LGBTQ+

The mind boggles with the sheer absurdity of this administration, and it's not poised to improve. Be safe, y'all!

The constant anti-trans rhetoric in the United States had exhausted and demoralized me. Immediately after the election, I began exploring the logistics of leaving the United States. It’s not just me. Transgender people have been advised to move from red states to blue if they want to and can, or even to leave the country.

Leaving the country requires a valid passport, and I feared the new administration would change the requirements. During his candidacy, President Trump advocated an end to “the left-wing gender insanity,” including a promise to ask Congress to pass a bill establishing that the only genders recognized by the U.S. government are male and female, as assigned at birth.

In response, transgender people were advised to update their legal documents to reflect their gender identity while they still could. (Some transgender persons never updated a passport because it was obtained only after transitioning.) At the time, the choices of gender markers on passports were “M”, “F” or “X.” Unfortunately, even updated documents may not provide permanent protection, and may even have unintended, dark consequences.

Trans activists representing the activist group Alianza Mexicana de Trabajadoras Sexuales — translated as the Mexican Alliance of Sex Workers — stormed two judicial buildings in Mexico City on Thursday, January 16, to protest the potential release of a man who stabbed trans rights activist Natalia Lane in 2022, according to Mexican newspaper La Prensa. During the protest, the activists broke doors, smashed glass windows, and spray-painted the building.

Haven't read through it in the entirety but found it on another site I trust. Figured it may be of use to others here.

According to the Colorado Name Change Project, the US State Department has stopped processing of all gender marker correction applications. This is confirmed by Notus.org, which adds that the policy change affects passport renewals as well.

At this time, there are rumors that the Minnesota Passport Agency is confiscating documents when denying a gender marker change. These rumors are unconfirmed as of the time of this post, but the situation is still developing.

https://www.namechangeproject.org/gender-marker/

https://m.facebook.com/ColoradoNameChangeProject/

https://www.notus.org/whitehouse/trump-gender-sex-order-passports

The ACLU has a form open for any affected by this policy: https://www.aclu.org/transpassports2025

Update: Marco Rubio has confirmed that the state department has suspended all applications including a gender change or an X gender marker, including applications which were already in progress. Official word on the status of existing passports "will come via other channels." https://theintercept.com/2025/01/23/marco-rubio-state-department-passports-gender-trans-nonbinary/

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/53392091

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/53392082

A great video about both getting hormones and blockers and how to safely use them if you want or have to do it DIY.

I hope you are doing well, wish you all best in the next years. Love you all 🫂you are strong, you are beautiful, you can endure anything that life brings you. Love you all! 🫂🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🩷💜💙 This community brings me joy and acceptance I love you all. If someone hates you just know I love you more! My love is stronger than their hate!

Produce harm reduction kits with supplies for trans people taking injection-based gender affirming hormone therapy!

Each kit includes a 1 year supply of necessary medical equipment, worth approximately $65 when purchased at retail value (see below for kit makeup). They will be delivered to local frontline organizations embedded in the communities they serve, and will be distributed for free to trans people in need. Our initial focus will be on the Southeast US, with plans to grow the program nationally over the course of 2025.

Distribute Aid already has medical aid donors, supply-chain infrastructure, kit assembly capacity, and initial frontline grassroots distribution partners in place. We expect to produce up to 24,000 kits in 2025, which is enough to support 2% of all trans people taking HRT in the US or 10% of trans people taking DIY-HRT. Funds will be used to source / ship / store bulk supplies, assemble the kits, and support cost-of-living volunteer stipends for an aid sourcing coordinator and a field coordinator.

Access to gender affirming hormone therapy saves lives. [1][2] Unfortunately 25 states already have laws restricting or banning gender affirming care [3], including every state in the Southeast region. Lack of access is compounded by the fact that many trans people are economically precarious. [4] Upcoming court decisions [5] and proposed Trump administration policies [6] will pave the way to further errode access to hormone therapy.

Trans people will access gender affirming healthcare anyways. Do-It-Yourself hormone replacement therapy (DIY HRT) is already being produced and distributed in response to difficulties accessing affordable official care, due to cost, gatekeeping by healthcare practitioners, or discriminatory laws preventing legal access. [7]

We need to keep trans people safe. These kits reduce the financial burden of taking inject-based gender affirming hormone therapy, and the 1-year supply prevents disruption of care due to lack of funds / supply access. By providing safe, clean injection supplies, they also reduce needle reuse / sharing. Finally, our local-first approach to mutual aid supply-chains protects the privacy of recipients while strengthening local trans support networks.

Kit makeup:

• Luer-Lock Syringe
• Draw Needles (various sizes available)
• Injection Needles (various sizes available)
• Alcohol Wipes
• Bandaids
• Sharps Disposal Container

Some slight good news in an ocean of shit

The team behind Queerly Beloved were not the only people with the idea to throw a big gay wedding, once the election news broke. In late November, the Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library in Ohio hosted “Legally Wed,” a marriage protection information session, which drew a crowd of 500, including ten couples who were married right then and there. Charis Books & More in Decatur, Georgia hosted an entire day of gay weddings on Jan. 19. A number of Rochester, NY Unitarian churches threw a Big Gay Wedding Day earlier this month. And in Iowa, Chaplain Anitta Milloro with lesbians of Iowa has created a resource similar to Michelle’s connecting couples who want to tie the knot before Jan. 20 with vendors willing to provide free services.

And the history of mass queer weddings goes back before the advent of legal gay marriage in the U.S. itself, which celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. In 2004, then-mayor of San Francisco Gavin Newsom started granting marriage licenses to gay couples, prompting queers from all over the state and even the country to descend on the city and stand in a line that wrapped around City Hall, braving the rain for the chance to get a marriage certificate. That same year, Massachusetts became the first state to legalize gay marriage, following the state Supreme Court’s decision in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health.

Queers have always been good at celebrating, even when things look pretty dark. Michelle says that while the impending inauguration may have been the impetus behind the event, the celebration was so much more than its context.

Archived

In the 26 US states where gender-affirming care for young people has been criminalized, trans+ individuals are forced to work around the law, or submit to medical detransition. Families have been separated, as loved ones move to states where their healthcare is still legal. These sanctioned attacks on an entire community’s health, fueled by manufactured suspicions of a youth-corrupting trans “agenda,” go increasingly unopposed by legal systems, medical organizations, and the public.

The Research Institute for Gender Therapeutics (RIGT), a nonprofit group, is pushing back on the medical front. It’s seeking FDA authorization for trans+ pharmaceutical treatments as a means of defense against anti-trans laws. Its work has just begun, but it’s already gaining ground.

[...]

Archived link

Of course, ordinary, non-LGBTQ+ victims of Putin’s regime are treated harshly too, but LGBTQ+ people are likely to face more brutality. What is truly horrifying is the deep-seated hatred and disgust toward LGBTQ+ people in Russian prisons, where individuals accused of “LGBTQ+ extremism” will eventually end up.

It is common knowledge that in Russian prisons, those even suspected of being gay are subjected to dehumanization, humiliation and sexual violence, both from fellow inmates and prison authorities. Vladimir Osechkin, a Russian-born human rights activist, claims that, according to his sources, Kotov, while in detention, was raped and had already been relegated to the ranks of prisoners with “low social status.”

Sexualized violence undoubtedly exists and has existed in penitentiary systems worldwide throughout history. Even before the Soviet Union, in tsarist prisons, sexualized violence among males was quite common: older inmates inflicted sexual violence on younger inmates.

Age, physical strength, prison status and one’s perceived masculine or feminine behavior, as well as resources, dictated who would be sexual prey and who would be sexual predator. If a youthful newcomer was raped by fellow prisoners, he would be rapidly incorporated into the prison’s social system as a “pederast,” at its lowest caste. After this status was set, he would become a prostitute, not to mention an object of attacks and abuse from other prisoners.

These practices continued in the Stalinist Gulag. Sexual violence among males was so widespread, and its role in establishing unofficial prison hierarchies so evident, that Gulag officials, after Stalin’s death, took measures to crack down on prison homosexual activity and homosexual violence.

[...]

In contrast to the late-Soviet and post-Soviet periods, in today’s Russia, sexual violence in prisons does not seem to bother officials much. In fact, not only are they not concerned about it, but they are willing to weaponize and harness it as a means of controlling prisoners and instilling fear in them.

The issue of widespread torture of prisoners, as well as prison authorities’ encouraging and condoning of sexual violence among male prisoners, gained prominence in Russia after Osechkin started to attract public attention to the issue. In 2012, the businessman-turned-human-rights-activist set up Gulagu.net, which has become a unique social networking site, where the relatives of abused prisoners can register their complaints, share information and seek assistance.

[...]

While cruising dates all the way back to Ancient Greece, it experienced its greatest boom during the 70s, a time of queer liberation when the gay community was able to experience some semblance of freedom. This was greatly impacted by the HIV crisis in the 80s, which fundamentally altered our relationship and approach to sex.

The same could be argued for Covid. The virus prevented people from going out in public, let alone being physically intimate with another human being. Dating app usage and sex toy purchases surged as a result, offering an alternative to the connection we so desperately craved. But we quickly grew tired of both, and became desperate for physical intimacy.

During the pandemic, many folks deemed cruising a safer option, as sex would be taking place outdoors. With assistance of map-based cruising apps like Sniffies making their mark around this time, cruising not only felt safer, but more accessible. Sniffies really took off following Covid in 2020. The timing was perfect, people were exhausted with endless chatting on apps, preferring n0-strings sex, which Sniffies offered. The app has only continued to grow since. For example, London saw a staggering 475 percent growth in usership from 2022 to 2023.

It would seem that for many, the queer response to an epidemic is going back to basics, and we keep finding ourselves in the same woods, parks and open spaces as the queer generations before us, where we can be free to enjoy ourselves until the next public health crisis comes along.

Since cruising has become commodifiable and as publicly accessible as ever, it’s especially important we stay safe; not only from the law, but from the possible dangers or hazards that may occur in more casual sexual environments.

Amazon has joined the slew of companies rolling back its DEI efforts in apparent celebration of Donald Trump’s “anti-woke” agenda. The changes specifically target LGBTQ+ people, with the section on LGBTQ+ rights being completely removed from its Positions page.

So, I have a mass in like 6 months. Is family bs that I can't avoid.

I will need a formalish outfit but I'm not exactly fond of wearing a suit, even a fem one.

Any ideas? I'm not exactly skinny :c