals of space babies wielding a spear) for $ 6 million in 2021. When you watch Beyond the headlines of these unique stories, you see artists gain loyal fans as well as commercial value. For example, Portugal critic’s darling The Man has launched his own designer coin, a cryptocurrency the group uses to provide coin holders with perks like evening saves and music lessons. Portugal The Man also recently collaborated with Deadmau5 to release 1 million copies of their new single “This is fine” as NFT. They aspire for the single to be the first NFT to go platinum. Portugal The Man’s designer piece is more than access to a fan club; it’s a way of investing in the group, which is a crucial detail that too often goes unnoticed in Metaverse discussions. Remember when David Bowie issued Bowie Bonds in 1997? Designer pieces are similar. I’m sure if David Bowie were alive today he would have been a pioneer with designer pieces. NFTs and cryptocurrencies empower independent artists around the world. There are too many to list here, but they include Ibn Inglor, Curren $ y, Mick Jenkins, the thought-detecting machines, and many more. For example, Daniel Allan built a fan following on the Discord server during the pandemic and used NFTs to fund his next EP. Overstimulated in exchange for 50 percent of the artist’s share of Overstimulatedmaster royalties. Investors in the digital currency $ OVERSTIM share the profits, with top investors gaining special access to perks such as private listening parties and featured shows. It also sells songs on an NFT music platform known as Catalog. He said Time magazine that building a fan base on Discord is crucial to its success, as Discord attracts digital currency enthusiasts: Allan subscribes to the idea that having “100 true fans” is better than having many casual fans. So he spends 6 to 8 hours a day interacting with his fans on his Discord, where they offer encouragement, comments and memes. Because many of them have bought him a share of his masters, they are emotionally and financially invested in his success. For his next project, he wants to break even more the wall between artist and fan. “I want to be like, ‘Here are 20 demos, let’s do an EP together,’” he says. “There are a lot of creatives in my Discord but they don’t necessarily have the mechanics to be able to exercise their creativity.” NFTs and cryptocurrencies level the playing field a bit for independents like Daniel Allan. As he said Time, “I don’t think it creates rich artists. It creates a musical middle class. Follow the money In 2022, we’ll see more businesses grow around the NFT space and cryptocurrency alone – businesses like Corite, a blockchain-based crowdfunding platform connecting musicians and their fans. ; OneOf, an NFT platform specifically designed for the music community and designed to eliminate economic barriers to entry; Rally, the platform where Portugal The Man struck his designer coin; and Catalog (Daniel Allan’s platform of choice), to name a few. Meanwhile, big brands will find more ways to create experiences in metaverse worlds like Roblox. These experiences will include music. For example, Nike recently launched NIKEWORLD on Roblox and bought RTFKT, which creates collectibles that merge culture and gaming. These steps will help Nike strengthen its presence as a music brand in the metaverse. Musicians who organize concerts in NIKEWORLD? It will happen. Nike will use the Metaverse (especially NIKEWORLD) as a way to create brand activations with emerging musical talent in the Metaverse, much like Warner Music Group does with Twitch in the good old digital world. But music labels will also exploit the metaverse for commercial value. Consider Warner’s partnership with Genies, a company that creates digital avatars and wearables. We quickly come out of “Wow, isn’t that cool?” Musicians who sell stuff with NFTs! »Phase. Businesses grow and regroup around musicians. When the tours return for real, promoters and festivals will offer interactive experiences and NFTs to complement the live shows. Everyone follows the money. Virtual star rise In 2022, the rise of the metaverse means that a growing number of musicians and celebrities cruising the music industry will not be real people. They will consist of digital characters created in computer graphics software by companies like Virtual Humans, and then endowed with a personality defined by a first-person view of the world. For example, K / DA is a virtual K-pop girl group made up of four themed versions of League of Legends characters: Ahri, Akali, Evelynn, and Kai’Sa. They’re the brainchild of Riot Games, and they’re great for gaming, gateway drug to the metaverse. They have a lot of company. Kai is a virtual influencer developer who created Splash, a game within Roblox that allows users to create and perform their music in front of a live audience. Kizuna AI is a virtual YouTuber with millions of subscribers on its channels. LV4 is a virtual cyborg and hip-hop producer. BumBailey is a non-binary collective made up of multiple characters, each with their own unique body shape, name, and personality. Recently, BumBaily posted a video on TikTok using the song “Rumors” by Cardi B and Lizzo. The post racked up millions of views and caught Lizzo’s attention. The popularity of virtual artists may seem odd and even off-putting, but not to anyone in the world of video games. That’s the whole point of the metaverse: to create a different world. And that’s what music does. Where virtual musicians and immersive concerts leave musicians in the offline world is an open question, and I realize that there is a very real apprehension that the metaverse will engulf the physical world. I think we’ll eventually see the two coexist. When tours and festivals come back for real, I suspect we’ll see more of a fusion between the two – like NFTs and virtual experiences complementing the onstage action at Coachella. NFTs will be the new VIP tent at Coachella. At the moment, we live in parallel worlds. About David Deal David’s Accord is founder and CEO of David J. Deal Consulting, a marketing consulting firm. He regularly contributes to publications such as Hypebot, Hacker Noon, The Startup and Festival Peak.

Gender identity is at the core of our sense of self. Transgender people (commonly known as trans) have a gender that is different to what was presumed for them at birth and includes people with a binary (male or female) and non-binary gender. Being trans is not a choice and trans people have existed throughout history. Not surprisingly, trans people are diverse and come from all walks of life. Yet transgender Australians are arguably among the most marginalised and socioeconomically disadvantaged groups in our community – a disadvantage that has been magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic. Our research shows that the situation will only improve if we reduce societal discrimination and ensure safe, low-cost and accessible mental health support services as well as gender-affirming medical and surgical interventions for those who need them. And trans health research and suicide prevention must also be prioritised. The first peer-reviewed study of the health and wellbeing of transgender adult Australians paints a grim state of health. Of the 928 participants, lifetime diagnosis of depression was reported in 85 per cent and anxiety in 79 per cent. Most concerningly, 63 per cent reported previous self-harm and 43 per cent had attempted suicide. These statistics are many times higher than rates for the general Australian population. Shockingly, 35 per cent reported discrimination from employment as a result of being trans, and the unemployment rate of 19 per cent was more than three times the national rate. Being unemployed is already associated with a 55 per cent higher chance of reporting a lifetime history of suicide attempts. The COVID-19 pandemic has created additional challenges. Rates of clinically significant depression have escalated among trans people and, in the midst of lockdown in June 2020, 49 per cent of trans Australians reported thoughts of self-harm or suicide. This is more than three times the national rate. These statistics were more likely if a person experienced cancellation or postponement of gender-affirming surgery, financial strain or felt unsafe or afraid in their household. FEAR OF DISCRIMINATION Most Australians take it for granted that we can see a doctor when needed, safely. However, discrimination when accessing healthcare results in nearly a third of transgender people avoiding medically necessary care. Being subject to physical assault and widespread institutional discrimination because of a person’s trans status is also associated with over 60 per cent higher odds of reporting suicide attempts. Outright verbal and physical assault were reported by 68 per cent and 23 per cent of participants respectively. Many have been subject to past trauma, leading to mistrust and fear of discrimination. These results show that trans people need safe, affirming, and low-cost accessible health services which must be trans-led or co-created with trans community members. More research is also needed to provide the highest level of evidence to reverse these alarming statistics, lower suicide rates, improve mental health and provide the best gender-affirming interventions enabling trans people to live a life without barriers. Many trans people share an intense, severe distress or discomfort related to parts of their body and/or how other people perceive their gender – known as gender dysphoria. This compels trans people to make steps to affirm their gender, which can ameliorate much of this distress. Some will affirm their gender socially or legally, by changing their name and pronouns or by wearing new clothing, and some will affirm their gender with hormone therapy to either masculinise or feminise their bodies, or by having surgeries. This can be lifesaving for trans people, with studies showing access to gender-affirming surgery is associated with better mental health and quality of life. We have found that desiring but not having had gender-affirming surgery is associated with a 73 per cent higher chance of reporting a lifetime suicide attempt. Despite the clear need, this surgery is difficult to access in Australia. A lack of experienced surgeons and public funding has resulted in prohibitive out-of-pocket expenses of more than $A20,000. Improving surgical training and public funding for gender-affirming surgeries is critical to address this healthcare gap. Governments and policymakers must prioritise trans health if this situation is to improve. A ‘FAIR GO’ As our research suggests, widespread discrimination in almost all aspects of life is arguably the biggest issue for many trans people. Societal interventions to increase social inclusion and reduce transphobia are needed, but even simple acceptance by family, friends, schools, workplaces and colleagues has been shown to reduce suicide attempts and improve mental health. This is even more critical during the COVID-19 pandemic which has disproportionately impacted an already vulnerable community. We all have a role to play to be open minded, to be respectful and to call out discrimination. Together, we can help create an inclusive Australia that embraces diversity and supports all people, including our most vulnerable, to have a ‘fair go’, receive quality evidence-based healthcare, work, study, live safely and reach their full potential. If you or anyone you or anyone you know needs help or support, you can contact QLife, which provides trans-inclusive phone/webchat counselling support 3pm-midnight everyday. https://www.facebook.com/qlifeaus/ Banner: The Gender Spectrum Collection/Zackary Drucker

My summer reading has been picking up and I have a firm plan – I think – for the rest of the foodie books that will make up my final 20. I’m reading two more at the moment: a classic with an incidental food-themed title and a work of American history via foodstuffs. Today I have a defense of drinking wine for pleasure; a novel about inheritance and selfhood, especially for mothers; and a terrific foodoir set in Berlin, New York City and rural Italy. How to Love Wine: A Memoir and Manifesto by Eric Asimov (2012) (20 Books of Summer, #9) Asimov may be the chief wine critic for the New York Times, but he’s keen to emphasize that he’s no wine snob. After decades of drinking it, he knows what he appreciates and prefers small-batch to mass market wine, but he’d rather that people find what they enjoy rather than chase after the expensive bottles they feel they should like. He finds tasting notes and scores meaningless and is more interested in getting people into wine simply for the love of it – not as a status symbol or a way of showing off arcane knowledge. Like Anthony Bourdain (see my review of Kitchen Confidential), Asimov was drawn into foodie culture by one memorable meal in France. He’d had a childhood sweet tooth and was a teen beer drinker, but when he got to grad school in Austin, Texas an $8 bottle of wine from a local Whole Foods was an additional awakening. Following in his father’s footsteps in journalism and moving from Texas to Chicago back home to New York City for newspaper editing jobs, he had occasional epiphanies when he bought a nice bottle of wine for his parents’ anniversary and took a single wine appreciation course. But his route into writing about wine was sideways, through a long-running NYT column about local restaurants. I might have liked a bit more of the ‘memoir’ than the ‘manifesto’ of the subtitle: Asimov makes the same argument about accessibility over and over, yet even his approachable wine attitude was a little over my head. I can’t see myself going to a tasting of 20–25 wines at a time, or ordering a case of 12 wines to sample at home. Not only can I not tell Burgundy from Bordeaux (his favorites), I can’t remember if I’ve ever tried them. I’m more of a Sauvignon Blanc or Chianti gal. Maybe the Wine for Dummies volume I recently picked up from a Little Free Library is more my speed. Source: Free from a neighbor Mother’s Milk by Edward St Aubyn (2006) (20 Books of Summer, #10; A buddy read with Annabel, who has also reviewed the first three books here and here as part of her 20 Books of Summer.) I’ve had mixed luck with the Patrick Melrose books thus far: Book 1, Never Mind, about Patrick’s upbringing among the badly-behaving rich in France and his sexual abuse by his father, was too acerbic for me, and I didn’t make it through Book 3, Some Hope. But Book 2, Bad News, in which Patrick has become a drug addict and learns of his father’s death, hit the sweet spot for black comedy. Mother’s Milk showcases two of St. Aubyn’s great skills: switching effortlessly between third-person perspectives, and revealing the psychology of his characters. It opens with a section from the POV of Patrick’s five-year-old son, Robert, a perfect link back to the child’s-eye view of Book 1 and a very funny introduction to this next generation of precocious mimics. The perspective is shared between Robert, Patrick, his wife Mary, and their younger son Thomas across four long chapters set in the Augusts of 2000–2003. Patrick isn’t addicted to heroin anymore, but he still relies on alcohol and prescription drugs, struggles with insomnia and is having an affair. Even if he isn’t abusive or neglectful like his own parents, he worries he’ll still be a destructive influence on his sons. Family inheritance – literal and figurative – is a major theme, with Patrick disgruntled with his very ill mother, Eleanor, for being conned into leaving the home in France to a New Age organization as a retreat center. “What I really loathe is the poison dripping from generation to generation,” Patrick says – “the family’s tropical atmosphere of unresolved dependency.” He mentally contrasts Eleanor and Mary, the former so poor a mother and the latter so devoted to her maternal role that he feels there’s no love left for himself from either. I felt a bit trapped during unpleasant sections about Patrick’s lust, but admired the later focus on the two mothers and their loss of sense of self, Eleanor because of her dementia and Mary because she has been subsumed in caring for Thomas. I didn’t quite see how all the elements were meant to fit together, particularly the disillusioning trip to New York City, but the sharp writing and observations were enough to keep me going through this Booker-shortlisted novella. I’ll have to get Book 5 out from the library to see how St. Aubyn tied everything up. Source: Free bookshop My Berlin Kitchen: Adventures in Love and Life by Luisa Weiss (2012) (20 Books of Summer, #11) Blog-to-book adaptations can be hit or miss; luckily, this one joins Julie Powell’s Julie and Julia and Molly Wizenberg’s A Homemade Life in the winners column. Raised in Berlin and Boston by her American father and Italian mother, Weiss felt split between her several cultures and languages. While she was working as a cookbook editor in New York City, she started a blog, The Wednesday Chef, as a way of working through the zillions of recipes she’d clipped from here and there, and of reconnecting with her European heritage: “when I came down with a rare and chronic illness known as perpetual homesickness, I knew the kitchen would be my remedy.” After a bad breakup (for which she prescribes fresh Greek salad, ideally eaten outside), she returned to Berlin and unexpectedly found herself back in a relationship with Max, whom she’d met in Paris nearly a decade ago but drifted away from. She realized they were meant to be together when he agreed that potato salad should be dressed with oil and vinegar rather than mayonnaise. After a tough year for Weiss as she readjusts to Berlin’s bitter winters and lack of bitter greens, the book ends with the lovely scene of their rustic Italian wedding. Weiss writes with warmth and candor and gets the food–life balance just right. I found a lot to relate to here (“I couldn’t ever allow myself to think about how annoying airports were, how expensive it was to go back and forth between Europe and the United States … I had to get on an airplane to see the people I love”) and – a crucial criterion for a foodie book – could actually imagine making most of these recipes, everything from plum preserves and a Swiss chard and Gruyère bake to a towering gooseberry meringue cream cake. Other readalikes: From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home by Tembi Locke, My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff, and Only in Naples: Lessons in Food and Famiglia from My Italian Mother-in-Law by Katherine Wilson Source: A birthday gift from my wish list last year I call it serendipitous when two or more books that I read at the same time or in quick succession have something pretty bizarre in common. Because I have so many books on the go at once (usually around 20), I suppose I’m more prone to such incidents than some. I also list these occasional reading coincidences on Twitter. The following are in rough chronological order. (January to March appeared in this post.) - Characters named Sonny in Pew by Catherine Lacey, My Father’s Wake by Kevin Toolis, and Sacred Country by Rose Tremain. - A double dose via Greenery via Tim Dee – while reading it I was also reading Other People’s Countries by Patrick McGuinness, whom he visits in Belgium; and A Cold Spring by Elizabeth Bishop, referenced in a footnote. - A red thread is worn as a bracelet for its emotional or spiritual significance in The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd and Plan B by Anne Lamott. - The Library of Alexandria features in Footprints by David Farrier and The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd. - The Artist’s Way is mentioned in At Hawthorn Time by Melissa Harrison and Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott. - Characters sleep in a church in Pew by Catherine Lacey and Abide With Me by Elizabeth Strout. (And both novels have characters named Hilda.) - Coins being flung away among some trees in In the Springtime of the Year by Susan Hill and The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd (literally the biblical 30 pieces of silver in the Kidd, which is then used as a metaphor in the Hill). - Rabbit-breeding projects in When the Lights Go Out by Carys Bray and Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler. - Mentions of the Great Barrier Reef in When the Lights Go Out by Carys Bray and Footprints by David Farrier. - The same very specific fact – that Seamus Heaney’s last words, in a text to his wife, were “Noli timere” – was mentioned in Curlew Moon by Mary Colwell and Greenery by Tim Dee. - Klondike ice cream bars appeared in both Small Victories by Anne Lamott and The Fixed Stars by Molly Wizenberg. - The metaphor of a rising flood only the parent or the child will survive is used in both Exit West by Mohsin Hamid and What We Carry by Maya Lang. - The necessity of turning right to save oneself in a concentration camp setting is mentioned in both Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl and Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels. - An English child is raised in North Africa in Oleander, Jacaranda by Penelope Lively and The Child in Time by Ian McEwan. - The Bristol Stool Chart appeared in both Gulp by Mary Roach and The Bad Doctor by Ian Williams. - A Greek island setting in both Exit West by Mohsin Hamid and Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels (plus, earlier, in A Theatre for Dreamers by Polly Samson). - Both Writers & Lovers by Lily King and Mother: A Memoir by Nicholas Royle mention Talking Heads within the first 20 pages. - A trip to North Berwick in the early pages of Mother: A Memoir by Nicholas Royle, and hunting for cowrie shells on the beach – so familiar from Evie Wyld’s The Bass Rock, read the previous month. (Later, more collecting of cowrie shells in Oleander, Jacaranda by Penelope Lively.) - Children’s authors are main characters in The Crow Road by Iain Banks and The Child in Time by Ian McEwan. - A character is killed by a lightning strike in The Crow Road by Iain Banks and Writers & Lovers by Lily King. - Characters named Ash in The Crow Road by Iain Banks and The Fixed Stars by Molly Wizenberg. - A brother steals the main character’s object of affection in The Crow Road by Iain Banks and Sacred Country by Rose Tremain. - A minor character in Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler is called Richard Rohr … meanwhile, I was reading a book by Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ. - A maternity ward setting in The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue and The Bell in the Lake by Lars Mytting. - A love triangle is a central element in Writers & Lovers by Lily King and The Bell in the Lake by Lars Mytting. - Reading a book by a Galloway (The Trick Is to Keep Breathing by Janice Galloway) and a book about Galloway (Native: Life in a Vanishing Landscape by Patrick Laurie) simultaneously. - Attending college in L.A. in The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett and Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama. - Two books that reference the same Darwin quote: Into the Tangled Bank by Lev Parikian, and “The Entangled Bank” is the title of the final poem in Red Gloves by Rebecca Watts. - Characters with the surname Savage in The Box Garden by Carol Shields and Islands of Mercy by Rose Tremain. - A character is taught how to eat oysters in The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett and Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. - A Louisiana setting in The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett and Property by Valerie Martin. - Characters named Stella in The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett and The Group by Lara Feigel. - The last line of the book has a character saying “Come in” in Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Ankomst by Gøhril Gabrielsen. - Currently reading four books with mixed-race narrators: (Black/white) The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi Durrow, Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama, Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey; and (Japanese/white) My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki. - Currently reading two novels in which a pair of orphaned sisters are taken in by relatives (Deerbrook by Harriet Martineau and Rise and Shine by Anna Quindlen). Plus two more novels with orphan characters: The Girl Who Fell from the Sky and My Year of Meats. - In two of these four (not telling which, though you can safely assume it’s not the Victorian novel!), they are orphans because both parents were killed in a car accident. I feel like this is a fictional setup that I encounter all the time (cf. All the Beautiful Girls, The Monsters of Templeton, Saint Maybe) that can’t be that common in real life? - Vassar as an alma mater in Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain and The Group by Mary McCarthy. - Punahou School (Honolulu, Hawaii) is the author’s alma mater in The Noonday Demon by Kathleen Norris and Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama. What’s the weirdest reading coincidence you’ve had lately? I’m still averaging four new releases per month: a nicely manageable number. In addition to Lily King’s Writers & Lovers, in May I’ve read a novel about eco-anxiety and marital conflict, a memoir of losing a mother to grief and dementia, and an account of a shift in sexuality. I had a somewhat mixed reaction to all three books, but see if one or more catches your eye anyway. When the Lights Go Out by Carys Bray Perhaps if this had come out two or three years ago, it could have felt fresh. As it is, it felt like a retread of familiar stories about eco-grief and -anxiety among the middle classes (such as Weather and Unsheltered). Emma Abram is an average suburban mother of two in the north of England, upcycling fabrics and doing her best with other little green initiatives around the house since she got laid off from her job when the local library closed. She feels guilty a lot of the time, but what else can she do? Nero fiddled while Rome burned; she will sew while the polar ice melts and the seas surge. She couldn’t un-birth the children, un-earth the disposable nappies or un-plumb the white goods. Such sentiments also reminded me of the relatable, but by no means ground-breaking, contents of Letters to the Earth. Emma’s husband Chris, though, has taken things to an extreme: as zealous as he once was about his childhood faith, he now is about impending climate change. One day, a week or so before Christmas, she is embarrassed to spot him by the roadside in town, holding up a signboard prophesying environmental doom. “In those days, Chris had been spreading the Good News. Now he is spreading the Bad News.” He thinks cold-weather and survivalist gear makes appropriate gifts; he raises rabbits for meat; he makes Emma watch crackpot documentaries about pandemic preparation. (Oh, the irony! I was sent this book in December.) Part of the problem was to do with my expectations: from the cover and publicity materials I thought this was going to be a near-future speculative novel about a family coping with flooding and other literal signs of environmental apocalypse. Instead, it is a story about a marriage in crisis. (I cringed at how unsubtly this line put it: “The climate of her marriage [has] been changing, and she has been in denial about it for a long time.”) It is also, like Unless, about how to relate to a family member who has, in your opinion, gone off the rails. Nothing wrong with those themes, of course, but my false assumptions meant that I spent well over 200 pages waiting for something to happen, thinking that everything I had read thus far was backstory and character development that, in a more eventful novel, would have been dispatched within, say, the first 40 pages. I did enjoy the seasonal activity leading up to Christmas Eve, and the portrayal of Chris’s widowed, pious mother. But compared to A Song for Issy Bradley, one of my favorite books of 2014, this was a disappointment. My thanks to Hutchinson for the proof copy for review. This came out in e-book and audio on May 7th but the print edition has been delayed until November 12th. Mother: A Memoir by Nicholas Royle “A memoir is about what survives. But it is also about what is enigmatic and irretrievable. Cryptic and unknown.” A few years ago I read Royle’s An English Guide to Birdwatching, one of the stranger novels I’ve ever come across (it brings together a young literary critic’s pet peeves, a retired couple’s seaside torture by squawking gulls, the confusion between the two real-life English novelists named Nicholas Royle, and bird-themed vignettes). It was joyfully over-the-top, full of jokes and puns as well as trenchant observations about modern life. I found that same delight in the vagaries of language and life in Mother: A Memoir. Royle’s mother, Kathleen, had Alzheimer’s and died in 2003. At least to start with, she was aware of what was happening to her: “I’m losing my marbles,” she pronounced one day in the kitchen of the family home in Devon. Yet Royle pinpoints the beginning of the end nearly two decades earlier, when his younger brother, Simon, died of a rare cancer. “From that death none of us recovered. But my mother it did for. She it by degrees sent mad.” In short, titled sections that function almost like essays, Royle traces his mother’s family history and nursing career, and brings to life her pastimes and mannerisms. She passed on to Royle, a professor of English and creative writing at the University of Sussex, a love of literature and of unusual words and sayings. She was often to be found with a crossword puzzle in front of her, she devoured books (devoting a whole summer to the complete works to date of Doris Lessing, for instance), and she gave advice on her son’s early stories. The narrative moves back and forth in time and intersperses letters, lists and black-and-white photographs. Royle often eschews punctuation and indulges in wordplay. “These details matter. The matter of my mater. Matador killing metaphor.” I found that I remained at arm’s length from the book – admiring it rather than becoming as emotionally engaged with it as I wanted to be – but it’s certainly not your average memoir, and it’s always refreshing to find (auto)biographical work that does something different. My thanks to Myriad Editions for the free copy for review. The Fixed Stars by Molly Wizenberg Wizenberg is the author of two terrific food-themed memoirs. I particularly loved A Homemade Life, which chronicles the death of her father Burg from cancer, her time living in Paris, building a new life in Seattle, starting her famous food blog (Orangette), and meeting her husband, Brandon. Her follow-up, Delancey, was about the ups and downs of them opening a pizza restaurant and bar in Seattle while she was pregnant with June. By contrast, The Fixed Stars was an uncomfortable read in more ways than one. For one thing, it unpicks the fairy tale of what had looked like a pretty ideal marriage and entrepreneurial partnership. It turns out Wizenberg wasn’t wholly on board with their little restaurant empire and found the work overwhelming. It was all Brandon’s dream, not hers. (She admits to these facts in Delancey, but it was the success, not the doubt, that I remembered.) And then, in the summer of 2015, Wizenberg was summoned for jury duty and found herself fascinated by one of the defense attorneys, a woman named Nora who wore a man’s suit and a butch haircut. The author had always considered herself straight, had never been attracted to a woman before, but this crush wouldn’t go away. She and Brandon tried an open marriage so that she could date Nora and he could see other people, too, but it didn’t work out. Brandon didn’t want her to fall in love with anyone else, but that was just what was happening. Wizenberg announced her coming-out and her separation from Brandon on her blog, so I was aware of all this for the last few years and via Instagram followed what came next. I knew her new spouse is a non-binary person named Ash who was born female but had top surgery to remove their breasts. (At first I was assumed Nora was an alias for Ash, but they are actually different characters. After things broke down with Nora, a mutual friend set her up with Ash.) The other source of discomfort for me here was the explicit descriptions of her lovemaking with Nora – her initiation into lesbian sex – though she draws a veil over this with Ash. I’m not sure if the intimate details were strictly necessary, but I reminded myself that a memoir is a person’s impressions of what they’ve done and what has happened to them, molded into a meaningful shape. Wizenberg clearly felt a need to dig for the why of her transformation, and her answers range from her early knowledge of homosexuality (an uncle who died of AIDS) to her frustrations about her life with Brandon (theirs really was a happy enough marriage, and a markedly amicable divorce, but had its niggles, like any partnership). I appreciated that, ultimately, Wizenberg leaves her experience unlabeled. She acknowledges that hers is a messy story, but an honest one. While she entertains several possibilities – Was she a closeted lesbian all along? Or was she bisexual? Can sexual orientation change? – she finds out that sexual fluidity is common in women, and that all queer families are unique. An obvious comparison is with Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts, which is a bit more profound and original. But the mourning for her marriage and the anguish over what she was doing to her daughter are strong elements alongside the examination of sexuality. The overarching metaphor of star maps is effective and reminded me of Constellations by Sinéad Gleeson. There were points in the narrative where I was afraid the author would resort to pat answers about what was ‘meant to be’ or to depicting villains versus heroic actions, but instead she treats this all just as something that happened and that all involved coped with as best they could, hopefully making something better in the end. It’s sensitively told and, while inevitably different from her other work, well worth reading for anyone who’s been surprised where life has led. I read an advanced e-copy from Abrams Press via Edelweiss. A Kindle edition came out on May 12th, but the hardback release has been pushed back to August 4th. What recent releases can you recommend? Review copies have started to feel like an obligation I don’t want. Almost as soon as one comes through the door, I regret having asked for or accepted it. (Now I have to read the danged thing, and follow through with a review!) So I’m going to cut back severely this year. The idea is to wait until late in 2020 to figure out which are the really worthwhile releases, and then only read those instead of wading through a lot of mediocre stuff. “Until one has some kind of professional relationship with books one does not discover how bad the majority of them are. In much more than nine cases out of ten the only objectively truthful criticism would be ‘This book is worthless,’ while the truth about the reviewer’s own reaction would probably be ‘This book does not interest me in any way, and I would not write about it unless I were paid to’. … The best practice, it has always seemed to me, would be simply to ignore the great majority of books and to give very long reviews … to the few that seem to matter.” (from “Confessions of a Book Reviewer” in Books v. Cigarettes by George Orwell) These are the January to May 2020 releases I own so far, with perhaps a few more on the way. I acquired a lot of these in September through November, before I made the decision to cut down on review copies. I’m also looking forward to new books by Sebastian Barry, Susanna Clarke, Stephanie Danler, Anne Enright, Yaa Gyasi, John Irving, Daisy Johnson, Daniel Kehlmann, Sue Monk Kidd, Rebecca Dinerstein Knight, Maya Shanbhag Lang, Helen Macdonald, Hilary Mantel, David Mitchell, Sarah Moss, Mark O’Connell, Maggie O’Farrell, Anne Tyler, Abraham Verghese, Raynor Winn and Molly Wizenberg. I can still access new/pre-release books via my public library and NetGalley/Edelweiss, especially fiction to review for BookBrowse and nonfiction for Kirkus and the TLS. This resolution is not about denying or punishing myself, as bloggers’ book-buying bans sometimes seem to be, so if an unmissable book (e.g. HAMNET) is offered on Twitter or via my blog, I won’t consider it cheating to say yes. FOMO will likely be a chronic condition for me this year, but ultimately I hope to do myself a favor. With the reading time I’m saving, I plan to make major inroads into those 440 print books I own and haven’t read yet, and to do a lot of re-reading (I only managed one and a bit rereads in 2019). I might well blog less often and only feature those books that have been exceptional for me. I’ve set aside this shelf of mostly fiction that I think deserves re-reading soon: “I do not think we go back to the exciting books,—they do not usually leave a good taste in the mouth; neither to the dull books, which leave no taste at all in the mouth; but to the quiet, mildly tonic and stimulating books,—books that have the virtues of sanity and good nature, and that keep faith with us.” (from “On the Re-Reading of Books” in Literary Values by John Burroughs) I hope (as always) to read more classics, literature in translation and doorstoppers. Travel and biography are consistently neglected categories for me. Though I won’t set specific goals for these genres, I will aim to see measurable progress. I will also take advantage of the Wellcome Book Prize being on hiatus this year to catch up on some of the previous winners and shortlisted books that I’ve never managed to read. Mostly, I want to avoid any situations that make me feel guilty or mean (so no more books received direct from the author, and any review books that disappoint will be quietly dropped), follow my whims, and enjoy my reading. What are some of your goals (reading-related or otherwise) for 2020? Despite my largely successful resolution to focus on my own books for the summer, I’ve also gotten through plenty of e-books from NetGalley and Edelweiss, too. I just find it easier to fit time with the Kindle into my day, whether it’s 20 minutes over lunch (food-themed nonfiction works particularly well for such situations) or 30 minutes on the cross trainer. Here’s a sample of the e-books I’ve enjoyed this summer: four nonfiction and one fiction. Pancakes in Paris: Living the American Dream in France By Craig Carlson A good-natured memoir about the travails of opening the first American-style diner in Paris. Carlson charts his somewhat chaotic growing-up years in Connecticut, the college study abroad experience that kindled his love for France, his years trying to make it as a screenwriter and director in Hollywood, his long-held dream of opening Breakfast in America, and finding a French sweetheart of his own. Much of the book is devoted to a blow-by-blow of the bureaucratic nightmare of opening a restaurant, starting with getting investors on board and continuing through France’s ridiculously restrictive labor laws. (The impression I came away with was: France – great place to be an employee or rent property; terrible place to start a business.) Next time I’m in Paris, I will be looking to get myself a stack of his signature blueberry and white chocolate chip pancakes. Releases September 6th. When in French: Love in a Second Language By Lauren Collins Collins, a journalist from North Carolina, married a Frenchman named Olivier she met while working in London. They then moved to Geneva, a mutually unfamiliar place but one where French reigned. For the first time, she was forced to learn a new language to survive. I love how she blends her own story with the philosophy, history and science behind language use. As she learned how to do things she never expected to have to in French – deal with her in-laws and give birth, for instance – she developed a new appreciation for the marvel that is bilingualism and pondered whether she was the same person in a different language. My favorite section recounts a holiday to Corsica that brought her family and Olivier’s into close quarters and cast her in the unforeseen role of translator. There’s a surprising amount of linguistic detail here, but Collins incorporates it well. Releases September 13th. A Body, Undone: Living On After Great Pain By Christina Crosby Crosby teaches English and gender studies at Wesleyan University. Her inclusion in this “Sexual Cultures” series has to do with her lesbian feminist ideology but also the new understanding of her body an accident forced upon her at age 50. While she was cycling, a stick stuck in her spokes and she fell over onto concrete, breaking vertebrae in her neck that damaged her spinal cord. In the midst of a full and physical life, she became a quadriplegic. The great irony was that in this she joined her brother Jeff, whose MS had long since reduced him to a wheelchair. Here, in a memoir written 11 years after the accident, she reflects on chronic pain and new limitations – even including bowel habits – with blunt honesty as well as literary allusions. Along the way she remembers physical pleasures now denied to her. Nonetheless, she never comes across as sorry for herself. I found this to be highly absorbing. The Reader on the 6.27 By Jean-Paul Didierlaurent Guylain Vignolles works in a paper pulping plant. Rather than an enemy of books, however, he’s really a champion of the written word and its power to improve people’s lives. Every day when he descends into the belly of “The Thing” to clean it, he rescues the stray pages that escaped destruction and reads them aloud the following morning on his twenty-minute train commute, or to the residents of an old-folks home, no matter what their subject. He also helps his disabled former colleague Giuseppe stockpile all the books made from the recycled paper created on the fateful day the machine shredded his legs. There’s a charming Amélie vibe to this short novel, especially in the later chapters when Guylain sets off on a romantic quest to find the lavatory attendant whose wry diary he finds on a memory stick on the train. Most of the subplots could do with some expanding, but it’s a pleasant and super-quick read. Stir: My Broken Brain and the Meals that Brought Me Home By Jessica Fechtor For me this is right up there with Molly Wizenberg and Ruth Reichl in how the author merges food writing with a frank recounting of personal experiences with crisis and heartache. At age 28 Fechtor, then a graduate student in history and Yiddish, collapsed on a treadmill with a brain bleed. Surgery to clip the aneurysm left her blind in one eye. During her long recovery process she started a food blog. At the end of each chapter she shares recipes that alternate between simple, favorite dishes and more involved ones. It’s that unpretentiousness that really endears her to me. She doesn’t think she was particularly brave in getting through an unwanted illness; nor does she think the perfect almond macaroon or cherry clafoutis is beyond anyone’s capability. Instead, she gives a glimpse into an ordinary life turned upside down and the foods that helped her regain a zest for life. Have you read any of these? Which one takes your fancy? Without further ado, I present to you my 15 favorite non-fiction books read in 2015. I’m a memoir junkie so many of these fit under that broad heading, but I’ve dipped into other areas too. I give two favorites for each category, then count down my top 7 memoirs read this year. Note: Only four of these were actually published in 2015; for the rest I’ve given the publication year. Many of them I’ve already previewed through the year, so – like I did yesterday for fiction – I’m limiting myself to two sentences per title: the first is a potted summary; the second tells you why you should read this book. (Links given to full reviews.) A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenberg (2009): Wizenberg reflects on the death of her father Burg from cancer, time spent living in Paris, building a new life in Seattle, starting her food blog, and meeting her husband through it. Each brief autobiographical essay is perfectly formed and followed by a relevant recipe, capturing precisely how food is tied up with memories. Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table by Ruth Reichl (2001): Reichl traces the rise of American foodie culture in the 1970s–80s (Alice Waters and Wolfgang Puck) through her time as a food critic for the Los Angeles Times, also weaving in personal history – from a Berkeley co-op with her first husband to a home in the California hills with her second after affairs and a sticky divorce. Throughout she describes meals in mouth-watering detail, like this Thai dish: “The hot-pink soup was dotted with lacy green leaves of cilantro, like little bursts of breeze behind the heat. … I took another spoonful of soup and tasted citrus, as if lemons had once gone gliding through and left their ghosts behind.” Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field by John Lewis-Stempel (2014): Lewis-Stempel is a proper third-generation Herefordshire farmer, but also a naturalist with a poet’s eye. Magical moments and lovely prose, as in “The dew, trapped in the webs of countless money spiders, has skeined the entire field in tiny silken pocket squares, gnomes’ handkerchiefs dropped in the sward.” Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane: This new classic of nature writing zeroes in on the language we use to talk about our environment, both individual words – which Macfarlane celebrates in nine mini-glossaries alternating with the prose chapters – and the narratives we build around places, via discussions of the work of nature writers he admires. Whether poetic (“heavengravel,” Gerard Manley Hopkins’s term for hailstones), local and folksy (“wonty-tump,” a Herefordshire word for a molehill), or onomatopoeic (on Exmoor, “zwer” is the sound of partridges taking off), his vocabulary words are a treasure trove. Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith by Kathleen Norris (1998): In few-page essays, Norris gives theological words and phrases a rich, jargon-free backstory through anecdote, scripture and lived philosophy. This makes the shortlist of books I would hand to skeptics to show them there might be something to this Christianity nonsense after all. My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer by Christian Wiman (2013): Seven years into a cancer journey, Wiman, a poet, gives an intimate picture of faith and doubt as he has lived with them in the shadow of death. Nearly every page has a passage that cuts right to the quick of what it means to be human and in interaction with other people and the divine. Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life by Hermione Lee (2013): Although Penelope Fitzgerald always guarded literary ambitions, she was not able to pursue her writing wholeheartedly until she had reared three children and nursed her hapless husband through his last illness. This is a thorough and sympathetic appreciation of an underrated author, and another marvellously detailed biography from Lee. Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande (2014): A surgeon’s essential guide to decision-making about end-of-life care, but also a more philosophical treatment of the question of what makes life worth living: When should we extend life, and when should we concentrate more on the quality of our remaining days than their quantity? The title condition applies to all, so this is a book everyone should read. - The Year My Mother Came Back by Alice Eve Cohen: Wry and heartfelt, this is a wonderful memoir about motherhood in all its variations and complexities; the magic realism (Cohen’s dead mother keeps showing up) is an added delight. I recommend this no matter what sort of relationship, past or present, you have with your mother, especially if you’re also a fan of Anne Lamott and Abigail Thomas. - The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr: There is a wealth of practical advice here, on topics such as choosing the right carnal details (not sexual – or not only sexual – but physicality generally), correcting facts and misconceptions, figuring out a structure, and settling on your voice. Karr has been teaching (and writing) memoirs at Syracuse University for years now, so she’s thought deeply about what makes them work, and sets her theories out clearly for readers at any level of familiarity. - A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L’Engle (1971): In this account of a summer spent at her family’s Connecticut farmhouse, L’Engle muses on theology, purpose, children’s education, the writing life, the difference between creating stories for children and adults, neighbors and fitting into a community, and much besides. If, like me, you only knew L’Engle through her Wrinkle in Time children’s series, this journal should come as a revelation. - Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh (2014): “Terrible job, neurosurgery. Don’t do it.” – luckily for us, Henry Marsh reports back from the frontlines of brain surgery so we don’t have to. In my favorite passages, Marsh reflects on the mind-blowing fact that the few pounds of tissue stored in our heads could be the site of our consciousness, our creativity, our personhood – everything we traditionally count as the soul. - I Hate to Leave This Beautiful Place by Howard Norman (2013): Norman has quickly become one of my favorite writers. You wouldn’t think these disparate autobiographical essays would fit together as a whole, given that they range in subject from Inuit folktales and birdwatching to a murder–suicide committed in Norman’s Washington, D.C. home and a girlfriend’s death in a plane crash, but somehow they do; after all, “A whole world of impudent detours, unbridled perplexities, degrading sorrow, and exacting joys can befall a person in a single season, not to mention a lifetime.” - Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man by Bill Clegg (2010): Through this book I followed literary agent Bill Clegg on dozens of taxi rides between generic hotel rooms and bar toilets and New York City offices and apartments; together we smoked innumerable crack pipes and guzzled dozens of bottles of vodka while letting partners and family members down and spiraling further down into paranoia and squalor. He achieves a perfect balance between his feelings at the time – being out of control and utterly enslaved to his next hit – and the hindsight that allows him to see what a pathetic figure he was becoming. And my overall favorite nonfiction book of the year: 1. The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander: In short vignettes, beginning afresh with every chapter, Alexander conjures up the life she lived with – and after the sudden death of – her husband Ficre Ghebreyesus, an Eritrean chef and painter. This book is the most wonderful love letter you could imagine, and no less beautiful for its bittersweet nature. What were some of your best nonfiction reads of the year? One of my goals with this blog is to have one convenient place where I can gather together all my writing that has appeared in disparate online locations. To that end, once a month I provide links to all book reviews I’ve published elsewhere, with a rating (below each description) and a taster so you can decide whether to read more. A few exceptions: I won’t point out my Kirkus Indie, BlueInk or Publishers Weekly reviews since I don’t get a byline. In Search of Mary: The Mother of All Journeys by Bee Rowlatt: A BBC journalist and mother of four sets out, baby in tow, to trace the steps of Mary Wollstonecraft in Norway and France. A follow-up trip to California is a little off-topic, but allows Rowlatt to survey the development of feminism over the last few centuries. This isn’t as successful a bibliomemoir as many I’ve read in recent years, such as Rebecca Mead’s My Life in Middlemarch or Samantha Ellis’s How to Be a Heroine, but for readers interested in engaging in the ongoing debate about how women can balance work life with motherhood, and especially for any women who have attempted traveling with children, it’s a fun, sassy travelogue. Italy Invades: How Italians Conquered the World by Christopher Kelly and Stuart Laycock: Proceeding alphabetically from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, the authors give a comprehensive picture of Italians’ global reach through one- to five-page snapshots. There are many familiar names here, such as Caesar, Garibaldi and Marco Polo. Along with exploration, some major reasons for historical crossover were trade, war, colonialism and immigration. At times it feels as if the authors are grasping at straws; better to skip one-paragraph write-ups altogether and focus instead on the countries that have extensive links with Italy. Nonetheless, this is a lively, conversational book full of surprising facts. Why You Won’t Go to Hell by Benjamin Vande Weerdhof Andrews: In a well-structured argument, Andrews prizes empirical thinking, rejects the supernatural, and affirms the possibility of godless morality. His central thesis is that religion doesn’t evolve to keep pace with society and so holds humanity back. The book’s tone is too often defensive, often in response to included website comments, and there are some failures of accuracy and fairness. Ultimately, though, this could be an inspirational book for atheists or believers, prompting both groups to question their assumptions and be willing to say “I don’t know.” Readers of Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens will be particularly drawn to the book, but others should take a chance on it too. Cultured Food for Health by Donna Schwenk: When Schwenk started eating cultured foods in 2002, she had diabetes, high blood pressure, and a premature newborn. Keen to see if good bacteria could help with her medical problems, she started introducing the “healing powerhouse” of kefir (a fermented milk product resembling thin yogurt), kombucha (bubbly tea), and cultured vegetables into her diet, and soon reaped the rewards. About a quarter of the book is background information about probiotic foods. Bullet-pointed lists of health benefits, along with an alphabetical inventory of the diseases that cultured foods can treat, should prove helpful. The rest of the book is devoted to recipes, most vegetarian. Three Simple Questions: Being in the World, But Not of It by Charlie Horton: Horton, trained as a social worker, was diagnosed with cerebellar degeneration in 1988. It has gradually affected his speech and movement. Despite having lived with disability for nearly three decades, he declares, “the world I live in is rich, and my spirit is young.” Here he documents how he deals with depression and physical limitations through guided meditations that bring him closer to God. Although he comes from a Christian perspective, he writes about spirituality in such inclusive terms that his work should speak to people of any faith. Middle Passage: The Artistic Life of Lawrence Baker by Louis B. Burroughs, Jr.: This ghostwritten autobiography of an African-American artist is not only an evocative, eventful life story that moves from the Jim Crow South to the North, but also a forceful artist’s manifesto. Burroughs writes in Baker’s voice, a decision that works surprisingly well. The title is a powerful reference to the slave trade. Indeed, Burroughs consciously crafts Baker’s autobiography as an “up from slavery” narrative reminiscent of Richard Wright and Maya Angelou – with ‘slavery’ in this case being poverty and racism. 40 Sonnets by Don Patterson: All but one of the poems in this new book have the sonnet’s traditional 14 lines; “The Version” is a short prose story about writing an untranslatable poem. However, even in the more conventional verses, there is a wide variety of both subject matter and rhyme scheme. Topics range from love and death to a phishing phone call and a footpath blocked off by Dundee City Council. A few favorites were “A Powercut,” set in a stuck elevator; “Seven Questions about the Journey,” an eerie call-and-response; and “Mercies,” a sweet elegy to an old dog put to sleep. There weren’t quite enough stand-outs here for my liking, but I appreciated the book as a showcase for just how divergent in form sonnets can be. Without You There Is No Us by Suki Kim: This is a quietly gripping book even though not much of moment happens over Kim’s five months teaching young men at a missionary-run college in Pyongyang. She was in a unique position in that students saw her as ethnically one of their own but she brought an outsider’s perspective to bear on what she observed. Just before she flew back to the States in 2011, Kim Jong-Il died, an event she uses as a framing device. It could have represented a turning point for the country, but instead history has repeated itself with Kim Jong-un. Kim thus ends on a note of frustration: she wants better for these young men she became so fond of. A rare glimpse into a country that carefully safeguards its secrets and masks its truth. Alive, Alive Oh!: And Other Things that Matter by Diana Athill: Diana Athill turns 98 on December 21st. Apart from “Dead Right,” however, this collection is not primarily concerned with imminent death. Instead Athill is still grateful to be alive: marveling at a lifetime of good luck and health and taking joy in gardening, clothing, books, memories and friendships. Six of the 10 essays originally appeared elsewhere. The collection highlight is the title piece, about a miscarriage she suffered in her forties. Another stand-out is “The Decision,” about moving into a retirement home in her nineties. This doesn’t live up to her best memoirs, but is an essential read for a devoted fan, and a consolation given she will likely not publish anything else (though you never know). [For first-time Athill readers, I’d recommend starting with Somewhere Towards the End, followed by Stet, about her work as a literary editor.] I also post reviews of most of my casual reading and skimming on Goodreads: The Weightless World by Anthony Trevelyan: This debut novel blends postcolonial bureaucracy with steampunk zaniness. The setup is familiar enough: businessmen head overseas to take financial advantage of a former colony, puzzle over unfamiliar customs, and by the end are chastened but gain a clearer sense of values. Narrator Steven Strauss is the personal assistant to Raymond Ess, an entrepreneur with a history of mental illness. Their aviation company has gone bust; Strauss is to accompany Ess to India and keep him occupied by looking for an anti-gravity machine. Not anchored by either current events or convincing fantasy, the plot suffers in comparison to works by Geoff Dyer or Nick Harkaway. Despite entirely serviceable writing and a gravity-defying theme, it never really takes off. My Confection: Odyssey of a Sugar Addict by Lisa Kotin: 1978. Twenty-one-year-old mime goes to macrobiotic rehab to recover from sugar addiction. Fails. Shows signs of being a sex addict as well. Pared down to headlines, that’s how this fairly rambling memoir about Kotin’s relationships with food, family, lovers, and career opens. I kept waiting for a turn, some moment of revelation, when Kotin’s binge eating would be solved. Still, her recreation of her obsessive younger self can be pretty funny and charming, and her family sounds a bit like the Sedaris clan. I found this a bit dated, but others may find the time period and Jewish family background more evocative. Good on Paper by Rachel Cantor: I’m going to chalk this one up to blurb inflation. The writing is lively and the plot well crafted, with quirky postmodern touches, but the novel as a whole did not live up to my absurdly high expectations: it’s really nothing like A.S. Byatt’s Possession. It’s 1999 and Shira Greene is a failed translator from the Italian, now working as a temp in New York City and raising her daughter Andi with the help of her gay, Pakistani co-parent, Ahmad. One day she gets a call from Romei, a Nobel Prize-winning Italian poet who wants her to translate his new work, a version of Dante’s Vita Nuova that focuses on his relationship with his ill wife – and eventually starts to comment on Shira’s own life in surprising ways. Water Sessions by James Lasdun: Wonderful poems from a severely underrated writer. The British Lasdun has relocated to small-town upstate New York, where he’s learned the spiritual worth of manual labor. There are such interesting rhyme schemes and half-rhymes throughout. One of the most striking poems, “Thing One and Thing Two,” compares human and animal sexuality in a rather disturbing way. The title sequence is a dialogue between a patient and a therapist, discussing what went wrong in a relationship and how arguments are never ‘about’ the thing that started it. The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks: A retelling of the life of King David from the perspective of the prophet Nathan. The naming takes some getting used to, but the stories – from gory massacres to moments of triumph – are recognizable from the Old Testament. What makes Brooks’s take unique is the different points of view it shows and the ways it subtly introduces doubt about David’s carefully cultivated image. It’s sensual historical fiction, full of rich descriptive language. Strangely unmemorable for me, perhaps because the storyline is just too familiar. Brooks doesn’t offer a radical reinterpretation but sows small seeds of doubt about the hero we think we know. (Full review in Jan/Feb 2016 issue of Third Way magazine.) When I Die: Lessons from the Death Zone by Philip Gould: Gould may be familiar to British readers as a key strategist of the New Labour movement and one of Tony Blair’s advisors. In 2008 he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer and chose to pay for private treatment at New York’s Sloan-Kettering hospital instead of going for a radical operation through the NHS – a fateful decision. Gould’s own account is fairly short, about 140 pages, but it’s supplemented by short reminiscences from his wife and two daughters. Daughter Georgia’s, especially, is a very good blow-by-blow of his final week. All royalties from the book went to the National Oesophago-Gastric Cancer Fund. Twain’s End by Lynn Cullen: “Twain’s End” was a possible name for the Clemens house in Connecticut, but it’s also a tip of the hat to Howards End and an indication of the main character’s impending death. In January 1909, when the novel opens, Samuel Clemens, 74, is busy dictating his autobiography and waiting for Halley’s Comet, the heavenly body that accompanied his birth, to see him back out. His secretary, Isabel Lyon, is 45 and it’s no secret that the two of them are involved. I love how the novel shifts between the perspectives of several strong female characters yet still gives a distinct portrait of Clemens/Twain. Interestingly, I found that it helped to have visited the Twain house in Connecticut – I could truly picture all the scenes, especially those set in the billiard room and conservatory. Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field by John Lewis-Stempel: Lewis-Stempel is a proper, third-generation Herefordshire farmer, but also a naturalist with a poet’s eye. His day job might involve shooting rabbits, cutting hay and delivering lambs, but he still finds the time to notice and appreciate wildlife. He knows his field’s flowers, insects and birds as well as he knows his cows; he gets quiet and close enough to the ground to watch a shrew devouring beetles. June and July are the stand-out chapters, with some truly magical moments. When his mower breaks on a stone, he has to cut the hay by hand, returning him to a centuries-gone model of hard labor. All delivered in the loveliest prose. Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg: A strong debut novel about personal and community responses to tragedy. Clegg’s multivocal approach works quite well, though there are perhaps a few too many voices diluting the mixture. I like how the revelations of what really happened that night before the wedding to cause the fatal house fire come gradually, making you constantly rethink who was responsible and what it all means. The small-town Connecticut setting is a good one, but I’d question the decision to set so much of the book in Washington, where the bereaved June drives on a whim. For a tragic story, it’s admirably lacking in melodrama. A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenberg: Foodoir extraordinaire! I liked this even better than Delancey, which is a terrific book about opening a pizza restaurant in Seattle with her husband. Here we get the prequel: the death of her father Burg from cancer, time spent living in Paris, building a new life in Seattle, starting her now-famous food blog (Orangette), and meeting her husband Brandon through it. Each brief autobiographical essay is perfectly formed and followed by a relevant recipe, capturing precisely how food is tied up with her memories. Wizenberg’s very fond of salad, but also of cake, and every recipe is full-on in terms of flavors and ingredients. Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons: This was a random library book sale purchase, chosen almost entirely for the title. I set aside my usual dislike of child narrators and found an enjoyable voice-driven novella about a feisty ten-year-old who loses both her parents (good riddance to her father, at least) and finds her own unconventional family after cycling through the homes of some truly horrid relatives. Just as an example, her maternal grandmother sends her out to work picking cotton. The book is set in the South, presumably in the 1970s or 80s, so it’s alarming to see how strong racial prejudice still was. The Ecco Book of Christmas Stories, edited by Alberto Manguel: I read this over several years, a handful each holiday season. There are some very unusual choices, including some that really have hardly anything to do with Christmas (e.g. one by Bessie Head). Still, it’s a nice book to have to hand, even if just to skip through. Manguel strikes a good balance between well-known short story writers, authors you might never think to associate with Christmas, and fairly obscure works in translation. Four favorites: “A Christmas Memory,” Truman Capote (overall favorite); “Christmas Is a Sad Season for the Poor,” John Cheever; “The Zoo at Christmas,” Jane Gardam; and “O’Brien’s First Christmas,” Jeanette Winterson.

Books on LGBTQ+ topics and issues are a great way to understand and celebrate the queer community, learning more about the achievements and struggle for liberation. In this article, we've curated a collection of our top 15 favourites, with all our recommendations available to buy online in the UK on Amazon and eBay. These books are perfect for educational use, or to just to add to your shelf, from stories of gender transition, to ideas for LGBTQ+ inclusivity at schools and celebrations of the work the community has done to support other causes too. So, whether you're searching for fiction, memoirs or graphic novels, we've ranked the best books that celebrate the diversity and strength of the LGBTQ+ community. A recommendation service that carefully researches each product and consults with experts across many disciplines. We are constantly creating new content to provide the best shopping experience from choosing ‘cosmetics’ to ‘food and drink’, ‘home appliances’ to ‘kids and baby’ products, reaching users all across the United Kingdom. The products and services listed are ranked independently by the editorial team based on the points mentioned in our thoroughly researched buying guide (as of 16-01-2023). Picking a book on LGBTQ+ issues isn't as simple as it may sound. You'll need to think about the kind of book you most enjoy and what you hope to gain from the reading experience. In this section, we'll take a look at the various kinds of books that are out there to help make your decision easier. Whether you prefer fantasy stories or facts, there are LGBTQ+ books out there to suit all reading preferences and genres. If learning the facts are your priority, you might want to choose a non-fiction book that discusses the history of the gay liberation movement or a particular element of the LGBTQ+ kaleidoscope. Non-fiction LGBTQ+ books can teach us information about particular events and campaigns, or give a broad, data-centred representation of the queer community as a whole. The personal memoirs of gay, bisexual, queer, transgender and non-binary writers present life from a personal perspective. Choosing a memoir puts you right inside the author's head, allowing you to share in the highs and lows of their lived experience. Great if you are the kind of reader who likes a true story, but also the compelling narrative style often typical of autobiographies. These books provide insight into the lives of others, whether it's one you've never discovered before, or one you can relate to. For lovers of imaginative fiction, novels with an LGBTQ+ storyline are a good call. Sometimes LGBTQ+ themes are central to the plot, other times the sexuality or gender identity of the characters is simply incidental. Either way, the excitement or emotions of the plot will keep you racing from chapter to chapter. LGBTQ+ fiction is a good pick if you love escapism and want to add more books with queer characters to your shelves. Whether it's a particular event, moment in time or area of LGBTQ+ life, of course you'll want to pick a book that suits your interests. Below we've divided your decision into possible categories. Try to decide whether you want to read about similar experiences to your own, or learn about life from a different point of view. Picking a book you can relate to can serve as a reminder that others are living through similar stresses, strains and triumphs, helping to build a greater sense of community. On the other hand, opting for a a read which looks at life from an unfamiliar angle can help you to broaden your perspective. Learning about the lives of others fosters greater empathy and understanding for experiences outside of our own. If you want to learn more about concepts of gender and gender fluidity, you may want to choose a book that discusses transgender or non binary experiences. Addressing this topic from a non-cisgendered viewpoint encourages the reader to consider gender from a less rigid perspective. This could be a book that is specifically explores the topic of gender, or approaches the idea more subtly. For example, through a novel with transgender, non binary or gender fluid characters. Among the fifteen LGBTQ+ books we've picked are reads dedicated to particular moments in history, such as the Stonewall riots, or the UK Miners' Strike of the 1980s which had great support from the lesbian and gay community. Choosing a book like this allows you to build your knowledge of LGBTQ+ struggles and successes. Historical reads can help to provide context and deepen your understanding of key events and prominent figures. If you're a teacher, you may be seeking a book aimed at transforming your classroom into an LGBTQ+ friendly space. This is a great way to make sure students feel comfortable talking about queer issues around their peers. Check out books with ideas for activities which bring diversity of gender and sexuality into the classroom in a variety of ways. If you are a visual learner, check out books with photos or illustrations. Images have a way of really sticking in our minds, and can help to bring particular events and issues to life. Photos especially are a great way to introduce us to the important names and faces relevant to certain time periods. Graphic novels are a similarly memorable pick, as they contain quirky illustrations to emphasise their message. For those who already love stories brought to life in cartoon form, an LGBTQ+ graphic novel is surely the ideal option! Consider whether the book you're choosing is available in hardcover or paperback. Hardcover books are sturdy and strong, and look great on shelves or coffee tables, but can be cumbersome to lug around with you. So, these perhaps aren't the best pick to read on your journey to work. Paperbacks are lightweight and can be bent and squished with relatively minimal damage. They are a good choice if you like to carry the book you're reading on the go, as they will fit easily in your backpack or handbag. Keen to live a more minimal lifestyle? eBooks are a good choice as they reduce the amount of stuff crowding your shelves. The downside is that you'll be looking at a screen, but eBooks really can't be rivalled in terms of space saving and the sheer number you can keep on one device. Audiobooks are a top pick for multi-taskers, or those who prefer to switch off after a busy day's work. This way, you can sit back have the story read to you in the dulcet tones of a professional narrator. Click to purchase We Are Everywhere A Rich Photographic History of LGBTQ+ Liberation Beyond the Gender Binary A Pocket Sized Re-Imagining of Gender Dr Ellie Barnes MBE and Dr Anna Carlile How to Transform Your School into an LGBT+ Friendly Place Making Education Fairer, Safer and More Open Meg-John Barker and Julia Scheele Queer: A Graphic History A Boldly Illustrated Graphic Novel Celebrating Queer History Jason Baumann and Edmund White The Stonewall Reader LGBTQ History Told Through Library Archives, Articles and Essays Pride: The Unlikely Story of the True Heroes of the Miner's Strike The Heartwarming Book Behind the Hit Film Tipping The Velvet A Nuanced Exploration of Lesbian Love and Gender Fluidity Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us A Thought-Provoking Un-Picking of Traditional Gender Roles Boy Erased: A Memoir of Identity, Faith and Family A Deeply Moving Story Beautifully Told A Unique Tale of Sexuality and Gender This wonderful book was put together by the creators behind the Instagram account @lgbt_history. It's a smashing read, giving even total novices a solid background on queer activism, with European roots reaching back into the 1800s. The narrative weaves a compelling tale and the high-quality photographs illustrate the story marvellously, making this a pertinent choice of book if you're the kind of reader who enjoys visual stimulation to supplement your learnings. Heartwarming, uplifting and fierce! Alok Vaid-Menon is a powerhouse when it comes to owning one's gender identity and this book is a glorious pocket-sized guide to both understanding your own and respecting others. This is a hugely important read, particularly in light of the current UK government's questionable approach to transgender and non-binary rights. Recommended by artists such as Sam Smith and Billy Porter, this book encourages the reader to see gender as a magnificent rainbow spectrum, rather than in black and white. It is truly a mood-boosting read that will inspire readers to embrace fluidity in themselves and others. Schools are a brilliant place to start when it comes to helping young LGBTQ+ people have the confidence to live their truest lives. Maybe you're a teacher hoping to centre queer stories in the classroom, or know someone working in education who has similar goals. This far-reaching and practical guide tackles the task of making classrooms LGBTQ+ friendly, with simple suggestions and bold ideas you can easily achieve in your own school and community. A top pick for heads of year, or those wanting ways to inspire their management team. Queer: A Graphic History, is a top choice for visual learners and fans of comic books and graphic art. Packed with clear statistics, memorable quotes and infographics, the bite-sized information will help readers to digest facts. A useful and informative read, this book is a well-rounded exploration of queer theory and the lived experience of the LGBTQ+ community. It's written by activist and academic Meg-John Barker and brought to life with drawings from illustrator Jules Scheele. It's been 51 years since the Stonewall uprising kickstarted the gay pride movement in the USA, the effects of which are now seen and celebrated around the world. Yet, more than 70 countries still criminalise and punish homosexuality with imprisonment and death. This book is a curated collection of essays, diary accounts and news articles from the years leading up to the riots, and those that followed. It turns the spotlight onto the less-loudly-celebrated figures from the queer liberation movement, like Ernestine Eckstine, an openly gay activist who was one of few Black women demanding LGBTQ rights in the 1960s. For readers who love a true story, you can't get much better than this! Pride is a fun, frolicksome read with an intensely powerful message. Prepare to be deeply moved by the beauty of two marginalised communities coming together to support one an other at a time when breaking from the 'norm' was punishable with violence and hatred. The campaign of 'Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners' shows solidarity between the queer community and the miners striking against Margaret Thatcher's plans, inspiring feelings of togetherness and friendship, regardless of cultural and class background. This book is an excellent choice if you're after a sumptuously-told novel with vivid descriptions, multiple plot-lines and memorable characters. The story is set between London and Whitstable in the 1890s, telling the tale of a woman who develops a relationship with a male impersonator. This book is thrilling at times, hilarious in others and explicit regarding the sexual relationship between its main characters. It toys with the notion of gender identity, and is ultimately a cracking good read! Kate Bornstein's book is one that has inspired millions of readers who don't feel any more at home on one side of the gender binary than the other. Kate's wit and warmth are celebrated in the trans community and this book gives voice to the experiences she has lived. It's partly a coming-of-age tale and at the same time an uplifting and inspiring call to arms. With emphasis on trans and non-binary joy, it's a powerful and thought-provoking manifesto for gender equality and freedom. This heart-wrenching memoir weaves together the themes of religion, personal identity and family relationships to create a touching, and at times horrifying, read. An account of a fundamentalist Christian childhood in a drab, oppressive Arkansas. The book explores Conley's personal terror at his own sexual desires, his experience of sexual assault and his parents' ultimatum; undergo conversion therapy or be ousted from the family and the community. Listed as one of the BBC's 'Top 100 Books that Shaped Our World', Virginia Woolf's Orlando is the story of a character we first meet as a man and then, generations later, as a woman. In this book, the matter of gender fluidity is simply stated as a fact, rather than the subject of scrutiny. Virginia Woolf's highly evocative writing style seductively captures the magic of an English winter, with its chilly tone infiltrating the segments set in the much hotter climes of what was once 'Constantinople'. A brilliant and timeless read, interwoven with themes of exoticism and mystery. While you're educating yourself on LGBTQ+ issues, why not take the opportunity to expand your bookshelf with more informative reads? Below we've linked you to some articles which will help you broaden your mind through the magic of reading. Discover more top ranking educational books you can enjoy alone, share with friends or even use as teaching resources. Whether you're buying a book for yourself, to help educate others, or to better understand the issues your LGBTQ+ friends and loved ones face, we think it's great you've decided to learn more on this bold, beautiful community! Author: Annie Hopkins No. 1：Leighton Brown｜We Are Everywhere No. 2：Alok Vaid-Menon｜Beyond the Gender Binary No. 3：Dr Ellie Barnes MBE and Dr Anna Carlile ｜How to Transform Your School into an LGBT+ Friendly Place No. 4：Meg-John Barker and Julia Scheele｜Queer: A Graphic History No. 5：Jason Baumann and Edmund White｜The Stonewall Reader View Full Ranking When you purchase products mentioned in the article, part of the sales may be returned to mybest. 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In today’s Theatre Artists Fund interview series, we are speaking to Loussin-Torah Pilikian to find out how the pandemic has affected her and why she applied for the grant. Loussin-Torah is an actress with Represent Theatre, a professional theatre company of people from lower socio-economic backgrounds that opens up the industry to those for whom it is currently inaccessible and the preserve of the privileged. You can read her story below. How has the pandemic affected you? The pandemic has meant that unfortunately, I’ve lost my job. We were eight rehearsals into our season. It was between March and June and were going to do three contemporary plays at Jackson’s Lane Theatre, The Vaults and Waterloo East Theatre and unfortunately it had to come to stop which meant that my pay also had to come to a stop. Why did you apply for the Theatre Artists Fund grant? The pandemic has had a huge effect on my mental health, my health and my general routine. It was crazy to go from doing intense theatre to doing nothing at all. My director sent it through to our team and immediately I realised this is ideal for me because I’ve been working in theatre since last year. I’ve always been in creative arts and youth arts. Even before my season with Represent Theatre started, I was running my own events night called Wombxnity which was music, singing, improv, dance, movement, a celebration, and safe space for the feminine expression. All genders were welcome but it was a safe space for fem and non-binary people, which was amazing. This was once a month at Doña, Stoke Newington. I was also headlining a number of open mic nights and it was the beginning of my performance career really taking off so it was hard for all of that to come to a stop. This is how I’ve been making my living, finding new opportunities and honing my craft so it made sense to apply for a grant like this. It was sad to come off Universal Credit and be self-employed with Represent Theatre and then have to go straight back onto Universal Credit. What does getting this grant mean to you? Getting the grant was a beautiful surprise. I applied for it and let the thoughts go because I didn’t want to put all my emotional energy into wishing and hoping. A few weeks later I received an email saying that I had received the grant. It means the absolute world that there are organisations like yours that are creating funds for this valuable area of work. For me, theatre has always been about reflecting the perspective of society back onto the people and it’s really important that we have our arts to do that. When you go to a poetry night, people find a safe space to explore their own expression. It can be really valuable and have a positive effect on your mental health. I’ve found that not having that space can be really difficult for people, whether you are in the arts already or not. It’s meant that I have breathing space… That there’s just a little less pressure to do so much during a national health crisis. It’s been an absolute blessing. What will theatres re-opening mean to you? When the theatres do reopen, it will mean that I get my job back again, and not only my job, but the space in life, that keeps me going. The space that I love. Theatre is medicine if I’m honest. To be able to work with such a tight-knit group of people and create and tell stories that otherwise wouldn’t be told. As Represent Theatre, we are a diverse cast of six people from working-class and black-mixed heritage backgrounds and it happens we were all selected for this season. We are waiting to see what happens but it means that storytelling can continue and again, people get their medicine back. If you’d like to apply for the second round of the Theatre Artists Fund or if you’d like to donate, please click the buttons below.

To start a company, you need a big vision, or at least that's what they say. Which is why people are usually surprised when they hear that, up until October 2018, I didn't have one. When I started Ladies Learning Code I was 23, and it was one of those "scratch your own itch" ideas. I had been teaching myself to code for a while, but it was tough, so I created exactly the organization that I would have wanted when I first started learning. Six months later, when I started HackerYou, I was 24. Our first course sold out, and then our next one sold out, and then we created an Immersive program and it also sold out, and then people got great jobs, so we just kept doing more. We didn't run a single ad until 2016, and even today, our marketing budget is tiny compared to other companies our size. We grew quickly between 2012 and today because people told their friends about us, and that's still our best source of students. Over the years I've gotten calls from venture capitalists and private equity guys (I say guys because they've all been guys), and they'd always ask about my vision. They wanted to know if I saw a big B2B corporate training play like General Assembly, or if we were going to expand into 10 cities in the next year, or when we would get into online training ("when you have an online offering, valuations are just better"). I'd always tell them that we're intensely focused on the quality of our programs and our students' experience and we don't have plans to expand quicker than felt natural. The call would always end shortly after that. As I've written about before, when I returned to work full-time after taking my second part-time parental leave, I was a different entrepreneur. I was more ambitious, but I was also more confident, based on HackerYou's results, that what we are doing is really special and should be shared more broadly. On October 6, 2018, it finally came to me. I remember what I was doing, exactly where I was sitting, the moment I realized. If I wanted HackerYou to grow, then we have to train more students at once. And rather than opening locations in 10 different cities, I thought, "Why not buy a campus, and train hundreds or even thousands of students at a time?" It would be an opportunity to craft a life-changing experience for our students on an even bigger scale, which has always been my passion. Creating life changing experiences also happens to be HackerYou's superpower. Once I realized where we were headed, I knew we had to change our name. My issues? I find the "Hacker" part needlessly aggressive, a holdover from a time when we as the tech community were trying to "reclaim" the word "hacker". (Spoiler alert: it didn't work.) We get emails and messages all the time from people who want help hacking their friend's Facebook account, and whenever I share my email at the bank or over the phone, I often hear "Oh, hmm. That's an interesting email." The "You" part of HackerYou also stopped working for me a while ago. When we launched in 2012, it was a bit cheeky. We weren't a university or college, so the "You" was there to tell people that we're in the same category, but we're different. Today, we're a registered Private Career College and we have ambitions of being a force for change in today's higher education system. The "You" just feels childish to me now. Over the years, HackerYou has come to mean a lot. Despite its shortcomings as a name, it is a well-loved brand. Our alumni are so passionate about what we do and the community that we serve every day that I was nervous to share that we're going through a re-brand. However, everyone we've told our new name to so far has responded super positively. I am confident that we're going to be able to bring meaning to our new name even more easily, and soon it will feel like it's always been who we are. So, what is it? It's Juno. Juno, Juno College or Juno College of Technology. Those all work. It's easy to say and easy to spell, and it's meaningful to me. Juno's role in Roman mythology was the protector of the entire community, but especially the women. At HackerYou, we've always been passionate about supporting those who identify as women or non-binary as well as other minority groups, so the name just feels right. Juno was also obsessed with her community's wealth and financial well-being, which resonates deeply. We've been helping unemployed or underemployed young people move into exciting, creative, well-paying roles in tech for half a decade now. And we're just getting started. A re-brand is tough. Even though I know it's the right thing for the company and our community, I'm still nervous about it. You can help us by talking about it. If you'd like to go one step further, we're offering Limited Edition Juno t-shirts and crewnecks, on sale now until midnight on June 30th. They're Limited Edition because these colours and styles won't be offered again - they're special, just for launch. And all of the proceeds will go towards upgrading the HackerYou Alumni Slack community, so that our 700+ weekly active users can have access to more than 10,000 messages at a time. If you decide to buy a t-shirt or crewneck to support us, our entire community thanks you. Did we mention that they're ethically sourced and printed in Toronto? We'll be officially launching the Juno brand and new website in August 2019, so until then, we're still HackerYou. As for my vision? It's never been clearer.

This week: Spotify wraps the year with its podcasting Top 10. The Telegraph embraces Whatsapp. Accounting problems lead to boardroom losses at M&C Saatchi, plus backstage rumblings at This Morning and Radio 1’s first ever blind and non-binary presenters prepare to go on air this Christmas. Plus, in the Media Podcast Quiz, we reminisce about some of the worst TV of 2019. A PPM / Rethink Audio Production, produced by Peter Price and Matt Hill. Support us with a Voluntary Subscription Please help us to maintain The Media Podcast with Olly Mann as the most popular independent voice of the UK media industries – Click here to dedicate an episode or sign up for a voluntary subscription. Subscribe now for free Subscribe now for free to automatically receive the next episode of The Media Podcast as soon as it drops. Follow these links or search for us in your podcast app of choice

We’ve been taught for so long to see our bodies and our physical pleasure as sinful or shameful. The body is only an earthly thing, we’re told, and the earth is only something lowly that’s trodden beneath our feet; we should always be looking up to Heaven. This is how we come to forget that we are all children of earth and water, as well as air and fire. We deny our ‘Mother Earth’ while we exalt the ‘Heavenly Father’; yet both are aspects of the same Divinity. As trans and/or non-binary Christians, we often carry a double or triple burden of body shame, over and above other people’s. Society tells us either that we’re in the ‘wrong’ bodies, or that our inability to accept our ‘God-given’ bodies means that something is wrong with our brains, or sometimes both. The small daily rituals that we adopt to face the world as something that looks, and feels, a little closer to our true selves — binding, packing, tucking, make-up, hormones, or whatever they might be for each individual — often feel like dirty secrets that can’t be spoken aloud, and especially not in church. We fear ‘not passing’, and dread being exposed as fakes. But who are we to imagine that we can hide anything from our Creator? We are seen; we are heard; we are called by name; and we are valued and loved more than we can imagine. When we’re among friends who walk the same path, why shouldn’twe speak of these body-centred acts? Shouldn’t the House of God be the place where we feel most at home, rather than yet another place where we feel forced to hide our real selves away? And are these rituals of ours really any more shameful, or any less acceptable, then the insulin taken daily by the diabetes patient or the hip replacement for someone living with arthritis? The Christ we follow is a Christ of the real and the practical: a Christ of everyday survival strategies, and the determination to keep on getting up from the floor. To us, Death-and-Resurrection is not merely a miracle that Jesus ‘performed’ for us at Easter, but a ritual that we keep on re-enacting day after day after day, as we keep coming out of the tomb of the false self that we once pretended to be. The emergence of a resurrection-body that even our nearest and dearest might struggle to recognise — just as Mary Magdalene knew the risen Jesus only by his voice — is, for us, no abstract ideal. We will rise again, we tell the trolls and the TERFs and the enbyphobic bullies and even those who resort to physical violence to keep us down. And again, and again. You can hate us or despise us, but you can’t put out our light…because our light is Divine. The Christ we follow is a Christ who sat down to eat with people on the margins of society. It’s far easier to envision him listening with compassion to his diverse collection of dinner guests, looking at them with loving eyes and sharing their joys and sorrows, than to imagine him monopolising the conversation or shaming them as ‘sinners’. Yet the Church that many of us grew up with is a place where we feel obliged to conform to the social norms of appearance, stay quiet, listen to one individual talking at length without interruption, and give generously to a faceless power structure without regard for whether we can afford it. We’re put down all too often, and told of our worthlessness, our powerlessness and our sinfulness. Isn’t this the opposite of what Jesus would have wanted? Didn’t he come so that we might have life in all its fullness? It’s probably no accident that the Church that many of us grew up with is becoming an empty shell, attended only by a few people in their seventies and eighties who cling on for the sake of tradition. Within the next two or three decades, most of the churches currently in existence in the West must either adapt or die. Disturbingly for those in power, to adapt might mean embracing Jesus as the radical, the rebel who broke the Sabbath and ate with sinners, the overturner of tables, and the wanderer in the wilderness. It might mean escaping the ‘death cult’ of the cold, damp building with its uncomfortable pews and its dated hymns, and inviting people in — the LGBTQ+ and non-binary people, the asylum-seekers and refugees, the people from gypsy and traveller families, the homeless people, the people with piercings and tattoos and unconventional hairstyles, the people with addiction problems, the people who listen to animals and talk to trees, the people with controversial views about God (and/or Goddess), and the people who aren’t willing to sit down and shut up and do as they’re told. Let’s face it: the Church needs people who are brave enough to speak their truth, whatever the cost. People for whom pretending to be someone they’re not, just to tick a box or meet someone else’s expectations, is not an option. People who accept the possibility of radical transformation, and understand that where miracles take place — and where the Resurrection happens — isn’t in the middle of anyone’s comfort zone. It’s at the rough, messy edges, where taboos are constantly being broken and prejudices challenged, that Jesus shows up in people’s lives and changes them forever. But for someone with all the trappings of power, that’s not an easy message to hear… Ashley Jay Brockwell Non-binary artivist, songworker, Timeweaver, author and consultant; Founder and CEO of Reconnecting Rainbows — Transforming LGBTQ+ Mental Health Read more of Brockwell's work here: Medium

I have to move. I am struggling because technically we’re supposed to be out today. We’re fighting, but I don’t know how much more fight I have in me. For years I’ve been telling y’all how tired I am and so now something has to give. I need to take a break from writing and it’s the first time in 3 full years that I’ve had to do that. I’m exhausted though and right now my mom needs as much strength as I can give her, so I need to focus on life stuff. I’m not sorry because I have been writing sporadically this year and I need to take care of myself, I need to fight for my life. I’m only writing this to ask you all to spare some good thoughts and prayers for my family as we move through this very rough and scary transition. Thank you so much for the support. See you when I’m back. Sending all my love, Devon J Hall There are several ways to help support this site, if you’re interested, it’s much appreciated. Thank you. Supporting this website means you’re also supporting a disabled mixed-race Black non-binary person from Surrey BC. Thank you so much for your efforts. It means the world to me and convinces me to keep going.

by Lucy Orr It’s easy to suppose that, with the rise of the alt-right in North America and an increasingly divided Europe the prognosis for an intelligent, informed and forward thinking discourse surrounding sexuality and bodies is poor. Watching recent bounds forward in legal and societal liberalism come under real and seemingly unopposed threat is no comfort for the artistic soul. Luckily there are those performers like Amada Palmer who, in a recent article, echoed what many of the marginalised in the world’s artistic communities are thinking and hoping: that there will, after the shock and awe, be a creative backlash bound to produce a new wave of subversive aesthetics and responses as we saw in response to the Reagan, Bush and Thatcher administrations. The mainstream media portends the Trump administration with the release of the newest TV adaptation of Margret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Though unsurprisingly helmed by a white male, there’s hope that it may jump start a painful discourse and critique of a white, heterosexual society dominated by men: those hounding and objectifying women and non-binary people through social media. The dystopian future depicted in Atwood’s novel, and in the recent HBO series Westworld (where sentient female robots are raped and murdered for pleasure), feels at this moment closer than ever with the disenfranchisement of women’s sexuality and the potential erosion of Roe vs. Wade in America. There’s about to be a war on every woman’s body, a war that will be fought on the fringes of society. Universal female foreboding has been unified and channeled into the March for Women which took place throughout the US, UK and around the world on January 21st, dwarfing the turn out for Trump’s inauguration the previous day. There was a tangible sense that those in attendance were bridging the continental divide, a show of international feminine solidarity totaling 670 marches worldwide with over 2 million in attendance. In the US these were the largest numbers seen at protests since the Vietnam War. In Edinburgh The Sick of the Fringe highlighted the vast range of performers addressing sexuality and a discourse of the body through performance. Romana Soutus’ performance of Hyena highlighted the caged and rabid female form, one which will now have to fight even harder for freedom and expression, the dissonant feminine howl a call to arms for a frightened female populous ultimately ready to resist this right-wing populist onslaught. In her recent book Tranny and interview in The Guardian Laura Jane Grace, lead singer of punk band Against Me! details her struggle with gender dysphoria and transphobia, but also suggests that now is not a time to panic. In the radical act of not losing hope, she is a hugely positive presence oozing self-esteem and unrepentant sexuality just like Christeene and her Edinburgh show Trigger, a “sex-positive pro-dirty celebration”. This artistic embracing of non-binary genders and the rejection of cisnormativity is something that the trolls on the alt-right seem terrified of. The hysterical closure of gender-neutral bathrooms under the suspicious auspices of female safety produces an atmosphere light years away from the Queer utopia imagined at Edinburgh in Callisto: A Queer Epic. John Berger’s death acts as a timely reminder of his fundamental writings on the male gaze. The language of images are more relevant than ever as we now have the prospect of a societal norm where is that male gaze magnified and transmitted across a variety of social media platforms. Be sure these are no longer safe spaces, with many women such as Lindy West and Leslie Jones opting to leave twitter under barrages of racist and misogynist fat shaming abuse. It shouldn’t be a surprise that Twitter has now become the communication tool of choice by Trump, as it favors the short angry sexist snarl. In Edinburgh, I saw the male gaze unwittingly undermined for a female one. John Berger suggested “Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.” Bea Roberts performance of Infinity Pool, where she used multimedia and found objects to unravel one woman’s desires and dysphoria with the mundane, in retrospect offers a telling insight into how those swathes of female Trump voters felt as they walked into the polling booths, fooling themselves that somehow different was better. The infamous footage of an unrepentant Trump’s physical mocking of a disabled journalist Serge Kovaleski and the rising death rate as ATOS unethically dismisses the claims of the sick, disabled and mentally venerable in the UK, might indicate an escalation of uncaring. We have every right to feel sad about this increasing emotional austerity. During the London festival performances the rise in hopelessness and depression will be addressed by the poignant but uplifting Black, by Le Gateau Chocolat & Psappha Ensemble, combatting feelings of despair at the future told in news of half-truths and dismal sound bites with love songs and harmonies. London will also play host to Brigitte Aphrodite’s My Beautiful Black Dog, dealing with mental health with a hopeful swagger. As was evident in Dancer at Edinburgh, a collaborative performance exploring the movement of able and disabled performers, it’s important not just to hear disabled voices talk about everyday limitations but life and art. Let’s hope these voices aren’t subdued in a daily struggle for subsistence. The arts are undeniably quick to respond to any form of political turmoil. The discourse surrounding the rise of populism and backlash against the establishment has been met by shock and cynicism by many on the liberal left, but this will quickly change and the prognosis for The Sick of the Fringe and its continuing encouragement of discourse and collaboration is bound to highlight how these troubling times can provoke performance and creativity, continuing an increasingly angry and passionate discourse around sexuality and the body. It is up to these emerging discourses to interrogate the new right-wing norms and never let them rest. We will undoubtedly be forced to fight for the fundamental human rights our current governments would take from us. It’s up to us to make this fight ours and grab it by the pussy!

Not only do we have the warm summer days to look forward to, but Pride Month is here! It’s a chance for LGBTQ+ communities and allies to come together to embrace their identities and celebrate the progress that has been made towards equal rights. As a brand, Protein World stands as an ally to our LGBTQ+ community by increasing awareness and spreading the message that love comes in all forms, and all love is beautiful! It’s the 21st century! LGBTQ+ inclusive workplaces should exist, right? All people are equal, all people deserve to work in an environment that supports their choices. We were shocked to find that “more than a third of LGBTQ+ staff still choose not to disclose their sexual orientation at work for fear of discrimination.” (Training Journal, 2021) The statistics sound bad, don’t they? And they are. But what sits behind the numbers is even worse. The many talented, valued members of staff hiding their true selves or living a lie in fear of judgement. This begs the question, where do those employers that wish to create diverse and inclusive businesses start? What can they do to lead the charge and be a voice for change? The answer lies in tackling uninformed ignorance and constantly challenging deep-rooted and innate ways of thinking in the workplace. This is crucial if we’re to see further progress and to avoid a tick-box approach. Creating a culture of diversity is not about emphasising the rights of a single community. It’s simply about being all-inclusive, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, political and religious views, or any other personal characteristics. Although we’ve come a long way since the 1960s, we still have a long way to go to abolish ignorance, harassment and discrimination in the workplace. Here are five actions employees and employers can consider to help create equality for LGBTQ workers: 1. Include pronouns in your internal manuals, training documents, social media accounts and e-signatures Imagine starting a new position, reading the training manuals and seeing pronouns next to all of your colleagues’ names. It’s a very small edit that takes less than a minute but will ease that LGBTQ+ person’s mind instantly, allowing them to feel relaxed, accepted and comfortable knowing this business understands inclusivity. Asking for someone’s preferred pronouns should be second nature, but for many it is an afterthought. This can put non-binary and transgender people in an uncomfortable situation and cause unnecessary trauma. This pride month consider adding all of your employees’ preferred pronouns to their email signature, to normalise not assuming someone’s gender. Showing your support on social media is arguably the most visible way to spread awareness. You can add your pronouns to your LinkedIn profile or get involved with Instagram’s latest feature, which allows you to add your gender identity to your profile. To do so, simply tap ‘Edit Profile’ below your profile information, then tap ‘Pronouns’ and fill in your defined words. Even if you’re cisgender, and you identify with the sex assigned to you at birth, adding these pronouns is an important show of solidarity as it normalises discussions around gender. 2. Remove the Male/Female signs from your toilets and embrace gender neutrality Going to the loo, might seem like a black & white process for many. The only problem some face is making it in time! However, for others it can be an uncomfortable experience when forced to choose between a male or female sign. Removing the gender choice may seem trivial, but for transgender and non-binary employees it is incredibly empowering. It reduces the everyday stress caused by gendered toilets and make it easier for all staff to find an available bathroom. 3. Book an LGBTQ+ speaker to educate your team and embrace gender neutrality What better time to hire an LGBTQ+ speaker, than pride month? When you book an LGBT speaker, you are investing in your workplace’s inclusivity. You are telling your LGBTQ+ staff that you care about their experiences, their happiness and their identity. An LGBTQ+ speaker will relate to their struggles, and open the eyes of their straight colleagues, leading to unity and understanding. 4. Mind your language We’re all familiar with office small talk, right? Chatting about the weekend, your family and partners is a conversation cisgender employees have most Monday mornings with ease. However, this can be an added stressor for non-binary & transgender workers as heteronormative statements such as “Does your husband surf?” can leave an LGBTQ+ employee in an awkward position if they don’t identify with being in a heterosexual relationship. Switch this statement for “Does your partner surf” to avoid pressuring your colleague into correcting you or feeling uncomfortable. Another phrase you can switch out is instead of saying “Ladies & Gentlemen” instead say “Hi everyone” avoiding a binary assumption. 5. Challenge your unconscious bias While this is a personal internal challenge, it can have enormously positive effects on your perception and actions when stepping foot into the office. Even if you feel like you don’t practise harmful behaviours, part of being an ally is also calling out unacceptable behaviour from friends and colleagues when you see or hear it. Essentially, we can all evoke positive change on a micro-level. Making sure recruitment panels are representative is a great place to start when tapping into unconscious biases especially within recruitment. It’s been proven that we hire people in our own image, so this is a really simple win. Wearing something small to show you can be approached to discuss an issue for example wearing a rainbow lanyard to increase your accessibility and openness. Having these visual cues on show does more to create a welcoming workplace than many other measures. Just knowing the allies are available goes a long way towards making everyone feel welcome and they act as a prompt to always challenge engrained thinking. So, what’s the key to ensuring your workplace is progressive? It’s about constant improvement and awareness – not doing some training and forgetting about it or writing a policy and filing it away. This is our opportunity to recognise, celebrate, and honour every member of the LGBTQ+ community. For your LGBTQ+ employees, inclusion can mean the difference between feeling understood and feeling excluded, emotions that can impact their confidence and performance. Self-assured LGBTQ+ staff are key to business innovation. To celebrate Pride Month we have created a new flavour to tickle your taste buds! “Tutti Fruiti” Slender blends the taste of summer with mango, pineapple & coconut aromas. Here’s a bonus Tropical Tutti Fruiti Smoothie Recipe (to check you’re still reading) enjoy! 1 Scoop Tutti Fruiti Slender Blend Powder 3/4 Cup Pineapple juice 1/2 Cup Light coconut milk 1 Cup Frozen mango 1 Cup Frozen pineapple - Grace Willoughby, The Protein World Team

What is Geek Girl Brunch? We are a meetup group of ladies who geek out together; usually mimosas are involved. Who can join Geek Girl Brunch? Identifying women, gender fluid, and non-binary people as long as they are comfortable with the “geek girl” label. All gender events do occur, but they are scheduled at the discretion of each chapter. What’s up with the themes on your blog and at brunches? We came up with themes because… they’re fun! Themes keep people interested and excited. It allows each and every geek girl brunch to be extra special, and you’ll always be looking forward to the next one. If we’re covering a theme close to your heart, you have more incentive to go. If not, you get to pass and have a diehard fan girl take that spot. Since we cater to a wide variety of geek girls, we like to take the opportunity to shine a spotlight on any given fandom. If you’re an expert on that fandom, we get to shine the spotlight on you! What should I wear? Every brunch is a special event to be celebrated, and half the fun of a celebration is in the planning of the outfit! Themes let you save yourself some of the headache of last-minute “what am I gonna wear?!,” by giving you an idea to work around. We get to very literally wear our geek pride on our sleeves. If your idea of theme appropriate is a printed t-shirt and jeans, awesome. Full body armor (maybe a little difficult to eat in), go for it! Both are fine unless otherwise noted, and you’ll always know up front if the theme calls for a special dress code. We ask only that you not wear anything vulgar or offensive. While we are an 18+ group, we are typically in a public setting and need to represent our brand in a non-offensive way. When in doubt, send us a pic. Also, it’s been a tradition in the past for some chapters to follow-up brunch with a bit of shopping and/or continued imbibing at another location, so if you are interested in continuing the party, do make sure those shoes are comfy! How often does Geek Girl Brunch meet? GGB chapters host brunches once a month. Some chapters also have special outings in lieu of or in addition to a monthly brunch. How do I know if I’m geeky enough? You can be a geek about ANYTHING. No one is a geek about EVERYTHING. You may even find new things to be geeky about during a monthly brunch. How can I join Geek Girl Brunch? Visit the chapter page for your local chapter of GGB to find out how to join! How do I start a Geek Girl Brunch Chapter in my area? We have chapters all over the world! If you are interested in starting a chapter where we are not currently active, send an email to email@example.com. Include your name, age, city and social media handles. Make sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter for updates on any chapters looking for new officers. What if I’m under 21? Geek Girl Brunch members must be 18+. That being said, brunch is brunch. If you can’t legally get liquored up, you can still partake in the pancakes! Just know that if we venture to a bar afterward, we’ll have to part ways. I want to sponsor Geek Girl Brunch. Hello, you beautiful, amazing person you! We’d love to have you sponsor us. GGB is the perfect opportunity to connect with multiple bloggers and get a lot of free advertising for your product across all social media platforms. If interested, shoot us an e-mail. Can you help me make a Geek Girl Brunch, but for men? Geek Girl Brunch was created out of necessity because geek culture can be hostile towards marginalized people. So although you may have no ill intentions, helping you create a male-only club would go against our mission of making sure there are safe spaces for under-represented populations to geek out together. 1 thought on “FAQ”

The Green Party is calling on the Government to rapidly respond to calls for constitutional transformation with Te Tiriti o Waitangi at the core - a move strongly backed by the Human Rights Commission. The key Green priority for Māori was among half a dozen unveiled at Waitangi today, as the party vowed to continue working with tangata whenua to honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi. "We are ready to do the mahi and with two more Green Māori MPs on board, we will ensure there is an iwi-led response to the big issues that disproportionately affect Māori in Aotearoa," said Green Party Co-leader Marama Davidson, who is Associate Minister for Housing and Minister for Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence. Other priorities include an iwi-led response to homelessness and family and sexual violence; protecting the rights of takatāpui; in particular trans, intersex, and non-binary people; and kaitiakitanga (stewardship) of whenua (land), awa (rivers) and moana (sea). One of the key priorities for the Greens will be ensuring a government response to the Matike Mai report, which is the independent Working Group on Constitutional Transformation. As many historical Treaty claims come to a close, there have been calls for a discussion around developing a constitutional framework with Te Tiriti at its core that recognised tino rangatiratanga, or Māori sovereignty. Professor Margaret Mutu and Dr Moana Jackson produced the Matike Mai report in 2016, based on hundreds of hui across the motu, which outlined a vision for constitutional transformation in Aotearoa. By 2040, it called for a new political system with Māori and the government sharing power, resources and responsibility for resources and social policy. "We will be pushing for a continuous response to the Matike Mai report, which is the independent Working Group on Constitutional Transformation," Davidson said. "A report which was developed as a model for an inclusive Constitution for Aotearoa based on tikanga and kawa, he whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Niu Tireni of 1895." On Thursday Governor-General Dame Patsy Reddy said she was "very happy" with the current situation, but if there was a shift to a republic at some point it was important one of the Treaty partners remained the head of state. "I think we have a good balance in the constitution at the moment. "Whether we become a republic or stay as a constitutional monarchy, it is important we continue that connection with our history." During a media stand-up on Friday on the tātahi (beach) at Paihia near Waitangi, Davidson said the question of becoming a republic was not the focus, rather looking for reform in a way that uplifts the authority of hapū and iwi. Whatever the people decided it was important the agreements under Te Tiriti were maintained, she said. "There are some whakaaro (thoughts) that becoming a republic would destroy that agreement and I think there is a good conversation to have, that no matter whether we are a republic or not we uphold the agreements in Te Tiriti for mana motuhake (self-determination)." The view is supported by the Human Rights Commission, which on Friday called for a written constitution that honoured Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and affirmed the pre-existing rights of tangata whenua to exercise their tino rangatiratanga and mana motuhake in all decision-making processes. Te Tiriti affirmed that tangata whenua had the inherent authority to exercise, maintain and develop their own tikanga and laws and provided non-Māori a tūrangawaewae in Aotearoa to live in co-existence with tangata whenua. "New Zealand is one of few countries without a written constitution," Chief Human Rights Commissioner Paul Hunt said. "This means the Government's human rights promises are less secure than they should be. "A constitution founded on Te Tiriti o Waitangi will help us build a vibrant inclusive democracy that protects everyone's human rights. "Matike Mai should be starting basis for this new constitution." Davidson also spoke out strongly in favour of the now-joint claim by Ngāi Tahu and Ngāti Kahungunu to share control and management of freshwater in their respective rohe (areas) with the Crown. "Kei te tautoko ahau," she said, stating she supported the claims. "The simple answer is Māori have always had kaitiaki (stewardship) of wai (water) in their rohe. Not only that but the mātauranga Māori (knowledge, science) built up over generations about how to heal our waters, which are making us sick, that sits with Māori but will benefit Aoteatora as a whole if we return those rights to Māori." Green MP Dr Elizabeth Kerekere will push for more equality within communities, specifically in Te Ao Māori. "We want to protect the rights of takatāpui in particular trans, intersex and non-binary people." As health spokesperson, a priority for Kerekere is creating an independent Māori health authority, as recommended by the Waitangi Tribunal and Simpson review last year. It would be funded by Government to support specific Māori health services, including Whānau Ora programmes and marae-based service delivery, she said. Education spokesman Teanau Tuiono said he would push the Government to acknowledge Māori as kaitiaki (stewards) of the whenua, awa, and moana through mātauranga (Māori knowledge/science). "This means we must ensure iwi, whānau and hapū have a say in decisions that affect them, by bettering relationships with Māori." Green Party priorities for Māori this term: 1. Iwi-led response to homelessness and family and sexual violence. 2. Ensuring iwi, whānau and hapū have a say in decisions that affect them. 3. Protecting the rights of takatāpui; in particular trans, intersex, and non-binary people. 4. Kaitiakitanga of whenua, awa and moana. 5. Ensuring a Government response to the Matike Mai Report. 6. Creating an independent Māori health authority.

Faly is a proud Malagasy/Chinese/Canadian, originally from Coquitlam, BC. As a queer mixed race creator, Faly is driven to tell scripted stories which showcase marginalized voices in a joyful way. Ever since she can remember, Faly has been singing, playing pretend, and creating fantastical stories. Since graduating from the Randolph College for the Performing Arts in Toronto, she has performed in seven provinces across Canada and been nominated for a Dora Mavor Moore Award for individual performance. Some of her favourite theatre credits include The Dream Catchers at The Charlottetown Festival, playing the title role in Alice In Pantoland at Neptune Theatre, starring as Juno in Juno's Reward at the Grand Theatre. Faly has a boundless curiosity for her work, and is constantly in class for comedy, acting, writing, and voice over. Some of her current studies include training in clown with Ken Hall, and in meisner with Playhouse Actor's North Studios. As the Program Associate for Write from the Hip with Nightwood theatre in 2021, Faly assisted in the dramaturgy of new plays for five female and non-binary writers. Outside of the professional realm, Faly volunteers as the Artistic Associate for a closed virtual arts community for artists and arts-lovers across Turtle Island from equity seeking groups, during which she has programmed, cast, and facilitated over 10 virtual play readings. Faly constantly works all across Canada, and is currently splits her time between Halifax (NS) and Vancouver (BC). When not acting or writing, she can be found playing ukulele and baking far too much sourdough bread.

2022 BarTur Photo Award alyssa schmidek for visura blog Dec 16, 2022 The f³-freiraum für fotografie presents the 2022 BarTur Photo Award winners from February 9-19, 2023 in Berlin, Germany. 2022 BarTur Photo Award Exhibition February 9-19, 2023 BERLIN, GERMANY- f³ – The Freiraum für Fotografie will exhibit the 2022 BarTur Photo Award winners from February 9-19, 2023. The $20,000 award is presented to photographers around the world who use their photography as a way to educate and bring attention to current global issues. The award categories include Climate Change, Unity and Diversity, and the newest addition: the Ann Lesley Bar-Tur Photo. Women, queer and non-binary photographers, and photographers from the Global South are given special attention as part of this award. The BarTur Photo Award was created in 2011 by Amnon and Armon Bar-Tur in memory of their late wife and mother, Ann Lesley Bar-Tur. According to the Bar-Tur Photo award website, “the award seeks work that is unique, compelling, and inspiring.” The goal of the BarTurn Photo Award exhibition is to highlight contemporary and original works from the nine award winners. Photojournalist Veronique De Viguerie received first prize for her project, Women are Amazing, documenting the country of Afghanistan for four years between 2003 and 2007. Her photos follow the rise of the Taliban and the experiences women faced during that time. By highlighting the women’s strength and their ability to overcome adversity, De Viguerie worked to challenge the stereotypical representation of women in Afghanistan. The eight other winners of the 2022 BarTur Photo Award are Kelly Beckta, Supratim Bhattacharjee, Chinmoy Biswas, Philip Cheung, Giacomo d'Orlando, Maroussia Mbaye, Espen Rasmussen, and Daniele Vita. The exhibition's opening night on February 8, 2023, at 7:00 pm will feature some of these award-winning photographers. This exhibition offers free admission to guests. About f³ – freiraum für fotografie f³ – freiraum für fotografie presents five to six exhibitions of international author photography per year on 200 square meters near Oranienplatz in Berlin-Kreuzberg. In addition, there are regular talks with photographers, discussion events, and workshops. With f³ , Berlin is getting a new place for photography that invites you to deal with current issues relating to the medium. The exhibitions in f³ – freiraum für fotografie set important content and aesthetic accents in the confusing flood of images and media of our day and get involved in the public discussion about social issues. Accompanying educational and information programs invite all visitors to delve deeper into the content and provide well-founded background information. On our website, you can find out about our current exhibitions and events at any time. We do not receive any institutional funding. We finance our exhibitions and events exclusively through your entrance fees, donations, membership fees, and project funding. We look forward to your visit!

Lush might be best known for its eco-friendly approach to the beauty and body care, not to mention its array of eye-catching bath bombs. But the brand has a long histroy of using its platform to advocate for social change. And its latest campaign is lending a hand in the fight to secure trans rights. As part of its 14-day #TransRightsAreHumanRights initiative, Lush has released an exclusive bath melt called Inner Truth that comes in the shape of a blue and pink heart, meant to evoke the complexities of gender, that swirl together in the bathwater into a beautiful shade of purple that has come to represent LGBT+ equality. The bath buy retails for $5.95 with 100% of the proceeds (save for taxes, of course) benefitting the National Center for Transgender Equality and the Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity in the hopes of raising $450,000 for the organizations. And according to Bustle, the funds will be used to support high school-based race and gender justice training for teens in the U.S. while the donations in Canada will fund resiliency training and community-building camps for trans youth. The brand, which was recently named one of Forbes’s Best Employers for Diversity, saw the campaign as an opportunity to amplify the voices of employees and colleagues who shared the discrimination they face. “We are a diverse group of people with one thing in common — advocating for human rights,” Carleen Pickard, Ethical Campaigns Specialist at Lush Cosmetics North America, told Teen Vogue. “As an inclusive employer that champions equality, we simply couldn’t stand by. We needed to shed light on these daily discriminations and work to advance and secure their basic rights.” And they’re not stopping there! Lush is also looking raise awareness by swapping out the vibrant bath and body buys in their stores’ windows for quotes and stories about gender identity, which come courtesy of its staff’s own experiences. Some of those stories are included in a recently released video about the campaign, which is part of a series of documentaries that feature trans allies discussing how to build a more accepting society. Plus, it plans to hand out 75,000 “How to Be an Ally” manuals to cisgender shoppers, host community events at 16 select shops in the United States and Canada, and use its Snapchat to share tips and resources for trans and questioning youth throughout the campaign though it will also mainatain a Trans Rights hub on its site an additional resource. “What’s really special about this campaign is that our transgender and non-binary colleagues have genuinely impacted every aspect of it, from providing guidance and sharing personal experiences to educating us on how to become better allies to the community, ultimately creating a safer and more inclusive environment for all, ” Pickard said. And that includes securing some of the most basic elements of life: freedom from harassment and violence, a safe place to live, and a secure job. One of the problems is that many trans people are faced with privacy violations, harassment, and even physical and sexual violence on the job — if they’re even able to get one, as some are refused employment because of their gender identity, which lead many to turn to sex and drug work to make ends meet.According to United States Transgender Survey (USTS), one in three trans people become homeless at some point in their lives because of violence, discrimination, and even rejection by their own family. One in four trans people have dealt with housing instability or discrimination, like getting being evicted from their homes or denied housing altogether. Worst of all, the survey found 300 reported cases of transgender people were killed by violent means, including at least 26 in North America. And the thing is these rates are much higher for trans people of color! So if a bath melt can help open up eyes and educate others to join the fight for equality, all I can say is power to the purple and to the people!

Debut album out on the 21st May pre-order HERE After her triumphant statement-of-intent music video for International Women’s Day, Delilah Bon is flexing her studio muscle even further and the time has come to unleash her highly anticipated debut album. A project built around female empowerment, freedom of expression and downright gnarly punk-infused hip-hop, this is one of the projects of the year from a seriously exciting artist. The music video for ‘Soul Sisters’ will be released on the 14th May, followed by the self-titled album which will land on the 21st. Pre-save is available now. 12 tracks, including the call to arms singles ‘Bad Attitude’ ‘School,’ and ‘Where My Girls At?,’ Delilah fuses head-bopping bass grooves, unapologetic feminist lyrics, fuzzed guitars and deep, real-talk rhymes, fusing the attitude of punk and swagger of hip hop to create her signature brat punk sound. Delilah is a one-woman phenomenon. She has performed all of the music and produced the entire album herself, including the stunning album artwork. She also creates all of her music videos. From the old-school hip-hop vibes of ‘Soul Sisters’, to the nu-metal injection of ‘Devil’, Delilah has found the unique ability to blend memorable lyrics, enormous choruses and in your face no nonsense punk rap with undeniably catchy songs, kicking it all off with album opener ‘Freak Of The Week’. On her debut album she added: “The album is a celebration of female empowerment and independence. Made by a woman as a voice for women and non-binary people, I wrote about rape culture, girls uplifting girls and self-love. From my own experiences and so many other girls in my dm’s, I wrote the album wanting to speak my truth, unfiltered and raw, sarcastic and often angry, fusing rap and fuzzy nu-metal guitars as what I call Brat Punk. “Self-producing the album was important to me, especially as female producers are sadly rare and under-represented. I wanted to prove that I could, creating all the beats, recording all the instruments myself to truly bring my visions to life.” Already reaching hundreds of thousands of her fans through her TikTok-inspired music video for ‘I Don’t Listen To You,’ the outspoken single and troupe-rallying video has paved the way for things to come. Delilah is blowing up rapidly on the platform, with 80k+ followers and over a two million views in just a few months. Made by a woman as a voice for women, this album stands for everything Delilah represents. The full track listing is: Freak Of The Week Where My Girls At? War On Women I Get The Feelin’ After years touring and releasing multiple albums under her own name and her band Hands Off Gretel, the ever-creative and expressive lead singer, songwriter and guitarist Lauren Tate has already clocked up over a quarter of a million streams under her new guise Delilah Bon, a badass brat punk that is ready to take over the world, one fierce release at a time.

Welcome to the Putnam Pride Initiative (PPI)! We are a non-profit community organization that came together in 2017. We are dedicated to community-building, support, and education of LGBTQ+ folks and allies in Putnam County, IN. PPI members get together to share stories, to lend our support by volunteering for community projects, and generally to hang out with supportive and accepting (and fun) people. Our members range in age from 12-70+ and we welcome everyone with open minds and hearts. Any and all LGBTQ+ folks and allies are welcome to attend our open meetings that are about once a month (on Thursday evenings in Greencastle community room in the Starbucks on the square). We would also love to hear from you on social media or via email (firstname.lastname@example.org). Come on out! Donate to Putnam Pride Initiative Please consider donating to PPI! Donations are used for programming, support, & advocacy for the LGBTQ+ community and allies in Putnam County, IN. You may contribute using Pay-Pal or a credit card via the button below or send a check to Putnam Pride Initiative, PO Box 752, Greencastle IN, 46135. We would also appreciate donations of your time, when we volunteer in the community! PPI is a volunteer, non-profit organization but we do not yet have 501-c3 status, so donations are not tax-deductible. Check out our exciting events coming up soon! Know of other LGBTQ+-relevant events? Let us know too! Saturday, June 1st 12-7pm PPI will table at Spencer's annual Pride event. Indy Pride Fest Saturday, June 8th 3rd Annual PPI Summer Picnic Saturday, June 15th 3rd annual PPI Summer Picnic Southern Indiana Pride Saturday, June 22nd PPI in PutCo Fair Parade Sunday, July 14th A few of our favorite recent PPI activities! Tabling at 2018 Putnam County Fair July 21-27, 2018 We had a great time representing PPI at the Putnam County 4-H Fair, celebrating the "Country Pride, County Wide" theme. We had a popular ring toss game for kids and handed out hundreds of glowstick bracelets. We also met lots of new friends and supporters-- thanks to everyone county wide, for coming out in support of Putnam Pride Initiative! Country Pride, County Wide! Putnam County 4-H Parade July 20, 2018 Visibility matters! More than fifteen PPI members met up to march down Greencastle's main drag during the big 4-H Fair Parade this summer, waving rainbow flags, trans flags, non-binary flags and a bi-pride flag. We made a splash with new friends and old, scooters, dogs, banners, silly hats, and lots of candy (after we withstood the thunderstorms, of course). Make sure to join us next year! Pitching in with Food Not Bombs Saturday, July 21, 12-3 PM, Robe Ann Park PPI members joined the Greencastle Chapter of Food Not Bombs volunteers to serve a free vegan meal to anyone who wanted one! This event included music, food, community and Pride! For more information see this link from the local paper: Volunteer Work Day at Rescued Treasures July 14, 2018 Several of us spent a Saturday afternoon sorting toys, t-shirts, teapots, and other treasures with our friends and LGBT+ allies at Rescued Treasures, a non-profit thrift store that benefits the Humane Society. Community volunteering helps us be visible and helps us meet new folks in town and beyond. Also, we got some great hats for the parade! Movie & Book Club: Love, Simon Putnam Co. Public Library Tuesday July 17, 5 PM We were happy to collaborate with the public library for a discussion of Simon vs. the Homo sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli, and a showing of the movie Love, Simon a terrific, light-hearted movie. 2nd Annual Putnam Pride Initiative Community Picnic & Pitch-In June 23, 2018, Robe Ann Park A fabulous celebration of Pride at the Park. More than 120 folks came out to eat, dance, get their faces painted, and hang out. We love ALL many different kinds of folks who come to our events, from patriotic and supportive dads to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. We had many food donations from some great Putnam County dining establishments. A great time was had by all! Tabling at Greencastle First Friday & Spencer Pride Festival June 1-2, 2018 We had a great time tabling at two back-to-back events to kick off Pride month, in Greencastle and Spencer. It was particularly fun to be a part of the Spencer Pride celebration because that organization has been so supportive of Putnam Pride Initiative. AND we met a bunch of new friends who have ties to Putnam County! Our Executive Board Why Putnam Pride Initiative is important to us: It's wonderful to be building a community of LGBTQ+ people and allies in our small town, where we are often invisible to the larger community and to each other. It is inspiring to be part of a multi-generational group of LGBTQ+ folks and allies coming together for support, community, and outreach so close to where I live and work. Putnam Pride Initiative makes LGBTQ+ people and their allies visible within the Putnam County community. . . We provide and advocate for community service and social justice; we want to feel like we belong and can be ourselves in this beautiful community; we want ALL to be accepted, safe, loved, and to have the same rights as everyone around us. Come join us as we continue on this journey!! Building Bridges is our tagline, and I am so happy to be a part of this endeavor - reaching LGBTQ+ individuals and allies, and providing support, education, and community for all, right here in Putnam County. The Putnam Pride Initiative provides light and hope in a time of darkness and despair. PPI makes a difference in so many lives! We have only just begun…

7 open jobs We add value to a supply chain that covers the world. Have you ever wondered how Amazon is managing its procurement across all our Fulfillment Operations globally? Do you want to join a company with an amazing growth and leave your own footprint? Within the Global Procurement Organization (GPO), there are a number of dedicated teams that support and partner with internal customers, stakeholders and external suppliers. Who we are and what we do. Learn more about the different teams within GPO. Global Procurement Excellence (GPE) is the single channel for Amazon globally that creates, delivers and maintains core procurement capabilities while executing best-in-class S2P policies, processes and digital solutions. The team drives efficiency, control and compliance, and delivers a user and supplier-centric procurement experience consistently across teams, businesses and regions. Local Procurement works collaboratively with internal stakeholders and external suppliers to provide procurement support and solutions. This team sits at the heart of site operations and works with local stakeholders to deliver procurement solutions to complex on-site projects. Supplier Management drives effective supplier management through a multi-faceted, fit-for-purpose approach based on effective assessment of supplier criticality, risk and value. The team focuses on driving enterprise-wide transparency and consistency through standards, KPIs and robust Supplier Risk Assessments. They also define strategic imperatives, creating a 3-year roadmap with evidence of leveraging higher dollar spend/critical areas, and lead scoring and metrics to drive impactful outcomes. The Category Team owns the strategic relationships with suppliers and internal stakeholders. The team identifies and leads strategic sourcing activities to lower overall total cost of ownership for Amazon operations, ensuring equipment and service availability to meet business owner requirements. The team develops and negotiates framework agreements to reduce risk and support local teams in project specific needs relevant to category. Supplier Diversity and Inclusion The SD&I team creates an inclusive procurement culture that identifies, monitors, and promotes partnership with Minority-Owned Small Businesses (MOSBs) to deliver results for Amazon, its customers and communities. The team works with partners across GPO to drive inclusion of MOSBs. They also engage in strategic outreach and collaboration with external MOSB advocacy organizations to identify new qualified and capable MOSBs. The Global Procurement Technology (GPT) team’s purpose is to develop, integrate and maintain technology solutions that enable GPO to realize its business strategies and organizational objectives. GPT’s vision is a one-stop-shop procurement digitalization tool suite built using common, reusable components that provides Hands off The Wheel (HOTW) automation and data science (AI and ML) driven decision assistance. GPT creates value through procurement digital transformation with an emphasis on business self-service solutions and automation. Say yes to opportunities coming your way, whether that's widening your scope or doing a project outside your comfort zone. It will pay off. If someone had told me back in 2014, when I was a temporary Purchasing Assistant stamping PO numbers on invoices, that I would some day become a Senior Shipping Supplies Manager responsible for 4 different countries, I would never have believed it. Introducing Procurement Women Represented The Procurement Women Represented group (PWR) drives the attraction, retention, development, and progression of women in Procurement roles. It aims to create an inclusive environment for women, non-binary and allies, increase internal opportunities for engagement and growth, and work toward gender diversity and equity in Procurement at Amazon. Amazon Procurement in the News Search jobs in our Global Procurement Organization below.

WHAT IS #SPAWN4GOOD? #SPAWN4GOOD is a platform where we give gamers ways to do good in the world via this initiative. A platform with which to talk about social issues that the greater gaming community isn’t addressing. Especially those affecting gamers of color and other underrepresented groups. The next topic we’re tackling is reproductive rights and abortion access for women, transgender, and non-binary people. We at Spawn On Me understand that all encompassing healthcare is a right and we want to do what we can to support those fighting for those rights. Congressional barriers to necessary healthcare is something we want to push back against while educating and supporting those in need. When thinking about this particular topic to raise funds for, We envisioned that we would have a higher ratio of women streamers than men. Although our show is hosted by two men, we both deeply care about these issues. We also know that since we can’t speak to these topics from personal experience we are giving a platform to those who have, do and will. So I’m hoping that for a weekend we flip Twitch on its head and have a bunch of badass people talk about these topics & issues frankly while playing games they love to make a difference. We’ll be using the tags #S4G2 and #ReclaimRoe during the event to both share our platform, and bring awareness that Roe v Wade’s anniversary will be happening 4 days after MLK day. I will be starting to stream around noon PST (possibly earlier to kick off the event) I would suggest this time for your respective time zones as well. That way I can route folks via social media towards your streams and we’ll hosting them as well. WHO ARE WE DONATING TO? This year our donations will go to http://www.fundabortionnow.org/ For more info on who they are go here: http://www.fundabortionnow.org/about/our-work Here are their tenets: http://www.fundabortionnow.org/about/our-beliefs Here is the donation link to put in your streams: http://tinyurl.com/s4g2016 SUGGESTED RULES FOR THE STREAM - Ask people to donate. I’ll provide a link to where all donation funds will go. - You can and should promote your respective platform (Website, Blog, Podcast) . I think it’s important for all those involved to share that they are doing something positive not only for our people but for the greater gaming community. - Have fun, although some of these circumstances are dire and continuing. I believe that gaming should be an enjoyable hobby. This stream could be cathartic to us and our viewers, so please have fun with your respective stream. - If you can or do already have mods for your streams, please let them know that we are hoping to have a positive day while this is going. We probably will get more trolls than usual. *If you already have a list of banned words for your Twitch stream PLEASE share it so we can give it to all our streamers for the weekend. - If you have any on-screen notifications (follower/sub/tips) that might be fitting with the theme of our event we ask that you please swap those out if you stream with us. We want to collect as many moments from our streams so if you are viewing or want folks watching to have an easy way to do so I suggest this chrome plugin. It’s AWESOME!: We want to keep viewership up as much as possible to please host other folks’ streams when you go offline or on a break. Also letting folks know via your SM channels helps with this. If you aren’t familiar with hosting folks on Twitch here is a great chrome ext that will let you do it with one click plus other features. Here is a list of games we greenlit from the last event that were light on human on human violence. (We can and should discuss any other games we can add to this list to play) CHECK OUT OUR SUGGESTED GAME STREAMING LIST PLEASE ADD TO THE LIST. IF YOU ARE PLANNING TO STREAM PLEASE ADD FILL OUT YOUR INFORMATION IN THIS FORM IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO CHECK OUR SOME RESOURCES AND INFORGRAPHICS If there are any other resources that we should add please let us know and send us links. We want these to be easy to share during the stream to our audiences. One thought on “#Spawn4Good V2 January 16 & 17, 2016” Comments are closed.

(Trigger warning: This blog post discusses sexual violence. If you think reading about this topic could trigger an unwanted, strong emotional response, feel free to skip to the last two sections, where we list resources survivors can use for recovery.) Did you know that April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month? During this time, we focus on discussing sexual violence in order to reduce misconceptions and stigma. By expanding our knowledge about the subject, we can better help survivors find the resources they need. This blog post will explain why sexual violence is a problem in all communities and how it affects the LGBT community specifically. Sexual Assault and the LGBT Community Many of the statistics and research we have on sexual assault focus on cisgender and heterosexual people. While it is important to discuss the issues these groups face, it’s also necessary to be aware that LGBT individuals often face higher rates of sexual violence than non-LGBT folks. Around one in eight lesbian women and four out of ten gay men have experienced rape. Almost half of all bisexual women face rape, and nearly half of bisexual men deal with sexual violence in general. Regardless of orientation, 64 percent of transgender and non-binary individuals have survived sexual assault. We know these are difficult statistics to read, but we have hope. By accepting and understanding the implications of these facts, we can more effectively support LGBT survivors. Knowledge is power, and this information gives us the strength to fight sexual violence. How You Can Help One of the best ways to give survivors support involves a three-word phrase: “I believe you.” Survivors of all genders and orientations may encounter victim-blaming and doubt. These stigmas can complicate the acts of reporting or prosecuting an assault, as they incorrectly imply a survivor invited their trauma. If a survivor chooses to disclose to you, trust their account. By doing so, you open the opportunity for them to receive aid and validation. Other essential affirmations include: “this was not your fault” and “you are not alone.” As advocates, we need to let the survivor dictate the discussion surrounding their trauma. The choice to report, or not report, an assault is incredibly personal. No matter what they decide, emphasize that their choice is legitimate. Empower them — don’t make decisions for them. Resources for Survivors of LGBT Sexual Violence Whether you want to support a survivor or need assistance yourself, we recommend getting in touch with the following organizations if you have questions: - – Rape Abuse Incest National Network (RAINN): This organization handles all forms of sexual violence for all survivors. Call their hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or use their online counseling chat. - – The Anti-Violence Project: This group specifically serves members of the LGBT community going through violence in all forms, including sexual assault. Their hotline number is 212-714-1141 and offers services in English and Spanish. - – FORGE: FORGE works with transgender and gender non-conforming survivors of domestic and sexual violence. Contact them for a referral to a trans-friendly provider near you. If you prefer to contact a local group, the YWCA of Greater Harrisburg offers a 24-hour crisis hotline for anyone going through violence or abuse. Call them at 1-800-654-1211, or read their list of services. Contact Alder Health Services If you or someone you know is navigating the aftermath of sexual assault, you are not alone. Remember that surviving an assault can be nuanced and painful — but it can also be affirmative and empowering. Alder Health Services provides behavioral health services, such as counseling, with a focus on issues pertinent to LGBT people. We help individuals in the Harrisburg area recover from violence and trauma, and we can help you too. If you would like to speak to a professional, please fill out our online form or give us a call at 717.233.7190.

Botanical Blues is a series of illustrations about professional growth and motivation. Set in a parallel universe of peachy glitches and baby blue grids. Little non-binary beings inhabit this world and communicate with their body language and through Korean characters. • 꼭대기에 올라가 Climb to the top • • 넌할수있어 You can do it •