#detransition challenge

[aromanticsubtext]

It's okay to be upset about the effects of HRT, even if you were aware of it before starting hormones

It's okay to mourn the loss of your hair, even if you knew it was a possible effect of taking testosterone

[genderkoolaid]

terfs found my "gonna make cis women's heads explode by telling them they aren't safe" post and are in the notes like what are you afraid of!!! that women THINK for OURSELVES!!! that we have Bad Thoughts!!!! and in like. no actually I'm afraid you are going to see me as a threat and pepper spray me or ask a cis man to beat me up. or you'll view my gender as some kind of personal challenge and try to manipulate or hurt me into detransitioning. i'm worried that any random cishet woman could see me being openly genderqueer and get scared and society will value her far more than it will value me.

"there's no way you'd be more scared of a woman on the street than a man!!!" i know this may be hard to understand, but literally yes. because trans/cis is a unbalanced power dynamic. Your Experiences Are Not Universal, Cis Woman.

and it literally only benefits GNC cis people to stand w trans people on this because thousands of butch women have been attacked by cishet women who are threatened of them. it's honestly fucking ridiculous that so many women who consider themselves butch/gnc are willfully ignorant of this well-known experience; because non-transphobic butch/gnc women find solidarity w trans people on this. but instead y'all are banging your fists on the floor and going nooo you guys are wrong about your lived experiences!!! your lives don't fit my personal narrative so you must be wrong about how you feel!!!!!! why are you asking me to consider other forms of oppression besides misogyny!!!!!!!!

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

[ Link: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/26895269.2022.2100644 ]

[ Correction: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/26895269.2022.2125695 ]

They have no idea how many or why people detransition. The claim that it’s a tiny minority is completely baseless.

Tanner Stage 2 occurs on average at about 10 years of age in girls, as early as 8, and on average at about 12 years of age in boys, as early as 9. So WPATH is proposing that if a 10 year old girl wants puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones - note that this is about hormones, not just blocking puberty - but her parents are dubious, members complying with WPATH standards will simply administer them anyway.

That is, there are more controls for detransitioning than transitioning. This is how cults work.

Except, who’s going to go back to the doctor who mutilated them? The Tavistock said that they have no idea what proportion of their, ahem, “patients” desisted or detransitioned, because they never followed them up. They never heard back from them, and that was it. This is suggesting that they will follow up, but it’ll be like an army of Jehovah’s Witnesses at your door with “additional viewpoints.” That is, they’ll only challenge the motives of a detransitioner, not someone seeking transition.

“There's kind of like this attitude in the trans community that if you question your transition, that makes you insane.”

-- Helena Kerschner

The paper repeatedly cites Jack Turban, who is a known liar.

It’s hard to tell if they’re now extremely confident now that this ideology has attained cultural supremacy and institutional domination and have dropped the mask of what they’re up to, or they’re in panic mode, making a last-ditch grab before it all comes crashing down.

Believe them when they tell you what they’re up to.

[uponstygianwings]

Tbh I’m getting to the point where I’m going to consider “you’re not oppressed because you’re a man, you’re oppressed because you’re trans!” a form of subtle misgendering. Like, no shit sherlock, that’s literally the definition of transphobia, that people don’t see us as the gender we are but the one that we were assigned and are trying to move away from. You cannot separate the trans from trans man when you’re talking about the oppression that trans men and transmascs face because of that intrinsic fact and doing so feels as if you’re trying to erase an important part of our identities.

Like, if I said that “trans women aren’t oppressed because they’re women, they’re oppressed because they’re trans!” I’m sure people would get on my ass for that, and rightly so! But because man beats woman in the game of oppression pokemon types that some people cling to, I guess it’s fine when it’s about trans guys???

I also feel like it’s tied into the attitude that “trans men don’t face any unique challenges or oppression, anything that they go through trans women have worse!” that feels so incredibly pervasive and yet is Very Clearly Not True if one puts even an ounce of thought into it. Like, leaving aside the statistics on suicide and DV and sexual assault, lets just go for the low hanging fruit: transfemmes are not going to be put into the position where they need to detransition because the alternative is not being able to access reproductive healthcare. And in a time when people are being denied meds because they might cause an abortion and pregnant people are being prosecuted for miscarriages, that is not an empty threat. And it’s not just a worry that people on this hellsite have made up.

So yeah. Maybe try listening to us and our problems instead of trying to police our language that we need to talk about the things that we are experiencing. Because no, using “just transphobia” or “just bioessentialism” or “just misogyny” does not adequately describe the mixture of them that we face, and feels extremely dismissive on top of it.

[detransition]

Many trans people talk about dysphoria as if it is some mysterious thing, that cannot possibly be comprehended by others. Having experienced gender dysphoria, I actually think it is a very ordinary thing. It is the discrepancy between how one would like the world to be and how the world is. You want your body to be one way, and it is a different way. You want to be treated in one way and you are treated in a different way. You want to be seen in one way, and you are seen a different way. This is really a universal experience, shared by all human beings. I find it helpful to see that, it helps to create empathy and compassion, rather than separation and isolation. It then follows that anything that increases the gap between how you would like the world to be and how it is will increase dysphoria and anything that decreases that gap will decrease dysphoria. Frequently, people report that when they come to a point of identifying as transgender rather than questioning, their dysphoria increases rather than decreases. This is not surprising because they have increased the gap between how they would like the world to be and how the world is. Now being seen as your birth sex hurts more, because you have solidified your idea of being otherwise. The pain of being misgendered increases greatly after taking steps to transition because you have committed to the idea of the world seeing you as the gender you identify with, and they don’t. The more rigid these ideas, the more suffering that there is. When faced with the challenge of the world being different than you would like it to be, there are two things that you can do to reduce that gap. One is to change the world so that it is more to your liking and the other is to accept the world as it is. It is like the classic serenity prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference.” When it comes to gender, there are things you can change it is true, you can change your hormones, you can have surgery, you can change your name, you can change the way you behave in the world. However, you cannot completely change your sex, you cannot control the perceptions of others. Not accepting those two facts, will lead to endless suffering. I remember having dysphoria that was so severe. It was very important to me that everyone perceive me as female. Whenever this failed in some way I would create some rationalization for why it happened. Sometimes that wasn’t possible, and I would go into a tailspin. I even moved to a place where people were less trans aware in order to attempt to be perceived as female. That didn’t work either. I wanted the world to be other that it was. I still had body dysphoria after surgery because I wanted my body to be other than it was. The only way out, was the path of acceptance. That was what helped to let go of dysphoria, not changing my body, not attempting to convince everyone I was born female, not attempting to convince myself that I was female in every way. You can change your body or not, but without the acceptance, the dysphoria will not go away. If you are dependent on other’s perceiving you a certain way, that won’t work either, because you do not control the perceptions of others. This acceptance is essential for any path through this maze, whether transitioning or not, going on hormones or not, having surgeries or not. So why not start with that first? I know for myself, if I had practiced this acceptance first, I would have not needed to change my body. I am not sure what is true for you, but I do know we all need to confront the fact the world is other than we would like it to be.

from thirdwaytrans | thinking of detransition? you are not alone

[girlsmoonsandstars]

“I thought anyone challenging these ideas wanted me to kill myself. I could not name that I wanted to change every part of my body and my Self that had been singled out for sexist treatment... I saw suffering under misogyny as inherently less significant than gender dysphoria. I knew that my suffering mattered, so I had to be transgender.” Max Robinson, Detransition: Beyond Before and After (2021)

[mithliya]

idk I feel burnt out on this but i remember when I used to work as a therapist I had asked a patient of mine where her dysphoria came from & she immediately called me transphobic for asking & requested to change her therapist. My boss sided with the student & reprimanded me. Well after that, she came back & apologized & said she detransitioned. She told me how she appreciated how I challenged her on it even tho she didn't wanna hear it (1/3)

i find that so horrifying, i think im never gonna go into that area of therapy or treatment bc it sounds so fucked up and corrupt. its horrible that u got that treatment for simply trying to get to the root of her mental health struggles which is literally standard practice for a therapist irt basically all other mental health issues??????????

[carharttlesbian]

Trying to prevent myself from committing suicide by becoming less recognizably female was an attempt at resistance that, politically, functioned in many ways as a form of capitulation.

In contrast, detransitioning has meant actually defying the misogynistic stereotypes that limited me. By naming myself as female without shame and doing the tedious daily work of explaining to others that many women stop our transitions, that someone who looks like me can still be better off without transition, that there are plenty of women my age who are proud to be specifically lesbian, I not only participate in making ideological room for my own experiences to be understood by those I encounter, but I make it that much easier for the next woman to explain herself. In making sense of my own life, I can participate in developing the frameworks put together by the detransitioned women who helped me. Working together, we make it increasingly possible for all women to substantively challenge the structures we suffered within on a day to day basis. This life-giving life's work is my choice.

- Max Robinson, Detransition: Beyond Before and After

[variousqueerthings]

I was tagged by @oh2e for some books and texts I’ve been reading recently

Before We Were Trans (Kit Heyam): I finished this last night and I am so happy that this exists. A challenge to the existing frameworks of what we call Trans History, purposefully intersectional and broad in its exploration

Brand New Ancients (Kae Tempest): This came out before Kae did, so ignore the name there. A beautiful story in poetic form, you can see it was intended to be read out loud. Reconsidering mythologies and gods

Shikhandi And Other Tales They Don’t Tell You (Devdutt Pattanaik): A queer exploration of Indian mythologies and religious stories. I have a lot to learn here, and I’m so glad this perspective exists

I Sexually Identify As An Attack Helicopter (Isabel Fall): A short story that sparked a lot of conversation about how we forcibly out creatives, genuinely an interesting set of questions about what happens when queer gender rights are appropriated by militaristic society

The Prophets (Robert Jones Jr.): Rethreading queer lines that were broken under slavery, centres two enslaved men on a plantation, while creating queer cultural roots through space and time

Detransition Baby (Torrey Peters): A story about a detransitioned trans woman (now cis man) who accidentally gets a woman pregnant and tries to find a way to queer parenthood. I’m pleased I read it and definitely recommend, but there were elements that I struggled with. The detransitioned character was so worth following

Braiding Sweetgrass (Robin Wall Kimmerer): Recommended to anyone who’s feeling climate doom, especially to get us out of an individualistic headspace and into anti-colonialist allyship with one another. Also plants. Remember to thank them

A Bright Room Called Day (Tony Kushner): Can’t believe I never read (or watched) this play before, considering it’s Kushner and I was a baby theatre gay, but I found it very healing in our times + Kushner’s musings in the 1994 afterword, thank you @mimsyaf

Between The World And Me (Ta-Nehisi Coates): A letter to his son. I don’t even know what else to say, go read it

Thanks again for the tag, I feel like if there’s one thing I actually have had the energy to do it’s read a lot (ngl it’s been a coping mechanism/avoidance tactic at times) and I always want to !!!! about it. I noticed with this list I’m currently drawn to books about creating/recreating threads; historical, mythological, political, communal. I’m very much feeling the potential power of finding similarities, allyship, and family, rather than cutting ourselves off into individual causes and clear-cut hierarchical identities. Some of these books were for me to find myself in and some of them were about listening. I think that’s an important balance too.

hon mention: The Peregrine, JA Baker

tagging (and no pressure whatsoever, I don’t know if you’ve had the spoons for books): @hunkydorkling , @le-red-queen , @an-sceal , @elsonambulo , @pohjanneito , @likethegardensofbabylonn

[metapianycist]

prefacing a claim—like "transition is due to misogyny / internalized misogyny" or "self diagnosis is harmful"—with "in my experience" doesn't magically make it your life experience

"life experience" refers to the specific facts of your life—like "i detransitioned because my transition was from internalized misogyny" or "i self diagnosed incorrectly and this is what happened to me." anything beyond describing what happened to you and your feelings has left the category

i will never tell someone what the reason for their transition or detransition was, but i will absolutely tell them that any generalizing of their own detransition or incorrect self-diagnosis experiences to make an argument (other than "at least one person has had this experience") is no longer merely a statement of your life experience but also a claim that can absolutely be critically examined and challenged.

[tyrannuspitch]

Jumping off @kidrat​ ’s recent post on JKR, British transphobia, and transphobia against transmasculine people, after getting a bit carried away and too long to add as a comment:

A major, relatively undiscussed event in JKR’s descent into full terfery was this tweet:

[image id: a screenshot of a tweet from JK Rowling reading: “’People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”

Rowling attaches a link to an article titled: “Opinion: Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate” /end id]

This can seem like a pretty mundane TERF talking point, just quibbling over language for the sake of it, but I think it’s worth discussing, especially in combination with the idea that cis women like JKR see transmasculine transition as a threat to their womanhood. (Recite it with horror: ”If I were young now, I might’ve transitioned...”)

A lot of people, pro- or anti-transphobe, will make this discussion about whether the term “woman” should include trans women or not, and how cis women are hostile to the inclusion of trans women. And that’s absolutely true. But the actual language cis women target is very frequently being changed for the benefit of trans men, not trans women, and most of them know this.

Cis people are used to having their identities constantly reaffirmed and grounded in their bodies. A lot of cis women, specifically, understand their social and physical identities as women as being defined by pain: misogynistic oppression is equated to the pains of menstruation or childbirth, and both are seen as the domain of cis women. They’re something cis women can bond over and build a “sisterhood” around, and the more socially aware among them can recognise that cis women’s pain being taken less seriously by medicine is not unrelated to their oppression. However, in the absence of any trans perspectives, these conversations can also easily become very territorial and very bioessentialist.

Therefore... for many cis women, seeing “female bodies” described in gender neutral language feels like stripping their pain of its meaning, and they can become very defensive and angry.

And the consequences for transmasculine people can be extremely dangerous.

Not only do transmasculine people have an equal right to cis women to define our bodies as our own... Using inclusive language in healthcare is about more than just emotional validation.

The status quo in healthcare is already non-inclusive. When seeking medical help, trans people can expect to be misgendered and to have to explain how our bodies work to the doctors. We risk harassment, pressure to detransition, pressure to sterilise ourselves, or just being outright turned away. And the conversation around pregnancy and abortion in particular is heaving with cisnormativity - both feminist and anti-feminist cis women constantly talk about pregnancy as a quintessentially female experience which men could never understand.

Using gender-neutral language is the most basic step possible to try and make transmasculine people safer in healthcare, by removing the idea that these are “women’s spaces”, that men needing these services is impossible, and that safety depends on ideas like “we’re all women here”. Not institutionally subjecting us to misgendering and removing the excuse to outright deny us treatment is, again, one of the most basic steps that can be taken. It doesn’t mean we’re allowed comfort, dignity or full autonomy, just that one major threat is being addressed. The backlash against this from cis women is defending their poorly developed senses of self... at the cost of most basic dignity and safety for transmasculine people.

Ironically, though transphobic cis women feel like decoupling “women’s experiences” from womanhood is decoupling them from gendered oppression, transmasculine people experience even more marginalisation than cis women. Our rates of suicide and assault are even higher. Our health is even less researched than cis women’s. Our bodies are even more strictly controlled. Cis women wanting to define our bodies on their terms is a significant part of that. They hold the things we need hostage as “women’s rights”, “women’s health”, “women’s discussions” and “support for violence against women”, and demand we (re-)closet ourselves or lose all of their solidarity.

Fundamentally, the problem is that transphobic cis women are possessive over their experiences and anyone who shares them. Because of their binary understanding of gender, they’re uncomfortable with another group sharing many of their experiences but defining themselves differently. They’re uncomfortable with transmasculine people identifying “with the enemy” instead of “with their sisters”, and they’re even more uncomfortable with the idea that there are men in the world who they oppress, and not the other way around. “Oppression is for women; you can’t call yourself a man and still claim women’s experiences. Pregnancy is for women; if you want to be a man so badly why haven’t already you done something about having a woman’s body? How dare you abandon the sisterhood while inhabiting one of our bodies?”

Which brings me back to the TERF line about how “If I were young now, I might have transitioned.”

I’m not saying Rowling doesn’t actually feel any personal connection to that narrative - but it is a standard line, and it’s standard for a reason. Transphobic cis women really believe that there is nothing trans men go through that cis women don’t. They equate our dysphoria to internalised misogyny, eating disorders, sexual abuse or other things they see as “female trauma”. They equate our desire to transition to a desire to escape. They want to “help us accept ourselves” and “save us” from threats to their sense of identity. The fact is, this is all projection. They refuse to consider that we really have a different internal experience from them.

There’s also a marked tendency among less overtly transphobic cis women, even self-proclaimed trans allies, to make transphobia towards trans men about cis women.

Violence against trans men is chronically misreported and redefined as “violence against women”. In activist spaces, we’re frequently told that any trauma we have with misogyny is “misdirected” and therefore “not really about us”. If we were women, we would’ve been “experiencing misogyny”, but men can’t do that, so we should shut up and stop “talking over women”. (Despite the surface difference of whether they claim to affirm our gender, this is extremely similar to how TERFs tell us that everything we experience is “just misogyny”, but that transmasculine identity is a delusion that strips us of the ability to understand gender or the right to talk about it.)

I have personally witnessed an actual N*zi writing an article about how trans men are “destroying the white race” by transitioning and therefore becoming unfit to carry children, and because the N*zi had misgendered trans men in his article, every response I saw to it was about “men controlling women’s bodies”.

All a transphobe has to do is misgender us, and the conversation about our own oppression is once again about someone else.

Transphobes will misgender us as a form of violence, and cis feminist “allies” will perpetuate our misgendering for rhetorical convenience. Yes, there is room to analyse how trans men are treated by people who see us as women - but applying a simple “men oppressing women” dynamic that erases our maleness while refusing to even name transphobia or cissexism is not that. Trans men’s oppression is not identical to cis women’s, and forcing us to articulate it in ways that would include cis women in it means we cannot discuss the differences.

It may seem like I’ve strayed a long way from the original topic, and I kind of have, but the central reason for all of these things is the same:

Trans men challenge cis women’s self-concept. We force them to actually consider what manhood and womanhood are and to re-analyse their relationship to oppression, beyond a simple binary patriarchy. 

TERFs will tell you themselves that the acknowledgement of trans people, including trans men, is an “existential threat” that is “erasing womanhood” - not just our own, but cis women’s too. They hate the idea that biology doesn’t determine gender, and that gender does not have a strict binary relationship to oppression. They’re resentful of the idea that they could just “become men”, threatened by the assertion that doing so is not an escape, and completely indignant at the idea that their cis womanhood could give them any kind of power. They are, fundamentally, desperate not to have to face the questions we force them to consider, so they erase us, deflect from us, and talk over us at every opportunity.

Trans men are constantly redefined against our wills for the benefit of cis womanhood.

TL;DR:

Cis women find transmasculine identity threatening, because we share experiences that they see as foundational to their womanhood

The fact that transphobes target inclusive language in healthcare specifically is not a mistake - They do not want us to be able to transition safely

Cis women are uncomfortable acknowledging transphobia, so they make discussion of trans men’s oppression about “womanhood” instead

This can manifest as fully denying that trans men experience our own oppression, or as pretending trans men’s experiences are identical to cis women’s in every way

[albertserra]

"why does every white lgbt person have to include racism" ajskejskles if you ever get to detransition by torrey peters be prepared lol..

…. 😃 white trans authors be normal about your whiteness challenge . failed miserably

[genderkoolaid]

Just got called a terf for saying transandrophobia is a thing-

Cause you know.. terfs.. they are super into saying the transmen face unique challenges cause they are trans men... cause you know terfs are huge on saying that men can be oppressed....

TERFs view trans men's issues as being misogyny and misogyny alone, which is how you can tell when they are trying to bait trans men & nonbinary people, because they will only mention the misogyny and not anything else.

It's vital to talk about how transphobia and antimasculism are also a part of transandrophobia, because there are aspects of transandrophobia that do not make any sense if you just say they are the result of misogyny. Trans men being told we shouldn't go on testosterone because it's poison and will make us violent misogynists can't be explained by misogyny. Trans men being viewed as more dirty, bigoted, and aggressive than cis women can't be explained by misogyny. Trans men being assaulted in an attempt to detransition them into the women/lesbians we "really are" can't be explained by misogyny.*

And TERFs get very mad at trans men when we point this out, because we are emphatically disagreeing with their point that all of our problems are because of Males™. Transandrophobia inherently points to the oppression of trans people and bias against marginalized masculinity, both things that TERFs are not super fond of.

* specifically in the context of "being a man is bad so I'm gonna force you to be a woman, which is better!"

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Yes, I know it’s Ben Shapiro, I don’t care. The real problem isn’t watching a video with Ben Shapiro, it’s why you have to watch a video with Ben Shapiro to hear the stories of people like Helena. Why outlets like CNN and MSNBC pretend that people like her, who have been impacted by radical gender ideology, don’t even exist.

“In that context [fitting in socially on social media], I was learning a lot about how, like, white people are evil, cis people are evil, straight people are evil.

And then on top of that, there was also messages telling me well, if you feel like you don't fit in, that means you're trans. If you feel like you don't like your body, that means you're trans. If you feel like other girls don't understand you, that means you're trans,

So it's kind of like that convergence of those two lines of messaging that really led me to start thinking like, hey well maybe if I just change my pronouns that'll give me an indication of if that's right for me.

And then you know you get those messages back at you that it's like, yes, you need to change your pronouns, gender questioning is good, that's how you discover yourself, and by the way, only trans people question their gender so if you're questioning your gender that means that you're trans.

So I began like that, and then it was a process of about two years where i just kept kind of like going further and further down that rabbit hole.

I would change my pronouns, get a ton of positive affirmation, and then after a while i would say like, you know I'm still uncomfortable with myself, I want to go a little bit further, kind of subconsciously thinking this way.

So then I would like, cut my hair for example, and then tons of positive affirmation. I might change my pronouns again, tons of positive affirmation and after kind of like two years of going down a rabbit hole like that, i ended up thinking, oh i was actually meant to be a boy, and i need to transition.

So it wasn't like one day I just woke up and started believing that. It was kind of like this long process of being very detached from reality and not having a lot of social influences in real life to challenge or push back against some of the things i was learning online.”

-

“I think part of my ability to desist from this ideology was the fact that I had stopped using the internet so much. So, I had gradually been - because my life was so dysfunctional, I just didn't feel like posting on social media anymore, and I was just kind of in my own world.

And I think being separated from all of these like, social reinforcements and messages that you see online allowed me to kind of think and eventually come to the conclusion that I wasn't trans.

So, in that sense when I detransitioned I didn't have that immediate social circle to blow back at me.

But I did go back to a social media account that I had and announced that, you know, I was no longer transitioning and I said that my my neliefs about gender issues had evolved. And when I made that post, that's when I got some blow back.

I had some old friends that at one point were very close to me, but we hadn't talked in maybe a couple of months, actually messaged me like, you're a disgusting person, I'm so disappointed in how you turned out, you've gone insane.

Because there's kind of like this attitude in the trans community that if you question your transition, that makes you insane.

So I was kind of getting like those kinds of accusations as well, so it was very difficult, but I do think that not having all of those social reinforcements there in the first place is what allowed me to begin to unpack my beliefs.”

==

Sounds like a cult to me.

[endreal]

As someone who's undergone elements of binary transition that did not actually affirm my gender (or in my case lack thereof), I wish there were more safe spaces and ways to have conversations about the experiences of non-binary and genderqueer/fuck/less people and the challenges of identity and self-fulfillment we experience.

Like, don't get me wrong - I am INCREDIBLY lucky to have found communities both online and irl where conversations about trans and nonbinary issues and experience are open and supportive, but even in those spaces the deep majority of participants and the dominant voices are "conventional" binary trans folks and enbies? Where do I go to share camaraderie with others who may have transitioned one way and realized that life wasn't foe them and want to transition again? With whom can I have these conversations without first having to silence the probing interrogations of why I regret (there is no regret) my choices and what to detransition? There is no "going back" - there's only a desire to keep going forward in a way that predominant narratives groan and struggle to bear the weight of.

How does one physically embody "neither and both, and by synthesis of both, neither" when the larger society and especially medical practice is so firmly binary focused? Where is it safe to talk about how I love what I have now, but also what I had before? That dysphoria 3asnt part of my story before or after, but also that I feel as alienated from my physical self today as I did 6 years ago? To whom can I say "I want to transition again" and have it feel like the celebration it is instead of a confession?

[kcrabb88]

Queer Movies/Books/TV Shows for Pride Month!

Happy Pride everyone!! For your viewing/reading pleasure I have made a (non-exhaustive) list of queer media that I have enjoyed! 

Movies/Documentaries

Pride (2014): An old tried and true favorite, which meets at the intersection of queer and workers’ rights. A group of queer activists support the 1985 miners’ strike in Wales (complete with a sing-through of Bread and Roses + Power in a Union)

Portrait of a Lady on Fire: On an isolated island in Brittany at the end of the eighteenth century, a female painter is obliged to paint a wedding portrait of a young woman (or, two young lesbians fall in love by the sea, and you cry)

God’s Own Country: Young farmer Johnny Saxby numbs his daily frustrations with binge drinking and casual sex, until the arrival of a Romanian migrant worker for lambing season ignites an intense relationship that sets Johnny on a new path (Seriously this movie is GREAT and doesn’t get enough love, watch it! It’s rough but ends happily)

The Half of It:  When smart but cash-strapped teen Ellie Chu agrees to write a love letter for a jock, she doesn't expect to become his friend - or fall for his crush (as in she falls for his crush who is another girl. This movie was so good, and really friendship focused!) 

Saving Face:  A Chinese-American lesbian and her traditionalist mother are reluctant to go public with secret loves that clash against cultural expectations (this is an oldie and a goodie, with a happy ending!)

Moonlight:  A young African-American man grapples with his identity and sexuality while experiencing the everyday struggles of childhood, adolescence, and burgeoning adulthood (featuring gay men of color!)

Carol:  An aspiring photographer develops an intimate relationship with an older woman in 1950s New York (everyone’s seen this I think, but I couldn’t not have it here)

Milk: The story of Harvey Milk and his struggles as an American gay activist who fought for gay rights and became California's first openly gay elected official (the speech at the end of this made me cry. Warning, of course, for death, if you don’t know about Harvey Milk)

Pride (Hulu Documentary):  A six-part documentary series chronicling the fight for LGBTQ civil rights in America (they go by decade from the 50s-2000s, and there is a lot of great trans inclusion in this)

Paris is Burning (Documentary): A 1990s documentary about the African American and Latinx ballroom scene. Available on Youtube!

A New York Christmas Wedding:  As her Christmas Eve wedding draws near, Jennifer is visited by an angel and shown what could have been if she hadn't denied her true feelings for her childhood best friend (this movie is SO CUTE. It’s really only nominally a Christmas movie and easily watched anytime. Features an interracial sapphic couple!) 

TV Shows 

Love, Victor: Victor is a new student at Creekwood High School on his own journey of self-discovery, facing challenges at home, adjusting to a new city, and struggling with his sexual orientation (this is a spin-off of Love, Simon, and it’s very sweet and well done! Featuring a young gay man of color)

Sex Education:  A teenage boy with a sex therapist mother teams up with a high school classmate to set up an underground sex therapy clinic at school (this has multiple queer characters, including a featured young Black gay man and also in season 2 there is a side ace character!) 

Black Sails: I mean, do I even need to put a summary here? If you follow me you know that Black Sails is full of queer pirates, just queers everywhere.

Gentleman Jack:  A dramatization of the life of LGBTQ+ trailblazer, voracious learner and cryptic diarist Anne Lister, who returns to Halifax, West Yorkshire in 1832, determined to transform the fate of her faded ancestral home Shibden Hall (Period drama lesbians!!! A title sequence  that will make you gay just by watching!) 

Tales of the City (2019):  A middle-aged Mary Ann returns to San Francisco and reunites with the eccentric friends she left behind. "Tales of the City" focuses primarily on the people who live in a boardinghouse turned apartment complex owned by Anna Madrigal at 28 Barbary Lane, all of whom quickly become part of what Maupin coined a "logical family". It's no longer a secret that Mrs. Madrigal is transgender. Instead, she is haunted by something from her past that has long been too painful to share (this is based on a book series and it’s got lots of great inter-generational queer relationships!) 

The Haunting of Bly Manor:  After an au pair’s tragic death, Henry hires a young American nanny to care for his orphaned niece and nephew who reside at Bly Manor with the chef Owen, groundskeeper Jamie and housekeeper, Mrs. Grose (sweet, tender, wonderful lesbians. A bittersweet ending but this show is so so wonderful)

Sense8: A group of people around the world are suddenly linked mentally, and must find a way to survive being hunted by those who see them as a threat to the world's order (queers just EVERYWHERE in this show, of all kinds)

Books

Loveless by Alice Oseman:  Georgia has never been in love, never kissed anyone, never even had a crush – but as a fanfic-obsessed romantic she’s sure she’ll find her person one day. This wise, warm and witty story of identity and self-acceptance sees Alice Oseman on towering form as Georgia and her friends discover that true love isn’t limited to romance (don’t be turned off by this title, it’s tongue-in-cheek. This is a book about an aroace college girl discovering herself and centers the importance and power of platonic relationships! I have it on my TBR and have heard great things)

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters: Reese almost had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York City, a job she didn't hate. She had scraped together what previous generations of trans women could only dream of: a life of mundane, bourgeois comforts. The only thing missing was a child. But then her girlfriend, Amy, detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Now Reese is caught in a self-destructive pattern: avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.Ames isn't happy either. He thought detransitioning to live as a man would make life easier, but that decision cost him his relationship with Reese—and losing her meant losing his only family. Even though their romance is over, he longs to find a way back to her. When Ames's boss and lover, Katrina, reveals that she's pregnant with his baby—and that she's not sure whether she wants to keep it—Ames wonders if this is the chance he's been waiting for. Could the three of them form some kind of unconventional family—and raise the baby together?This provocative debut is about what happens at the emotional, messy, vulnerable corners of womanhood that platitudes and good intentions can't reach. Torrey Peters brilliantly and fearlessly navigates the most dangerous taboos around gender, sex, and relationships, gifting us a thrillingly original, witty, and deeply moving novel (again, don’t be thrown off by the title, it too, is tongue-in-cheek. This book was GREAT, and written by a trans women with a queer-and especially trans--audience in mind)

A Tip for the Hangman by Allison Epstein: A gay Christopher Marlowe, at Cambridge and trying to become England’s best new playwright, finds himself wrapped up in royal espionage schemes while also falling in love (this book is by a Twitter friend of mine, and it is a wonderful historical thriller with a gay man at the center).

Creatures of Will and Temper by Molly Tanzer: a very very queer remix of The Picture of Dorian Gray (which was already quite queer), featuring amazing female characters, a gay Basil, and a much happier ending than the original. 

Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston: The gay prince of England and the bisexual, biracial first son of the president fall in love (think an AU of 2016 where a woman becomes president). Featuring a fantastic discovery of bisexuality, ruminations on grief, and just a truly astonishing book. One of my favorites!

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston:  For cynical twenty-three-year-old August, moving to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and cinematic love stories don’t exist, and the only smart way to go through life is alone. She can’t imagine how waiting tables at a 24-hour pancake diner and moving in with too many weird roommates could possibly change that. And there’s certainly no chance of her subway commute being anything more than a daily trudge through boredom and electrical failures. But then, there’s this gorgeous girl on the train (This is Casey McQuiston’s brand new novel featuring time-travel, queer women, and I absolutely cannot WAIT to read it)

The Heiress by Molly Greely: Set in the Pride and Prejudice universe, this takes on Anne de Bourg (Lady Catherine’s daughter), and makes her queer! 

Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters:  Nan King, an oyster girl, is captivated by the music hall phenomenon Kitty Butler, a male impersonator extraordinaire treading the boards in Canterbury. Through a friend at the box office, Nan manages to visit all her shows and finally meet her heroine. Soon after, she becomes Kitty's dresser and the two head for the bright lights of Leicester Square where they begin a glittering career as music-hall stars in an all-singing and dancing double act. At the same time, behind closed doors, they admit their attraction to each other and their affair begins (Sarah Waters is the queen of historical lesbians. All of her books are good, and they’re all gay! The Paying Guests is another great one)

(On a side note re: queer books, there are MANY, these are just ones I’ve read more recently. Also there are a lot of indie/self-published writers doing great work writing queer books, so definitely support your local indie authors!)