#as a queer educator

[yippeecahier]

It's in the upper 80s so it's getting too hot for me to wear a binder under men's office wear to work. If I put on a breathable dress shirt and bra, my breasts stick out so much I feel uncomfortable and keep pulling my shirt down and into my pants to try (and fail) at flattening them. I guess I really do have chest dysphoria.

I've been enjoying not shaving my legs and armpits (and using men's deodorant), but as it's getting warmer I can't comfortably cover up my legs and armpits as much anymore. I dread having to shave. I may have to for an upcoming summer wedding where I'm expected to wear a dress. Ugh.

[cptapathy]

We have all been saying this was coming for years now. The UK is now introducing a new section 28.

This is a direct attack on the queer Community, stop accepting it.

[ipso-faculty]

Perisex allies: stop this shit

CW: intersexism

Came across this infographic during some google image searching and I'm still kind of a state of despair about it because it's not just offensively wrong about what intersex is, it was used to teach university students about queer issues:

Alt text: LGBTQIA+ are defined one by one. Intersex is defined erroneously as "These are people who were born with genital organs of both sexes (male and female). It is a genetic condition."

It's one thing for your rando perisex person to be getting this wrong on social media. It's another thing entirely when it's professionals getting this wrong in an educational setting. 😩 And that this infographic appears in a peer-reviewed publication. 😩

It's even worse to know the students that were taught with this infographic were medical students, who will be the ones traumatizing intersex people for decades to come 😩

It's so wrong in so many different ways:

Intersex is not limited to people with genital differences. Most intersex people have intersex variations that are not apparent at birth, with puberty being the most common time of life for variations to present. Many people find out in adulthood having no outward physical differences.

Of the intersex people with genital differences, they do not have two sets of genitals. Most genital differences are still recognizably female or male (e.g. spadias), and those who have ambiguous genitals have one set.

Intersex is not "male parts + female parts" or even "intermediate male/female parts", it is an umbrella term for anybody whose primary/secondary sex characteristics don't line up with what is expected for male and female bodies. Some intersex variations make women look more feminine, or make men look more masculine.

Defining intersex by genital differences doesn't just exclude most intersex people, it also sets the tone that we are defined by our genitals. To be publicly intersex is to have non-stop DMs about your genitals. This sort of framing sets up openly intersex people for invasive questions and harassment, and it keeps large numbers of intersex people from coming out.

Many intersex variations do not have a known genetic basis. Many intersex variations are caused by exposure to certain hormonal levels in the womb. Certain medications when taken during pregnancy can trigger intersex variations.

While bodily variation is necessary for being intersex, the social experience of stigma, discrimination, isolation, hyper-medicalization, and hyper-sexualization are all just as much a part of being intersex.

📣 Perisex allies: this is shit you can stop. When you see other perisex people parrot this sort of misinformation, correct them. Direct them to look up resources written by actually intersex people.

Here are some starter resources to give:

Intersex explained by Hans Lindahl

Media and style guide by IHRA

FAQ by intersex-support

A recent post I did compiling information for trans people who want to be better intersex allies

[fixing-bad-posts]

i agree with practices that are a celebration or affirmation of LGBTQ, including "Pride" events and activities .

We deserve to engage in g a y rights .

[magical-grrrl-mavis]

Here's some queer history in honor of the approaching Pride month.

It's an acronym.

The organization shut down in 1968 due to pressures from both straight and queer parties (there's always been those gays more concerned with being seen as normal than actual progress) but they permanently changed the face of the queer rights movement and their spirit lived in to today.

[hellyeahscarleteen]

New donors needed to help keep Scarleteen’s queer, trans and gender nonconforming sex educators going!

We, the queer and trans, staff & volunteers at Scarleteen spend the vast majority of our time giving support. We very actively maintain a friendly and accessible website full of resources, advice and information, and provide a caring, safe and patient environment in all of our direct services. We continue to make a massive contribution towards sexuality education as a whole, as we have for the whole of our 25 year tenure. Everywhere we go we receive thanks from educators and service workers for the motivation we, and our founder Heather Corinna, have given them to do incredible work in their communities. However, for our daily survival and our dreams of the future, we need support too!

Unless our current trajectory changes we will not have the funding this year to give our volunteers end-of-year stipends to reward their generous efforts, nor bring our codirectors’ wages any closer to industry standard or even industry average rates of pay for their positions and tenure - averages which we continue to undershoot by quite some margin, nor will we be able to reimburse those staff for the many hours they have worked in excess of their basic 30 hours a week. We will also be unable to increase their healthcare benefits which for one disabled member of our team, will have been exceeded 4 times over by actual healthcare costs by the end of the year, which they have had to pay for out-of-pocket.

As part of our annual Pride celebration we are asking you to consider becoming one of the 50 (and fabulous) new recurring donors we are determined to find this week! Please consider supporting a few good queer & trans people to help us continue to deliver queer sex and relationships education, info and support, which remains free and open to all.

Recurring monthly donations of $10 or more are part of the treasured community of donors who give us peace of mind like nothing else can. We will need a further 250 recurring donors at that level or the financial equivalent to keep us on-track for our most modest projections through the coming years, so whatever help you can give us today to exceed our initial target of 50 will be cherished by us more than you can know.

Here’s some ways to help:

If you can become a new monthly donor, please do! We would love to welcome you to our valued bunch of fabulous supporters!

If you are already a donor, please consider tacking on an extra $10 per month, even temporarily, if you can!

If you cannot currently afford to donate an increased amount, or cannot donate at all, please consider reaching out to someone who you think can, so that eventually we can find that new donor. (And if you manage to sign someone up, do let us know so we can thank you!)

If you only want to or can give us a one-time donation we will still be incredibly grateful for that help at any level. We know a thing or 12 about deep financial limitations and having to choose very carefully where you give.

Please go to scarleteen.com/donate to begin your monthly donation, or if you have further questions head to scarleteen.com/contact drop us a message.

Thank you once more for your support and for being your queer/trans/allied/otherwise-awesome self,

Yours sincerely,

The Scarleteam …

of Scarleteen: queer sex ed for all since 1998❤️

[tuttle-did-it]

“We’re trained to be like, ‘If I’m not exceptional, I won’t be loved.’ Certainly, I think that was my thing,” Gatwa shared. “So, yeah, I think I’m just learning now like, ‘Oh, you are allowed to be loved.’ You don’t have to be excellent or aspire to that term, ‘Black excellence’. What the hell?”

He continued, “There’s so much white mediocrity that gets celebrated, and Black people, we have to be absolutely flawless to get half of [that] anyway. So, I’m slowly training myself out of that and being like, ‘No shit. You deserve love just for existing.’ And that has taught me to be a lot more loving as well, in a weird way.”

No lies detected

edit - adding link to original article here.

[gubler-garbage]

Queer solidarity

[unapologeticallygay]

a list of (some of) the things we owe to lesbians

the stonewall uprising (x)

pride marches (x)

homosexuality being removed from the dsm (x)

paving the way for the legalization of cross dressing/influencing gnc women’s fashion (x) (x) (x)

aids organizing and care (x) (x) (x)

fighting to include black women and lesbians into feminism/women’s rights movements (x) (x) (x)

black history month in the uk (x)

legalization of gay marriage in the usa (x) (x)

physically protecting the community (from storme delarverie who patrolled gay neighbourhoods to the butches protecting drag story time)

[yippeecahier]

[anarcho-smarmyism]

"I also want people to stop treating bi identities and bi lives as a perversion. To do that we don't just need to better understand bisexuality, we also need to call heterosexuality into question. Bisexuality isn't mysterious, threatening, or performative...or even cool, woke, or transcendental. It is a normal part of human sexuality. Yet, even in the twenty-first century most of us still assume that people are straight until proven otherwise. We center heterosexuality as the sun of our sexual solar system. I don't think that everybody is bi, as is so often half-jokingly stated, rather I believe it is time to queer our worldview by stabilizing our assumptions about sex and sexuality."

-Bi: The Hidden Culture, History, and Science of Bisexuality by Julia Shaw

[sexwithsophie]

My site, $ex With Sophie (withsophie.co), is a safe space for everyone, no matter if you're trans, ace, straight… anything. All are welcome. Come and join me for FREE! I love you.

[dhddmods]

Please stop sigmatizing small phalluses.

We see it in almost every queer space we go, and it is humiliating, degrading, and saddening that our own community can be so intersexist, altersexist, and transphobic, without even seeming to realize it.

We know that "small dick - big dick" is a joke, a meme, but frankly, its just not funny. Phallus size has been stigmatized and mocked so much that its caused countless people gender dysphoria, sex dysphoria, body dysmorphia, depression, anxiety, and stigma. This stigma leads to a lot of people with small phalluses having a more difficult time getting into relationships, because people are judgmental of their bodies. Small phalluses don't make a person bad in bed, nor is it something to be ashamed of.

Not only that, but it is rooted in intersexism. Micropenises are an intersex trait, and yet it is belittled, laughed at, and treated like some joke. People's bodies are not jokes.

Mockery of small phalluses, even if done with good intent or in "good fun", stigmatizes and humiliates real intersex people - people with congenital buried penises, clitoromegaly, fused labia & clitoromegaly, and similarly structured genitals. Please read (and reblog) about intersex variations & traits here, for a better understanding and compassion for their community - a community that very frequently overlaps with the trans community, and is a part of the LGBTQIA+ community as a whole.

It also stigmatizes altersex, transsex, transmasc, and non-binary people. This includes those that desire/have metoidioplasties and that desire/have T-dicks or enlarged clitorises. It also includes those that have penises/phalluses, and take estrogen (or intersex people who produce high estrogen) that causes phallus shrinking. It makes many people feel sad and ashamed of their genitals, as if there is something wrong with them.

We mean no hate to anyone that has made these jokes in the past. This post is simply a plea to expand your mindset, and think of the psychological and social damage those jokes do to real people.

Please reblog to spread awareness.

[fixing-bad-posts]

actually children can be trans. Thanks.

[commiepinkofag]

‘Weeding’

Uncovering the Cover-up: How Republican Pennridge School Board Directors Secretly Banned Books

Darren Laustsen | May 28, 2024

Pennridge School District engaged in a massive two-year cover-up of a secret book-banning campaign initiated by two sitting Republican school board directors hellbent on unilaterally purging books without any due process, community input, oversight, or accountability.  According to a sworn Attestation from new Superintendent Angelo Berrios, Ricki Chaikin and Jordan Blomgren ordered school staff to remove books from the library that they had unilaterally deemed were inappropriate. More so, during legal battles over a Right-to-Know request, Pennridge’s law firm, Eckert Seamans, fought to circumvent the state’s Open Records laws and conceal book removals from the public. The scheme involved illegally-doctored public records, the concealment of book removals under fake student accounts, and the eventual disposal of targeted books under the false pretense of librarian “weeding.” …

[vintagesapphics]

there’s dykes in Oklahoma too! (1972)