#LGB Trains

[olddominionrailways]

Bringing Your LGB Train Layout to Life: A Guide to Essential Accessories

LGB trains, known for their durability and ability to operate outdoors, offer a unique experience for model train enthusiasts. But what truly transforms a basic track layout into a captivating miniature world is the addition of LGB Train Accessories. These accessories breathe life into your creation, allowing you to tell a story and capture the essence of a real-life railway environment. This…

[bekolxeram]

7x03 analysis part 1 — Everything Air Ops

I promised helicopters, so now we get helicopters. I want to look into how Air Operations work in the 9-1-1 universe, in comparison to its real life counterpart in this first part. Then, I will try to figure out the location and intensity of "hurricane Ethel" during the clandestine operation in the second part. And finally, I will prove how risky it is to fly a helicopter into a storm and why Tommy deserves every bit of his Medal of Valor.

Location

Real!LAFD Air Ops operate (Station 114) out of Van Nuys Airport (VNY/KVNY). It's not only one the busiest general aviation airports in the world, it's also smack dab in between major green areas of the city of LA itself.

This location makes perfect sense in real life. Air Ops might get the occasional highway car wreck or urban structural fire calls, but most of their missions still consist of wildfire suppression and rural search and rescue. Being based at Van Nuys makes sure they can respond to emergency in a timely fashion.

in the 9-1-1 universe, the LAFD Air Ops are based at "Harbor Station", or Station 217. (Harbor and 217 are the same station, Chimney especially asked if Tommy was still at the 217 in 2x14 when requesting air support, unless the 911-verse LAFD has 2 different air operation units, which I highly doubt.) Obviously it has to be at an airport, because that's where the hangers and helipads are, and going by "harbor" I can only speculate that it's in the Harbor Region of LA.

The only non-military airport in the LA Harbor Region is Long Beach Airport (LGB/KLGB), but it's quite a busy commercial airport, probably not a good one to run emergency services from. There's also the Zamperini Field (TOA/KTOA) nearby in Torrance, although not exactly inside the Harbor Region, it's coastal and close enough to the 2 LA ports I guess? Feel free to create a whole new airport using your imagination though, as you know 9-1-1 is set in an alternate universe where geography and physics work differently.

Helicopters

The LAFD Air Ops have 5 medium (FIRE 1-5) and 2 light duty (FIRE 6/7) helicopters, you've heard Tommy in 7x04. Everything applies to the real world counterpart, but the medium type that real!Air Ops operate is AgustaWestland AW139, the Italian-made medium sized twin-engine helicopter with a 5-blade main rotor primed for emergency response and off-shore oil rig transportation.

It has auto-pilot, an anti-icing system for harsh weather and even auto-hover suitable for hoist rescue missions. In a passenger transport configuration, it can carry up to 15 passengers in a 3 row seating plan. In an SAR (search and rescue) configuration though, the middle row can be removed for gurney space. It's big and powerful enough to transport multiple patients, but at the same time, light and agile enough to get into difficult terrain.

The AW139 is designed to be flown by 2 pilots, flying solo is also possible, but only under VFR (Visual Flight Rules), with an additional certification, which LAFD pilots can and do. To fly it under IFR (Instrument Flight Rules), it always requires 2 pilots according to the FAA last time I checked.

The light helicopter type real!LAFD flies is the Bell 505 Jet Ranger X, a single engine twin-blade made in Canada. It's an relatively new airframe, set to replace the aging Bell 206, which the LAFD used to operate. It's quite a bit smaller than the AW139, it can only fit 1 pilot and 4 passengers.

While it's perfectly capable of carrying a Bambi bucket to assist with aerial firefighting missions, it's mainly used as a training aircraft for new pilots and HLCO (Helicopter Coordinator) when there is a major catastrophe that requires on-the-site air traffic coordination.

These are all brand new and sophisticated aircrafts that a mere TV channel can't get their hands on without a government budget. So for 911!LAFD Air Ops, ABC went to their usual helicopter service company for prop aircrafts.

Helinet Aviation provides all sorts of helicopter services from aerial journalism, medevac, delivery to regular chartering. All the 911!Air Ops scenes in 7x03 and 7x04 are naturally filmed in the Helinet hanger, for convenience's sake, at VNY, just a runway across from real!Air Ops.

911!Air Ops

Helinet hangar Street View

I believe I've identified all the helicopters shown in 7x03 and 7x04, but let's get the 2 in the background which probably do not belong to 911!Air Ops out of the way:

N72EH, a Sikorsky S76C++, still in its Boston MedFlight livery. Sold to Helinet in 2022, possible used as a medevac vehicle currently? Unlikely to have anything to do with 911!Air Ops, probably just happened to be in the background to make it seem like there were many helicopters.

The one Tommy flies Eddit to Vegas in is N67TV, an Eurocopter AS350B2 Écureuil (aka squirrel). No fire department would ever let employees take their expensive equipment out for a joy ride so it's likely that in universe, Tommy rented it from somewhere outside of the station. IRL though, according to this forum post, it's used as a backup helicopter for all its customer news stations, but also any TV or film production purposes outside of journalism.

Now, for the one seen in the hangar, therefore explicitly belonging to 911!LAFD:

N29HD, also an AS350B2, also a news helicopter. According to this reddit comment, it used to be shared between CBS and FOX, but now it seems to be configured as a dedicated aircraft for ABC7.

The one the who cares gang stole to rescue Bobby and Athena though has a fake registration number on it:

You just have to look up Helinet's fleet, and you will see this is obviously a DHL livery, and it's quite easy to find out that this is actually:

N211FN, an AS350B1 (so an even older variant than the previous two), operated on behalf of DHL for package delivery service.

Don't get me wrong, the AStar (how the AS350 is called in the US) is a versatile and reliable aircraft. It the 4th most produced rotorcraft in the world, someone even managed to land one on top of Mount Everest. But it's kind of small? It can seat only up to 5 passengers with 1 pilot, and there is hardly room left for any gear. There is also no space for stretcher, so anyone they rescue would have to sit upright. It's just not very realistic.

I have no idea what medium duty helicopters 911!Air Ops operate, we're unlikely to see them in the future. There is this Bell 205 in 4x12 Treasure Hunt, but it clearly says L.A County Rescue on the tail.

Pilots

Real!Air Ops pilots wear beige flight suits, it's the aeromedics who wear blue, and helitac crews wear orange. I'm not complaining too much though, Tommy looks good in blue. (I think the chief pilot wears dark blue, but I'm not sure.)

Helicopter pilots in general usually wear helmets, in case a particularly strong pocket of turbulence slams you against the body of the aircraft, or a bird decide to fly through the windshield into your face, but I get that it gets in the way of the camera, so I'm just gonna enjoy Tommy's beautiful face.

Real!Air Ops pilots work on a 24/48 shift schedule just like any platoon firefighters. Due to the danger of pilot fatigue on aviation safety, they do try to limit their continuous flight time to 6 hours before taking a prolong break.

There are 5 levels of pilots: pilot I (trainee), pilot II (probational), pilot III (full pilot), pilot IV (lead pilot) and pilot V (chief pilot). The chief pilot oversees the entire Air Ops and work on a 10 hour per day, 4 days a week schedule. The rest of the pilots are put into 3 shifts, each shift with a pilot IV, 2 pilot IIIs and 2 trainees/probies, together with 4 aeromedics. (Can't find the most updated version, the lastest one I can get my hands on is from 2022, so good enough?) Therefore Tommy's Bobby would not be a captain, it would be a lead pilot.

I've already explained in detail the timeline of Tommy's career as a firefighting pilot, but here is the short version of it: Once accepted into the LAFD pilot training program, he would have to train with the LAPD for 180 hours then back to the LAFD for 200 hours, that takes around 2 years, and by then he would be a probie. After that, he would have to slowly build up flight hours then train and certify for all types of missions on the medium duty helicopter, that would take another 2-3 years, and after that he would be promoted to a pilot III, which is probably the rank he holds now.

We can see from the form Hen submitted in 7x03 that she initially asked for Lucy as their pilot, as she's forgotten that Tommy also worked there. Fortunately Chimney called Tommy, as Lucy most likely would've still been a probie if not just a trainee.

Melton

I have no idea who he is.

I can sort of see his badge says "firefighter"? At real!Air Ops, everyone wears a flight suit as uniform, so that they can hop into a chopper in an emergency. I don't know what a dude in a regular uniform with the regular LAFD patch on his arm doing there.

Tommy's arm has the Air Ops helicopter patch on it.

Real!Station 114 though do have a crash unit staffed with regular firefighters, maybe Melton is with them? But then, why is he doing with Hen's helicopter requisition?

[aurazoo]

LGB(Trains)

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

I can see your point of view on people getting gender-affirming surgery at a young age and how that could be harmful for some. But how is socially transitioning as a child or adolescent harmful? If I want to be referred to as a he at school, how does that hurt people?

And what are you doing on the queer website if you don’t like queer people, anyhow?

"what are you doing on the queer website if you don’t like queer people, anyhow?"

Well, there was no sign on the door saying that on the way in. Are you sure you don't mean Grindr?

Besides that, your use of that term (which many gay people find offensive) illustrates a problem with the present situation: it used to describe men who desired men or women who desired women - in other words, sex-based sexual preference - but in recent years it has been widened to encompass people with medical conditions like gender dysphoria, and people who have been surgically mutilated, and a thousand other whims and fancies, which is obviously an entirely different thing from the original meaning, and now actively works against sex-based sexual preference, i.e., with trans activists demanding lesbians give blowjobs or else be labeled "transphobes", etc. Which is why so many gay people are now wanting the LGBs to divorce from the TQ+2SJKLMNOPs.

"how is socially transitioning as a child or adolescent harmful?"

There's a bunch of answers to that one, but the previously mentioned story of David Reimer is a good example. Also, many of the people now attempting to detransition as best they can report that once they "socially transitioned" as children / teenagers, they were fast-tracked into hormones and surgery, and because they had made such a public show and built their identities around being trans, they didn't feel able to get off the train that had by then been rolling for years.

Beyond all that, children cannot and should not be making long-reaching, life-altering decisions while they are still growing, changing and lost in play.

If a 6-year-old wants to pretend they're a bear, and the rest of the family go along with it, there's unlikely to be any noticeable harm. But if those parents were to go to the child's school and demand the children and staff there all only refer to their child as a bear, rather than a human, and change the child's passport to an animal passport, and take their child to a vet rather than a doctor, and so forth and so on, a great deal of harm would likely be done to that child's natural development and future life: their education would suffer, along with their health, their social skills, their understanding of actual reality, their work options, etc., and by the time they outgrew that phase, they would in every way be in a worse situation than the other children at their school who had none of that done to them.

One could write a book of all the other reasons to be concerned about the present craze - the massive explosion of social contagion amongst teenage girls, etc., but hopefully that's enough to be going on with.

[sahaquiel43]

My favorite Genshin relationships.

Xiao/Lumine. THE one and only correct male Lumine ship. It's so good, plus there's so much good fanart out there, good fanfic, just an absolutely beautiful ship. And probably the most canon of them all. I just love it.

Sara/Itto: A fun ship, enemies to lovers, all that beautiful nonsense, plus there's a ton of good fanart and fic of it.

Cyno/Nilou. I feel like it's a cool thematically fitting. A great dynamic, and a small but extremely good collection of fanart, it's just so beautiful and aesthetic.

Kazuha/Beidou: I love it. It's just such a fun dynamic, and really hot too.

Jeht/Lumine. I don't really get into F/F ships, but this......THIS....it's perfect, it's tragic, it's so good. Not to mention jeht is virtually the most canonical lgb character in genshin, with the voicelines with Lumine specifically, I love it. (And to add to Jeht's-no-stop-tragedy-train, Lumine's obviously going to outlive her). top quality.

crackship: Candace/Tighnari: I mean, they're both guardians/leaders/of peoples in the desert and rainforest respectively.

Aether: no one really. He's a friend to all, but I don't think he's romantic with anyone really. In a way he's like a benevolent eldritch monstrosity. an otherworldly being helping everyone that he can and looking for his sister.

-YES, I believe Lumine ships work but Aether ships don't. fite me.

Bonus: Razor being literally everyone's family.

--Cyno: long lost brother and can't tell me otherwise

--Bennett, Fischl, Klee, traveller: Best friends.

--Rosaria: older sister. (literally his step sister since both were adopted by Varka).

--Mother/teacher: Lisa

--father figures: Varka, Andrius

--and Razor/Amber feels pretty nice,

[lexygabe]

tora aikawa / twisting tiger headcanons/rewriting/etc.

(march/11/1990)

pisces sun | virgo moon | aquarius rising

INFP - 9w8 - sx/so - 974 - ESI - RLUAI - EFVL - Melancholic-Phlegmatic

general headcanons:

• trans masc, he/him, gayace,

• nobody cares but his sexuality headcanons were made by me when i was mad at wattpad bitches infantalizing him and making him their uwu japanese anime boyfriend,

• also he is little gremlin man before anybody start treating him as omg so cute trans boy hahaha gay baby. nah, he will kick you directly in the balls (even if you don't have them) and he will do this with pleasure,

• as a kid he was creepypasta enjoyer (he tortured miko with them when he was trying to sleep),

• philosophy nerd, not only into "asian philosophy", but philosophy in general. marxism, stoicism, nihilism, epicureanism, etc. everything,

• he reads this big fucking books weighing tons and they are always the craziest shit ever like "the idiot" by fyodor dostoevsky,

• i think he is russian literature fan in general,

• i think he had something that we could describe as depressive episodes, but he was never diagnosed with it til adulthood. and to be honesg tiger himself thought that everyone have felt something like that from time to time,

• probably has light ptsd,

• his friendships with nakama players (besides his and miko bond) aren't that strong like they used to. this is "when both of you start to distancing from each other and you become strangers to each other" situation, (he misses them)

• he self expressing himself very often in form of his new tricks, but also in his writing (he has a lot of notebooks with multiple essays),

• loves cartoons,

• <energy drinks3,

• he has keyhole top surgery type of scars,

• he become strika member after his whole transition journey,

• when doc got his medical results he was a little bit confused bcs birth certificate said that tiger is afab, so he informed coach about it,

• some day after training coach took tiger aside and told him that if anybody's gonna have problem with his identity, he will talk to them and he also asked tiger if he was capable of informing him or doc about his problems/health,

• rasta was first to know, bcs he and tiger went out for a beer together once and tiger started pointing out on his chest and telling a whole story totally drunk. the next day rasta walked up to him and asked in friendly-jokingly way is it safe for him to remove his muscle breasts, to which tiger replied with laugh,

• besides rasta, coach and doc. shakes, klaus and probably whole reserve players bench know about him,

• y'all will eat me (for speaking the truth) but matador, joe and north don't know about the fact that he is trans. bcs north definitely says f/aggot at least once a day, el is this cis lgb+ stereotype in tigers eyes (even tho matador doesn't care about gender identity, if you are hot, then you are hot and you will have to deal with his interest in you) and joe may perceive tiger differently when he would come out (again, this is how tiger feels about him),

• he is very critical of the sigma male trend and whole "sigma" idea in general, he even done a research and watched and read american psycho and fight club (yeah ik this is so random),

• idealist. he is close with his feelings and morality, so he assumes very often that everyone controls their own emotions like him,

• he is both idealist and skeptic,

• texts >>>>>>> voice messages/video calls,

• had religion crisis,

• he develops his trust to people very slowly,

• has mulitple accounts on twitter and makes the best trolling posts out there,

• he has decent knowledge about politics,

• watches kdramas when bored,

• he was wearing brackets in the past,

• has a lot of collections (like gadgets from chips' wrappers, TALISMANS, jewelry, figurines), but he is not obsessed about them,

• has tattoos like this:

• DEFINITELY HAS SOMETHINGG FROM HYPERMOBILITY SPECTRUM. that's why he is so flexible.

throught the series (og tv show, rewriting):

• [—] is waiting to be completed.

relationship with:

• miko: ik a lot of you ships them, but they are platonic to me.

they are like brothers. sometimes they fight for dear life and the other time they send each other funny memes at 3 am. in my head, both of them didn't have a great family dynamic, so they stayed together late at night.

miko was more easy going, so he was always worried about tiger when something happened to him. they aren't ashamed to show their love to each other.

• inyo: when they were kiddos she truly loved him in the most sisterly way you can think of. both of them are very careful when it comes to developing relations so they become very important to each other. it hurt when they had no contact with each other for years and then they become super league enemies (they never even have a talk after this).

• rasta: tiger is welcomed in rasta's house and tiger is always open to do something for rasta in return. buddies.

• cool joe: its complicated. on the one hand they are good friends and joe considers tiger as one of the most normal mates in their team, but they still have that unresolved tension that prevents them from deepening their relationship further.

• others: ?

fashion headcanons:

• smokey eye makeup supremacy,

• TW SCARYASS PRINTED SHIRT. he wears t-shirts with the most obscure shit on them

.

.

.

.

.

• his style is something between grunge, gothic and alt,

• he wears platform shoes to look taller than he actually is,

• some examples of his fits:

music headcanons:

• soft rock!! (car seat headrest is his beloved), j-pop, mcr & bôa.

NSFW:

• had a tdick at the time when he was playing for nakama,

• is into t4t relationships, bcs every cis gay guy he had thing for were super weird about him and either have had internalized transphobia or specific fantasies that crossed his boundaries of comfort,

• tldr give this man a trans bf so he could have the most non sexual intercourse.

[mimble-sparklepudding]

People I Want To Get To Know Better

Tagged by @astrology-bf.

Tagging @musesofawolf @aedandragonforged @johnnylandslide @cyrus-black @stalwart-spirit @starrysnowdrop @spotofmummery @scholarlostintime and @cimarraskylark!

Last Song: Heartbreak (Make Me A Dancer) by Sophie Ellis-Bextor at the gym. It was very motivational for my heavy leg training. Favourite Color: White or Turquoise. Currently Watching: Erm, I don't actually know how to turn my TV on at the moment (don't ask). If YouTube counts I am watching some Eddie Izzard (Covered in Bees!) Last Movie: I watched Pariah Nexus 40k thing with a couple of friends, if that counts? Sweet/Spicy/Savory: Sweet. Give me swiss rolls and bakewell tarts and sticky toffee puddings. Relationship Status: Forever Alone :( Current Obsessions: I'm playing a lot of Space Marine 2 (very badly) and trying to keep up with FFXIVwrite2024. Last Thing In My Search History: Something about % of LGB people in the population, because I stupidly got sucked into responding to someone's ridiculous "OMG why is every single character on every single piece of media gay now when gay people are less than 1% of the population" comment on a YouTube video that I shouldn't have watched in the first place, as it made me all politically agitated (anyway the actual figure in the UK is more like 5-6% and I politely asked the person whether they demand strict demographic accuracy for all social groups, or just the ones they happen to find icky? Which I think was quite restrained of me).

[menalez]

I reject feminism not because of some misguided belief that women belong in the kitchen, or because I think women should be subordinate to men. American feminism, as a long and complex ideology spanning centuries, is often divided into “waves”. Each is a movement within a movement, all dedicated to making life better for women, but with slightly different goals. The suffragettes who fought for our right to vote are known as the first wave. Radical feminism, on the other hand, is a splinter group dating back to the second wave of feminism in the 1960s that feels fourth wave feminists of the modern era have lost touch with their roots (Grady). This is the group that spawned the misandrist, or men-hating, feminists. 

“Oh woe is me!” cries the radical feminist, also known as the radfem, as she types on her Macbook Pro. She furiously posts about how she was “mansplained” to that day at work when she couldn’t get the new coffee machine to work, and how her creepy coworker complimented her new blazer. “How dare he!” she mutters. The radical feminist clutches her privilege like barnacles to the bottom of a pier, seeing anyone who dares disagree with her as the underpaid workman hired to pry her off.  

Is this a stereotype? Certainly. Radical feminists are real people, after all, with stories and personal histories like everyone else, who are just as deserving of the right to speak their mind. But the fact remains that they use their right to speak to erase trans people, push their narrative of victimhood, and violently campaign against sex workers. When a group brimming with hatred and anger for those even more marginalized then they are is loud enough to be conflated with people fighting for equality, rather than further discrimination, there is a problem (Preen). And the problem is radical feminism, which has to go—and if this means getting rid of feminism altogether, then so be it. 

“TERF” is an acronym that stands for  “trans-exclusionary radical feminist”; however, those who identify with this particular sect of radfem denounce the label as a slur and prefer the name “gender critical”. Discerning readers will note that this is an unapologetic euphemism. 

Gender critical, in this case, doesn't mean that they are critical of the institution or concept of gender as a whole. Rather, it means they don’t believe in the existence of trans people and actively seek to erase them. These are people who only believe in biological sex, both primary and secondary sex characteristics, who refuse to use preferred pronouns, and who would seek to push through legislation that would cause numerous problems for transgender individuals. Now, one could argue that these are small subsets of productive, non-extremist communities, lurking online like internet trolls. But these communities are larger than you’d think, considering a subreddit called r/GenderCritical on Reddit has over 54 thousand members. These people have massive platforms to spread hate and enormous echo chambers of radfems who think just like them. 

A high-profile radfem group called The Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF for short) has been particularly active lately in the justice system. They wrote a “Declaration of No Confidence in LGB Movement Leadership” (Women’s Liberation Front). 

The “LGB movement”. 

The entire petition is dedicated to somehow getting the “LGB Movement” to denounce transgender people and pay “restitution” to those they have wronged by campaigning for trans rights. The post sounded academic, perhaps even sounded reasonable if one didn’t read too closely. But it calls the surgeries and hormonal treatments that trans people use to alleviate their dysphoria, which is a mental condition, mutilation. They call it “irresponsible” for trained medical practitioners to allow, or even recommend such treatments.

Typical TERF dogma is to say that trans women are really just men who have a fetish for seeing themselves as women, which they call “autogynephilia” (Blanchard). All of these are just excuses for these women to discriminate against trans people while hiding under the feminism label, twisting the movement that historically fought for equality to their own ends.

This isn’t limited to niche Reddit communities or the odd militant organization. J.K. Rowling herself, a woman beloved by many people for writing the Harry Potter book series, was recently criticized online for tweeting her support for a woman named Maya Forster, who had posted transphobic sentiments on her twitter. Radical feminism may be a small group, but they are incredibly loud, and their dogma is pervasive. It’s seductive in that it makes you feel superior by playing upon your existing preconceptions of evil, dangerous men. The narrative of a faceless oppressor you can blame all of your problems upon is painfully easy to buy into. For example, you’ve probably been ignored or talked over by a man at least once. Chalking it up to how “all men are terrible people” is easy. And the whole idea that it’s time for women to be on top, for women to be in power when we have been historically oppressed, has a nice symmetry to it—some bitter irony for the other gender, right? It’s easy, and it’s symmetrical, but responding to oppression with oppression is the opposite of progress.

Tied into their anti-trans dogma, radfems are also strongly against sex work in all its forms. To them, there is no safe version of sex work—it’s all exploitation and “for the men”. This goes hand in hand with the victimization of women, because to these people, no woman in sex work could be in control of her own life (“Subcultures and Sociology”). This, of course, ignores that sex work is dangerous enough without privileged women, who likely have never needed to work in that particular field, trying to pass legislation to make it even more dangerous. 

The blatant victimization of women that pervades radfem dogma exists right there in the name of WoLF. The need for a “liberation front” itself implies that women are slaves, and a radical feminist would make the argument that we are, oppressed and enslaved by the patriarchy as we seem to be. But a deeper look into their website reveals more. 

Their membership page says that “Please note that we are a women-only organization, intended to serve and include biologically female persons who survived girlhood” (Women’s Liberation Front). Putting aside the blatant transphobia that is par for the course by now, the issue is with the phrase “survived girlhood”. This phrase implies that growing up female is some sort of Hunger Games-esque battle for survival. I don’t know about you, but my girlhood consisted of watching Disney Channel and eating cookies. I didn’t need to fight for the right to grow older, not in the ever-progressive Bay Area. 

And while this may be a different case in other countries, perhaps one with more restrictive laws than the US, it is important to note that WoLF is an American organization dedicated to making changes in America. Rather than fighting actual battles for women’s rights where women are actively oppressed by repressive laws and policies, and rather than aiding women suffering in abusive households, this “Women’s Liberation Front” is writing strongly worded letters to nobody in particular and pushing a narrative of victimization. 

An article written by the Independent in the UK expounds upon this idea that “Misogyny should be recognised as a hate crime for the same reason that misandry should not be: women and girls are systematically oppressed and exploited by men and boys” (Smith). This was about the issue of making misogyny a hate crime—should misandry, the hatred of men, fall under the same umbrella? This author argues that no, it should not be, because apparently our “systematic oppression” negates any reason for similar protections to be given to men. There are several issues with this idea of systematic oppression, the most glaring of which is how it makes women the victims. It makes us seem helpless, exploited by a system we cannot control. This demonstrates the inherent hypocrisy of radical feminism. These are the same women who virulently campaign against being seen as children, for whom their own autonomy is a right they must protect against the ruthlessly exploitative patriarchy. And yet they cast themselves as victims, adopting the infantilization they claim to oppose. 

Radical feminists don’t have it entirely wrong, however. Some of their goals seem downright reasonable rather than rabid, one of which is their goal to have women’s only spaces. These are spaces they describe as being for women only, such as gender-segregated showers and changing rooms, correctional facilities, and rape trauma centers (Women’s Liberation Front). Radfems do not believe that there should only be showers, changing rooms, prisons, and trauma centers for women; rather, they should be separated by gender. Which, of course, is not an utterly unreasonable expectation. Having gender-neutral showers, especially once past the age of puberty, would be uncomfortable and invasive. 

The problem with radfem’s “women’s only spaces” is two-fold. For one, they would seek to exclude trans women from such spaces on account of their “not being real women”. The sheer transphobia of such a sentiment cannot be ignored, despite the field of landmines that the issue of trans women in female prisons can be. But on top of that, there’s a growing sentiment among radical feminists that men are an utterly different species from women. Not in the strict denotation sense, of course, but that because of their different biology and supposed different experiences growing up, no man could ever sympathize with female issues and female struggles. No man should ever be allowed to weigh in on supposedly “female-only” issues. 

There is this growing divide between men and women during a time when the entirety of humanity needs to stand together on global issues. Climate change comes to mind, as do political conflicts and the return of measles due to anti-vax ideology. By emphasizing this divide, radical feminists push people apart. Movements, especially ones calling for great change, only succeed when the people behind them are united. When they are not—when there are splinter groups, competing ideologies, and those who refuse to hear one another—they fail, every single time.   

This is perhaps said best by the Washington Post, in an article saying that radfem fixation on the apparent bad behavior of men distracts from real problems (Young). But more importantly, it colors the movement as a whole. I am not a feminist, and I never will be—at least, not until there is a distinct ideological separation between actual gender equality and, as the article puts it, raking men over the coals for perceived slights and the crimes of their ancestors (Young). 

But above all, I reject this idea that womanhood is pain and the narrative of oppression that privileged women on the internet want me to believe. I refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of the feminist movement until they themselves refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of radical feminism, and neither should you. It is only when there is a near-unanimous rejection of the monster this movement made that there will be any ideological change; indeed, any societal change.

Blanchard, Ray. “Early History of the Concept of Autogynephilia.” Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 34, Aug. 2005.

Goldberg, Michelle. “What Is a Woman?” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 9 July 2019, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/04/woman-2.

Grady, Constance. “The Waves of Feminism, and Why People Keep Fighting over Them, Explained.” Vox, Vox, 20 July 2018, www.vox.com/2018/3/20/16955588/feminism-waves-explained-first-second-third-fourth.

Kearns, Madeleine. “TERF Wars.” National Review, vol. 70, no. 22, Dec. 2018, p. 25. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=pwh&AN=132993584&site=pov-live.x

Preen, Katy. “Radical Feminism - a Good Idea in Theory.” Medium, Medium, 19 Apr. 2018, medium.com/@KatyPreen/radical-feminism-a-good-idea-in-theory-e3ba0e56ecc3.

Smith, Victoria. “'The Fact That We're Considering Making Misandry a Hate Crime Should Concern Everyone'.” The Independent, Independent Digital News and Media, 16 Oct. 2018, www.independent.co.uk/voices/misandry-men-hate-crime-women-sexism-racism-feminism-a8586591.html.

“Subcultures and Sociology.” Grinnell College, Grinnell College, haenfler.sites.grinnell.edu/radfems/.

Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF). “Become A Member.” Women's Liberation Front, Women’s Liberation Front, 2014, womensliberationfront.org/become-a-member/.

i read the first few paragraphs and then gave up bc youre an obvious MRA + boring + stupid + misinformed.

[partly-hueman]

Q**r!

Imagine being a homosexual during the 80's and having to come out. AIDS was decimating the population, people didn't know how it was spread and there was talk in the halls of government about gathering AIDS patients and putting them on a island or in camps. Gay men and women were being hunted in the streets and "queer bashing" was a sport.

I wonder how many men died from assault and the last words they heard on earth was being called queer. I can't count how many times I heard "QUEER" or "FAG" followed by getting sucker punched or hit with something. How many times my friends heard it before being beat. You didn't even have to be a homosexual to hear that and be the victim of the "smear the queer" crowd.

Queer is and was and always will be a slur. Forever. It's not cute and it's not a "gender". That's madness.

Now a days, thanks to trans people, mediocre basic heterosexual people are attempting to align themselves with the LGB community in order to feel special. It's a total social contagion. It's fake. Its as fake as Dylan Mulvaney is trans.

I came across this on my Twitter timeline:

With the trans flag in her profile she says of herself: "Magical Girl in training|Gamer Girl Extraordinaire| Network Admin| Toku Fangirl|She/her| Proud Pan Lesbian|Beginner Streamer" Whatever the fuck any of that means....

I responded: You've "reclaimed" nothing in the name of GAY people. Try meeting some actual humans and you'll find you cannot compel speech and you don't own the English language.

That's a lot of prejudices about me after I told you that the word queer is still being perceived as harmful to some LGB people. I will ask again, why is it that when the trans gender community asks for everyone to not say a word or to use inclusive language we all need to obey. But when the LGB asks for the same courtesy all that happens is they get verbally abused and get to hear, "You just have to deal with it." Where is the mutual respect in that? For my followers, is the word "gay" just as offensive as the word "queer", like this person is saying?

[hard--headed--woman]

3rd day of Pride Month - 2nd LGB history 🏳️‍🌈

Today is the second day of my "post about one lgb icon/story everyday" thing for Pride Month, and I am gonna talk about the first lesbian wedding in Spain !

It's a quite famous story, but I wanted to talk about it anyway.

Here's the story of Elisa and Marcela !

Marcela Gracia Ibeas and Elisa Sánchez Loriga got married on June 8, 1901, in A Coruña, at Galicia, in Spain. Their marriage was the first homosexual marriage in Spain since the Roman imperial era (though some documents were found, proving that two men got married in Spain in 1061, I'll talk about it in another post !) and happened more than 100 years before the country legalized homosexual marriages !

To achieve this, Elisa disguised herself as a man, and adopted a male identity, Mario Sánchez, which is the name on their marriage certificate. Their lie was later discovered, but their marriage was never annulled, and they remained married for the rest of their lives.

Here's a picture of them after their wedding :

There is a very good movie on Netflix, called Elisa y Marcela, that tells their story. I watched it and liked it a lot, though there are some little criticisms to be made, and if you're interested, you should watch it too! I really enjoyed it and will probably watch it a lot of other times.

Note that there are some differences between the movie and the real story, and if you watch if, I think you should also read their true story, like reading their Wikipedia page. But the biggest part of the movie (except 1-2 details and the end) is pretty accurate, so if you want to watch it and to discover their whole story like that, don't read the end of this post ! I'll tell their story in details here. Keep reading only if you don't want to watch the movie/don't care about already knowing the entire story before watching it.

▪︎

The two young women meet at the Teacher Training College in A Coruña, where future primary school teachers are trained. Eighteen-year-old Marcela is studying there, while twenty-three-year-old Elisa is working there after completing the same course. They become friends, and then lovers. Marcela's parents, fearing scandal, send their daughter to continue her studies in Madrid, but it's not enough to end their love story. Marcela is appointed teacher in Vimianzo, in the village of Calo, while nearby Elisa works as a temporary replacement in Couso, a small parish in Coristanco in the province of A Coruña. They decide to live together in Calo, until 1889, the year in which Marcela leaves to teach in Dumbría while Elisa stays in Calo. The two keep in touch, writing to each other, until Elisa joins Marcela.

They live their love for years, hiding their relationship, until they have had enough, and decide to hatch a plan to get married.

In 1901, Elisa adoptes a masculine appearance and applies to the College of Education under the name of Mario. She creates a past for herself based on a cousin who died in a shipwreck, claims to have spent her childhood in London with an atheist father. She gets baptized as Mario on May 26, 1901 and gets her First Communion under the same idendity.

The couple gets married on June 8, 1901, after publication of the banns. A short wedding ceremony is performed before witnesses, and the couple spends their wedding night in the Corcubión guesthouse on Calle de San Andrés - Elisa and Marcela are officially the first spanish homosexual couple to get married since the Roman imperial era, their plan was a success.

Unfortunately, the villagers begin to have doubts, and realize that this marriage is what they call "a marriage without a man".

The Galician and Madrid press reports the case, the two women lose their jobs, are excommunicated and placed under arrest.

Here's a picture of them after their arrest :

Elisa tries to pass herself off as intersex (using the term hermaphrodite at the time) when a doctor checks whether she's male or female, to no avail. Despite this, and the Civil Guard's attempts to prosecute them, their marriage was never annulled, and the two lovers manages to escape. Their story becomes famous in Spain and many other European countries.

(Un matrimonio sin hombre = a marriage without a man)

After that, we don't know what happened to them. The last thing we know fore sure about them is that they embarked on a ship bound for South America - perhaps Argentina, like so many other Spaniards of the time, where they spent their honeymoon and settled.

But in 2008, a book, Elisa e Marcela – Alén dos homes (Elisa and Marcela – Beyond men), by Narciso de Gabriel, was published in A Coruña, and tells their story from 1901 to 1904. It narrates the events in Porto, Portugal, where they were imprisoned, tried, and later released. They fled to Argentina after the Spanish government demanded their extradition from Portugal. The book tells that before leaving Porto for the Americas, Marcela gave birth to a girl - I couldn't find any other information about that. It also tells that after they landed in Buenos Aires, Elisa (under the alias of Maria) married Christian Jensen, a wealthy immigrant from Denmark 24 years her senior, in 1903 and that Marcela, under the alias of Carmen, pretended to be her sister and stayed there with her daughter.

Elisa refused to consummate the marriage with Jensen. He grew suspicious and tried to have the marriage annulled on the grounds that Elisa wasn't, in fact, a woman. This claim was never substantiated: Three medical examinations confirmed that Elisa was a woman.[11] Since the marriage was between a man and a woman, and therefore valid, no charges were brought against Elisa. After this time, there is no further record of Marcela and Elisa. Still according to this book, Elisa refused have sex with Jensen, who grew suspicious and tried to have the marriage annulled on the grounds that Elisa wasn't, in fact, a woman. It didn't work : three medical examinations confirmed that Elisa was a woman, and since the marriage was between a man and a woman, and therefore valid, no charges were brought against Elisa. After this time, there is no further record of Marcela and Elisa - though some sources claim that Elisa killed herself in 1909.

I'm sorry if some things aren't very clear - sometimes the sources I've found contradict each other, and there are differences in information between French (I'm French), Spanish and English sources. Sometimes even the same source says two different things. I've done my best, and I hope what I've written isn't too far from the truth.

This is a very interesting sorry, that is very, very important in LGB history, and I encourage you all to do your own research, read the book and watch the film! Personally, I'm very happy to have discovered this story, which I like very much.

See you tomorrow for another story/lgb icon :)

[scentedluminarysoul]

Today TERFs loudly protested ALL KINDS of Pride flags a train station had put up. ALL of them

Because they don't want to see them

Self-hating cis LGB who support TERFs should really start paying attention now

It was never just about trans people

It was never going to stop with trans people

Open your eyes

They hate you too. No matter what they print on their T-shirts

When the leopards come to eat your face, you have no one to blame but yourselves

[olddominionrailways]

Bring Your Model Train Dreams to Life: LGB Locomotives for Sale at Old Dominion Railways

Old Dominion Railways is your one-stop shop for all things LGB! We carry a wide selection of LGB Locomotives For Sale, including classic steam locomotives, sleek diesels, and even specialty LGB models.

[vintage-bentley]

im a huge book nerd, so i hang out in bookstores, libraries and antique shops to look at books a lot. something ive noticed lately is that every time big stores would put out a stand for pride month with LGBTQ+ lit and/or by LGBTQ+ author, there's contemporary lit only. i haven't seen a classical book by gay/lesbian/bi authors in ages. its all that "They both die in the end"s and "Heartstopper"s, "A Little Life" 😬. Contemporary romlit, all that hot new garbage from booktok. but it's never oscar wilde, or james baldwin, or virginia woolf, or sapho, or em forste, or anna-maria sh, or radclyffe hall, or patricia highsmith. even of the never ones, there are more than just ya and romance or romantasy, like let me see like alice walker at least, or sarah waters, leslie feinberg???

i know that they are chasing the trends and trying to be as unproblematic as possible and "uplift trans and q*eer voices" and also they probably have contracts with these authors. but by doing that they are basically erasing lgbt voices from the past, who were already silenced at the time. younger people don't discover authors from the previous centuries, even decades, on these stands. if you are a ssa teen or ya, unless you are doing your own searching, nowadays you won't find any connection with the people from the past that were like you.

I’ve noticed this too. My local library had an “2SLGBTQIA+” pride month display, and I swear it was ALL trans stuff. It was all books starring trans identifying characters or books about gender identity. I think out of the whole display there was maybe two books about same sex attraction. And of course, all of the books were the modern ones with rainbow covers, “progress” flags, and that tik tok book art style.

And I think it’s because they don’t care. They never cared. They’ve just found an easy way to pretend they care so that they can be hailed as Amazing Allies. I feel that way about everyone that’s jumping on the TQ+ train. They’ve found a super easy way to feel good about themselves, and they don’t even have to put in any work to actually support LGB people. It’s all performative.

Why would libraries and bookstores put in the work to find works written by LGB people throughout history, if they can just pull out every rainbow coloured book they see, and still get praised for it?

[slugcats-go-hophop]

Day 19 - "Deep Energy"

Author's note: My dumb butt not only mixed days 18 and 19,but I also forgot to draw yesterday. For now enjoy our guy riding in a train on top of LGB's can because the way into her can was overgrown :>

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Pamela Garfield-Jaeger

Published: Mar 26, 2024

“Would you rather have a dead daughter or a live son? That question is asked over and over again, and therapists are trained to say that.”  —Author in the Epoch Times docu-drama, Gender Transformation, The Untold Realities

One of the most common lies told by therapists and clinicians to colleagues, the general public, the media, and ultimately hurting families is that if parents don’t affirm their child’s new identity, their child will die by suicide. These emotional statistics are found on the Trevor Project Website: Top-Line Statistics (note that most statistics group Trans with the entire LGB+ population): 

Suicide is the second leading cause of death among young people aged 10 to 24 (Hedegaard, Curtin, & Warner, 2018)—and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth are at significantly increased risk. LGBTQ youth are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide than their peers (Johns et al., 2019; Johns et al., 2020). The Trevor Project estimates that more than 1.8 million LGBTQ youth (13-24) seriously consider suicide each year in the U.S. — and at least one attempts suicide every 45 seconds. The Trevor Project’s 2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health found that 45% of LGBTQ youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, including more than half of transgender and nonbinary youth.

Transition allies ask parents of transgender identifying youth the shocking question, “Would you rather have a living son than a dead daughter?” A new slogan that is being repeated by media and politicians is “gender affirmative care saves lives.” 

But is this true? 

Due to the fact that trans activists often prevent studies on this subject, the studies that are quoted are generally small sample sizes, do not have control groups, and don’t follow the patients for very long—so they prove little. Also, many of the headlines regarding these studies do not differentiate between suicidal thoughts, suicidal gestures, and actual suicide. You must read the fine print to find that information. 

The truth is that there is a large correlation between people who have other mental health diagnosis and gender dysphoria. Causality is the claim but is never adequately addressed in the studies cited. Though it’s true that statistics of suicidal thoughts and actions are higher in this population, we need to ask if it was the lack of “affirmation” that caused a suicide, or a symptom of another mental health issue, such as depression or anxiety. That answer is not clear in the murky discussions of this topic. Finally, notice that the LGBTQI+ are all lumped together. When you start to think critically, you realize that a gay boy is vastly different from a girl who says she is non-binary. Both are completely different from a person who was born with a rare birth defect that qualifies them to be intersex. These broad statistical claims do not give the real information you need. 

One of the few rigorous studies, which was completed in Sweden, followed a transgender group of adults from 1973-2003. This study found:

Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behavior, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population. Our findings suggest that sex reassignment, although alleviating gender dysphoria, may not suffice as treatment for transsexualism, and should inspire improved psychiatric and somatic care after sex reassignment for this patient group.

The study concluded that, “The overall mortality for sex-reassigned persons was higher during follow-up than for controls of the same birth sex, particularly death from suicide.”  

This study still doesn’t give all the information we need because it did not have a control group of transgender people who did not get hormones and surgeries. It also only follows adult patients, and it does not represent the majority of today’s demographic who are teenage girls influenced by the internet and their environment. 

Anecdotal experience shows that suicide rates are not reduced by affirming a new gender identity, rather, the mental health of the young person declines. In some cases, there is an initial “euphoria” (a term more widely used by trans influencers), especially if they gain attention and status, but eventually that feeling fades and the underlying issues the person had been avoiding are still there. In many cases it takes time, about seven to eight years or more, for the patient to figure out that hormones and surgeries did not solve their mental anguish. More unbiased research is needed on the subject, but unfortunately, in this climate, politically neutral research is nearly impossible to carry out. 

Interestingly, there has been a ban on affirmative care on children in other countries such as UK, Sweden, France, and Finland, but there have been no reports of suicide spikes. Paradoxically, according to this narrative, with all the new celebrations, trans visibility days, and media representation, suicide rates in LGBTQ youth should have decreased, however, the rates continue to increase, and the media reinforces that. Plus, there have never been such high suicide rates in any marginalized population like this in the past, which suggests the suicidality is not from lack of acceptance, but other variables such as co-morbid mental health issues and the repetition of this idea. 

Throughout modern therapy, threatening suicide to get something (in this case gender affirmation) was recognized as maladaptive and considered unethical to be reinforced by a therapist. This behavior is often learned from online influencers, but sadly, it is deliberately practiced by many therapists and school personnel, particularly those who hold themselves out as “gender therapists.” Kids are coached to say, “I will kill myself,” to get hormones or other components of affirming care. Previously, this threatening behavior was typically done by those with conditions such as borderline personality disorder. 

A therapist must assess whether the suicide threat is genuine, or an unhealthy way to seek help or attention. If it is attention-seeking, the therapist and family should show compassion by acknowledging mental anguish and guide the individual to find healthy ways to ask for help. Those who demonstrate this pattern also tend to crave a lot of external validation, which means the treatment would include ways to help the person manage the desire with learning self-validation and self-soothing techniques. Also, when people get distressed, they tend to get tunnel vision or engage in black and white thinking. It is the therapist’s job to help the patient reality-check and see shades of grey.

Unfortunately, with the affirmative model, this learned suicide threat, and the demands for others to conform with forced pronouns and new names, we are reinforcing unhealthy thinking and behavioral patterns. In addition, no parent can give true informed consent if they are presented with the false ultimatum of choosing between a trans kid or a dead kid. 

If a therapist asks if you would “rather have a dead daughter or a live son,” here are a few suggested responses.

Can you please show me the data you are referencing? (If the therapist presents a study, look at it closely because it will be flimsy with no control group or solid conclusions because there is no valid study that proves this theory).

Did my child already threaten suicide? If she did, why wasn’t I notified? If she did not, then it sounds like you are giving her scary ideas which do not sound therapeutic.

If you believe she is so unstable, then we should be discussing a higher level of care, which you have failed to do. I find it difficult to trust your judgment now.

I thought that therapists believed that threatening suicide to influence someone to change their behavior was emotional manipulation. In fact, Marsha Linehan, the founder of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) and an expert on people with suicidal and self-harm behaviors, teaches skills on how to get needs met appropriately, without suicidal threats, in the Interpersonal Effectiveness module of her therapy. 

(If you know there are other major issues) Why isn’t therapy addressing them? Why isn’t therapy addressing my child’s eating disorder or the recent social group changes she just had? 

I would rather not lead my child on a path that would lead to sterilization, chronic pain, disability, and making her a life-long medical patient. 

If your child’s therapist uses this tactic, my professional opinion is to pull your child from that provider as quickly as possible.

--

About the Author

Pamela is a California licensed social worker (LCSW) with over 20 years of experience. She has worked in a variety of settings including schools, clinics, residential programs, and hospitals. In 2022, she publicly started questioning the direction the mental health field is going. Pamela believes in working collaboratively with families when treating minors and advocates treating patients holistically, rather than using a one-size-fits-all approach. She has starred in three documentaries about the harms of gender medicine.

The preceding essay is an excerpt from her new book, A Practical Response to Gender Distress, about understanding and fighting back against the emotional manipulation of ideologically-captured therapists.

[elipheleh]

Section 28 & Henry

So I wrote a series before the film was released where we learnt together about things from the book. I’ve been seeing some things about Henry growing up & not necessarily having the queer visibility available to him in the same way Alex did. Someone was writing about Henry at school, or mentioned it in passing - I can’t find the post now - and it reminded me of something that non-UK folk (and even perhaps the younger UK folk) wouldn’t be aware of, but would have been a part of Henry’s schooling if he had been at school, both as book-accurate age but especially as the aged-up film version. (Alex is aged up to 27 so im putting Henry at a similar age.)

This post will talk about the history behind Section 28 & its legacy, and then some personal anecdotes that will contextualise what it might’ve been like for Henry, under the premise of the real world being comparable to the RWRB universe.

—

Section 28 was part of a wider Local Government Act, and was enacted in May of 1988 by a Conservative government under Thatcher. ‘The amendment stated that a local authority "shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality" or "promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship".’ (source) In simple English, this meant that teachers - and anyone on staff - couldn’t talk about or make reference to anything that wasnt cis-heterosexuality, nor could they be openly queer. Student support groups for queer teens also had to either close or self-censor, and many teachers worried that stepping in to stop homophobic bullying would result in censure & so didn’t speak out.

Section 28 was repealed in Scotland in June 2000 and in the rest of the UK in November 2003 (under a Labour Government), but the shadow of it was present for years after - and arguably still to this day to some degree.

It was enacted for a number of reasons, but predominantly due to moral panic resulting from a negative shift in opinion about non-straight sexualities & the AIDs epidemic. Alliances between labour unions & LGBT groups (for example Lesbians & Gays Support the Miners and the National Union of Mineworkers - if you’ve seen Pride, this is the two groups featured there) caused the introduction of a resolution at the Labour Party Conference in 1985 to criminalise discrimination against LGB people. During the election campaign in 1987, then-Prime Minister Thatcher & the Conservative Party ran a smear campaign that suggested the Labour Party wanted to teach young children about explicit queer sex in schools (they didn’t).

The resulting response after the enactment of Section 28 was that of increased homophobia alongside an spike of action by the British gay rights movement. One of the UK’s leading queer groups, Stonewall, emerged from the response to Section 28, and Ian McKellen came out as a gay in 1988, whilst arguing against the legislation. However, as I mentioned previously, the shadow of Section 28 is still felt now. In 2014, 10 years after its full repeal, 29% of secondary school (age 11-17) teachers weren’t certain that they were allowed to teach lessons about LGBT topics. In 2016, it was found that school libraries still had very little queer literature or support from librarians for queer students, and 3 years later there were still British librarians who assumed Section 28 was still law - a full 16 years after full repeal. A 2018 study found that teachers who had worked under Section 28 were still cautious about being openly queer, in contrast to those who were trained as teachers after 2003.

—

for context, i am 30 & was schooled in England specifically. i did go to a same-sex high school (secondary school) but i did not go to a private school (as Henry would have, were he real!) so some things will differ but it would not have been better for Henry than my experiences.

On a more personal note, I started school in 1997 and left in 2011. Throughout my schooling - my entire secondary/high school experience was once Section 28 had been repealed - I can count on one hand the number of times I encountered anything that was positive about queer people, and even less if you limit it to being ‘approved’ information. My most common exposure was hearing someone being accused of being attracted to the same sex, usually with slurs, and I use ‘accused’ here intentionally as it was meant to be insulting. There was no-one openly queer in my school - my friend was trans, but we didn’t ever call it that. I just knew from their reaction that their very-gendered birth-name made them uncomfortable & the neutral diminutive was preferred (as an example, Alexandra and Alex - this isn't their name). I don’t know if they knew the word for it then, I certainly didn’t. We didn’t learn about sexuality in PSHE (Personal, Social, Health Education), and we definitely didn’t have openly queer teachers. Straight was the default & the only option.

I talked to my friend about their experience - they’re 22 so Henry’s schooling would fall in between mine & their's in both book & film - and realistically there was not much difference. They were at a mixed-gender school, and had a couple of mentions of ‘gay’ in classes (e.g. one reference to ‘g is for gay’ in an alphabet song) but were also expected to debate if being gay was wrong in RE (religious education). Being queer wasn’t ‘okay’ but it wasn’t necessarily inherently terrible in the way my experience implied it to be. They also didn’t have any lgbt/queer clubs in school.

Another friend a similar age to myself had no positive mention of queer sexuality until they were at university, but instead was surrounded by constant slurs, was accused of being a lesbian, and heared queer (as a slur) & the f-slur thrown around on an almost hourly basis, with teachers ignoring it.

From my understanding & perspective, Henry would have had a more repressive existence than our experiences. Private all-boys boarding school, especially Eton (the school of choice for the male British royals!), would have had much more negativity surrounding being gay, and I doubt the repeal of Section 28 had much impact in such a conservative setting like that. There are open letters from former students of Eton, some of which lay out their (predominantly negative) experience with being queer at school. I've linked them below.

-

Sources/Additional Reading: Wikipedia - Section 28 BBC - Section 28: What was it and how did it affect LGBT+ people? Tribune - The Long Shadow of Section 28 Attitude - How Section 28’s painful legacy is still being felt three decades on - cw for homophobic violence, addiction, suicide Metro - Section 28 was repealed 15 years ago but I can’t forget the impact it had on me so easily - cw for homophobic violence, mention of grooming, suicide & addiction Guardian - Section 28 protesters 30 years on: ‘We were arrested and put in a cell up by Big Ben’ LSE - Section 28, three decades on: the legacy of a homophobic law through the LSE Library’s collections Daily Beast - I Was Eton’s Only Out Schoolboy Pink News (in response to the above) - Comment: Yes, there is homophobia at Eton Huffington Post (similar as above, more information/context) - Former Eton Student Jamie Jackson's Open Letter Proves There IS Homophobia At The College