Category: LGBTQ+

  • “The problem with British transphobia: it sounds so reasonable”

    June Tuesday, writing on Medium: JK Rowling and the Reasonable Bigotry. The UK’s transphobia is many-pronged — our conservatives, religious fundamentalists, alt-right, ‘rational men’, and so all exist here, too. But virulent and aggressive anti-trans feminists have a culture and history specific to Britain, and their views trickle down into the respectable views of those with…

  • “We are your neighbours, siblings, sons, daughters…”

    It seemed a good time to repost this, by Gray Crosbie. We are your neighbours, siblings, sons and daughters. #TransDayOfVisibility pic.twitter.com/ybG7uclKRt — BBC The Social (@bbcthesocial) March 31, 2019

  • Trying to walk like a man

    It took me a very long time to realise how good Bruce Springsteen is: like many people, I misinterpreted Born in the USA as a tub-thumping, chest-beating, USA! USA! USA! anthem and didn’t investigate further. I’m a lot older and a little bit wiser now, and while I wouldn’t call myself a fan – I…

  • JK’s trolling

    The thing about bored celebrities taking pops at trans people isn’t so much what they say: we have heard it all before. It’s that their celebrity means we hear it again and again and again. I don’t follow JK Rowling, whose opinions on trans people are well known (and no longer explained away as “middle-aged…

  • “the hardest thing to do is admitting that others may have it worse”

    Katelyn Burns, writing for Vox: The LGBTQ civil rights fight is far from over. Often, the common perception of LGBTQ people’s lives in the US is filtered through the experiences of white, upper-middle-class, cisgender lesbian and gay people [who] live in coastal cities and happen to have access to large media platforms. Kirchick’s piece is…

  • Protect trans kids

    A sad but sadly unsurprising study is yet more evidence that not only are LGBT+ young people more at risk of depression and suicide than straight kids, but that the risk is even higher for trans youth. PinkNews: compared to their cisgender LGB+ peers in the Trevor Project survey, young people who identify as trans…

  • Offensively ignorant

    The LGB Alliance, on the actual anniversary of Section 28: “We never demanded society change its laws” isn’t just shockingly ignorant, although of course it is. It’s also a grossly offensive insult to the thousands of gay, bisexual and lesbian people (and of course trans people, but the LGBA doesn’t even pretend to care about…

  • “Capitalism needs women to work for free”

    There’s an interesting interview in PinkNews with Alison Phipps, author of Me Not You: The Trouble With Mainstream Feminism. The book is very critical of the often very privileged white women whose feminism excludes women of colour, poor women, incarcerated women, sex workers, trans women and disabled women. This bit is short and to the…

  • Battling homophobia?

    David Paisley took a look at the Twitter feed for the LGB Alliance on the international day against homophobia, biphobia and transphobia (#IDAHOBIT); you’d expect a group that says it’s standing up for lesbian, gay and bisexual people to have something to say about ignorance and bigotry. He made this image. On the left, all…

  • “We do not need protecting from trans people.”

    Many [press reports say “thousands” of] cisgender women have signed an open letter to women and equalities minister Liz Truss expressing their concern at her apparent plans for the gender recognition act. Trans equality was not widely seen as an issue until the Transgender Equality Inquiry of 2015 triggered a concerted campaign in the media…