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Gender care is one of the most politicized types of medical treatment. Despite the fact that every major medical society has published statements supporting the medical necessity and safety of gender-affirming care for adults as well as minors, in America, more than half the states have enacted laws or proposed bills that ban gender-affirming care for minors. Such laws may impose criminal penalties on healthcare providers or parents who assist a minor in obtaining any gender-affirming treatments. Similar to laws banning abortion, laws that criminalize gender-affirming care directly contradict evidence-based standards of medical care. Studies have shown that access to gender-affirming care drastically decreases rates of depression, suicidal thoughts, and self-harm, with up to 70 percent reduction in suicidality in transgender youths. It is truly lifesaving care.

It's Not Hysteria: Everything You Need to Know About Your Reproductive Health (But Were Never Told), Dr. Karen Tang

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Time does not heal all wounds. Grief is just like a sink full of dirty dishes or a pile of soiled laundry. Grief is a chore you have to do, and it’s a messy one, at that.

Bright Young Women, Jessica Knoll

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There is no innovation that will ever spring from the minds of men that will not eventually be used for slaughter and control.

Shorefall, Robert Jackson Bennett

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They will call you hysterical no matter how much dignity you have. So you might as well do whatever the hell you want.

Bright Young Women, Jessica Knoll

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I remember thinking that the fading of hopes and ambitions was mostly painless. That was good, but it was also rather horrible. I wanted to be a writer, but I was beginning to think being a good one was beyond me. If it was, the world would continue to spin. You relaxed your hand… opened your fingers… and something flew away. I remember thinking maybe that’s all right.

You Like It Darker, Stephen King

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He tried to build us strong and steady and whole. But he didn’t keep us safe. He didn’t know how to shelter us from all the hurt that was waiting, because he thought that hurt was the shape of love.

Just Like Home, Sarah Gailey

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I predict I will always be in negotiation with my body, what it wants, and what I want of it.

How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures, Sabrina Imbler

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Every innovation—technological, sociological, or otherwise—begins as a crusade, organizes itself into a practical business, and then, over time, degrades into common exploitation. This is simply the life cycle of how human ingenuity manifests in the material world. What goes forgotten, though, is that those who partake in this system undergo a similar transformation: people begin as comrades and fellow citizens, then become labor resources and assets, and then, as their utility shifts or degrades, transmute into liabilities, and thus must be appropriately managed.

Foundryside, Robert Jackson Bennett

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Almost every system we exist in is cruel, and it is our job to hold ourselves accountable to a moral center separate from the arbitrary ganglion of laws that, so often, get things wrong.

How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures, Sabrina Imbler

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Tomorrow, in my experience, is only worth worrying about when there’s something you can do about it.

What Feasts at Night, T. Kingfisher

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Time and thinking tame the strongest grief, I was taught, but many a proverb’s promise proves false. I’ve found that thinking only wears away at grief, grinds it deeper, and time only preserves it, encases it in glass for the ages.

Learned by Heart, Emma Donoghue

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Loving people. That's a fucking flaw if you want to be a hero. Being willing to give your life for someone is all well and good but it means sooner or later you'll give your life for someone and that'll be the end of the story. Heroes can't afford for that to happen.

Herc, Phoenicia Rogerson

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If unkindness is indeed a serial killer, then my revelation is that I was my own murderer. I had taught myself to bend to my own unkindness first, so that I would be able to withstand the unkindness of others. I will not bend anymore.

Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement, Tarana Burke

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We are, all of us, given such a brief moment of time together, it hardly seems fair. But it’s precious, and maybe it’s enough, and maybe it’s right that our bodies dissolve into the earth, giving our energy back to it, feeding the little creatures in the ground and giving nutrients to the soil, and maybe it’s right that our consciousness rests. The thought is peaceful.

Migrations, Charlotte McConaghy

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The west you talk about doesn’t exist. It’s a fairytale, a fantasy you sell yourself because the alternative is to admit that you are the least important character in your own story. You invent an entire world because your conscience demands it, you invent good people and bad people and you draw a neat line between them because your simplistic morality demands it. But the two kinds of people in this world are not good and bad, they are engines and fuel. Go ahead, change your country, change your name, change your accent, pull the skin right off your bones, but in their eyes they will always be the engines and you will always, always be fuel.

What Strange Paradise, Omar El Akkad

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There is a time for any fledgling artist where one’s taste exceeds one’s abilities. The only way to get through this period is to make things anyway.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin

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More people’s lives have been shaped by violence than we like to think. And more people’s lives have been shaped by silence than we think.

Black Cake, Charmaine Wilkerson