Category: LGBTQ+

  • This is why trans people self-medicate

    Sometimes Murdoch-owned news outlets manage to do something amazing: they publish something about trans people that isn’t untrue, isn’t malicious and doesn’t show us in a terrible light. In the same week The Sun is banging on about predators in changing rooms, The Australian is calling us dangerous extremists and The Sunday Times is no…

  • I can’t tell you that I like you

    Have you ever wanted to swipe right on a dating app, or tell someone who makes your heart beat faster that you like them, but stopped yourself because you’re too scared of being rejected – not because of how you look, act or think but because of what you are? I have, and I think…

  • Money for Mermaids

    Mermaids, the charity for trans kids and their families, is trying to raise money to better help people. The video above does a really good job of demonstrating just how toxic things are at the moment: I thought I was pretty much desensitised to the constant barrage of anti-trans articles, but it turns out I’m…

  • “The biggest threat to single-sex services is insufficient funding from the Government”

    I hadn’t seen this before: a Q&A on gender recognition by the Fawcett Society, a leading feminist charity campaigning for women’s rights. It strikes me as nuanced and fair-minded, so for example: The tone of the debate in some quarters, and on extremes of both sides, has been a problem. Amplified by social media, a small…

  • It’s really very simple

  • Trigger happy

    One of the things I’m really interested in is where words come from and how they’re used. For example, I’ll happily bore you senseless about how “shambles” has changed meaning several times. In the 15th century what originally meant a stool or money changer’s table became used to label the table butchers used to display…

  • “You invited us here to celebrate genitals, Karen”

    Here’s a fun question for you. Which group of people is so obsessed with enforcing regressive gender stereotypes that they’ve killed a woman, injured several others and set fire to various bits of land? Is it: (a) LGBT+ people? (b) The straights? It is of course (b), thanks to one of the most awful facets…

  • The sin of omission

    Something that’s puzzled me for a while is how so many people believe that Donald Trump and his administration are pro-LGBT+ when they’ve been so viciously anti-LGBT+: from the transgender military ban onwards, they have mounted a sustained attack on the basic rights of LGBT+ people in an ongoing campaign to remove the most basic…

  • Daddy doesn’t know best

    Writing in Vox, Katelyn Burns’ piece about Luna Younger demonstrates why media outlets should have trans people covering trans issues: unlike pretty much every piece about the poor kid I’ve read so far, it eschews ill-informed scaremongering. If you’re not familiar with the story, it’s about a horrible battle in the US between two estranged…

  • Money for nothing

    Interesting developments at the LGB Alliance, the newly launched anti-trans group. It’s managed to raise over £25,000 in largely anonymous donations in just 11 days of existence, largely due to support from right-wing media here and in the US. The right-wing press and the US religious right like the Alliance because while it advances the same…