#glbt issues

[nerdygaymormon]

The LGBTQ community has seen controversy regarding acceptance of different groups (bisexual and transgender individuals have sometimes been marginalized by the larger community), but the term LGBT has been a positive symbol of inclusion and reflects the embrace of different identities and that we’re stronger together and need each other. While there are differences, we all face many of the same challenges from broader society.

In the 1960′s, in wider society the meaning of the word gay transitioned from ‘happy’ or ‘carefree’ to predominantly mean ‘homosexual’ as they adopted the word as was used by homosexual men, except that society also used it as an umbrella term that meant anyone who wasn’t cisgender or heterosexual. The wider queer community embraced the word ‘gay’ as a mark of pride.

The modern fight for queer rights is considered to have begun with The Stonewall Riots in 1969 and was called the Gay Liberation Movement and the Gay Rights Movement.

The acronym GLB surfaced around this time to also include Lesbian and Bisexual people who felt “gay” wasn’t inclusive of their identities. 

Early in the gay rights movement, gay men were largely the ones running the show and there was a focus on men’s issues. Lesbians were unhappy that gay men dominated the leadership and ignored their needs and the feminist fight. As a result, lesbians tended to focus their attention on the Women’s Rights Movement which was happening at the same time. This dominance by gay men was seen as yet one more example of patriarchy and sexism. 

In the 1970′s, sexism and homophobia existed in more virulent forms and those biases against lesbians also made it hard for them to find their voices within women’s liberation movements. Betty Friedan, the founder of the National Organization for Women (NOW), commented that lesbians were a “lavender menace” that threatened the political efficacy of the organization and of feminism and many women felt including lesbians was a detriment.

In the 80s and 90s, a huge portion of gay men were suffering from AIDS while the lesbian community was largely unaffected. Lesbians helped gay men with medical care and were a massive part of the activism surrounding the gay community and AIDS. This willingness to support gay men in their time of need sparked a closer, more supportive relationship between both groups, and the gay community became more receptive to feminist ideals and goals. 

Approaching the 1990′s it was clear that GLB referred to sexual identity and wasn’t inclusive of gender identity and T should be added, especially since trans activist have long been at the forefront of the community’s fight for rights and acceptance, from Stonewall onward. Some argued that T should not be added, but many gay, lesbian and bisexual people pointed out that they also transgress established gender norms and therefore the GLB acronym should include gender identities and they pushed to include T in the acronym. 

GLBT became LGBT as a way to honor the tremendous work the lesbian community did during the AIDS crisis. 

Towards the end of the 1990s and into the 2000s, movements took place to add additional letters to the acronym to recognize Intersex, Asexual, Aromantic, Agender, and others. As the acronym grew to LGBTIQ, LGBTQIA, LGBTQIAA, many complained this was becoming unwieldy and started using a ‘+’ to show LGBT aren’t the only identities in the community and this became more common, whether as LGBT+ or LGBTQ+. 

In the 2010′s, the process of reclaiming the word “queer” that began in the 1980′s was largely accomplished. In the 2020′s the LGBTQ+ acronym is used less often as Queer is becoming the more common term to represent the community. 

[waitingforthet]

They Were Roommates: Once again, Brantley makes a meeting of the University of Minnesota GLBT (Gay Legendary Beasts Trans) club all about him and his personal issues.

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[camisoledadparis]

THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … December 24

1305 – France: Grand Master Jacques de Molay and over 500 Knights Templar recant their confessions of homosexual activities to which they had admitted under torture. King Phillip IV burned 54 of them soon after the false confessions. Philip had de Molay burned upon a scaffold on an island in the River Seine in front of Notre Dame de Paris in March, 1314. The sudden end of both the centuries-old order of Templars and the dramatic execution of its last leader turned Molay into a legendary figure.

1573 – French diplomat and law professor Hubert Languet wrote to Sir Philip Sidney, "My affection for you has entered my heart far more deeply than I have ever felt for anyone else, and it has so wholly taken possession there that it tries to rule alone."

Sir Philip Sidney

1905 – Howard Hughes Jr. (d.1976) was a USA business magnate, investor, record-setting pilot, engineer, film director, and philanthropist, known during his lifetime as one of the most influential and financially successful individuals in the world. He first became prominent as a film producer, and then as an important figure in the aviation industry.

Later in life, he became known for his eccentric behavior and reclusive lifestyle—oddities that were caused in part by his worsening obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), chronic pain from a near-fatal plane crash, and increasing deafness.

Hughes dated many famous women, including Joan Crawford, Billie Dove, Faith Domergue, Bette Davis, Yvonne De Carlo, Ava Gardner, Olivia de Havilland, Katharine Hepburn, Hedy Lamarr, Ginger Rogers, Janet Leigh, Pat Sheehan, Mamie Van Doren and Gene Tierney. He also proposed to Joan Fontaine several times.However, a rumour persists that Hughes and another notorious womanizer Errol Flynn had a sexual relationship, with Flynn at the top man!

1912 – A report issued by Utah's State Board of Insanity recommends sterilization of persons convicted of sexual crimes.

Robert Joffrey (rear) with Gerald Arpino

1930 – Robert Joffrey, born Abdullah Jaffa Bey Khan, (d.1988) was an American dancer, teacher, producer, choreographer, and co-founder of the Joffrey Ballet, known for his highly imaginative modern ballets. He was born Abdullah Jaffa Bey Khan in Seattle, Washington to an Afghan father and Italian mother.

As a teenager, Joffrey met 22-year-old Gerald Arpino, then serving in the Coast Guard. Arpino moved into the Joffrey home. From then on, the two were inseparable. They became best friends, artistic collaborators, and lovers.

Joffrey studied ballet and modern dance in New York City and made his debut in 1949 with the French choreographer Roland Petit and his Ballet de l'Opéra National de Paris. From 1950 to 1955, he taught at the New York High School for the Performing Arts, where he staged his earliest ballets. He founded the Joffrey Ballet School in New York City in 1954.

In 1954 he formed his own company, which premiered Le bal masqué (The Masked Ball, 1954; music by French composer Francis Poulenc) and Pierrot Lunaire��(1955; music by Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg). Joffrey's other works include Gamelan (1962) and Astarte (1967), which was set to rock music with special lighting and motion-picture effects.

The Robert Joffrey Ballet took up residence at New York City Center in 1966. In 1982 it moved its principal activities to Los Angeles, California and in 1995 to Chicago, Illinois. Noted for its experimental repertoire, the company was called the "Joffrey Ballet of Chicago" after its move but has since returned to being called simply the Joffrey Ballet. Besides Joffrey's works its repertoire includes many works by Gerald Arpino, Joffrey's long-time lover, co-director, and eventually artistic director emeritus until his 2008 death, and ballets commissioned by Joffrey from new choreographers as well as works by such established choreographers as George Balanchine, Alvin Ailey and Twyla Tharp.

Joffrey was sexually promiscuous but discreet. His pattern was to have Arpino at home for domestic stability, one principal romantic attachment, and numerous one-night stands.

In 1973, Joffrey fell in love with A. Aladar Marberger, a 26-year-old gay activist and manager of the Fischbach Gallery in New York. In the 1980s, both men contracted AIDS. While Marberger was outspoken about his illness, Joffrey remained silent. He was ashamed and wanted his obituary to say that he died of liver disease and asthma. Arpino agreed to his pleas, but the secret could not be maintained, as AIDS took a staggering toll on the dance world in general and on Joffrey's company in particular.

Robert Joffrey died of AIDS on March 25, 1988 in New York City. Aladar Marberger died eight months later.

1952 – Kevin Killian is an American poet, author, editor, and playwright of primarily LGBT literature. My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer, which he co-edited with Peter Gizzi, won the American Book Award for poetry in 2009. His novel, Impossible Princess, won the 2010 Lambda Literary Award as the best gay erotic fiction work of 2009.

Killian is also co-founder of the Poets Theater, an influential poetry, stage, and performance group based in San Francisco.

Kevin Killian was raised Roman Catholic and attended a Roman Catholic parochial school run by Franciscan monks where he suffered what he has described as "routine abuse". He discussed these experiences in an essay in the edited work Wrestling With the Angel, which describes the experiences of 21 gay men with religion. He was also the New York City spelling bee champion.

Kevin attended graduate school at the State University of New York at Stony Brook (SUNY-Stony Brook) in the 1970s, and moved to San Francisco in 1980. Although he is gay and Dodie Bellamy is a lesbian, the couple married and have an active heterosexual sex life.

Killian is also active in bringing attention to important LGBTQ artists and writers of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. He has held poetry readings of a wide number of influential poets and writers, and participated in a number of panels, art installations, retrospectives, and memorials.

1958 – Bob Smith (d.2018) was an American comedian and author. Smith, born in Buffalo, New York, was the first openly gay comedian to appear on The Tonight Show and the first openly gay comedian to have his own HBO half-hour comedy special. Smith, along with fellow comedians Jaffe Cohen and Danny McWilliams, formed the comedy troupe Funny Gay Males in 1988.

With Funny Gay Males, Smith is the co-author of Growing Up Gay: From Left Out to Coming Out (1995). Smith is also the author of two books of biographical essays. Openly Bob (1997) received a Lambda Literary Award for best humor book. Way to Go, Smith! (1999) was nominated for a 2000 Lambda Literary Award in the same category. Smith published his first novel, Selfish and Perverse, in 2007, and Remembrance of Things I Forgot in 2011. He published a new collection of essays, Treehab: Tales from My Natural Wild Life, in 2016. The essays cover a wide range of subjects including his career in stand-up, his love of nature, and his experience with ALS. He performed at the inaugural We're Funny That Way! comedy festival in 1997, and appeared in the festival's documentary film in 1998.

While taping a 2007 comedy special for Logo, Smith disclosed that he was suffering from a neurological disorder. He described his symptoms at that time as slurred speech, making him sound inebriated. In response to an August 2012 New York Times article on openly gay male stand-up comedians, Smith posted a comment stating he had ALS.

On February 2013, Smith gave a candid interview to Canada's Global News, where he elaborated about his condition. The article also revealed that Smith assisted with the conceiving of fellow LGBTQ comedian Elvira Kurt's children, who with Kurt reside in Canada, and that he was a direct descendant of Henry Smith, an early settler of Canada's Niagara Region for whom the Henry of Pelham Winery is named.

Bob Smith died on January 20, 2018 from Lou Gehrig’s Disease in his Manhattan, New York home at 59 years of age.

1971 – On this date the international singer and actor Ricky Martin was born. Born Enrique Martín Morales in San Juan, Puerto Rico, he is known to millions of fans by his stage name Ricky Martin, is a Puerto Rican pop singer and actor who achieved prominence, first as a member of the Latin boy band Menudo, then as a solo artist after 1991. During his career he has sold more than 60 million albums worldwide. He is the founder of Ricky Martín Foundation (in Spanish Fundación Ricky Martin) a non-profit charity organization.

Martin rose to fame as a member of the Latin American boy band Menudo, after which he became a solo artist in 1990. During forays into acting on Broadway ("Les Miserables") and soap operas (General Hospital) he released numerous albums of Spanish music, which sold millions of copies throughout Latin America and Europe. In 1995, Martin refocused on his music career through his third album, A Medio Vivir. With this album, Martin made a shift from formulaic hit ballads to a more risky fusion of music centered around traditional Latin sounds, with the hit "Maria", which epitomizes this new sound. "Maria" broke Martin into Europe through Spain. With the ballad "Te Extraño, Te Olvido, Te Amo", Martin began his expansion from Latin American and Spanish-speaking audiences to the European and Asian markets. He was chosen to sing the anthem of the 1998 FIFA World Cup, the famous hit "The Cup of Life"/"La Copa de la Vida", that reached number one on the charts in 60 countries.

He broke into the English-language market with his mega-selling hit single "Livin' la Vida Loca," which reached number one in many countries around the world, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, France, Greece, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Guatemala, Mexico, Russia, Turkey, and South Africa. He followed up with the hit "She's All I Ever Had" which peaked at #2 on The Billboard Hot 100. This album became one of the top-selling albums of 1999, and was certified 7 times platinum, selling over 22 million copies worldwide to date.

During the Livin' la Vida Loca era, Martin's personal life went under the microscope due to his large Gay following, and he was questioned about his sexual orientation. In December, 2000 during an interview in The Mirror, Martin was asked, '"So what about all these rumors?" "There's not a lot I can do about that," he said. "I guess these rumors were started by people who don't have a life, or perhaps it's because they want me to be like them and I'm not. I try not to pay attention to any of these allegations. I could have been married with kids for years or have 27 girlfriends, and if people still want to go around saying that I'm gay, they will."'

In August 2008, Martin became the father of twin boys, named Matteo and Valentino. The babies were delivered via gestational surrogacy.

On March of 2010, Martin publicly came out as Gay in a post on his official web site by stating, "Today is my day, this is my time, and this is my moment. These years in silence and reflection made me stronger and reminded me that acceptance has to come from within and that this kind of truth gives me the power to conquer emotions I didn't even know existed ... I am proud to say that I am a fortunate homosexual man. I am very blessed to be who I am."

"What will happen from now on? It doesn't matter. I can only focus on what's happening to me in this moment. The word 'happiness' takes on a new meaning for me as of today. It has been a very intense process. Every word that I write in this letter is born out of love, acceptance, detachment and real contentment. Writing this is a solid step towards my inner peace and vital part of my evolution."

In January 2018, Ricky Martin married his long-time partner artist Jwan Yosef.

Ricky and Jwan

1973 – Paul Foot is an English comedian. He commands a significant cult following called The Guild of Connoisseurs. Foot is known for his musings, rants, 'disturbances' and apparent aversion to pop culture. The Daily Express likened Foot to "a rare exotic bird", whilst six national newspapers including the The Independent and The Age have declared Paul to be "a comedy genius".

Foot was born and raised in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, he studied mathematics at Merton College, Oxford.It was during his studies he first started performing stand-up. As of 2011 Foot has refused to discuss his years at Oxford or former pursuits as a mathematics student.

Graduating from Oxford in 1995, Foot was head-hunted by a computer software company in the run-up to the dot-com bubble, however he loathed the industry: "I had to read manuals on HTML and just write websites from scratch. None of us really knew what we were doing".

He started to pursue a career in comedy, doing open mic slots at various venues, in the hope that show business would allow him to meet his idol Ella Fitzgerald. Tragically Ella Fitzgerald died a few days after this decision was made, but Foot decided to stick with comedy as a career anyhow.

He is openly gay. Foot also has a much admired collection of pre-war Toby jugs, which he parades on a custom made milk float on his yearly trip to the Edinburgh Comedy Festival.

1981 – Chris Kluwe is a former American football punter and writer. Kluwe played at Los Alamitos High School in Los Alamitos, California, where he was a 1999 USA Today High School All-American, and then attended the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he played college football for the UCLA Bruins. He was signed by the Seattle Seahawks as an undrafted free agent in 2005 and played professionally in the National Football League for the Seattle Seahawks, Minnesota Vikings, and Oakland Raiders.

Kluwe is widely known for his eight seasons with the Minnesota Vikings, where he set eight individual team records. During this period, Kluwe became an outspoken advocate on social issues, including same sex marriage and gay rights, which ultimately led to tension between Kluwe and coaching staff.

Kluwe is widely known for his eight seasons with the Minnesota Vikings, where he set eight individual team records. During this period, Kluwe became an outspoken advocate on social issues, including same sex marriage and gay rights, which ultimately led to tension between Kluwe and coaching staff.

Kluwe publicly released a letter on September 7, 2012, via sports website Deadspin he had sent to Maryland state assembly delegate Emmett Burns, defending the opinions of Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo and condemning Burns on his attempt to stifle Ayanbadejo's free speech. Ayanbadejo has been a vocal supporter of same-sex marriage and Burns had sent a letter requesting that the Ravens ownership "inhibit such expressions" by their employee. On October 1, 2012, Kluwe published a letter to the editor that responded to a video statement released by former Viking Matt Birk in supporting a ban on same-sex marriage. In the letter, Kluwe outlined six primary reasons why he disagreed with Birk's statement. Kluwe was also featured in a documentary called The Last Barrier which aired on NBC Bay Area on December 8, 2012. During this interview he spoke about his feelings towards equality.

Kluwe and Ayanbadejo filed an amicus brief to the United States Supreme Court on February 28, 2013, regarding Hollingsworth v. Perry, in which they expressed their support of the challenge to California Proposition 8. Kluwe appeared on the January 18, 2013, episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, to discuss his support of same-sex marriage. Ellen DeGeneres inducted Kluwe as the first inductee in her Hall of Fame, since NFL punters are unlikely to be voted into the league's hall of fame. On April 16, 2013, in recognition of his steadfast support of same-sex marriage and for starting a conversation about LGBT issues in athletics, Kluwe was named the Grand Marshal of the 41st annual Twin Cities Pride festival in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

On January 2, 2014, Kluwe alleged that he was released from the Vikings due to his support of same-sex marriage. He stated that the Vikings requested that he "deliberately sacrifice my own numbers to help the team, a request with which I always complied." The team stated it was not previously made aware of Kluwe's allegations, and countered that he "was released strictly based on his football performance." Kluwe said that special teams coach Mike Priefer in 2012 made homophobic remarks and criticized the player for his views on same-sex marriage. Priefer responded with a statement saying that "I do not tolerate discrimination of any type and am respectful of all individuals. I personally have gay family members who I love and support just as I do any family member.” Kluwe called the coach's acts "inexcusable", and hoped he prevented Priefer from ever coaching again. He also alleged that head coach Leslie Frazier told him to stop speaking out on same-sex marriage. Kluwe later said his comments on Priefer were "a little too harsh originally", and stated that he preferred that the coach get therapy and counseling and return to the league as a role model.

Kluwe was released by the Vikings after the 2012 season, signed with the Oakland Raiders prior to the 2013 season, and was subsequently released. Kluwe was unable to find another NFL team with which to sign and retired from professional football in 2013. Following his departure from football, he has pursued a writing career and is a humor columnist for the sports website Deadspin.

2012 – The Serbian Parliament approves changes to the Penal Code to include sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes when it comes to hate crimes.

2013 – Alan Turing considered the father of computer science, was a code-breaker who helped shorten WWII. Since he was gay, the British government offered him the choice of prison or chemical castration after he was convicted of gross indecency. He selected hormonal castration via estrogen. He died in 1954 of cyanide poisoning. In 2009, Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official apology, and Queen Elizabeth II issued Turing a royal pardon on this day in 2013.

[iphigeniacomplex]

rejoice! the glbt historical society has a digital archive collecting the writing of camille moran, a transgender activist for psychiatric survivor rights who advocated for the removal of gender identity disorder from the dsm

you may be familiar with moran from her statement in the fall '93 issue of ex-patient newsletter dendron, "why a transgendered woman calls for psychiatry's destruction". (if not, it can be accessed here, on page 17.) her writing on the psychiatric abuse she experienced as a transgender woman is crucial reading for anyone interested in the psychiatric survivors movement or anti-psychiatric perspectives.

[pep-the-artemis]

When people say that LGBT and BLM or even LGB and T shouldn't be connected since they're separate issues they're dumb

Even ignoring how on a fundamental level they're all linked in a weird cobweb of problems, that doesn't matter. What matters is that the groups are being suppressed and discriminated against, we may be fighting different battles but it's all the same war.

For example, two things which couldn't be much more different are gay rights and miners rights but guess who stood by the miners when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher waged a class war against miners, who stood besides them... the GLBT community (or as we know them today the LGBT community but thats a story for another day).

The only reason to divide is to the advantage of our enemy, divide and conquer.

[talisidekick]

2SLGBTQIA+

The 2S is for Two Spirit. An umbrella term for various third gender rolls and identities in First Nations cultures. I originally saw it as LGBTQIA2S+, but was reminded elsewhere that the reason LGBT has this acronym and not GLBT as it originally was, was because the L got shifted when lesbians showed up for blood drives during the Aids Crisis both as donors and nurses. The L became up front to honour the sacrifices made back then by lesbians in the community; and to this day one of the driving forces behind the anti-discrimination laws Canada has written into our constitution is because of the efforts of First Nations people and Two Spirit identities. And seeing how Canada and largely North America as a whole has a notoriously bad history about treating First Nations peoples with any degree of respect or agency over their own affairs and culture, it seemed prudent to place it up front.

It duals as a reminder for me as well; that while queer sexualities and gender identities fight to achieve equality and recognition on the same level as cisgender white men, we, and importantly I, cannot forget that this fight isn't over until all the minorities touched on and apart of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community simultaneously also achieve the same equality and recognition in all other respects. 2SLGBTQIA+ isn't a separate fight, it's one part of a much larger equal rights movement spanning across issues of race, creed, religion, gender, sexuality, and identity.

This is also what I mean when I say "none of us are free until/unless all of us are". It's about equality for all. Respect it or get bricked.

(if u add a + just vote for whichever one you add it to <3)

[thecontextofthecoconuttree]

The Proud "Damned Lesbian," Roberta Achtenberg

Although Roberta Achtenberg is deeply entrenched as a fairly niche political figure, she has had a tremendous impact on the way we are educated about the LGBTQ+ Community and the way they are treated from court rooms to the Senate floor. I personally don't believe that there can be a discussion about inclusion within American politics without referencing Achtenberg's reception as a Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development nominee.

When Roberta was 27 and going through law school, at the University of Utah, she found herself attracted to a woman. Although she was too scared to discuss these feelings at the time, she researched homosexuality and what it meant to be a lesbian. After reuniting with her husband, they amicably divorced, and Roberta decided to come out exclusively to her family, fearing that revealing her sexuality would jeopardize her career as a lawyer and educator. However, her research exposed the disadvantages at which the LGBTQ+ community were often placed under within the law and issues such as; adoption, privacy rights, marriage, housing, and employment. In 2011, she noted "The fact that sodomy laws existed, and we were therefore criminals; and because we were criminals we were judged mentally deficient and because we were mentally deficient we were expendable... [meaning] we could be fired from our jobs or we could have custody of our children taken away" (Achtenberg, Youtube, 13:42-14:28). At the time, legal and societal prejudice made them vulnerable to losing basic human rights if they were to express their sexuality. These issues inspired her to co-found the National Center for Lesbian Rights in 1977, as well as join the National Lawyers Guild in 1978 and begin working within its Anti-Sexism Committee, which was tasked with creating a manual to help attorneys represent their LGBTQ+ clients, how to address their First Amendment issues, etc. This work resulted in her editing of "Sexual Orientation and the Law" (1985).

As she made her way through different positions, in 1993, she was appointed Assistant Secretary for the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity by President Bill Clinton, making her the first openly LGBTQ person to be appointed and confirmed to a position within a cabinet office. However, this was no easy feat. Conservative groups and Senators, notably Senator Jesse Helms, lobbied against her. In fact, Senator Helms pledged to stall Achtenberg's nomination "for weeks and weeks and weeks" (Helms, UPI), using her sexuality as a central point of attack. In a particularly harsh statement to Times, he referred to her as a "damn lesbian" and an "intolerant radical," framing her nomination as a threat to the future electability of Achtenberg's supportive Senate members. Moreover, the Christian Action Network circulated a video of Achtenberg and her partner riding in a Gay Pride parade in 1992. Helms saw this as further evidence that this was an "insane assault on family values" and chastised her for "demanding that society accept as normal, a lifestyle that most of the world's major religions consider immoral and which the average American voter instinctively finds repulsive" (Helms, GLBT). These actions and statements reaffirmed an issue we continue to struggle with today--the separation of church and state. While some view LGPTQ+ rights as a matter of moral or religious conviction, Achtenberg's appointment underscored the importance of ensuring that public policy and government positions remain free from religious interference. Achtenberg also recalled in 2011 how she was confronted about her position on housing discrimination against gay people and whether or not she wanted to emplace protections. To which she denied, later stating, "I was so scared I wouldn't get confirmed... in 1993 I could not have imagined the temerity of asserting such a position" (24:10-24:47). Despite this she still managed to receive a vote of 58-31 affirming her position within Clinton's cabinet. One of her actions integrated the previously all-white town of Vidor, Texas creating opposition from the Ku Klux Klan. However, her role in this position, despite the national attention, gave the opportunity for gay individuals around the country to find hope in her success. Achtenberg herself stated "The ability to be in public life has been enormously positive to our movement, to our people, and being able to contribute has been very gratifying" (Achtenberg, GLBT).

To speak on her more recent activity and ideology, she gave a speech at Harvard in 2011 detailing how she believes "Old-time warriors like myself, it's time for us to stand down. Not because we're too old, or too tired, or too cynical, but because our skills are not the skills that are needed today to help the movement take the next step"(Achtenberg, Youtube, 11:35-12:20). This sentiment echoes a broader concern in today's political landscape, in which many older politicians refuse to step aside, clinging to their positions of power even as newer generations push for fresh perspectives and leadership. Achtenberg believes that in order to understand why we internalize homophobia and to do something about this, we must look to the next generation. Otherwise, the work of the LGBTQ+ movement will fail to be important and complex. It isn't so much about legalistic thinking or equal rights anymore, but rather a "cultural transformation... of souls, hearts, and minds" (Achtenberg, Youtube, 35:01-35:20). We have to learn to dress the antipathy that pervades the way our culture treats LGBTQ+ people.

Roberta Achtenberg's work, determination, and family life with her partner and son ultimately helped to broaden the definition of family within American culture.

Works Cited

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_e1RgSb4DM&list=PL1dGNrB33lS0vqNa7glklNwikwevRYbyl&index=1

http://www.glbtqarchive.com/ssh/achtenberg_r_S.pdf

https://www.upi.com/Archives/1993/05/06/Helms-vows-to-block-open-lesbians-nomination/9012736660800/

https://kids.kiddle.co/Roberta_Achtenberg

[josephine-practicum]

Nearing the End

Log for 11/18/2024

Today I worked from 11AM to 4:30PM. I mainly worked on outreach emails and publication research. Lawson was able to point me in the right direction for the latter, and I would like to showcase one of the magazines I found quirky.

The Out on the Town Magazine (2010s) is a "GLBT magazine for the Florida Panhandle, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, the Nashville market in Tennessee, and the Springfield/Joplin markets in Missouri." (source). This publication was included in Invisible Histories' "Extra Extra, Queer All About It" presentation alongside other Queer magazines.

Covers for this magazine range wildly from eye-catching guests:

Out on the Town Magazine: Volume 2, Issue 6

To strangely intriguing:

Out on the Town Magazine: Volume 2, Issue 2

These magazines are a product of their time. The ones I showed here are from their online Issuu profile that has issues from 2010 to 2012.

In addition to uncovering this, I was able to send out five more outreach emails. My message to Jacksonville State University came a few hours later. They were able to direct me to "JSU Pride: First Openly Gay Professor Shares His Story"---an article on Freddy Clements. I came across this article during my search through the JSU archives, but I had not known about his work specifically. Not only did he design costumes for the university, but he made outfits for a local ball he attended. I plan on adding more information about him to the spreadsheet tomorrow.

Lastly, my meeting with Lawson and the rest of the team went smoothly. I confessed that I was running out of content to research, and thankfully that means I'm nearing the end of my project. Our last meeting will be on the 2nd of December. By then, I should have this spreadsheet complete and my final blog draft complete.

That's all for today, until tomorrow!=

[pashterlengkap]

Retired gay couple awarded for launching organization supporting LGBTQ+ elders of color

On November 12, Paul Glass and Charles D. Evans of Falmouth were honored with this year’s AARP Andrus Award for Community Service. It’s AARP’s most prestigious and visible state volunteer award for community service. They are the first married and Black gay couple in AARP’s history to receive the award. AARP, formerly the American Association of Retired Persons,  is one of the largest organizations in the country. With a membership of over 38 million members as of 2018, it focuses on issues affecting Americans over the age of fifty. The AARP Andrus Award for Community Service is an annual awards program developed to honor individuals whose service is a unique and valuable contribution to their community and society, reflecting AARP’s vision and mission. Related: This tiny market in East Texas is made for LGBTQ+ people In one of the most conservative corners of the country, queer folks are supporting each other. “I am beyond honored and grateful for this recognition. I feel we are not put on this earth to exist but to be of service to others and our community,” Evans told LGBTQ Nation. Get the Daily Brief The news you care about, reported on by the people who care about you: Subscribe to our Newsletter When AARP Massachusetts was looking to honor the state’s top volunteer, Glass and Evans’s names rose to the top. They have made a difference in the lives around them, sharing their knowledge, experience, talent, and skills to enrich the lives of our community. Since childhood, their indefatigable spirit to give back to their community was ingrained in them.  “Paul and Charles have channeled the many negative experiences they endured into positive, healing, and inspiring volunteer work and leadership,” wrote Barrie Atkin of Swampscott, who nominated the couple. “Their signature work co-founding LGBTQ+ Elders of Color in 2013 in Massachusetts was innovative, unusual, and courageous. No such organization existed at that time. In collaboration with the LGBTQ+ Aging Project, they identified the need and turned the need into a reality. They didn’t just co-found the organization along with others. Their continued leadership inspires many others to be involved.”  People of color are underrepresented and underserved when it comes to aging services and resources. Paul and Charles understand the intersectional challenges and complexities of growing older as African-American gay men. LGBTQ+ senior communities with multiple identities confront multiple challenges. Their organization, LGBTQ+ Elders of Color, fills the gap missed by Massachusetts LGBTQ+ organizations and local, state, and federal public health systems. Outreach is essential because the challenges facing Black LGBTQ+ seniors intensify with age. According to Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders (Sage) and the Movement Advancement Project (MAP), approximately one-third of LGBTQ+ elders live at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level, with 40 percent being Black. These seniors often feel more vulnerable, invisible, and isolated by retirement. Historical and ongoing discrimination has created significant lifelong challenges for this demographic: limited wealth and savings, low wages, few labor protections, housing instability, food insecurity, stigma, immigration, HIV status, and higher mortality from treatable conditions. All have contributed to a lack of well-being and a lower quality of life. By 2050, POC seniors will comprise over 40 percent of the elderly population, and approximately 3 million seniors will identify as LGBTQ+. With this projection, specific cultural and linguistic competence training and nondiscrimination policies are needed to support a rapidly growing demographic group that has experienced a lifetime of health, educational, and economic disparities. In 2018, Massachusetts legislators passed “An Act Relative to LGBT Awareness Training for Aging Services Providers” mandating LGBTQ+ cultural awareness training for all… http://dlvr.it/SzJfYC

[camisoledadparis]

HIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … January 1

I hope you are enjoying This Day in Gay History. It was started out as a reposting of White Crane's daily newsletters in early 2011 has gained a life of its own and grown out in many directions, in particular, gaining a international identity. The postings now come from many sources, some of them credited in the masthead, but also from tips and suggestions from members. As we move into a new year, you will find you have seen many of the postings before, but always check them out, because there will always be something new, especially as so many public figures are now coming out of the closet. Your Admin

1533 – Italy: Michelangelo writes a love letter to Tommaso de Cavalieri, devoting "the present and the time to come that remain to me."

Rare snapshot of Charles Kains Jackson

1857 – Charles Kains Jackson (d.1933) was an English poet closely associated with the Uranian school.

Beginning in 1888, in addition to a career as a lawyer, he served as editor for the periodical the Artist and Journal of Home Culture, which became something of an official periodical for the movement. In it, he praised such artists as Henry Scott Tuke (to whom he dedicated a sonnet) and Henry Oliver Walker. He also befriended such similar-minded contemporaries as Frederick William Rolfe, Lord Alfred Douglas and John Addington Symonds.The homosexual and pederastic aspects of the Artist declined after the replacement of Kains Jackson as an editor in 1894. The final issue edited by Kains Jackson included his essay, 'The New Chivalry', an argument for the moral and societal benefits of pederasty and erotic male friendship on the grounds of both Platonism and Social Darwinism. According to Kains Jackson, the New Chivalry would promote 'the youthful masculine ideal' over the Old Chivalry's emphasis on the feminine. Jackson's volumes of poetry include Finibus Cantat Amor (1922) and Lysis (1924).

Kains Jackson was a member of the Order of Chaeronea, a secret society for homosexuals founded in 1897 by George Ives, which was named after the location of the battle where the Sacred Band of Thebes was finally annihilated in 338 BC. Other members included Samuel Ellworth Cottam, Montague Summers, and John Gambril Nicholson.

1879 – E.M. Forster (d.1970) was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society.

Forster was born into an Anglo-Irish and Welsh middle-class family in London. England. He attended the famous public school Tonbridge School in Kent as a day boy. The theatre at the school is named after him, and later studied at King's College, Cambridge, between 1897 and 1901.

After leaving university he travelled in continental Europe with his mother. He visited Egypt, Germany and India with the classicist Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson in 1914. By that time, Forster had written all but one of his novels. In the First World War, as a conscientious objector, he volunteered for the International Red Cross, travelling to Alexandria, Egypt.

Why didn't EM Forster write much of anything in the second half of his life? According to a new biographer, Wendy Moffat, who has had access to Forster's private papers, what knocked him off track was losing his virginity in his late 30s.

He slept with a wounded soldier in Egypt, in 1917 - "losing R [respectability]" he called it in his private diary. After that, he set about making up for lost time. "I should have been a more famous writer if I had written or rather published more," he later explained, "but sex prevented the latter."

Back in England Forster divided his time between his mother in the Home Counties and gay friends and bisexual boys in his London flat. Homosexuality in Britain was aggressively persecuted then and Forster wisely centred his affairs on officers from Hammersmith police station.

One of them, Bob Buckingham, became the love of Forster's life. Bob was bisexual and soon married, however, he never abandoned Forster. As for writing novels that stopped with the development of his homosexual life.

Forster developed a long-term loving relationship with Bob Buckingham, and his wife, and included the couple in his circle, which also included the writer and arts editor of The Listener, J.R. Ackerley, the psychologist W.J.H. Sprott, and, for a time, the composer Benjamin Britten. Other writers with whom Forster associated included the poet Siegfried Sassoon and the Belfast-based novelist Forrest Reid.

In the 1930s and 1940s Forster became a successful broadcaster on BBC Radio. He was a humanist, homosexual, and lifelong bachelor.

Forster had five novels published in his lifetime. Although Maurice appeared shortly after his death, it had been written nearly sixty years earlier. A seventh novel, Arctic Summer, was never finished. The earlier novels are Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), The Longest Journey (1907), A Room with a View��(1908), and Howards End (1910).

Forster achieved his greatest success with A Passage to India (1924). The novel takes as its subject the relationship between East and West, seen through the lens of India in the later days of the British Raj. Forster connects personal relationships with the politics of colonialism through the story of the Englishwoman Adela Quested, the Indian Dr. Aziz, and the question of what did or did not happen between them in the Marabar Caves.

Maurice (1971) - his one novel to deal head-on with homosexuality - was written some years previously, though it was published only after his death. His posthumously-published novel tells of the coming of age of an explicitly Gay male character.

Maurice is a homosexual love story which also returns to matters familiar from Forster's first three novels, such as the suburbs of London in the English home counties, the experience of attending Cambridge, and the wild landscape of Wiltshire. The novel was controversial, given that Forster's sexuality had not been previously known or widely acknowledged. Today's critics continue to argue over the extent to which Forster's sexuality, even his personal activities, influenced his writing.

Forster's two best-known works, A Passage to India and Howards End, explore the irreconcilability of class differences. A Room with a View also shows how questions of propriety and class can make connection difficult. The novel is his most widely read and accessible work, remaining popular long after its original publication. His posthumous novel Maurice explores the possibility of class reconciliation as one facet of a homosexual relationship.

Sexuality is another key theme in Forster's works, and it has been argued that a general shift from heterosexual love to homosexual love can be detected over the course of his writing career. The foreword to Maurice describes his struggle with his own homosexuality, while similar issues are explored in several volumes of homosexually-charged short stories. Forster's explicitly homosexual writings, the novel Maurice and the short-story collection The Life to Come, were published shortly after his death.

Forster died of a stroke in Coventry on 7 June 1970 at the age of 91. at the home of his policeman friend and his wife, the Buckinghams.

1895 – Although never elected to any office, J. Edgar Hoover (d.1972) wielded tremendous political power in the United States government for almost five decades, and through eight presidencies, as head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Under his leadership, the Bureau developed from a weak and ineffectual collection of political appointees into one of the most efficient police agencies in the world.

It also developed into an undercover secret police that frequently used illegal means to gather damaging information, not only on criminals and political dissidents, but also on political leaders as well. Although Hoover was always in the front lines of government attempts to harass homosexual liberation movements, rumors that he himself was gay followed him throughout his career.

Hoover went to work for the Justice Department in 1917 as a clerk, but moved up quickly by virtue of his efficiency and his vigorous action against Communists and radicals during the late 1910s and 1920s. He supervised the deportation of foreign-born radicals in the great strike wave of 1919.

In 1924, he was appointed head of the Bureau of Investigation of the Justice Department (renamed Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1935). Hoover immediately began to tighten up the slack Bureau. New agents were hired and promoted based on merit and strict performance reviews. He used his library experience to re-organize records and files, and he began amassing his famous "secret files," confidential information, often illegally obtained, which he kept to use against anyone who might threaten his power or tenure.

Hoover soon became both famous and feared for his zealous campaigns against such criminal and "subversive" groups as the Communist Party and the Ku Klux Klan. During the prohibition era, his "G-men" hunted down and caught many prominent gangsters, such as Al Capone and John Dillinger.

During the 1950s, he participated fully in the McCarthy witch hunts, zealously seeking out Communists and fellow-travelers.

Along with pursuing Communist sympathizers, Hoover also led a campaign of harassment directed at the new "homophile" groups such as the Mattachine Society, which sprang up to protest mistreatment of gay men and lesbians. F.B.I. agents took pictures and license plate numbers at demonstrations and infiltrated meetings and conferences of the fledgling homophile groups.

Many believe that Hoover took this anti-gay stance to cover his own homosexuality. Although he constantly (and violently) denied it, whispers about his sexuality followed Hoover throughout his career. For example, a 1943 internal F.B.I. memo reported claims that the director was homosexual.

Hoover's lifestyle fit many gay stereotypes: he was a sharp, dandified dresser, known for his white linen suits and silk handkerchiefs, who collected antiques and lived with his mother until her death when he was 42. He was never known to have even one date with a woman, yet he had several intimate relationships with men, notably a more than forty-year relationship with the handsome Clyde Tolson, his second-in-command at the F.B.I.

Hoover and Tolson rode to work together, ate lunch and dinner together most days, and took vacations together. Many observers described their relationship as marriage-like. Although some commentators believe that Hoover's rigid morality and strict religious beliefs would not have permitted him to have a physical relationship with a man, the rumors of his homosexuality were accelerated by the appearance, after their deaths, of photographs of Hoover and Tolson in drag, photographs that were allegedly Mafia blackmail pictures.

If Hoover and Tolson were homosexual, as seems more and more likely, their roles as persecutors of other homosexuals casts into bold relief the nightmare-like quality of the McCarthy era's war on homosexuality.

Hoover remained in charge of the F.B.I. until his death from a heart attack on May 2, 1972.

1927 – Maurice Béjart (d.2007) was a French born, Swiss choreographer who ran the Béjart Ballet Lausanne in Switzerland. He was the son of the French philosopher Gaston Berger.

Perhaps the preeminent descendant of Sergei Diaghilev and Serge Lifar, Maurice Béjart was a significant presence in late twentieth-century and early twenty-first century dance as an innovator with a radical vision. Central to his reinvigoration of classical ballet was his creation of palpably homoerotic dances that celebrate male beauty.

After studying with Léo Staats, Lubov Egorova, and Madama Rousanne (Sarkissian) in Paris, he performed with Mona Inglesby's International Ballet and the Royal Swedish Ballet and sealed his reputation as industrious and disciplined before creating dances for his own path-breaking companies.

Symphonie pour un homme seul (1955, with a score by Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry), featuring the first electronic score to accompany ballet, established Béjart as an innovator with a radical vision.

After presenting an electrifying interpretation of The Rite of Spring (set to the classic Igor Stravinsky score) informed by myth, sexual heat, and stage flash in 1959 at the Théâtre Royale de la Monnaie in Brussels, he founded The Ballet of the Twentieth Century, a company that had a major influence on the European Dance Theatre movement.

Nijinsky: Clown of God (1971, set to a score combining music by Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky and Pierre Henry), a dreamlike meditation on Vaslav Nijinsky and his legacy, is only one prominent example of Béjart's personal identification and connection with his choreographic subjects.

Many times that connection, as in Nijinsky: Clown of God, was palpably homoerotic. In addition to reimagining Ballets Russes classics such as The Firebird (to the original Stravinsky score), Pétrouchka (to the Stravinsky score) and The Specter of the Rose (to a score of a piano piece by Carl Maria von Weber, orchestrated by Hector Berlioz) to spectacular effect, he also derived inspiration from such gay icons as Prometheus, Dionysus, Orpheus, and Saint Sebastian.

Collaborating closely with many extraordinarily handsome men (Argentine Jorge Donn and Italian Paolo Bortoluzzi among them), Béjart consistently created dances celebrating male beauty and eroticism, not the least of which was the all-male variant of his Boléro (1960, to the throbbing score by Maurice Ravel).

Audiences and critics were either enthralled or enraged by later offerings such as the celebratory Ballet for Life (1997, set to a score combining classical Mozart with pop-rock Queen), in response to the AIDS-related deaths of his friends Jorge Donn and Freddie Mercury of the rock group Queen; and Bolero for Gianni (1999, set to his all-time-favorite Ravel score), a tribute to the murdered Gianni Versace, who had designed the eye-popping costumes for that 1997 dance.

Although beset by kidney problems and other illnesses in his final years, Béjart continued working until the very end of his life. He died on November 22, 2007.

1944 – Eloy de la Iglesia (d.2006) was a Spanish screenwriter and film director.

De la Iglesia was an outspoken gay socialist filmmaker who is relatively unknown outside Spain despite a prolific and successful career in his native country. He is best remembered for having portrayed urban marginality and the world of drugs and juvenile delinquency in the early 1980s. Many of his films also deal with the theme of homosexuality.

Born in Zarauz, Guipúzcoa into a wealthy Basque family, he grew up in Madrid. He attended courses at the prestigious Parisian Institut des hautes études cinématographiques, but he could not enter Spain’s national Film School because he wasn't yet 21, the minimum age required for admission. Instead, he began to study philosophy and literature at the Complutense University of Madrid, but on his third year he abandoned it to direct children’s theater. By age twenty he had already written and directed many works for television sharpening his narrative skills. He established himself as a writer of children's television programs for Radiotelevisíon Española in Barcelona.

De la Iglesia made his debut as film director when he was only twenty-two years old with Fantasia 3 (Fantasy 3) (1966), adapting three children’s stories: The Maid of the Sea, The three hairs from the devil and The Wizard of Oz. While doing mandatory military service, he wrote the script of his second film, Algo Amargo en la Boca (Something Bitter Tasting) (1968). Algo Amargo en la boca, a sordid melodrama, and de la Iglesia’s next film, Cuadrilatero (Boxing Ring) (1969), a boxing story, faced problems with the Francoist censors and failed at the box office. His films did not attract widespread notice until his fourth effort, the critically acclaimed thriller El Techo de Cristal (The Glass Ceiling) (1970).

The dismantling of the Francoist censorship allowed Eloy de la Iglesia to increase sexually charged tones in his works. This approach became apparent in his films: Juego de amor prohibido (Games of Forbbiden Love) (1975) and La otra alcoba (The other bedroom) (1976). In the late 1970s Eloy de la Iglesia, associated with journalist and screen writer Gonzalo Goicoechea, tackled former taboo subjects in Spanish Cinema. Los placeres ocultos (Hidden Pleasures ) (1977) focused on homosexuality. El diputado (Confessions of a Congressman) (1979), follows the story of a politician who is blackmailed due to his secret homosexuality and El sacerdote (The Priest ), also released in 1979, deals with a conservative catholic priest whose sexual obsessions leads him to self-mutilation.

Like many of the young protagonists of his films, Eloy de la iglesia became addicted to drugs such as heroin and he stopped making films for fifteen years. Claiming that his addiction to cinema was stronger than his drug problems, de la Iglesia eventually kicked his habit and resumed his career making Los novios bulgaros (The Bulgarian Lovers) (2003), a film based on the novel of the same title written by Eduardo Mendicutti.

Stricken with kidney cancer, he died on March 24, 2006, age sixty two, after surgery to remove a malignant tumor.

1959 – Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba after leading a revolution that drove out dictator Fulgencio Batista. Castro then established a Communist dictatorship. Although homosexuality was illegal under the Batista government the laws were largely ignored in fun loving Cuba. Since Castro, tens of thousands of gays have been rounded up and imprisoned.

1967 – The Los Angeles Police Department raid the New Year’s Eve parties at two gay bars, the Black Cat Tavern and New Faces. Several patrons were injured and a bartender was hospitalized with a fractured skull. Several hundred people spontaneously demonstrate on Sunset Boulevard and picket outside the Black Cat. The raids prompted a series of protests that began on 5 January 1967, organized by P.R.I.D.E. (Personal Rights in Defense and Education). It’s the first use of the term "Pride" that came to be associated with LGBT rights and fuels the formation of gay rights groups in California, well before the Stonewall Riot.

The popular notion that the Stonewall Riots marked the very first time that LGBT folks "fought back instead of passively enduring humiliating treatment,” is false. Other critical moments in LGBT History that pre-date Stonewall include:

New Year's Ball Raid in San Francisco (1965)

Gene Compton’s Cafeteria Riot (1966)

Cooper Do-Nuts Riot (1959)

1968 – Joey Stefano (d.1994) was an American pornographic actor who appeared in gay adult films. Born Nicholas Anthony Iacona, Jr., Stefano grew up in the Philadelphia area (Chester, Pennsylvania). His father died when he was 15. After several years of prostitution and hard-core drug use in New York City, Stefano moved to Los Angeles and quickly became a star in gay pornography. In addition to his good looks, his persona as a "hungry bottom" (sexually submissive but verbally demanding) contributed to his popularity.

His image and success caught the attention of Madonna, who used him as a model in her 1992 book Sex.

During his lifetime, he was the subject of rumors (some of them spread by himself) regarding his relationships with prominent entertainment industry figures who were known to be gay. At a May 1990 dinner and interview with Jess Cagle (Entertainment Weekly) and Rick X (Manhattan Cable TV's The Closet Case Show), Stefano discussed an alleged series of "dates" with David Geffen, who at one point implored Stefano to quit using drugs. After the videotaped interview appeared on Rick X's show, OutWeek Magazine "outed" Geffen, who went on to announce his homosexuality at an AIDS fundraiser.

He was HIV positive. According to a subsequent biography Stefano died of speedball overdose (cocaine, morphine, heroin, and ketamine) at age 26 in the shower of a motel on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California. His body was taken back to Pennsylvania where he was buried next to his father.

Stefano's life is chronicled in the book, Wonder Bread and Ecstasy: The Life and Death of Joey Stefano by Charles Isherwood. His life is also the subject of a one-man-play, Homme Fatale: The Fast Life and Slow Death of Joey Stefano, by Australian playwright Barry Lowe.

1976 – (Daniel L.) Dan Kloeffler is an American television journalist. Since 2010, he is an anchor of ABC News Now, a cable-news channel of the ABC broadcasting network.

He worked at WSTM-TV - an NBC-affiliated television station in Syracuse, New York - prior to joining MSNBC, a cable-news channel. While at MSNBC, he anchored overnight MSNBC Now news updates as well as MSNBC's First Look and broadcast network NBC's Early Today, both early-morning news programs; Kloeffler left MSNBC in 2009. In 2010, he became a freelance anchor and correspondent for ABC News, where he anchors on its ABC News Now channel.In response to the news that actor Zachary Quinto had come out as gay, Kloeffler publicly came out on the air in October 2011.

In a statement on the ABC News website, he wrote that a series of suicides by gay youth also led him to hope his being publicly out would help encourage young gay people struggling to accept themselves.

2008 – Queen Elizabeth II makes actor Ian Mckellen a Companion of Honor, one of only 65.

[abitmoredetail]

[URBAN NOTE] Eight Toronto links

[URBAN NOTE] Eight Toronto links

Samantha Edwards writes at NOW Toronto about the controversy surrounding the visit of transphobe author Meghan Murphy to give a speech at the Palmerston library, with authors even threatening a boycott of the network.

Natasha Tusikov writes at The Conversation about how Sidewalk Labs’ proposals for the Port Lands would give it great and unaccountable political power.

blogTO looksat the 1945…

[progressivejudaism]

I believe that same-sex couples may not only be permitted but may indeed have a religious obligation to marry the one they love & are fully and exclusively committed to. It's true that according to one Talmudic approach, the purpose of marriage is to procreate together. But another Talmudic approach explains that the purpose of marriage is to liberate one another from the depths of existential loneliness. Indeed, this is a deep religious insight of the rabbis that marriage is just not just about family but also deeply existential. In Jewish thought, love is not a strange emotion to be conquered. Rather, love is a spiritual value to be cherished & celebrated wherever it is found. "Rav Nachman said in the name of Shmuel that even though a man has many children, he may not remain without a wife, as it says: ‘It is not good that man be alone.’ But others say that if he does have children then he may abstain from procreation and he may even abstain from taking a wife altogether," (Yevamot 61b). תלמוד בבלי מסכת יבמות דף סא עמוד ב מסייעא ליה לרב נחמן אמר שמואל, דאמר: אע"פ שיש לו לאדם כמה בנים - אסור לעמוד בלא אשה, שנאמר: +בראשית ב'+ לא טוב היות האדם לבדו. ואיכא דאמרי: הא יש לו בנים - בטיל מפריה ורביה ובטיל נמי מאשה

Rabbi-Shmuly Yanklowitz (Orthodox Rabbi and Activist)

[lesbianishstuff]

Today I came out to one of my docs at work. She high fived me

[placegrenette]

Longing for Dick and Laughing at Death: The Story of Diseased Pariah News

All right, Tumblr, gather round. This is not my usual style here, and I have missed World AIDS Day by a number of days, but I searched for “Diseased Pariah News” on this nonsense site and got all of two coherent hits, and that does not sit right with me. So let me tell y’all a story of black humor, porn, a pre-venture-capital-overrun Bay Area, lovingly photographed penises, recipe testing, friendship, and death. It’s all true but I wasn’t there; sources are linked throughout and compiled at the end.

Cover of Issue #3. This and all illustrations courtesy of the GLBT Historical Society and Calisphere, the online archives of the University of California. Support your librarians and archivists, kids!

“It’s My Party and I’ll Die If I Want To”

The short version of the story is: Diseased Pariah News was a zine that ran for eleven issues, all published between 1990 and 1999. It was edited almost completely by, and addressed pretty much exclusively to, PWAs, or People With AIDS.

To remind you whippersnappers: to know you were HIV positive in 1990 was to know that you were going to die a lot sooner than average, and probably not peacefully. As Jonathan Kauffman wrote in “Get Fat, Don’t Die,” a 2020 Hazlitt essay on DPN: “So many of the narratives of the time circled around two themes: memorializing the terror and adulterated sweetness of being alive as everyone they knew was dying, and shearing through the cordon of dehumanizing indifference that the public had erected around plague-struck communities. The experience of daily diarrhea or constant nausea may have been too visceral, too private, or simply too grinding to fit into the arc of a plot.” The diarrhea could go on for months, by the way. And that was separate from debilitating fatigue, potential blindness (from CMV retinitis), or constant prickly pain in your hands and feet (from peripheral neuropathy).

This was years before the development of protease inhibitors and “the cocktail” could prevent HIV-positive patients from developing full-blown AIDS; AZT could slow things down, but it came with nasty side effects. AIDS was not like the tuberculosis, or rather like the romantic conception of tuberculosis, in which one’s dying status could be signaled by paleness and the occasional discreet cough. AIDS was painful, and complicated.

So somebody had to have a sense of humor about all this.

Co-founder, original Serene Editor, and the guy who gets the credit for having the idea in the first place, Tom Shearer

Tom Shearer was a computer hardware engineer living in San Francisco, running a zine on the side called GAWK (it stood for Gay Artists and Writers Kollective) when a reader named Beowulf Thorne (more on him later) complained that GAWK looked terrible. Shearer challenged Thorne to do better; Thorne rose to the challenge; one thing led to another and the pair ended up collaborating on a whole new zine, this one focused on the experience of dealing with AIDS. Shearer got the title from an Advocate comic in which a flight attendant asked a passenger: “Would you like the smoking, non-smoking, or diseased pariah section?” (This was during a time when airlines not only had smoking sections but were occasionally refusing outright to transport PWAs.)

From the very beginning, Diseased Pariah News was meant to be funny, helpful, and obsessed with dick. Page 3 of the first issue lists a number of practical steps PWAs can take (“Call Pac Bell for low income phone rates”). There was also a Resources page, dedicated to advocacy groups, support groups, even mail-order pharmacies easy to work with, anyone whom the editors judged would treat PWAs fairly and not waste their time. In between those two was the debut of the column, “Get Fat, Don’t Die!,” dedicated to high-calorie recipes specifically designed to combat wasting disease, illustrated by a naked man in a come-hither pose; the debut of the column “Porn Potato,” which reviewed porn videos while keeping a much better sense of narrative than its subjects; a short-short story titled “I Fisted Jesse Helms”; and a contest to guess Shearer’s T-cell count. (Not included yet was the centerfold feature, which would include the model’s history of infections and T-cell count alongside his full-frontal glory; that would come in later issues.)

Shearer died in April 1991, as the second issue of DPN was going to press. (”Thanks to Mike for guessing optimistically high,” ran the conclusion to the T-cell count contest.) Issue #3 starts with Thorne recounting the aftermath of his death, including a visit to “Akbar and Jeff’s Cremation Hut,” and then, contemplating taking over DPN by himself, allowing himself a rare show of mourning:

Seriously though, the reality of Tommy's death isn't funny. But then, neither is it funny that the first President to preside over the age of AIDS couldn't make himself say the name of the syndrome. Or that a septuagenarian senator would obstruct prevention programs because he would rather see his nation's children die than "promote deviant sexual behavior" (all the while forcing us to endure tobacco subsidies and its retinue of smoking related deaths). Or...well, you know enough about this yourself, you fill in the blanks. What can I say about this situation? You can either laugh or cry, but crying gives you crow's feet.

Fortunately Thorne wasn’t alone for the rest of the ride: as “Cranky Editor,” he was joined by Tom Ace, christened “Humpy Editor,” and Michael Botkin, who already had a reputation around the Bay Area as a suffering-no-fools journalist and critic, as “Sleazy Editor.” DPN had found an eager audience to begin with--Shearer and Thorne had to double back to the printer when the first print run of the first issue sold out--but at its peak it had a circulation of 5,000 and could be bought in dozens of bookstores across multiple countries. The guys were dedicated and passionate without being self-important, and it showed.

Left to right: Sleazy, Cranky, and Humpy, in an undated photo (1994?), for a DPN Christmas card.

All eleven issues have been archived and can be read in PDF form courtesy of the Gay and Lesbian Historical Society and the University of California’s online archiving efforts. Highlights include “AIDS Barbie,” in #8; an interview with playwright and ACT UP co-founder Larry Kramer in #9; Thorne’s evisceration of And the Band Played On author Randy Shilts (who had himself just died of AIDS) also in #9; and the Opportunistic Infection Merit Badges (OIMBs), introduced by Botkin in #10:

The outcome will be an array of badges and ribbons which tell the educated viewer, at a glance, just how progressed your HIV disease is. It will be particularly useful for health care providers, who instead of taking lengthy histories will instead be able to briefly study a PWA's array of service ribbons, badges, etc.... a careful study of my OIMBs would quickly reveal my obscenely low T-cell count (17 at last testing), the fact that I've had PCP, peripheral neuropathy, MAC, wasting syndrome, cryptococcal meningitis, and herpes, and that I've taken every nucleoside analogue known to man. This would allow those who want to fawn over or avoid me to act accordingly, and avoid the frustration of mistaken acquaintanceship.

I can’t speak for you, but the badges were what stuck in my mind: humor black enough to communicate the bleakness of its source. It’s funny how history can seem incommunicable. Odds are you reading this are young enough that if I try to tell you what it felt like to look down Lexington Avenue on the afternoon of September 11, 2001, and see a great column of smoke and no cars, you can place the reference but probably not the devastation. People dealing with the aftereffects of COVID now are having a hard time gaining empathy for what it feels like to have their body betray them; the distance of a couple decades or so is not going to help. To take history at all seriously is to admit that the various horrors of the past are ungraspable. But the badges allow you a glimpse of what it was like to live in the midst of this particular horror.

Which is not to say that the DPN guys were particularly concerned with history. Hamilton-style musings about legacies would have left them cold. History had, in a sense, been stolen from them, and so they were going to embrace the present they had left. Especially Thorne, who would be the guiding force behind DPN for the rest of its run.

The Story-within-a-Story of Beowulf “Biffy Mae” Thorne, Writer, Editor, Graphic Designer, Illustrator, Cartoonist, Recipe-Tester, Critic, Know-It-All, and Horndog Extraordinaire

and also, a babe. I don't care what your gender/sexuality combination is, you would've been at risk of doing some pining.

Beowulf Thorne--no, that wasn’t his birth name, but it seems to have been the name he used exclusively during DPN’s run, so that’s what we’ll stick with--was born in 1964 and grew up in southern California, but fled to the Bay Area in 1983. I saw one source say he tested HIV-positive as early as 1986, which is to say before the term “HIV” was even in widespread use. Suffice to say, dude had to start contemplating his mortality far, far earlier than he should have. He was enrolled at UC-Santa Cruz for a while, studying biology, but that whole contemplating-his-mortality part led him eventually to focus on graphic design and advocacy: first with various condom-promoting organizations, such as the Condom Resource Center in Oakland, and then DPN.

If he hadn’t been doomed, Thorne probably would’ve been one of those guys resented by his acquaintances, just for the sheer number of things he was good at. He was not only DPN’s chief writer and editor but its layout artist and the designer of its related merchandise (not to mention the OIMBs). While working as a graphic designer for Addison-Wesley, he would occasionally piss textbook authors off by pointing out errors in their text, even though he wasn’t supposed to be factchecking: he just couldn’t help it. He did full-page, multi-panel “Captain Condom” comics for several DPN issues; that takes some time and effort now, never mind with Adobe Illustrator as it was three decades ago. He tested all of the “Get Fat, Don’t Die!” recipes. He was a gardener who specialized in orchids, cacti, and meat-eating plants, and beautifully detailed plant sketches are scattered in his collected papers.

1994 version of the Condom Educator's Guide, co-written by Thorne and Daniel Bao (who would later work on DPN issues) and designed by Thorne on "his trusty Macintosh."

And he could write. Reading him, you’d never guess the man wasn’t a trained writer, or is now twenty-three years dead: his voice is unstoppable. I’m not the type who laughs out loud at books easily, and while reading the DPN back issues, I found myself giggling repeatedly at the turns of phrase in Thorne’s porn reviews.

Oh, yeah: he also was Porn Potato. And just generally an unabashed horndog. He and Ace met when Ace saw Thorne’s personal ad: “Relatively stable 25-year-old design student seeks other adventurous good-looking men for mutual sodomy and oral copulation.” When a POZ writer asked Thorne about this in 1997, Thorne--who by this point was dealing with neuropathy and killer candida that ate his gums down to the bone--said cheerfully of Ace: “He’s quite buxom. I’ve always had a letch on him.” If Thorne and DPN stood for anything, it was the conviction that an AIDS diagnosis could not take away the right and responsibility to live, and living included being sexual.

But You Already Know the End of the Story

The hardest issue of DPN to read is the eleventh and last one, which came out in 1999, three years after #10. “In the eternity since DPN #10 appeared,” ran a note under the masthead, “66.67% of the editorial staff expired.” Botkin had died in 1996; that left Thorne and Tom Ace. By this point there was a new set of treatments available, but they worked a lot better if you hadn’t already been fighting HIV (plus the side effects of AZT) for over a decade.

One of the last DPN pieces Thorne wrote was on viatication, the practice of selling your life-insurance policy to be able to collect cash while you’re still alive. His health was failing pretty fast at that point--another of the last pieces is about CMV retinitis blinding him--but the article is practical, funny, and devoid of self-pity. It will break your heart nonetheless.

Deciding to viaticate my policy started with some soulful contemplation. The first thing I had to face was my own impending mortality. It was as though signing the paperwork obliged me to kick the bucket on some kind of schedule. For an obsessive taskmaster such as myself, there were some control issues....

Finally, there's a little roulette. The closer to death's door you are—on an actuarial basis—the more moolah you get. You don't want to cash in too early for a measly 50% (two-year life expectancy). On the other hand, if you wait for that 80% jackpot (six-month life expectancy), you might croak before you can enjoy it all. I was feeling pretty grim at that point, so the time seemed right.*

* For all you voyeuristic sickies, It was necrotic periodontitis.

He died on May 8, 1999. Reportedly his friends tried and failed to create a snowglobe with some of his ashes and Astroglide lube.

Tom Ace, miraculously, is still in possession of his mortal coil, or at least was as of 2010, when Vice interviewed him. Kauffman was able to talk to several of Thorne’s friends for his 2020 Hazlitt article. Beyond that I didn’t find a lot of easily accessible information about DPN’s survivors, either editors or readers.

Why Remember Diseased Pariah News

It’s not for everyone, I’ll grant you that. It never was. Even setting aside the sharp (necessary) line it drew between PWAs and HIV-negative onlookers, it was very much a product of a small, dedicated group with its own goals. If you are not a white gay cis man, you were not going to feel seen, as the modern saying goes, reading DPN. And if you don’t draw as strong a link between sex and vitality as its editors did, the repeated explicit celebration of dick might well put you off.

It’s still worth remembering, and celebrating. DPN is the kind of work that’s not easy to preserve. There were thousands and thousands of zines in the 1990s, and we’ve got no hope of learning from all of them, or even a good percentage of them. Eventually the people who can remember getting zines in the mail (my husband still sometimes uses the term “trib,” short for “minimum acceptable contribution”) will be gone. Our ability to communicate has expanded so much in the last three decades that it’s hard to archive and learn from all that communication--think of all the lost MySpace and Geocities pages, bulletin boards, emails. Preservation will be by definition selective, and later generations’ sense of what was actually happening thereby skewed, but we ought to preserve what we can.

But also: these guys were trying to bring laughs, help, and comfort to a vulnerable population, and in 2022 we like to think we approve of that kind of thing. Meanwhile they themselves were vulnerable, far more so than they should have been, and they recognized the unfairness of their situation but they did not whine. They were brave in the face of death, which is hard, and physical pain and the deterioration of the body, which is even harder. And we still in these supposedly enlightened times don’t have a good mechanism for thinking of campy gay men as brave. They weren’t looking to be remembered. We should remember anyway.

Sources

All the back issues of DPN are archived on Calisphere, the archives of the University of California, with Beowulf Thorne’s papers. Direct links: #1 (1990), #2 (1991), #3 (1991), #4 (1991), #5 (1992), #6 (1992), #7 (1992), #8 (1993), #9 (1994), #10 (1996), #11 (1999). Some of the information comes from this collection of contemporary articles Thorne clipped.

Tom Ace, “Thorne on Our Side,” POZ, August 1, 1999

Mark Allen, “That’s Not Funny, Or Is It?,” Vice, December 31, 2010

Jonathan Kauffman, “Get Fat, Don’t Die,” Hazlitt, April 28, 2020

Greg Lugliani, “Last Laughs,” POZ, October 1, 1997

[padawan-historian]

Decolonized Booklist - Queer Edition

Lil Nas X is letting y'all know that queerness is not a "white people thing." 💁🏾‍♀️🌈

Queerness is ancestral || queer folks existed in pre-colonial spaces, struggled and resisted under colonialism, and are kicking down barriers in the 21st century.

Here are some must reads by scholars, poets, and activists who are sharing the histories, lived experiences, and ancestral-liberation work of those who came before and those blooming and yet to come~

Find their works listed below on my Neighborhood Historian bookshop.

Top Picks

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches - Audre Lorde (1984)

Freedom To Love For ALL: Homosexuality is not Un-African - Yemisi Ilesanmi (2013)

Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity -  C Riley Snorton (2017)

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous - Ocean Vuong (2019)

Black Girl, Call Home - Jasmine Mans (2021)

The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice - Shon Faye (Pre-Order)

Queer History, Activism, and Liberation in the United States (by time period)

Female Husbands: A Trans History - Jen Manion (2020)

Arresting Dress: Cross-Dressing, Law, and Fascination in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco - Clare Sears (2014)

We've Been Here All Along: Wisconsin's Early Gay History - R. Richard Wagner (2019)        

Welcome to Fairyland: Queer Miami Before 1940 - Julio Capó (2017)

Her Neighbor's Wife: A History of Lesbian Desire Within Marriage - Lauren Jae Gutterman (2019) 

Queer Clout: Chicago and the Rise of Gay Politics - Timothy Stewart-Winter (2017)        

The Deviant's War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America - Erin Cervini (2021)

We Are Everywhere: Protest, Power, and Pride in the History of Queer Liberation - Matthew Riemer and Leighton Brown (2019)

Queer Twin Cities - collected by Twin Cities Glbt Oral History Project (2010)

Queerness Across Borders and Generations

We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir - Samra Habib (2019)

Queer and Trans Migrations: Dynamics of Illegalization, Detention, and Deportation - (2020)

Tolerance and Risk: How U.S. Liberalism Racializes Muslims - Mitra Rastegar (Pre-Order)

Lived Experiences and Memories in Marginalized Spaces

Visibility Interrupted: Rural Queer Life and the Politics of Unbecoming - Carly Thomsen (2021)

Living Queer History: Remembrance and Belonging in a Southern City - Gregory Samantha Rosenthal (Pre-order)

Girl, Woman, Other: A Novel - Bernardine Evaristo (2019)

On Being Different: What It Means to Be a Homosexual - Merle Miller (1971)

Black Girl Dangerous on Race, Queerness, Class and Gender - Mia McKenzie (2014)

Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers - Anne Balay (2016)

Rust Belt Burlesque: The Softer Side of a Heavy Metal Town - Erin O'Brien and Bob Perkoski (2019)

Study Resources

We Will Always Be Here: A Guide to Exploring and Understanding the History of LGBTQ+ Activism in Wisconsin - Jenny Kalvaitis and Kristen Whitson (2021)

New Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Writing by Women of African Descent - edited by Margaret Busby (2019)

Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology - E. Patrick Johnson (2005)

[horseb0y]

No worries, I'll try to elaborate, I was out of my house when I wrote this, so I didn't have time to explain.

I disagree with the praxis and theory of transandrophobia in many ways. Such as how it applies to cis men especifically. I've seen some transandrophobia theorists try to explain how there isn't a system that especifically oppresses cis men for being men, but they can still be affected by transandrophobia. Unfortunately, I don't have any examples at hand, so take me with a great of salt.

I don't necessarily disagree that cis men can be affect by certain types of violence that affect dissident masculinities, but there isn't a specific oppression towards them; transandrophobia framework often doesn't seem to know how to navigate these complexities.

Cis men can be affected by various intersections of oppression (class, race, disability, migration, religion), however, I do not feel comfortable going into detail as a privileged white, middle class man. There's a lot of historical, cultural and social context I don't have the knowledge on. Thus, why I'm arguing only on the front of cis and trans identity.

As I mentioned, transandrophobia theorists can't decide how it actually applies to cis men or how deep it goes. Speaking from experience, while I have somethings in common with my cis male friends, there are also many specific forms of violence they've not faced and probably never will because they are cis; and if they do, this violence may not stem from the same place nor have the same repercussions. Male privilege is only afforded to cis men who have identified as such since birth. That sort of privilege isn't applied to those who are trans, nonbinary, GNC or inteesex in some way. I don't think cis passing affords you much privilege either, since it is conditionally based on the fact that people never know your were assigned a different gender at birth and transitioned socially, legally and/or medically.

I firmly believe in an alliance between masculinities to destroy the patriarchy, but we gotta recognize our differences and privileges as well.

-

To continue with gender and sex, there's an open contempt for trans women, an acceptance of transmisogyny and and implicit belief in gender/sex essentialism.

I'm gonna use a specific kind of argument as an example to show what I mean.

Decided to use this one since it comes from a deleted user. I occasionally see a post with this argument making the rounds.

I recently saw this video by Nicole Rudolph on the history of women's credit cards and historical misconceptions. I'd recommend checking it out:

Although, I've have had specific issues with this discussion and how its framed, even if I believed it at first sight. Which include:

The insinuation that transitioning is only valid and visible if you medically transition, denying the existence of trans men who may not have done so for various reasons, but were still trans men.

The implication that, contrary to trans men, trans women could more easily transition due to being "perceived as men" and having access to bank accounts, mortgages and loans; and thus, they were in charge of their finances. This leaves out the fact that trans women have often lived in poverty, with no familial connections or accumulative wealth, with very limited work opportunities. You could and can still be denied a credit card, back account or loan for many reasons, including discrimination based on your gender, class and type of work. Most being AMAB didn't help them at all, they didn't benefit from male privilege. A lot of trans women also had to resource to unsafe operations and hormonal treatments, such as injecting fuel or cement to their bodies, which would decrease their health, disable them or kill them.

The insinuation that (cis) women's rights and trans men's rights moved at similar times. This is bullshit. You don't even have to go back in time. An easy example: trans men still have a harder time accessing abortions due to discrimination, lack of knowledge, care and assumptions that cis, perisex women don't have to go through. Trans women and (cis) women's rights don't move at the same time either.

The erasure of historic transmasculine figures we have recorded. Some of them, such as Dr. Alan Hart and Michael Dillon, were some of the first we know of to have had gender-affirming surgeries. I remember there was a particular site that compiled various folks from the late 19th century to early 20th century who might've been trans men and transmasc, based on records, newspaper clippings and more. We would get a glimpse into their lives, such as how some were able to acquire a house with their (cis) wives, only to be betrayed by them, outed and losing everything. Unfortunately, I don't recall the name of the site. But what I'm trying to get at is, that while yes, absolutely, there has been an erasure of transmasculine people from history...they don't help by making these dumb arguments either!

Here are some similar sites I've found that have records of transmasc history:

Arguments like the one pictured indirectly reinforce the gender-sex binary and gender essentialism.

I feel that in various transandro circles, they like to play with the fact that most are AFAB to victimize themselves, especially if it means winning an argument against a trans woman. It's something I've done as well in the past and I've worked to change. It's just shitty, dirty and hypocritical.

Many transandro followers also have zero patience on a trans woman saying something they dislike or might not be correct, and instead of gently correcting her or ignoring it, they treat her like garbage. I especially find it dumb how they have a fixation on baeddelism and treat it like the worse thing in existence. This might be controversial, but I don't believe baeddelism has been as influential in the community as people think, to say it has been little to none. I don't even think 5% of the structural violence faced by the transmasc community can be attributed to baeddels. It's ridiculous to give them so much energy.

Before entering transandrophobia circles, I had never heard of baeddelism. I thought it was a big deal until I started having more experiences and acquired more knowledge regarding various issues.

I remember I was in a transmasc server and one of the moderators was a known figure in the community who had a lot of hatred and contempt for Julia Serano due to some of her statements regarding our community. There was another user (another trans man) who disagreed with his stance and felt differently about Serano's work. They had lengthy convos where the mod was aggressive for now reason, despite the user never being disrespectful to him. Eventually this led to the user no longer talking in discussions due to feeling intimidated by the mod, simply for having a different, less uncharitable opinion on Serano's work.

The mod was kicked, not without causing issues and claiming he was being persecuted. I haven't read much of Serano myself, but from the few articles I've read, I felt this mod was wildly exaggerating. She's not unreasonable as he portrayed her, even if I don't agree with everything she's said. It just feels very dirty and dishonest. And this is not the only time people on those circles do something similar.

The way some trans men and transmascs, especially those who orbit this sphere, talk about trans women and transfems puts me off. It doesn't feel like a genuine conversation, but thinly-veiled distaste, to put it lightly. I don't even agree with everything transfems say, but I avoid knocking anyone just cause.

-

Apart from that, from my own experience in transandrophobia advocate spaces, I felt extremely frustrated and limited. It mostly centers US and european white voices. Global South, black, brown, asian and indigenous voices were relegated as supplementary, a sort of commodity for white trans men and transmascs to affirm their own oppression. I know this because I used to do it as well (I've worked to stop doing it).

I would like to link to the post of an indigenous trans man who explained his own experiences better. It's a really thoughtful post.

There have been specific, important users in the transandrophobia movement that have silenced POC voices and used their experiences for their own benefit, totally removing the racial roots from them. I won't link to examples to prevent their followers from coming after me and sending them harassment, but it has been documented by many.

-

Transandrophobia is not actually anti-colonialist

I wrote about it a couple of months ago, but to reiterate: transandrophobia and its followers cannot claim it is anti-colonial when figureheads in the movement have been silent, complicit and have denied the gravity and history of the Palestinian genocide.

Again, I won't provide specific examples or name-drop users, but if you search what their opinion on the Palestinian genocide is, they'll divest the conversation to anti-semitism and the historical oppression of the Jewish population.

They have been known to talk over Palestinian users on this site and characterize them as terrorists sympathizers. Any sort of Palestinian resistance is met with contempt, even if they swear they believe in armed resistance and violence.

If they show this level of apathy towards palestinians, do you think they won't do the same with other indigenous groups?

They don't care about them unless they can use their experiences for their own gain and their Tumblr posts. They don't care about Palestinian trans men. They don't care about Palestinian men. They don't care about Palestinian trans women, enbys or queer folks.

It's not intersectional if it doesn't include the multiply marginalized and at-risk. It is not anti-colonial if it excludes indigenous people who have been fighting for their rights, land and freedom from colonial powers.

-

And finally, I just found absolutely zero practice out of it. It's all talk, no work. There's just so many 10,000-word Tumblr posts you can make just complaining before you start walking in circles.

I don't really care about Saint because I never knew him personally, I just heard of him. I don't condone his actions or words, but I don't know enough about the guy to say much. But his theory has had the opposite effect on me, I've found less place on it the more time I spend.

I stopped finding transandrophobia theory and praxis useful for my activism. You get tired of playing the blame game (same reason why I've distanced myself from my local community and have decided to build other spaces). I was never going to get far under a praxis that never wished to take me or other marginalized identities under account.

I hope this helps. Not trying to change your opinion, but I wanted to be thorough on why transandrophobia doesn't work for me and I don't wanna be associated with it. I'm trying to avoid using it as a basis for any sort of activism I do.

Since some of my latest posts regarding transmasculinity, gender identity and oppression have received a small amount of interest in the past few days, I would like to clarify my position on a topic that comes up now and then on this site.

I do not identify with the praxis and theory of transandrophobia. I think transandrophobia is a flawed concept in many ways.

I believe trans men, transmascs and other dissident masculine identities suffer a specific intersection of oppression that cannot simply be categorized as transphobia or misogyny. Our particular issues have not been considered or recognized by the larger trans and queer community. I do not believe trans men or transmascs have any sort of male privilege, there isn't a equivalent to the one cis men experience.

However, when trying to apply this outside of non-normative gender identities, the theory becomes messy and unclear, often leaving more questions than answers. Simply put, it does not apply well.

I used to identify with the concept of transandrophobia in my early transition, but I no longer do, and have not identified with it for a long time.

I would like to get into the specifics of why I think the concept is flawed and why I became disenchanted with it, but I'd like to leave that for another post(s). Just wanted to clarify my position. I don't wish for myself or my posts to get lumped with this group. My thoughts do not use this theory as a basis, nor my praxis.