#the remedy: queer and trans voices on health and health care

[gatheringbones]

Hello, I'm trying to track down a book that I'm fairly sure you posted some excerpts from a while back but my memory of it is vague enough that I'm having trouble. It was talking about how grassroots liberatory movements get digested and transmuted into professionalised charity/social work/service provision models particularly in the context of domestic violence organising — possibly there was also something about community-based healthcare (community acupuncture, maybe?). Does this ring a bell? Thanks in advance :)

the acupuncture one is definitely from Lisa Baird’s piece from not a liability: on trauma-informed care and community acupuncture, from the remedy: queer and trans voices on health and healthcare, 2016 I think the other one is Priya Kandaswamy’s piece from Innocent Victims And Brave New Laws: State Protection and the Battered Women's Movement, from Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity, Edited by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, 2006, here’s two quotes I pulled from it.

Also mutual aid by dean spade

[tzifron]

Edited by Zena Sharman, 2016

The Remedy invites writers and readers to imagine what we need to create healthy, resilient, and thriving LGBTQ communities. This anthology is a diverse collection of real-life stories from queer and trans people on their own health-care experiences and challenges, from gay men living with HIV who remember the systemic resistance to their health-care needs, to a lesbian couple dealing with the experience of cancer, to young trans people who struggle to find health-care providers who treat them with dignity and respect. The book also includes essays by health-care providers, activists and leaders with something to say about the challenges, politics, and opportunities surrounding LGBTQ health issues. Both exceptionally moving and an incendiary call-to-arms, The Remedy is a must-read for anyone–gay, straight, trans, and otherwise–passionately concerned about the right to proper health care for all. Contributors include Amber Dawn, Sinclair Sexsmith, Francisco Ibanez-Carrasco, Cooper Lee Bombardier, Kara Sievewright, and Kelli Dunham.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

LGBTQ+ healthcare things from the perspective of a health sciences student: 1.) mandatory LGBTQ+ training for all health care practitioners that is a significant part of training and comprehensive/inclusive of queer communities of colour (esp. FN) 2.) Required pronouns and gender identity sections on patient charts. 3.) Queer-focused health care navigators in urban centers with high numbers of queer patients. 4.) Health infrastructure to support rural queer people who must travel for care 1/?

5.) In particular I would really like to see HCPs and in particular GPs being trained to have a basic understanding of trans healthcare needs as "a lack of understanding in how to help trans patients" is something I see a LOT in my research. 6.) The de-gendering of prenatal health care as not only women can be pregnant and not all families are a man, a woman, and children. 7.) The removal of any rules in hospitals limiting visitors to one or two specific people... (2/?)

7.), Explaining that queer families are typically chosen and large and it's difficult to put one person forward as a visitor when we usually do things communally around shift work. I forget point 8.), but 9.) was a suggestion that people read The Remedy: Queer and Trans Voices on Health and Health Care, editted by Zena Sharman, especially if they're in BC as most (but not all) of the stories in the compilation are from the Greater Vancouver Area.

The TL;DR is that cisheteronormativity in our health care system (and every other system) harms us and by removing it, we'll fare better

~~~~

[ms-demeanor]

Because that person commented I've been on a terf blocking spree and came across a google doc of "evidenced radfem claims" and it is so goddamned funny.

CW for transphobia and outdated terminology but look at this:

Okay so you follow that link to a site that argumentatively reinterprets the study and directly refutes claims made by one of the study authors who is directly challenging claims that trans women are a sexual threat:

And then you go to the study itself and it's extremely cut and dried:

And then you look at the conclusions of the study and:

This study found substantially higher rates of overall mortality, death from cardiovascular disease and suicide, suicide attempts, and psychiatric hospitalisations in sex-reassigned transsexual individuals compared to a healthy control population. This highlights that post surgical transsexuals are a risk group that need long-term psychiatric and somatic follow-up. Even though surgery and hormonal therapy alleviates gender dysphoria, it is apparently not sufficient to remedy the high rates of morbidity and mortality found among transsexual persons. Improved care for the transsexual group after the sex reassignment should therefore be considered.

So the radfems looked at this, ignored the conclusions, and winnowed down a 30-year study about improving health outcomes for trans people to "trans women display the same crime rates as men."

Here's another:

And then you click the link and of course it's just an abstract, but then you look at the publication notes and they didn't meet the quota for trans respondents:

And on top of that, the study isn't looking at conservatism: it's questioning respondents' relationship to liberalism:

Specifically, sexual identity (heterosexual, lesbian/gay, bisexual, pansexual, and asexual), gender identity (cis man, cis woman, trans man, trans woman, and non-binary), and queer identity are explored as they relate to liberal perspectives (liberal ideology; law/policy support of those in poverty, racial/ethnic minorities, immigrants, and women; feminist identity).

Which she is very careful to point out and explore when talking to newspapers about this study:

Additionally, when it comes to gender identity, cisgender and non-binary women are the most liberal groups. But interestingly enough, Worthen said, trans women are the least liberal. “I expect it has something to do with their voices just not being met, not being heard,” she said. “We say, ‘Of course, it’s liberal. These are the spaces,’ but perhaps these aren’t the spaces at all that trans women feel are connecting with who they are.” [...] “There’s a negative relationship between being a trans woman and being liberal,” Worthen said. “That’s robust. There’s something going on there. I think they might be their own thing. It just doesn’t make sense for trans voters, and most people are not looking at trans voters or what trans people think about.”

and

“There is something going on here, where trans women are not feeling that their needs are best met by liberalism,” she continues. “It doesn’t mean they’re running over to Trump, it just means these examinations of their liberal identities are revealing these types of differences. … I do think that the voices of trans people need to be heard, much more so than they have been. We really just need more research about this topic generally.”

Worthen isn't pointing to trans survey respondents as conservative, she's gesturing toward the fact that trans respondents are more likely to be politically radical than liberal. And the radfems boil that down to "trans women are more conservative than straight men" instead of "trans women - in a sample size that did not meet the survey quota for responses - are less likely to identify themselves as liberal than straight men."

There are 123 pages of "evidenced" radfem claims. I have clicked through like thirty of the claims and every single one has had either significantly misinterpreted data or is just a terf site that links to a bunch of deleted news articles or is just bluntly insisting that "transvestite means a cis person cross dressing, therefore these historical activists who called themselves transvestites in the 70s would all consider themselves cis today."

It is so unbelievably stupid.

There is, i shit you not, a section on how women are superior that discusses the "shriveled" y chromosome.

Real quick, if you have "gender critical" in your bio literally none of your criticism means anything to me. "Gender critical" is a fantastic way of signaling that you are so out of touch with reality that I do not have to consider your opinions. It's like "anti-vax" or "ancap" in terms of people whose points of view just do not matter.

[biandlesbianliterature]

[image description: a collage of 20 covers of books mentioned in the lists below with the text LESBRARY LINKS: Lesbian & Bi Books, June 8-21]

Bibliosapphic posted 6 YA Books With Bisexual Protagonists.

Lambda Literary posted 29th Annual Lambda Literary Award Winners Announced and New in June: Brontez Purnell, Janet Mock, Christopher Bollen, and Roxane Gay.

Queership posted

10 WLW Second-World Fantasy Novels

Who should star in the Labyrinth Lost movie?

Ship’s Log: 8 Queer Fantasy Books To Read in an Hour

“Fried Green Tomatoes in the Rubyfruit Jungle” was posted at popmatters.

“That my characters are lesbian is both central and incidental: Welsh novelist Sarah Waters” was posted at the Indian Express.

“8 Great Books by LGBTQ Authors From Countries Where It Is Illegal To Be Gay” was posted at LitHub.

[image description: the covers of Marriage Of A Thousand Lies by SJ Sindu,  Queer Game Studies edited by Bonnie Ruberg and Adrienne Shaw, The Seafarer’s Kiss by Julia Ember, Meg and Linus by Hanna Nowinski, and The Remedy: Queer and Trans Voices on Health and Health Care edited by Zena Sharman]

A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers was reviewed by Shira Glassman.

The Seafarer’s Kiss by Julia Ember was reviewed at Alex Reads Books.

Cottonmouths by Kelly J. Ford was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness by Kabi Nagata was reviewed at ANN.

After Hours Vol. 1 by Yuhta Nishio was reviewed at ANN and Okazu.

Meg and Linus by Hanna Nowinski was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

Queer Game Studies edited by Bonnie Ruberg and Adrienne Shaw was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

The Remedy: Queer and Trans Voices on Health and Health Care edited by Zena Sharman was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

Marriage Of A Thousand Lies by SJ Sindu was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

(See more links at the Lesbrary. We’re also on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, and Youtube.)

If you enjoy the Lesbrary and FYLL, support our Patreon for $2 or more a month to be entered in a monthly queer women book giveaway!

[stupendousbouquetfuryposts-blog]

From The Remedy: Queer and Trans Voices on Health and Health Care 

[bookclub4m]

Just in time for LGBT Pride Month, this episode has us discussing LGBTQ+/QUILTBAG Non-Fiction books! We talk about queer Canadians, own voices, the importance of cultural context, and how this is our newest episode ever (in terms of publication dates for books). Plus: Anna and Matthew will be at the American Library Association conference in Chicago this weekend. Tweet at us if you’ll be there and want to say “Hi!”.

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or your favourite podcast delivery system.

 In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | Jessi

Books We Read (or tried to)

The Lesbian Lexicon by Stevie Anntonym (recommended)

Queer Game Studies edited by Bonnie Ruberg and Adrienne Shaw (Matthew mistakenly called this Queer Gaming)

David Bowie Made Me Gay by Darryl W. Bullock (out November 21st, 2017) (recommended)

Outlaw Marriages by by Rodger Streitmatter

Queers Were Here: Heroes & Icons of Queer Canada edited by Robin Ganev and RJ Gilmour (recommended)

Scott Thompson (of The Kids in the Hall)

LOOK: Lesbian Organization of Kitchener

LOOT: Lesbian Organization of Toronto

The Remedy: Queer and Trans Voices on Health and Health Care edited by Zena Sharman (recommended)

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson (recommended)

The Life and Times of Butch Dykes (series) by by Eloisa Aquino

The Case of Alan Turing: The Extraordinary and Tragic Story of the Legendary Codebreaker by Éric Liberge and Arnaud Delalande (recommended)

My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness by Nagata Kabi (recommended)

Goodreads review that suggestions Nagata Kabi is “non-binary and possibly asexual”

Cities vol. 1 by Anand Vedawal (recommended)

The Prince of los Cocuyos by Richard Blanco

Books We Mentioned

On Trails: An Exploration by Robert Moor

Fun Home and Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel

Pedro and Me by Judd Winick (that page shows the terrible cover) (recommended)

Two or Three Things I Know for Sure and Skin: Talking about Sex, Class and Literature by Dorothy Allison

Forward by Abby Wambach

Man Alive: A True Story of Violence, Forgiveness and Becoming a Man by Thomas Page McBee (recommended)

My Body is Yours by Michael V. Smith (recommended)

Female Masculinity by J. Jack Halberstam

Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme edited by Ivan E. Coyote and Zena Sharman

Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (recommended)

Tomboy Survival Guide by Ivan E. Coyote (recommended)

Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari, Eric Klinenberg

Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh (recommended)

Princess Jellyfish (series) by Akiko Higashimura (recommended)

DAR (webcomic) by Erika Moen

How to be a Guy (series of articles) by Jay Edidin (recommended)

Links, Articles, and Things

Our list of genres

QUILTBAG definition on Wiktionary

LGBT Pride Month

QZAP: The Queer Zine Archive Project

Mass Effect

Kaiden Alenko

Casey the Canadian Lesbrarian

Broad City

The Imitation Game

Otokonoko: A frustratingly brief WIkipedia article about crossdressing in Japan

Questions

Do you want a postcard? Email us your address!

Will you be at ALA in Chicago? Let us know!

Got any recommendations for asexual non-fiction?

Check out our Pinterest board and Tumblr posts for all the QUILTBAG/LGBTQ+ books we read, follow us on Twitter, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email!

Join us again on Tuesday, July 4th, when we’ll talk about Reading Exhaustion and Reading Slumps (or maybe a super secret surprise).

 Then come back on July 18th when we’ll be discussing Legal Thrillers!

[sometimesalwaysandnever]

Powell's haul: the Remedy: queer and Trans voices on health and health care - Zena Sharman the undoing project - Michael Lewis Thinking, fast and slow - Daniel Kahneman Persistence: all ways butch & femme - Ivan e Coyote & Zena Sharman Milk & honey - rupi kaur Female masculinity - Judith Halbert am Daring greatly - Brene brown I am a cat - soseki natsume

[gatheringbones]

best books of 2022 rec list:

fiction:

chouette by claire oshetsky

forty thousand in gehenna by cj cherryh

fierce femmes and notorious liars by kai cheng thom

sula by toni morrison

everyone in this room will someday be dead by emily r. austin

jane eyre by charlotte bronte

villette by charlotte bronte

non-fiction:

gay spirit by mark thompson

we too: stories on sex work and survival by natalie west

transgender history by susan stryker

blood marriage wine & glitter by s bear bergman

love and rage: the path to liberation through anger by lama rod owens

gay soul by mark thompson

between certain death and a possible future: queer writing on growing up in the AIDS crisis by mattilda bernstein sycamore

the man they wanted me to be: toxic masculinity and a crisis of our own making by jared yates sexton

nobody passes: rejecting the rules of gender and conformity by mattilda bernstein sycamore

cruising: an intimate history of a radical pastime by alex espinoza

gay body by mark thompson

what my bones know: a memoir of healing from complex trauma by stephanie foo

the child catchers: rescue, trafficking, and the new gospel of adoption by kathryn joyce

the opium wars: the addiction of one empire and the corruption of another by w. travis hanes III

a queer history of the united states by michael bronski

the trouble with white women by kyla schuller

what we don't talk about when we talk about fat by aubrey gordon

the feminist porn book by tristan taormino

administrations of lunacy: a story of racism and psychiatry at the midgeville asylum by mab segrest

the women's house of detention by hugh ryan

angela davis: an autobiography by angela davis

ten steps to nanette by hannah gadsby

neuroqueer heresies by nick walker

the remedy: queer and trans voices on health and healthcare by zena sharman

brilliant imperfection by eli clare

the dawn of everything: a new history of humanity by david graeber and david wengrow

tomorrow sex will be good again by katherine angel

all our trials: prisons, policing, and the feminist fight to end violence by emily l. thuma

if this is a man by primo levi

bi any other name: bisexual people speak out by lorraine hutchins

white rage: the unspoken truth of our racial divide by carol anderson

public sex: the culture of radical sex by pat califa

I'm glad my mom died by jenette mccurdy

care of: letters, connections and cures by ivan coyote

the gentrification of the mind: witness to a lost imagination by sarah schulman

skid road: on the frontier of health and homelessness in an american city, by josephine ensign

the origins of totalitarianism by hannah arendt

nice racism: how progressive white people perpetuate racial harm by robin diangelo

corrections in ink by keri blakinger

sexed up: how society sexualizes us and how we can fight back by julia serano

smash the church, smash the state! the early years of gay liberation by tommi avicolli mecca

no more police: a case for abolition by mariame kaba

until we reckon: violence, mass incarceration, and a road to repair by danielle sered

the care we dream of: liberatory & transformative justice approaches to LGBTQ+ health by zena sharman

reclaiming two-spirits: sexuality, spiritual renewal and sovereignty in native america by gregory d. smithers

the sentences that create us: crafting a writer's life in prison by Caits Meissner

[gatheringbones]

a.k. morrissey, from remedial asexuality: sexualnormaticity in health care, from the remedy: queer and trans voices on health and healthcare, edited by zena sharman, 2016

[gatheringbones]

francisco ibáñez-carrasco, from read this before your next visit: cheap advice for frequent patients, from the remedy: queer and trans voices on health and health care, edited by zena sharman, 2016

[ixlander]

[ID] TRANS GRIT

Cooper Lee Bombardier

On the mild Sunday evening I became a trans curmudgeon, I sat circled up with two-dozen others in folding chairs: all on a spectrum of gender in the neighbourhood of my own. We ranged in age from high school to near-retirement. Many a year or less into transition, or else trying to decide whether or not to swing a leg over in this rodeo at all. I wasn’t seeking support so much as a sense of connection, to be among others like me. Strange to progress from the constant of change to this olde-trans status with no segue, no half-time show. All flux, and then it was everything else in life that I needed to deal with. A young trans guy, anxious and lost in a mass of too-big clothes, shared with utter despondency that someone from a doctor’s office was rude to him on the phone. He’d crumbled in the face of rudeness, his forward process stymied by the molasses of agonism, this ticket-taker saying: you’re too short to ride, sorry. He’d hung up the phone, unable to access the care he needed. Welcome to the rest of your life as a transsexual, I wanted to say. I slouched in my plastic chair like a delinquent student. A cascade of similar tales ricocheted around the room from other younger folks, volleyed in a manner that precluded any true listening or reflection. You think rudeness is the worst of it? I thought, Microaggressions? You cannot wither in the face of those who don’t want to help you. You’ll need to learn how to either charm them into being your greatest proponent or else clamp your will to their pant legs with the persistence of a pitbull until they help you! Voilà! In an instant I’d become that guy: olde-trans. A goddamn trans curmudgeon. Perhaps I no longer belonged at a meeting if I couldn’t brim with empathy for the plight of this kid and his vexing phone call. Perhaps the agony, excitement, and wanting a high-five for each achievement, for me, was long gone. I joined this rodeo a decade and a half ago, and my ass was sore from years of rough riding. I was well aware of the judgment that stewed in me and how little my Buddhist practice made a dip in that mucky soup. I wanted to say, across the room, Buck up, little camper. You’re gonna have to be tougher than this. You’re gonna need some grit to do this. The folding plastic chair chewed at my back as I remembered the hurdles and trials and obstacles and violence and discrimination that trans people I know have overcome for years to be who they are. We were busy confronting and surviving macroaggressions and lack of access. I thought of my early mentors who smuggled, shared, and used black-market hormones, or friends who, long ago, lay alone in hotel rooms for a week post-surgery without anyone to help them. People I’ve met who sought hormones and surgery from doctors twenty, thirty years ago, knapping a wheel out of stone. No Harry Benjamin to jump through, no WPATH to walk. People who turned tricks, went on fertility drugs and sold their eggs, or took out student loans to afford surgery; others who shot street steroids or self-castrated in prison. I thought about trans women friends from the Navajo Nation, who told me stories about pumping parties on the rez where women self-injected hardware-store silicone into their breasts. I thought about a friend whose almost transmythological tale about being forced to self-aspirate a hematoma in his chest after top surgery I’d heard about years before we’d ever met, and this was in pre-social networking days. I thought of the countless hours I’ve spent being told no, that something was unavailable, illegal, or impossible. Or just not right: like a bearded man needing a pelvic ultrasound or mammogram. I thought of the time when, after many years of being on T and procuring top surgery without health insurance, I finally got coverage and then made many long calls appealing to a middle-aged white Texan man at the insurance company to explain why the hysterectomy I was seeking pre-approval for was not part of a not-covered “sex change.” “Look, Hal,” I’d explained to this stranger, “I’m not trying to get away with anything here. These are just the parts I was born with, and they’re causing me significant pain.” I was frustrated by these young trans people for being so easily discouraged and deterred. If transitioning taught me anything, it was that I needed to possess the will to do whatever it takes to survive.

cooper lee bombardier, from trans grit, from the remedy: queer and trans voices on health and health care, edited by zena sharman, 2016

[gatheringbones]

Lisa Baird, from not a liability: on trauma-informed care and community acupuncture, from the remedy: queer and trans voices on health and healthcare, 2016

[gatheringbones]

Lisa Baird, from not a liability: on trauma-informed care and community acupuncture, from the remedy: queer and trans voices on health and healthcare, 2016

[ixlander]

[ID] A history of trauma can leave us with a lingering sense of shame around being broken. Health care providers with trauma histories are under enormous pressure to be completely healed and maintain composure. This pressure to be “whole” persists despite the fact that those of us who have had to navigate re-traumatizing health care systems are sometimes best able to offer care that is trauma-informed. A trauma history is not a liability for those of us working in health care. I struggle to express what it has meant for me to have respected colleagues who are also dear friends, who are also trauma survivors. Having allies who can respond to my text saying “Got triggered in clinic last night, still kinda shaky this morning, have had three drop-ins today, all in crisis” with “Oh, hon. Hang in there, I love you.” They stitch me back together when I’m falling apart, affirm that wholeness is not a requirement, healing is not a destination, and that we don’t do this alone. [End ID]

Lisa Baird, from not a liability: on trauma-informed care and community acupuncture, from the remedy: queer and trans voices on health and healthcare, 2016

[biandlesbianliterature]

[image description: a graphic of the covers of the books listed below, with the text “2017 Lambda Literary Awards: Lesbian & Bi Winners”]

29th Annual Lambda Literary Award Winners:

Lesbian Fiction

Here Comes the Sun, Nicole Dennis-Benn, Liveright Publishing Corporation (review)

Bisexual Nonfiction

Black Dove: Mama, Mi’jo, and Me, Ana Castillo, The Feminist Press (review)

Bisexual Poetry

Mouth to Mouth, Abigail Child, EOAGH

Lesbian Poetry (TIE)

play dead, francine j. harris, Alice James Books

The Complete Works of Pat Parker, edited by Julie R. Enszer, Sinister Wisdom/A Midsummer Night’s Press (review)

Lesbian Mystery

Pathogen, Jessica L. Webb, Bold Strokes Books

Lesbian Memoir/Biography

The Wind is Spirit: The Life, Love and Legacy of Audre Lorde, Dr. Gloria Joseph, Villarosa Media

Lesbian Romance

The Scorpion’s Empress, Yoshiyuki Ly, Solstice Publishing

LGBT Erotica

Soul to Keep, Rebekah Weatherspoon, Bold Strokes Books

LGBT Anthology

The Remedy: Queer and Trans Voices on Health and Health Care, Zena Sharman, Arsenal Pulp Press (review)

LGBT Children’s/Young Adult

Girl Mans Up, M-E Girard, Harper Teen

LGBT Studies

Sex Museums: The Politics and Performance of Display, Jennifer Tyburczy, University of Chicago Press

(See all the winners at Lambda Literary)