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10 Simple Things Transgender and Nonbinary People Actually Do Want From You

(written by an American in the context of USA culture/politics)

1) If you misgender someone, just say "oops" or "sorry" and immediately repeat the sentence with the correct pronoun(s), then move on. This shows you're taking it seriously, helps you build better habits. It's best to catch yourself, but you can use this method whether it's you or someone else who catches your mistake.

2) Outing is when you make someone's status as transgender known without their consent. This is bad. Sometimes it's a safety issue, and it's always rude. This is still true even when you think you're keeping someone anonymous and talking to random people, especially in these dangerous times. Need to process someone's transgender identity? That's fine, just be sure to talk to a therapist or someone else with confidentiality requirements.

3) If you know a transgender child, never ever post about that child's transgender status on social media. Ever. Outing is bad (see #2), and the risks are far greater to children.

4) If you know transgender people, ask them today how they want you to handle it if you hear people misgendering them, especially if you haven't asked them since all the changes that started happening in January. And then ask them if there are any contexts in which their answer is different. A lot of trans people will have different answers for different contexts for safety or other reasons.

5) If your state has anti-trans bills or laws (almost all do, even in liberal sates such as CA, OR, and WA), contact to your state reps to oppose them. If your state has pro-trans bills, write to your reps to support them. Regardless of whether you think your rep is on your side or against you, they tally every call and letter. It makes a difference. Get your friends and loved ones involved too. We need your voices, because state laws are how we are going to survive the Trump/Republican administration's assault on our rights.

6) Delete all references to Harry Potter from your social media profiles, and stop consuming any HP content/merchandising/theme parks in any way that gives Rowling money. Transgender people have been begging you to boycott HP and Rowling for years because she uses her HP money to fund significant anti-trans work with impressive/terrifying real life results.

7) If you have money to donate, give it to the ACLU, SPLC, or local organizations in your area that support transgender people. The ACLU and SPLC fight for everyone's civil rights, and local trans-supporting orgs save lives in ways you can't begin to imagine.

8) If you didn't already know that transgender people are being systematically targeted at historic rates by both state laws and the Trump/Republican administration, please sit down with your favorite search engine for 10 or 20 minutes, or read through the transgender politics blog Erin in the Morning. It's painful that it's happening, of course, but it's terrifying that most people don't seem to know. (Reminder: this is the sort of topic that AI is particularly likely to get wrong.)

9) When you take an action to support trans rights (calling your member of Congress, donating to the Lavender Rights Project, etc.) post about it on social media. Let yourself simultaneously act as a beacon of hope for your transgender friends on the platform and a role model for everyone else. It's not performative when you're building hope and encouraging others to take meaningful action. For those who like scripts: A short little post about what you did, why you did it, and a link for others who want to do the same is all it takes.

10) Honestly? Just be a real friend. We need it. Show up in the ways above, sure, but also all the standard friend things too.

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Image of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs with a caption that was edited to read, "Impact of anti-everyone, anti-everything executive orders on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs for Americans." Each step in the hierarchy has an added label. From bottom of the pyramid to the top: Psychological needs (air, water, food, shelter, sleep, clothing): "Directly Endangered" Safety needs (personal security, employment, resources, health, property): "Destroyed" Love and belonging (friendship, intimacy, family, sense of connection): "At risk" Esteem (respect, self-esteem, status, recognition, strength, freedom): "Directly Endangered" Self-actualization (desire to become the most that one can be): "made impossible"

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In the age of misinformation, the top 3 internet safety rules from the 1990s are back!

1) Don't connect with someone's online social media profile if you don't know them in person. (2020s addendum: Turns out it's misinformation campaigns hidden behind bot profiles that we had to worry about, not serial killers.)

2) Fact check everything before you post, repost, or repeat it. That's just polite. (2020s addendum: You can't use AI to fact check!)

3) Don't believe what you read online at face value. Disregard it until you can fact check it. (2020s addendum: This includes pictures, video, and audio!)

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Vaccinate your kids!

If you're in the USA and your parents are antivaxxers, the age of medical consent is often lower than 18. Check your state laws. You might be able to get yourself vaccinated.

Let's talk about measles.

It's got this reputation as a cute little disease that children get, but the reality is a bit different. Let me explain some science real quick to make sure everyone can understand this post. You may have heard that the human body has an immune system. It is extremely complex, but the part of the system that matters for this measles discussion is immune memory and antibodies. When your immune system gets exposed to something that shouldn't be in your body (such as the measles virus), it makes antibodies. Antibodies are shaped like a Y, as you can see in the diagram below. The bottom part of the Y is usually the same, while the two upper prongs of the Y are different in different types of antibodies. This is the "binding site," meaning, the place where the antibody will stick to the things that don't belong in the body. The specific thing that the antibody sticks to is called an "antigen."

Antigens are small, and can be attached to bigger things. Once the binding site of the antibody sticks to the antigen, the immune system uses the bottom part of the Y to recognize "This! This is the invader! KILL IT!" and then goes about ridding your body of whatever the antibody's antigen is attached to. But we wanted to talk about measles! I promise, we will get there.

The immune system also has cells that basically work like libraries. They store information about any antigens the body has been exposed to, making it much easier to mount a fast response if the antigen ever returns because the days to weeks that it takes to create an antibody response in the first place have already been accomplished. That's why you don't usually get sick from the same exact virus/bacteria twice, and why having some illnesses can prevent you from getting related ones if they have the same antigens.

Immune memory is both why vaccines work, and why it takes time for vaccines to become effective. Vaccines provide antigens associated with various pathogens to train the immune memory. But we're here to talk about measles, so let me get to that: The thing about measles is yeah sure something like 1 or 2% of people who get will die from the virus....but it wipes out that immune memory for those who survive. I've seen it in the lab in longitudinal studies where we measure the amount of antibodies that people have for a large set of viruses. I've seen how pretty much everyone has antibodies for tons of different viruses because of immune memory. I've seen how multiple people who had that robust immune memory lost it completely and had no more antibodies against anything after having measles. It was terrifying to see.

People who recover from measles have no more protection against a slew of illnesses that they have either had or been vaccinated against, which means they are suddenly susceptible to catching basically everything. A lot of them of course die from those illnesses because they have no immune memory left to fight them. That is why measles is terrifying. That is why measles vaccines protect individuals and communities from a whole host of illnesses, not just measles.

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Trans allies in the US: pick one and do it

1) Find out which pro-trans and which anti-trans bills are in the works in your state, and contact your reps to voice against the anti-trans bills and for the trans protections bills. No trans protection bills? Ask for them.

2) Same as #1, but for your city or county government.

3) Ask a trans person if they would rather have snacks or cash, then give it to them.

4) Pick the ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Lavender Rights Project, the Seattle Trans and Nonbinary Choral Ensemble, or a local trans org in your area and either donate once or set up recurring donations.

5) Pick a conservative family member and talk openly with them about trans rights. This is difficult because it often requires hearing out something that grates against your nerves, but it's mandatory work for things to improve.

6) Delete all references to Harry Potter from all of your social media profiles, including your Hogwarts house. Don't understand why? Nutshell: J.K. Rowling's years of anti-trans advocacy produced some of the UK's modern anti-trans laws, many of which include her own words. She points at the existence of the Harry Potter fandom as evidence that people like her politics, and politicians believe her. Thus by removing any public display of liking Harry Potter, you can help undermine her anti-trans/racist/anti-semetic/etc platform. (It's still okay to enjoy the franchise, just do it privately and without giving her any money).

7) Ensure that you know basic trans etiquette such as how to correctly refer to individual transgender people and then work to always use this language. This is the basic level of respect that is necessary for us to move forward in an inclusive manner. (Example: If someone changed pronouns from "she" to "he," you should use "he" to refer to that person even when telling stories from before the change unless that specific person tells you otherwise.)

8) Find out if your area has trans/nonbinary performing groups (choirs, theater troupes, etc) and if so, go to their next show.

9) If your place of work does not have gender-neutral restrooms available on every floor of every building, ask HR to check into correcting that. It can be dangerous for your trans coworkers to ask for this themselves.

10) Read books by trans authors. They don't have to be autobiographies. My favorites right now are "Dragon Pearl" by Yoon Ha Lee (coming of age story about a fox spirit girl in space) and "Her Majesty's Royal Coven" by Juno Dawson (secret British wizarding world; the author used actual sensitivity readers; has a slow start, gotta get past that to the good stuff).

These 10 actions are also available for any other marginalized demographic of your choice. It doesn't have to be trans people that you advocate for to participate in this post.

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Happy trans awareness week!

Did you know that testosterone was first isolated and first synthesized in 1935, by 3 separate scientists working in 3 different countries? In 1936, despite being in the height of the Great Depression, testosterone was already being manufactured for human use. By circa 1939 we see the first known cases of people using testosterone to transition! That means we've had people transitioning with testosterone for 85 years (this post you're reading was written in 2024). Think about that next time someone tries to tell you that transgender* people are some kind of newfangled trend.

Oh and if you want to look up the first known cases I mention above, their stories are pretty interesting:

One of them is Dr. Alan Hart, who saved countless lives by figuring out how to use X-rays to diagnose tuberculosis early enough to not only save the life of the person but also to isolate that person before this extremely infectious disease could spread to other people. He did this work at a time when tuberculosis was even more stigmatized than HIV and AIDS would later be in the 1990s.

The other one is Dr. Michael Dillon, who was also the first British man to undergo phalloplasty (the surgical creation of a penis). He grew a beard with testosterone treatment, got a job as a ship's doctor, and was later humiliated and forced to leave the role after being outed by a genealogy kerfuffle. Did I mention he was a minor British nobleman?

*Linguistics note: The word "transgender" was not coined until the 1960s.

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There is one simple difference between calculators and so-called AI:

Calculators actually answer the prompt you give them, and do so with accuracy.

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So was anyone gonna tell me about this or

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Cap the total interest owed on student loans, no matter how long it takes to repay the loan, at 100% of the principal.

Translation for the math-shy slash context for anyone outside of the USA: Right now, US college grads pay many times more money in total interest than the amount they actually took out in student loans, which is a major contributing factor to the financial struggles of many people, especially most adults ~40ish and under (college costs skyrocketed when Gen X told Millennials they all had to go to college, then didn't ever drop back down). Anyway, I am saying to cap total interest paid at a number that is equal to the amount of the original loan. So for example if the original loan was $10,000 (this is called the "principal"), then the most the student would ever have to pay back is $10,000 (principal) + $10,000 (interest) = $20,000. If this seems like a lot of extra money to pay compared to the original $10,000 loan, well, it is. It is also SIGNIFICANTLY lower than what people are having to pay on their student loans right now without this kind of cap. Our banks are farming cash from everyone who went to college regardless of how much money they make. Not that how much money they make would really matter. College loans in the US are a scam and it's time to put a stop to banks taking advantage of people's dreams.

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Petition to replace "it's all in your head" with "it's all in your imagination."

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Dandelion Hair (v2)

I started painting version 1 of Dandelion Hair in early 2021, but I was never happy with the result. I'm not even sure if I'm happy with version 2, but with each iteration I aim to improve until I am happy with it. Maybe in another year or two I'll tackle version 3~

Version 1

Timelapse

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Blackwater Dive

2024, hand bleached and dyed denim, cotton batting and thread

inspired by blackwater photography of plankton! this was my first time layering bleach painting. All the silhouettes were painted with bleaching gel, loosely tie dyed, and then bleached again to make the highlights. I quilted the piece using my free motion foot to outline each individual animal and tacked down the rest of the quilt with small satin stitches that remind me of marine snow. I dyed bias tape to match. super happy with this one and excited to show it in a gallery setting soon!

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Make sure you are registered to vote and know where your polling place is and be prepared to vote!!

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Happy Disability Pride Month from the USA!

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alright boys, girls, neither, both, and those in between we need to clear something up:

if someone says they are queer, they are queer.

no ifs, ands, buts, etc. they are queer.

and if they discover later that they're cishet, great, amazing, wonderful, i'm glad we gave them community when they were figuring themselves out and needed it.

no gatekeeping of queerness here, alright?

because when shit hits the fan queerphobes wont care whether you're a cis gay man who goes by he/him or a bigender aromantic pansexual who goes by it/its

so stop with the respectability politics.

we're a community, fucking act like it.