LGBTQ+

I dunno if this is the right place for this, but I was curious. I joined Beehaw during the Great Reddit API migration, a few years ago at this point. I couldn't put a finger on why but I wanted to join a queer-friendly space. It just seemed like a good place to be, somewhere that seemed to have goals of inclusivity and being kind to one another that I thought sounded good. I wanted to belong somewhere like this place seems to want to be.

Then, years later, in Nov of 2024 my egg absolutely shattered and I came out to myself as trans. Then I just realized this morning that the timeline is kinda funny to me. Thought I'd ask and see how common that pattern was.

The largest-ever survey of trans Americans reaffirms what the trans community has been saying for ages: trans people who go back to living as their sex assigned at birth do so because of transphobia, not because of doubts about gender or transition.

Approximately 92,329 binary and nonbinary trans Americans aged 16 and older — including 84,170 adults — participated in the 2022 U.S. Trans Survey (USTS), which was spearheaded by the trans rights organization Advocates for Trans Equality (A4TE). Researchers then used survey findings to compile a trans health report titled “Health and Wellbeing: Findings from the 2022 US Trans Survey.”

Only 9% of respondents said that they had gone back to living as their sex assigned at birth at some point in their lives. Of that 9%, the most common reason for doing so was that it was “just too hard to be trans in my community” (41%). Meanwhile, 37% cited pressure from a parent, 24% cited pressure from other family members, and 33% cited facing too much harassment or discrimination for being trans.

“Social and structural explanations dominated the reasons why respondents reported going back to living in their sex assigned at birth,” the report reads. “[...] Only 4% of people who went back to living in their sex assigned at birth for a while cited that their reason was because they realized that gender transition was not for them. When considering all respondents who had transitioned, this number equates to only 0.36%.”

CW: Mentions of transphobia, transphobic violence, mass shootings, school violence, slurs.

Being trans is not a controversial idea. It is a lived reality.

Philosophical conversations about trans people do not happen in a vacuum. They happen in a political context where trans people are relentlessly attacked and a material context where trans lives are particularly vulnerable. These contexts make it impossible to "just ask questions" about trans people. And trans people and our loved ones are not okay -- in, with, and because of our discipline.

So what is it like to be a table in a discipline that has been busy writing table-burning instructions? Being Trans in Philosophy collects first-personal accounts from 22 trans philosophers and philosopher-parents of trans kids. These stories detail the material and on-the-ground consequences of our discipline's role in providing intellectual cover for a global transmisogynistic and transphobic moral panic -- one that has been increasingly institutionalized into laws and policies. But they also speak to solidarity, freedom, hope, moral progress, and our shared love for philosophy.

Any who are unaware of the conversations at issue might read Hope Pisioni's piece in Unclosed Media, A Philosophy Professor Is the Only Known Author of Trump's Big Trans Health Care Report. Why? on the most recent instance of philosophical scholarship being used to promote state-sponsored transphobia.

A Federal Court judge has halted the deportation of a non-binary American in a ruling that criticized Ottawa’s Immigration Department for not properly considering the situation of LGBTQ Americans since U.S. President Donald Trump took office.

Angel Jenkel, a 24-year-old multimedia artist from Minnesota who is engaged to a Canadian, can now remain in Canada while their case is judicially reviewed, in a judgment that their lawyers hailed as precedent-setting.

https://archive.ph/BxIik

The Latin Times reports, Mx. "Jenkel's legal team says the ruling could open the door for other LGBTQ Americans facing similar threats under current US policies to seek refuge in Canada."

The sound of Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ‘Em” and the stomping of boots on hardwood echoed against the neon-bathed walls of O’Donnell’s in Lockhart’s town square. This Pride of Caldwell County dance night was one of eight events that the organization hosted over the last week of June, and with the bar packed from end to end with line dancers, onlookers singing along, and laughter, there was no shortage of celebration in this small Texas town.

Nestled in the heart of Central Texas, Caldwell County is better known as the barbecue capital of the state. But over the past few years, it’s also become home to a growing and visible LGBTQ+ community, a transformation sparked, in part, by a conversation among friends in 2021.

That year, a group gathered in Lockhart Arts and Craft, a bar just around the corner from O’Donnell’s, and laid the foundation for what would become Pride of Caldwell County, a grassroots nonprofit organization committed to building LGBTQ+ community and visibility in the region.

“Even just a few years earlier, there was so much more hesitation about starting something like this,” said Haley Fort, one of Pride of Caldwell County’s board members. “Pride did not have the same presence back then and we didn’t have stickers showing safe spaces or anything.”

It started with a dream: The Old Dykes Home.

Envisioned during beach trips with friends nearly 30 years ago, this is how Pat McAulay first thought of the concept that would become Village Hearth, the first LGBTQ cohousing community in the nation for people 55 and over.

“Any older lesbian you speak to has this dream of living together or living in close proximity and taking care of one another,” McAulay said. “Because people from our generation… come out of the closet and then have to go back in, in old age. That was the biggest fear, the treatment you’d get in a nursing home or some sort of a facility. And so that's where the idea came from: You take care of your own, as long as you can.”

In 2015, McAulay and her wife Margaret Roesch began seriously developing plans for Village Hearth, a sprawling fifteen-acre property in Durham, North Carolina, where lush gardens and 28 accessible, pastel cottages are now home to more than three dozen older LGBTQ adults and allies, some of whom The Flytrap met during a recent visit. Gathered in Village Hearth’s common house for coffee and cake, residents shared their many reasons for choosing cohousing, the challenges of close quarters and cooperative self-governance, and the model that Village Hearth can provide to other queer and trans people who want to support each other through the aging process.

“This isn’t for everyone,” McAulay laughed. “You have to be able to really listen. It can’t just be, ‘I’ve got this great idea to fix this problem and I’m going to do it.’ You have to be able to listen to everyone’s input, and adjust—it’s the only way to live in cohousing and it’s best for creating community.”

Yesterday Erin in the Morning reported that the term "bisexual" was getting removed from the national park services pages. It was. They had proof -- but now, they've reverted that change so it is NOT TRUE now. Perhaps it will be again, but PLEASE check before saying it is gone.

• Old news: they removed TQ+ from LGBTQ+ -- that happened in February 2025.
• As of today, they still have the 'B'. See for yourself:
• https://www.nps.gov/ston/
• https://www.nps.gov/ston/learn/education/new-index.htm

The source wrote the piece well and linked to an archive so people can see the history. They have a snapshot from July 10th with 'bisexual' erased, but as of July 11th, it is back. As I write, the text they cite for the MAIN page (not History) reads:

Before the 1960s, almost everything about living authentically as a lesbian, a bisexual person or a gay man was illegal.

The History page (current | Jun 4 archive } April 19 archive uses LGB) is obliquely worded and has been for months, saying:

Through the 1960s almost everything about living openly as a member of the Stonewall comunity was a violation of law

It still omits transgendered as it has since the February 'purge'.

Midway through Benedict Nguyễn’s propulsive trans volleyball novel, Hot Girls with Balls, Six, one of the book’s two heroines, struggles with mounting nerves as she prepares to play an important match. She is less worried about the actual gameplay than she is about the performance of her public persona, which she knows will be screencapped, shared and dissected by fans and haters alike: “For what sports arena was not also a theatre?”

Six and Green are the larger-than-life protagonists of Nguyễn’s dizzying satire. The two are both “very hot” Asian American trans women who play in a fictional men’s global volleyball league; they work tirelessly, not just in their volleyball training sessions, but also to curate and maintain their social media star status. Six and Green, who are also very publicly dating each other, are as canny and self-aware as they are hot—they know that their athletic careers depend just as much on their ability to bring in brand deals by amassing more and more followers, as on their prowess on the volleyball court. Hot Girls with Balls brims with charisma, envy, sabotage and taut, taut muscles. You don’t have to be a sports fan to be utterly compelled by Nguyễn’s vision—and to become just as obsessed with Six and Green as their fictional followers are.

Nguyễn’s knack for recreating the chaotic, hate-it-but-can’t-look-away nature of online discourse makes this, her debut novel, a text in perpetual motion. She is an athlete herself—a dancer and self-professed gym buff—and writes as deftly about the stresses, training regimens and team choreography of competitive sports as she does about the micro-details of being trans in the public eye. Hot Girls with Balls is an expertly structured text, its central narrative arc intercut and propelled by scrolls of livestream and forum comments from Six’s and Green’s supporters and enemies. Reading it is a dizzying experience, as overwhelming as scrolling through a constantly updating online comment section, while straining to follow the various polarized arguments that are being thrown around. Six and Green have taken the sports world by storm, showing volleyball fans that the game “wasn’t just balls but endless unspoken feeling filtering back and forth across the net.” Nguyễn crafts a text that mimics this emotional back-and-forth—the novel darts between the perspectives of our two star players as they train for a major tournament; curate their online personas; publicly manage their romantic relationship; navigate brand deals, media appearances, blatant transphobia, obsessive adulation and the pitfalls of solidarity and visibility discourse.

One of the most telling things about queer history is that so much of it has to be gleaned by reading between the lines.

There are the obvious tentpoles: the activism, the politics, the names and accomplishments of key cultural heroes. Without the stories of lived experience behind them, however, these things are mere information; to connect with these facts on a personal level requires relatable everyday detail — and for most of our past, such things could only be discussed in secret.

In recent decades, thanks to increased societal acceptance, there’s been a new sense of academic “legitimacy” bestowed upon the scholarship of queer history, and much has been illuminated that was once kept in the dark. The once-repressed expressions of our queer ancestors now allow us to see our reflections staring back at us through the centuries, and connect us to them in a way that feels personal.

One of the most effective formats for building that connection, naturally enough, is documentary filmmaking — an assertion illustrated by two new docs, each focused on figures whose lives are intertwined with the evolution of modern trans culture.

Viewer discretion is advised, both companies are subject to calls for a queercott, and HBO/Max is engaging in wizardry.

Reform councillor’s boast about removing ‘trans-ideological’ books from children’s library sections falls flat

A boast by a Reform UK councillor that he ensured the removal of “trans-ideological material and books” from the children’s section of his county’s libraries has fallen flat after it emerged that no such material ever existed there.

A Pride parade held at an IKEA is going viral on TikTok. [...] The video, posted by user kenyavargas98, has gotten over a million likes so far. It shows people pushing small floats through an IKEA store while others cheered and Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” plays.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) vetoed three anti-LGBTQ+ provisions in the state’s latest budget bill yesterday, in a partial victory for civil rights that still leaves several assaults on LGBTQ+ identity signed into law.

Over the past year, we’ve completely rebuilt the Namesake app. It has a new design, more accessible forms, improved security, and is now open source. This new app builds a foundation for us to support name changes in many more locations and for different types of activities. You can sign up today.

Esther Fallick wants her comedy to be an escape from the horrors. But that escape has a purpose: to make it easier to face these times for what they are. By poking fun at something that can feel so heavy, like the president pitting his administration against transgender people, Fallick wants to find ways to bring people together and laugh off the darkness creeping in on everyday life.

“We could be having a little more fun as a community, as a country. I just feel like so much of what we’re talking about as trans people right now is so dire. There’s reason for that, but I just wanted a space to be intentionally silly,” she said. Intentions aside, she still spent the first episode of her podcast — aptly titled, “Having Fun” — joking about fleeing anti-trans violence in America with fellow comedian Ella Yurman. The gallows humor is inescapable.

Her weekly variety show in Brooklyn, titled “While We’re Here,” is also a dark joke: We’re only here, alive and on this planet, for so long. And life is only getting harder. So what should we do in the meantime? Fallick suggests laughter, to start, followed by music, reading and teach-ins on topics ranging from transmisogyny — how trans women are hurt by both misogyny and transphobia — to demilitarizing New York City’s police force, especially in Brooklyn.