LGBTQ+

The Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR), also known as the International Transgender Day of Remembrance, has been observed annually from its inception on November 20, 1999, to memorialize those who have been murdered as a result of transphobia. Source: Wikipedia

Claire Sharpe says she disagrees with Cycling UK only naming cis women in their top 100 list.

Actually shocking....guess it won't happen with this bench. But we know from Dobbs that this doesn't mean a future bench won't reopen the issue, and this is why we need Supreme Court reform YESTERDAY!

Salt Lake City’s oldest and longest-running LGBTQ+ bar has closed, with workers claiming the shuttering was a “stunt” to prevent unionization.

The SunTrapp, widely considered the oldest LGBTQ+ bar in Utah, was founded in 1973 and is one of the few safe havens for the community. It shut on 31 October after workers pushed to unionize.

Workers who spoke with the Guardian allege the owner of the bar engaged in numerous unfair labor practices after they submitted a letter requesting voluntary recognition of the union with Communications Workers of America Local 7765 in late September.

In a Republican dominated state ranked as one of the least safe states in the US for the LGBTQ+ community, workers called the bar “a really special place” and a safe haven for the community. The bar had to increase security after the Charlie Kirk assassination that occurred in Utah in September heightened concerns over threats toward the community.

“It’s a really special place where you can go and be judgment free,” Natalie Jankowski, a lead bartender at the SunTrapp, told the Guardian. “We have a lot of older queer people, older trans people, who feel comfortable coming there and nowhere else. We have a lot of Mormons who just left Mormonism who want to have their first drink, judgment free, come there, and we get a lot of people who are questioning their sexuality and they just want to talk to the bar staff about it.”

Yeah, I added a comma. Close your asides, Guardian!

TIL Nancy Pelosi seriously went to bat for gay people during the AIDS epidemic, despite it being a near universally unpopular position in the 80s. Threw hands with the Regan administration for being dicks as well.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/34079011

The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to enforce a policy blocking transgender and nonbinary people from choosing passport sex markers that align with their gender identity.

In a brief, unsigned order, the court said the policy doesn’t appear to discriminate against transgender people. “Displaying passport holders’ sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth,” it said. “In both cases, the Government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment.”

Sex markers began appearing on passports in the mid-1970s and the federal government started allowing them to be changed with medical documentation in the early 1990s, the plaintiffs said in court documents. A 2021 change under President Joe Biden, a Democrat, removed documentation requirements and allowed nonbinary people to choose an X gender marker after years of litigation.

A judge blocked the Trump administration policy in June after a lawsuit from nonbinary and transgender people, some of whom said they were afraid to submit applications. An appeals court left the judge’s order in place.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/33944872

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/33944871

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/33944870

Hello everyone, hope all is well. It has been months since I posted. I had lost my account because my phone was stolen. Also a lot has been happening ever since from the government chasing us from the camp because we are transgender to now that the South Sudanese wanting to kill us a video was uploaded on the fundraiser about how a South Sudanese national is trying to tell others to attack the refugees that haven’t managed to leave Gorom refugee settlement. This really a serious situation that needs your support in order to find safety for the rest kindly. Honestly the major reason as to why I’m writing is that we are in an emergency situation. We are going be chased out of the shelter because of failure to pay rent. We are trying to raise 950$ and we only have 78$. I’m really afraid because even here we live by hiding and how about if we are left on streets. We are visible transgenders that we will be at risk of being killed in this war country. Anything can help also boosting the post means a lot.

Please consider supporting us through the support link in the bio/profile. Thank you so much.

When Ceyenne Doroshow first began raising money to buy a building that would provide safe housing for transgender women in New York City, she recalls, “people were coming out of the woodwork trying to offer us the equivalent of crack buildings, in bad neighborhoods, with horrible policing,” just because those buildings were cheaper. But Doroshow found this unacceptable. Her organization, GLITS Inc. (Gays and Lesbians Living in Transgender Society), primarily serves Black trans women. Doroshow says after facing so much harassment and discrimination in the rest of their lives, they deserve a chance to live in stable housing in a peaceful neighborhood.

Like many of the women she works with, Doroshow has spent time homeless. “Our families just may not be that nice behind the velvet rope,” she observes. This can lead to so much housing insecurity that even when they’re housed, program participants’ anxiety stays high: “As soon as they got into [an] apartment, they were already mentally processing for the next round of . . . moving on again,” she says. That’s one of the reasons GLITS emphasizes supports and leadership development along with housing.

Doroshow held on to her dream. With money raised during Pride Month 2020, GLITS bought a 12-unit apartment building in a quiet Queens neighborhood, now known as GLITS 1 South. The residents are all part of the GLITS Leadership Academy, a program that helps each participant with their health, education, and leadership development goals. The building includes its own classroom and study space.

Janetta Johnson is CEO of the TGIJP, or Transgender, Gender Variant, Intersex Justice Project. For 20 years, TGIJP has been working for justice for transgender and gender nonconforming people inside and outside of incarceration, through leadership development, reentry services, name change clinics, advocacy, and recently a wellness program.

TGIJP purchased a building in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood in 2023, creating a hub for organizing and supportive services in the Bay. The neighborhood is the location of the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria uprising, led by young TGNC (transgender and gender non-conforming) people and drag queens against raids and overpolicing of LGBTQ+ communities. “Black trans people deserve ownership, and I’m not talking about being capitalistic,” Johnson says in the report Duranti-Martínez co-authored for LISC, “We Take Care of Each Other”: The Power and Promise of TLGBQIA+-owned spaces. “It’s important for people to have safe cultural spaces. It’s important for people to have ownership so that they can believe in themselves and their abilities.”

While TGIJP doesn’t manage housing directly, it does help its clients access housing using city resources. It’s a struggle. “Our community is the last to be housed,” says Johnson. The organization has considered owning its own housing in the future, but under the current administration, it is not currently looking to take on new projects.

There’s a running joke online that gay people just make better coffee. It usually boils down to someone crossing their fingers that their barista has they/them pronouns, so their cold brew is actually drinkable. “I’ve definitely heard the joke and there’s a lot of truth to it,” says Kent Collins, owner of the Flying M Coffeehouse in Boise, Idaho. “Queer people are a huge part of coffeehouse culture—they always have been.”

At the intersection of Halsey Street and Malcolm X Boulevard in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, passersby are greeted by a hot pink sign welcoming them into Soft Butch, a trans-owned café. Antæus Mathieu, a co-owner, says that “ on the surface, it’s a funny, cute meme about how all your baristas are gay,” but there’s more to be said about job accessibility within the coffee industry. “It’s one of those skilled jobs that are both accessible to queer people and people who are [otherwise] marginalized because you can start on so many different levels.”

Whether or not you buy into the playful stereotype, what’s certainly true is that the LGBTQ2S+ community has long-standing ties to the coffee industry. Coffee and tea have long been a way of creating community at a low-cost buy-in, according to Dr. Alex Ketchum, an associate professor at the Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at McGill University in Montreal who’s also the author of Ingredients for Revolution: A History of American Feminist Restaurants, Cafes, and Coffeehouses—which, she says, were primarily run by lesbians and queer women. She points to the “women’s music musicians”—a code word for lesbian artists at the time—who would work at Brick Hut Cafe, which was a lesbian-feminist establishment founded in the seventies in Berkeley, California, during off time between touring or recording. “ Not that all queer people are creative—I don’t want to generalize us—but there is this kind of tie [between the] artist community and cafés,” Ketchum explains.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/33595203

today is intersex awareness day

hai, hello, are you aware of me?

please be aware of me

i am intersex greml

if you do not be aware of me

i'm coming to steal your genitals

What they found is that, after mere months of HRT, trans women’s bodies may change down to the molecular level.

“This highlights that human biology is malleable and that even in adulthood, our bodies respond to sex hormone changes,” co-author Dr. Boris Novakovic said in a press release about the project. In other words, the endeavor shows the true range and plasticity of human bodies, including the idea of sex, which many gender conservatives falsely argue is immutable, binary, and stagnant.

This also matches fairly well with another study that found trans men can develop vaginal prostate tissue after taking testosterone.

Even as the number of youths who identify as LGBTQ rises, so has the number of state-level bills seeking to curtail their rights, a new analysis finds.

The number of bills aimed at rolling back or prohibiting in-school protections and health care access has tripled from 77 in 2020 to some 300 a year in 2023, 2024 and 2025, according to the Movement Advancement Project.

The drumbeat of legislation, report the researchers, has taken a steep toll on the mental health of the students in the crosshairs — regardless of where they live. When the dramatic escalation in legislation started in 2023, 90% of LGBTQ people ages 13 to 24 said politics had a negative impact on their well-being — up from 71% in 2022.

Policies enabling in-school support are particularly important to LGBTQ youth. Slightly more than half say they are accepted by peers or teachers at school, compared with 40% who are supported at home. The presence of even one supportive educator in a child’s life has long been shown to reduce rates of suicidality, anxiety and depression.

The number of young people impacted has risen sharply in recent years, though estimates vary depending on how data is tabulated. According to a recent Gallup survey, almost 2 million — or 9.5% — of teens ages 13 to 17 now identify as something other than straight or cisgender. That’s nearly twice as many as in 2020.

In Rotterdam there is a long stretch of flags of nations with anti-gay policy. Each flag pole has a sign indicating the criminal penalties they level against homosexuals. I think it was called “Rainbow project” or something… not sure, vague memory. It’s shocking how many flags there are.

I think last I heard there were ~7 or so countries where the penalty is potentially death.

It’s a great project to increase awareness. And it can be improved. Actions to consider:

• There are so many flags that probably not many bypassers read all the signs. I suggest something extra on the flag poles of the countries that use the death penalty for homosexuality, to make them stand out a bit more. Maybe add a ☠ -- skull and crosspones sign or flag.

• Facebook’s algorithms determine who is gay -- regardless of whether an FB pawn is open about it or not. In some cases, FB knows before the FB pawn even knows. Facebook’s data is threat in all the countries represented. This needs to be publicised as well, to shame Facebook and increase awareness. I mean, there are lives on the line so I don’t really get why there has not been widespread condemnation of Facebook over this.

The FB problem should be mentioned but perhaps not in a way that’s louder than the sign with the legal penalty. A good approach might be to print some labels with fine print saying:

“… and Facebook tracks who is homosexual.”

which could be applied to the bottom of every sign.

Most people walking past the signs don’t have any connection to those countries so awareness is all the display does. Add the Facebook sickers, then some people will realise they are not helpless. They can boycott Facebook.