nonbinarymlm

[nonbinarymlm]

[nonbinarymlm]

I’m hoping that this is as “angry” as I’ll get with a comic, but given how the world is shaping up politically at the moment, I fear that might not be the case.

It’s been incredibly eye opening to witness the degree to which some people I know are willing to bury their heads in the sand in order to avoid the reality of the awful things that are happening around them.  Awful things that they were told were going to happen.

In America, people are being black bagged and shipped off to El Salvador without due process to be held indefinitely in prisons, with the current administration now making social media posts cruelly boasting that they’ll never return. 

Make no mistake, if people are being kidnapped by the government, given no due process, and are shipped to a foreign nation to be held in prison with no intention to give them any legal recourse, we need to call these prisons what they are:

They are death camps.

The United States of America is rounding up “undesirables” and sending them to death camps. 

There are people in this country that voted for this.  No matter how nice they otherwise seem or claim to be, these people are evil to the core. 

There are also people who didn’t vote for this, but do provide social validation and acceptance to those who did.

If you are someone who thinks you’re against fascism, but you also accept fascists in your life, you are a fascist. 

There can be no acceptance of intolerance.  In the comic, the person I’m lampooning is the “Fake Trans Ally”, but you can swap out “trans” for any other group of marginalized people.  Frankly, just call this person “The Fake Ally.”

If you’re someone reading this and feel attacked because I’m calling you a fake ally, it’s time to do some soul searching.  When the history books are written about this period of American history, are you going to be someone who was unambiguously against hatred, or were you someone that treated hate as acceptable? 

Were you someone that invited hatred into your home?

Were you someone that shared a meal with hatred?

Were you someone that allowed hatred a safe haven?

If you’re someone that does that, you yourself are hateful. 

When you accept hate, you do so at the expense of those who are the target of that hatred.

Be better, our lives depend on it.

[nonbinarymlm]

Seeing generative AI in queer spaces is chilling for a lot of reasons. Not least among them being that it's an easy way to edge out queer creators who are already in a precarious position, facing book bans and attacks from all sides.

As a queer history resource, watching an AI try and fill the roll that has taken so long to carve out for actual people, is disheartening. It's great to know that there is demand for queer history resources, but after so many queer people have worked so hard to build a space for themselves, it feels disrespectful to watch that spot be filled by machines.

Queer people have won the battle in a way, convinced the world that our stories are worthwhile. I suppose it shouldn't be shocking to see that the response is to try and find a way to not compensate queer people for any of their work and value.

[nonbinarymlm]

I recommend also reading the post this commenter is responding to.

[nonbinarymlm]

Sometimes I come out to a new friend and say “I’m gay by the way” and today I told a friend and she said “I’m gayer.”

HA

[nonbinarymlm]

In addition to what I read in March, here are the trans books (trans authors or trans characters) I've read since the last TDOV. Each one is special to me for different reasons, and I hope to find more favorites in this upcoming year.

And yes, I included my own book because I had to read and listen to it all for audiobook production. Which if you didn't know, Paige Reisenfeld is donating all her proceeds from this title to the Human Rights Campaign. So check it out on Audible!

I really wanted to read more for the Trans Rights Readathon, and in general during March. But I've been really looking forward to Love After the End, and Galaxy The Prettiest Star, and both were well worth the wait.

Axton Landing and St Lawrence Ripples are local books, the first one is a historical fiction based on loggers in the mid 1800s, and the second one is a collection of local (mostly) true stories. I was surprised at how profound Axton Landing was, it touched a lot on the Underground Railroad, women's suffrage, slavery, workers rights, and many other issues plaguing the time.

[nonbinarymlm]

it's genuinely crazy that free the nipple died

[nonbinarymlm]

Tbh the average healthcare worker cannot comprehend a transgender man existing

The average woman working in the healthcare industry cannot comprehend a transgender man existing.

[nonbinarymlm]

i think there's a conversation to be had about cis people (and this very much includes women) trying to "compliment" how us trans men look(ed) pre-transition (whether medical or social) by saying things like "why did you do that?", "you used to be a baddie"… it's insulting how they think that our self-worth is entirely dependent on our looks—and yes, it's very much misogynistic: how dare a beautiful girl do this to herself? how dare you throw your beauty away when it determines how worthy you are of respect?

[nonbinarymlm]

Sorry had to consolidate some of the answers to make it fit tumblr poll options! Would love to see similar polls for transfems, nonbinary people in general, trans and intersex people in general, etc.

Please also feel free to share your thoughts! Do you identify more with these as labels or communities? What do you think of them?

[nonbinarymlm]

only thing that comes to mind today.

[nonbinarymlm]

Sorry had to consolidate some of the answers to make it fit tumblr poll options! Would love to see similar polls for transfems, nonbinary people in general, trans and intersex people in general, etc.

Please also feel free to share your thoughts! Do you identify more with these as labels or communities? What do you think of them?

[nonbinarymlm]

The Women's House of Detention

A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison

Hugh Ryan 

This singular history of a prison, and the queer women and trans people held there, is a window into the policing of queerness and radical politics in the twentieth century.

The Women's House of Detention, a landmark that ushered in the modern era of women's imprisonment, is now largely forgotten. But when it stood in New York City's Greenwich Village, from 1929 to 1974, it was a nexus for the tens of thousands of women, transgender men, and gender-nonconforming people who inhabited its crowded cells. Some of these inmates--Angela Davis, Andrea Dworkin, Afeni Shakur--were famous, but the vast majority were incarcerated for the crimes of being poor and improperly feminine. Today, approximately 40 percent of the people in women's prisons identify as queer; in earlier decades, that percentage was almost certainly higher.

Historian Hugh Ryan explores the roots of this crisis and reconstructs the little-known lives of incarcerated New Yorkers, making a uniquely queer case for prison abolition--and demonstrating that by queering the Village, the House of D helped defined queerness for the rest of America. From the lesbian communities forged through the Women's House of Detention to the turbulent prison riots that presaged Stonewall, this is the story of one building and much more: the people it caged, the neighborhood it changed, and the resistance it inspired.

Winner, 2023 Stonewall Book Award--Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Book Award CrimeReads, Best True Crime Books of the Year

(Affiliate link above)

[nonbinarymlm]

The evolution of (trans) man.

(Well, this one, anyway.)

Age 9: "Tomboy"

Age 15: Strictly enforced femininity

Age 30: Hitting the mental limits of being closeted all his life and about to crash HARD

Age 47: Fifteen years now since starting transition. Far more good days than bad, no regrets.

The world may be full of uncertainty and danger, but I resolve to continue to find joy in who I am. Be joyful to be kind to yourself and be joyful to spite the bastards who would tear us apart.

[nonbinarymlm]

why be radically exclusionary abt queerness when you could be radically inclusionary instead. let's inflate the numbers. let's become the majority. the sky's the limit

[nonbinarymlm]

I'm from the USA and am trying to take hope and inspiration from our queer predecessors who faced dark times in the past. How did they keep going even when it felt like the world was ending?Do you have any recommendations for queer historical essays, poems, books, anything to find comfort and hope for these dark times?

Yes, I have a couple of stories for this.

Claude Cahun

A queer surrealist photographer from 1920's paris, Claude was Jewish and recognized the rise of antisemitism in their home country and watched it become fascism. Here is a quote from their article:

"In 1937 Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore cut off many connections because of the war and ran to Jersey to avoid anti-Semitic violence. Upon arrival, they went back to using their birth names and laid low until the Germans took Jersey. Moore and Cahun set to work. They used their experience with art and disguising their genders to create works that spread misinformation, seeds of rebellion and implied that there was a large-scale resistance happening when in reality, it was just the two of them. Though some of their work was based on confusing the soldiers, they also translated and transcribed BBC transmissions into German, detailing the war crimes that were being committed. They would have these translations on pieces of paper that they would slip into soldier's pockets, matchboxes, and anywhere a soldier may stumble across it and possibly read it. An investigation was started, and Nazi authorities believed there to be a group of people doing this. When the two were discovered to be behind the actions, Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore were sentenced to death. Fortunately, the sentence was never carried out because the island of Jersey was liberated from German rule only a year later. Claude took a picture upon their release in front of the camps with a Nazi eagle pin between their teeth."

And Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz

who wrote:

"Poetry readings and concert attendance—and often a chat over vodka—were not only forms

of escapism, but also a search for better, more substantive aspects of human beings, a search

which would end, more often than not, in complete disillusionment. If it could be possible, to

discern, in these notes even if only for a moment a measure of humanity in that time of

inhumanity, the goal of this publication would be fulfilled.”

I think his whole article is worth reading.

Also here are some books to read:

Your Art Will Save Your Life

Beth Pickens

Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies

Ben MacIntyre

Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color

Christopher Soto

The New Queer Conscience

Adam Eli

(Some of the links are affiliate links)