I’m done w/ dealing with people who are convinced that you can only give a fuck about one thing at a time, so I’ll just remind you all that marriage equals immigration, healthcare, and childcare access to a great many people and if you think everyone who gives a fuck about whether or not they can get married is a white, cis, rich gay dude I think you need to take your head out your butt
I can care about homeless kids AND legal protection for my own damn family at the same time
And you know what, as a formerly homeless queer kid who was queerbashed growing up, you want to know the one thing that started turning my small, rural town neighbors’ opinions on whether or not I had the right to exist? It was when they turned on their TVs to the one channel we all got in the middle of nowhere and saw the Prime Minister of Canada telling them that my moms could get married just like them. In a very real way, I think that legalizing gay marriage had a HUGE IMPACT on many peoples’ lives, to the point where my baby sister has not once had to clean the word “dyke” written in dog shit off her locker at school.
Yes there are other issues, yes they are important, but FFS I am capable of caring about more than one thing at a time, and also of understanding that most people who want to get married have bigger, more significant reasons than wanting to have a big stupid party.
Finally, if you are a straight cis person telling queer folks that they’re not radical enough if they want to get married, I hope all the food in your refrigerator rots overnight.
The question lesbian and gay people need to answer is not “Why are transgender issues suddenly demanding so much attention?” but rather “Why have we abandoned transgender people and their concerns in our rush for equality?
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| — | “Transgender Communities: Developing Identity Through Connection” |
38 weeks 4 days pregnant and finally squeezed in a maternity shoot. If you’re friends with me on Facebook you should check out the rest of the pictures…they’re pretty fun.
Can’t believe we’ll be taking pictures with a baby boy any day now!!!
This is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Excuse my tears of joy.
I don’t understand what’s wrong with supporting the Salvation Army?
Well, here’s the deal, anon. The Salvation Army is an evangelical Christian group, and they impose those beliefs on the people that they employ and the communities they serve. Here are a few examples:
They are so opposed to LGBT rights that they have lobbied multiple times for exemptions from Federal and Local anti-discrimination laws, and threatened to withdraw their services.
They refused to provide shelter to a homeless gay couple, unless they broke up and renounced their homosexuality.
They refused to provide a transgender woman with shelter that was congruent with her gender presentation, instead insisting she house with men. She chose instead to sleep on the sidewalk and died from the cold.
Speaking of gender, there was also this charming incident where one of their hostels refused to open the door for a 17-year-old victim who had just been brutally raped (or even call the police for her) because that particular hostel had a strict “men only” policy.
Children who can’t prove their immigration status are turned away.
The organization also disposes of any Harry Potter or Twilight related donations (rather than giving them to other charities), because they claim the toys are “incompatible with the charity’s Christian beliefs”.
During the Bush Administration (thanks to ‘faith-based initiatives’) they fired about 20 long-time employees (Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Gay), simply for refusing to sign the organization’s statement of Christian belief.
So, that—in a nutshell—is what’s wrong with it.
Winter is coming… and so are their buckets. Remember this when they’re bothering you for change.
“No homo,” I whisper tearfully, cradling the dead body of the last homosexual on earth. There is no more homo. The last of his kind, and he was murdered. I will get revenge. The hunt is on.
My Son Draws Himself As A Girl
Today my son drew himself as a boy for the first time in his life. He’s five and a half years old. For that many years, when he has drawn himself, he has drawn himself as a girl.
In the mediums of crayon, colored pencil and marker, our son is a beautiful girl with long red hair, a big puffy ball gown the color of cotton candy and a tiara with a gigantic heart-shaped stone front and center. Sometimes he’s a sassy girl in a jean skirt, black leather jacket and knee-high boots. Sometimes he’s a girl going to school in a hot-pink t-shirt dress and purple high top sneakers with turquoise socks peaking out.
It took his dad and me a while to get used to seeing our son’s self-portraits. For a long time there was the urge to correct him, to remind him that he is a boy and his renderings weren’t accurate. We fought that urge until it wasn’t there anymore. Feelings of uneasiness popped up in us here and there when it was time for arts and crafts, especially when there were other people around. I’ve had to remind myself that you never tell an artist that his or her art is bad or wrong — art can’t be those two things (especially when you are five).
Being acutely aware that children who continually, over an extended period of time draw themselves as the opposite sex are more likely to be transgender, we have always wondered if and when the day would come when our boy would draw himself as a boy looking like a boy. We imagined that if it ever happened we would feel a sense of relief and happiness. Then, it happened and we were nothing but sad.
C.J. has just started kindergarten and at his school every kindergartner is matched up with a “Kinderbuddy,” an older student at the school who will see C.J. on a regular basis throughout the year to read to him, play with him and mentor him. Hopefully they will have a mutually beneficial and special relationship.
Because the school tries to match up Kinderbuddies based on sex/gender, C.J.’s Kinderbuddy is a boy. Because C.J.’s sex and gender aren’t in total alignment, that process for matching up Kinderbuddies isn’t exactly ideal.
On their first day of meeting, the Kinderbuddies had to sit together and draw a picture of themselves together. That’s when it happened; C.J. drew himself as a boy next to his boy Kinderbuddy.
“Mommy, I got a Kinderbuddy today. And, he’s so cool! He’s a teenager!” C.J. said after school. By “teenager” he meant “sixth grader.”
He showed us the picture that they had drawn together. We didn’t recognize our son. We looked at each other in shock.
“Hey, Buddy…how come you drew yourself as a boy?” C.J.’s Dad asked casually.
“Oh, that’s because I didn’t want my Kinderbuddy to know that I like girl stuff,” C.J. said matter-of-factly.
Our hearts sank. We had always thought that things would feel more right, more normal, on the day that C.J. finally drew himself as a boy, but things didn’t. Things felt sad because our son had to do it out of self-preservation. He did it to adapt and conform. He did it to hide his true self. It felt like he had lost some of his innocence.
Diane Ehrensaft, an expert on raising gender nonconforming children, once wrote:
“Gender creative children are blessed with the ability to hold on to the concept — that we all had one time in our lives — that we were free to be anything we wanted – boy, girl, maybe both.”
With that drawing, it felt like our son was losing his grip on the concept that he is free to be anything he wants to be. Was he losing his grip? Or, was he tightening his grip on the concept and exercising control over when it could be on display and when it couldn’t?
C.J. didn’t want to hang his Kinderbuddy drawing on the fridge or his bedroom door for all to see like he usually wants to do with his art. He wanted to throw it away.
“Why?” I asked.
“Cause that’s not really me,” he said as he sat in the sun at our dining room table, drawing himself with a side ponytail, purple shirt with a pink heart on it and an orange skirt.
