Dave Chappelle’s cisgender enablers repeatedly assert that anti-trans “jokes” are "just jokes" and not an essential aspect of the dehumanization process. So, let us put cisgender media’s claim to the test. The pushback against supporting the dehumanization of trans people began with a trans employee for Netflix writing, “I work at @Netflix. Yesterday we launched another Chappelle special where he attacks the trans community, and the very validity of transness – all while trying to pit us against other marginalized… Read more.

If celebrities are going to profit off of being the figureheads for our collective traumas, then we have the right to demand they do it right. Trans people are sexually victimized at a sadly high rate. All victims of sexual harms deserve to be respected and represented by those treated as the spokespeople of the #MeToo movement. Unfortunately, that's not the case. I want to speak out about a nasty case of ally fail that took place this week when a presumed… Read more.

By Kelley Winters The National Center for Transgender Equality Executive Director Mara Keisling respondedKeisling, M (2016). Response to BuzzFeed Article. Blog, National Center for Transgender Equality, Oct. 28. http://www.transequality.org/blog/response-to-buzzfeed-article]to sharp criticismHolden, D. (2016). Top LGBT Leaders Are Divided Over Compromising On The Bathroom Fight. BuzzFeed News, Oct. 25. https://www.buzzfeed.com/dominicholden/lgbt-leaders-divided-bathroom-fight] of the recent strategy by NCTE and other nonprofits funded by the Gill Foundation to back a Pennsylvania state nondiscrimination bill that included LGBT employment and housing protection but excluded public accommodation protections.… Read more.

On Monday, May 9th, the United States Attorney General, Loretta Lynch came out swinging against North Carolina's commitment to discriminating against trans people. The speech that AG Lynch gave is incredibly striking and stands as a singular moment in the history of trans advocacy. While numerous sites will pair soundbites with their own commentary and others will inevitably misrepresent her words, we at the TransAdvocate wish to simply let the AG's words… Read more.

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has given the State of North Carolina until Monday, May 9, 2016, to cease discriminating against trans people: Both you and the State of North Carolina (the "State") are in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964... Specifically, the State is engaging in a pattern or practice of discrimination against transgender state employees and both you, in your official capacity,… Read more.

While it's well and good to call out those who denigrate trans people in the media, it's time to take it a step further. Making Money with Media What cis privilege looks like. Chances are that you've seen the clueless being used to generate ad revenue for corporate media interests. Have you ever wondered why the press has a habit of asking cis people what their thoughts are regarding trans people? A Guardian op-ed recently opined on this exploitative practice: Here’s how it… Read more.

Traveling While Trans: The False Promise of Better Treatment By Dr. Cary Gabriel Costello Back in 2012, I wrote about the problems I regularly encountered as a trans person when going through TSA security screening at airports. Since that time, we've been promised, much has changed. The TSA has formally stated that it will not discriminate on the basis of gender identity. Passengers are to be screened based upon their gender presentation. Any pat-downs are to be conducted… Read more.

On August 22, 2015, the NY Times ran an article by Richard A. Friedman titled, "How Changeable Is Gender?" One might be excused for mistaking the piece as an earnest call to the medical community for better interventions for the trans community. Alarmingly, Friedman warns readers that science has found that post-operative transsexuals are at significant risk of suicide and moreover, maybe medical treatment isn't actually the right approach after all, especially for trans kids. Friedman gravely recounts a scientific study that… Read more.

Tumblr TERF, radfem-momma apparently thinks it's okay to threaten trans kids with murder as long as you lie about the reason.   BACKSTORY: This post has to do with Tumblr TERFs trying to make the abuse a trans kid experienced by adult MichFest TERFs seem somehow okay. The abuse was witnessed by multiple individuals, specifically members of the Lesbian Avengers and a MichFest performer and member of Sister… Read more.

In the 2013 film Adult World, when cisgender protagonist Amy is cleaning the bathroom, she peers through a glory hole in the stall to see Rubia, a transgender woman, using the urinal. The sequence is constructed around Amy's point-of-view: Adult World Whatever the filmmakers' intentions, this is an excellent encapsulation of the cisgender gaze in cinema: a cisgender person viewing a transgender person without their consent, with little regard for their humanity. The reverse of… Read more.

Why TERF ideology is child abuse and how the media supports it. By  Natacha This article discusses the clash of ideology and lived experience as exemplified by a recent BBC radio program in the UK. This article uses the term Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF) to distinguish between the trans-supportive Radical Feminism of Andrea Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon, The Olivia Collective or the West Coast Lesbian Conference and sex essentialist anti-trans feminism of Janice Raymond, Sheila Jeffreys and/or the… Read more.

The yearly struggle the trans community experiences with MichFest has been taking place for so long, some of us have trouble remembering why MichFest's "womyn-born womyn" policy was such a painful issue for the feminist and trans communities in the first place. The very notion of "woman-born woman" is now so ubiquitous that many of us have forgotten that its roots span all the way back to when MichFest's organizer took part in attacking a feminism that was trans… Read more.

One of the fairly regular commenters on GenderTrender is Roslyn Hardy Holcomb, a published writer of color. She's been interviewed by USA Today, she has twenty-three books reviewed on Goodreads, and you can buy her books on Amazon. Basically, she's a moderately well-known author in the romance genre. She apparently is also a trans-exclusionary radical feminist, abbreviated as TERF. Holcomb made a comment on the GenderTrender post “We must look, act and live the part” about the Planet Fitness… Read more.

Some of you might remember that Germaine Greer, a TERF the Radical Feminist Andrea Dworkin took to task for trying to pass off patriarchy as feminism, made some small waves for appealing to the patriarchal vagina smell trope in order to claim that trans women aren't real women. However, what's making waves throughout the UK is that Green Party activist Beatrix Campbell, along with numerous other activists, are appalled that the trans community dared think they had the same rights… Read more.

TERFs battle over who has the correct vaginal odor in order to determine female validity. I've noted many times that while Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs) like to speak on behalf of Radical Feminism, the type of so-called "gender critical feminism" they offer is at war with the roots of Radical Feminism. For example, pioneering Radical Feminist opinion leader Andrea Dworkin was supportive of trans women, ensuring that her 1980s-era pro-woman… Read more.

While her mom talks to CNN to profess her love and support, Leelah's Reddit posts paint a homelife defined by bullying and fear. Much has been written about Leelah Alcorn's suicide note* which identifies conversion therapy and unsupportive parents as contributing factors to what happened to Leelah. Under the weight of public condemnation, Leelah's mother, Carla Alcron told CNN that "e told him that we loved him unconditionally. We loved him no… Read more.

A personal reflection on the abuse of weaponization of Facebook’s “Real Name” Policy By Emmagene Cronin I woke up Monday morning, the first day of Trans Awareness Week, as I do everyday before I’m off to classes. I get myself out of bed after hitting the alarm a few times, and then I trot downstairs to make myself some coffee and read a news story or two while I try to wake up from the lack of sleep I know I just… Read more.

It has long been asserted that the iconic TERF opinion leader, Janice Raymond, played a part in bringing an end to the public and private coverage of transgender medical care, resulting in measurable death and suffering within the trans community. Unsurprisingly, Raymond rejects any assertion that she has blood on her hands. Over on TheTERFs.com, Raymond objects to the following assertion: “It was only after the NCHCT published Raymond’s bigotry in 1980 that… Read more.

Are Trans Communities Losing Intersex Allies in the TERF Wars? By Cary Gabriel Costello, PhD Recently I spent several days in a public internet group for "gender critical" people, after a few intersex friends voiced some positive things about this line of thinking. As an intersex individual who gender transitioned from the sex he was assigned at birth, I was puzzled and concerned by this development. I'd read in trans writing that "gender critical" feminists were actively transphobic--yet here were… Read more.

The Demands of Michfest's Lisa Vogel: A Response & a Good Faith Offer of Support By Emmagene Cronin   The end of the 39th annual Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival (MWMF of Michfest) has arrived, and the trans community has been left with a list of “demands” from the Festival itself. To the unknowing reader, this list would seem like the extension of an olive branch, and glimmer of hope for reconciliation between two presently oppositional factions within the feminist movement.… Read more.

In what has to be one of the most facepalm-inducing interviews I've ever watched, Canadian school board trustee, Sam Sotiropoulos attempted to explain why he's not a bigot for promoting bigotry. The above interview occurred after Sotiropoulos posted a few transphobic tweets. Psychiatry expert: ‘scientifically there is no such thing as transgender’ http://t.co/huWbDpd6bl Where's Bill C-279? http://t.co/4JRejJhuW6 — Sam Sotiropoulos (@TrusteeSam) August 30, 2014 The article Sotiropoulos promoted states, "Dr. Joseph Berger has issued a statement saying that from a medical… Read more.

In the post announcing #TERFweek, we specified goals for the week. These goals were: Raise awareness about this movement of hate and the groups it forms. Educate people about its tactics. Collectively speak out against its bigotry. Encourage the Feminist, Radical Feminist and Lesbian communities to speak up about the aggressive colonization their communities have faced at the hands of this movement. #TERFweek has accomplished this and so much more. Actual Radical Feminists stepped forward to share their painful… Read more.

In the middle of a cool August night in 1991, Nancy Burkholder was thrown out of the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival (MWMF) because she’s a trans woman.  Burkholder was Janis Walworth’s friend and she was outraged that MWMF’s would engage in anti-trans discrimination. Walworth, a cisgender radical lesbian feminist,  immediately began to educate MWMF attendees about trans people. After coping with threats of violence and dealing with having her consciousness-raising… Read more.

What follows is a continuation of my interview with Radical Feminist lesbian icon, Robin Tyler. In the previous piece, Tyler talked about being beaten by TERFs for trying to protect a trans woman from their assault. In this portion of the interview, Tyler describes how a TERF's fist at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival (MWMF) led her to conclude that it was time for her to start her own women's music festival.… Read more.

Robin Tyler is an iconic Radical Feminist lesbian who talked with me about the ways she confronted TERF violence and oppression against trans women. We discussed Tyler’s involvement with the 1973 West Coast Lesbian Feminist Conference. For some context on why this particular conference was so important, Susan Stryker sums it up well: Elliott also served on the organizing committee of the West Coast Lesbian Feminist Conference, planned for April of 1973 in Los Angeles, and she had… Read more.

Sandy Stone was a problem that Janice Raymond, author of The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male, decided to take care of. Raymond felt that Stone -- an out trans woman who was part of the radical feminist lesbian separatist music collective, Olivia Records -- didn’t belong. Raymond engineered a smear campaign that nearly destroyed the Collective and put Stone’s life in jeopardy, culminating in armed TERFs asserting their intention to murder Stone. Olivia Records was a successful… Read more.

By Debi Jackson Although I have been part of the LGBT community for the last three years since my daughter transitioned from male to female, I still seem to learn something new every day. Take, for example, my recent discovery of a group that some call TERFs, or Trans-Excluding Radical Feminists. Within the last few weeks, I’ve become a target of hate from some who watched a video of me giving a speech about my daughter’s transition. Most of that… Read more.

Part II of the 'Sexing the Body is Gender' Series: Contextualizing the Body If one is talking about something that has chemistry and mass, one is not talking about the thoughts in one’s head. In this series, I will make this simple distinction knowing that there is robust and nuanced discussion around whether there is a biological predisposition that causes trans people to experience our bodies in the way we do. For the purpose of this post, I will make a distinction between that which we take to be… Read more.

Before you read further, I need to state a strong Trigger Warning: The following post recounts the circumstances surrounding the suicide of a trans women. Filisa Vistima was a 22-year-old transsexual woman from Seattle who had not been able to access the type of trans medical care she needed. She volunteered at the Lesbian Resource Center (LRC) and on March 6, 1993, Filisa took her own life after handling feedback from TERFs demanding that people like her be banned from the Center.… Read more.

I have seen various version of this phrase. "Quit attacking your allies!" - many, many times.  I've only been involved heavily in trans activism for about two years.  How and why I've become as invested as I am is a long story; but at the end of the day, I am a woman who was assigned female at birth.  I am cis.  So, it's odd that this statement has been directed at me, but it often has.  It's also something… Read more.

About a decade ago, the feminist community came up with the term Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF) as a way to halt the default colonization of Radical Feminism and feminism itself by TERFs (and this move by feminists is, of course, claimed to be incredibly insulting). Now, under a wave of new awareness of the hate group hiding among them, feminism is becoming more vocal about its recrimination of TERFs. Old TERFs and TERF allies like Sue Hyde and Gloria Steinem have openly recanted their TERF rhetoric and… Read more.

What it is #TERFweek is a week of education, raising awareness and openly talking about the abuse our communities have endured at the hands of the Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist movement. From Monday, August 11 to the 17, we invite everyone to share their experience with the TERF movement using the #TERFweek tag. We hope that all our diverse communities will take this opportunity to speak with one voice, united in standing in opposition to the hate and very real harm this group has caused. Why… Read more.

At first, I wasn’t going to write a response piece to Caroline Criado-Perez (CCP) article concerning the term “cis”, because many of her ideas were similar to those in Sarah Ditum’s post I recently responded to. Then I realized those similarities should be pointed out. There are patterns emerging where otherwise respected feminists are injecting thinly veiled transmisogynist bigotry within self-congratulatory “bravery” narratives, as well as, patronizing pro-trans-sounding platitudes.  So, when trans activists respond to their seemingly conciliatory knives-in-the-back… Read more.

The appearance of Lavern Cox, a prominent trans woman activist and actor, on the cover of Time magazine was a great moment in trans advocacy.  Although Chelsea Manning was the first trans woman to be pictured on the cover of Time, the context of Lavern Cox photo was a bold statement.  Beside her name were the words, "The transgender tipping point: America's next civil rights frontier." Sarah Ditum, a feminist journalist from the UK, reacted to the photo in… Read more.

Engaging in fraud in order to overturn LGBT and especially trans equality in cities throughout the nation is nothing new for anti-equality bigots. In the past anti-equality efforts, election fraud was limited to purposefully deceiving voters about trans equality or intimidating voters. Recently, the TransAdvocate documented an anti-equality activist using county property to attempt to circumvent a Texas election law. The Houston Area Pastor's Council (AKA, the Texas Pastor's Council, AKA, the US Pastor's Council) is the Texas-based anti-queer group that is heading up… Read more.

The past president of the Southern Baptist Convention Ed Young and current pastor of Second Baptist Church in Houston recently joined Pastor Kendall Baker and David Welch in denouncing Houston's recent Equal Rights Ordinance.  Young claimed equality in Houston was a "staggering moral issue" because equality, according to Young, Baker and Welch, discriminates against cisgender heterosexual Southern Baptists like himself.  At a rally for ending equality, Young proclaimed, "The verbiage of the proposed ordinance is couched in non-discrimination language but, without question, discriminates… Read more.

On Wednesday, May 28, 2014, the Houston City Council approved a sweeping non-discrimination ordinance barring discrimination against 15 protected classes, including an explicit protection against discrimination due to one's religion. The city's right-wing community immediately claimed to be oppressed, threatened to recall everyone who voted for the ordinance and pledged to put their own religious protections up for a popular vote in the November election. More worrisome, the Mayor of Houston… Read more.

Laura Jane Klug (image: Facebook) Lumberton Texas ISD suspended Laura Jane Klug, a transgender teacher at the intermediate school. Mainstream news reports say parents complained about her transgender status, but Ms. Klug thinks something else prompted her dismissal. Ms. Klug, in a phone conversation, told the Advocate about her hiring "The school was fully aware of my transgender status when they hired me. I made a point of making that clear to them by showing… Read more.

Ms. Dier Recently I talked with a transgender woman, Ms. Dier, who was repeatedly assaulted by two employees of the Irish Times Pub in Holbrook, Suffolk County New York on the night of March 14, 2014.   She was with a group of friends and was asked for her identification by the establishment’s bouncer.  She complied with the request and handed the bouncer her valid New York State Drivers Permit.  “He took my ID and continued… Read more.

In his latest piece for TheFederalist, arts writer David Marcus takes on what he believes to be a great injustice: the inclusion of trans people in a list of playwrights developed to demonstrate that perspectives beyond those of men actually do exist and are readily accessible. The list, a public google document titled “We Exist,” was developed in response to a recent comment by a director at a gathering of professional DC theater folks that there are too few… Read more.

Andraya Williams Subjected to discrimination, intimidation, humiliation and stonewalled by North Carolina Central Piedmont Community College (CPCC), transgender student Andraya Williams tells the TransAdvocate she's had enough. On March 19th, Ms. Williams was detained by a campus school guard while exiting the lady's room bathroom telling her that they had heard reports of a man in the restroom and asked her for her college ID. Ms. Williams then presented her ID, which clearly identifies her… Read more.

The day after the Maryland House of Delegates passed legislation making discrimination against transgender people illegal, one group has decided to take action against it. The bill, SB 212 "Fairness for All Marylanders Act of 2014" amends the state's law to include gender identity in the workplace, housing, and public accommodations. The Baltimore Sun is reporting that the conservative group MD Petitions emailed supporters telling them: "The good news is that we don't have to accept this bill as law – there is another… Read more.

In a situation that recalls the recent controversy around MMA Fighter Fallon Fox, Chloie Jönsson, a trans woman, was recently banned from competing in the women’s division of Reebok’s CrossFit athletic competition, a high-intensity endurance fitness challenge with a cash-prize of $250,000. She is now suing Crossfit for $2.5 million for discrimination. In the letter to her lawyer, obtained by TMZ, CrossFit contends that:  This is simply wrong as a matter of human biology and if you can’t see… Read more.

Andi Dier. a transgender woman from New York was roughed up by the employees of The Irish Times Pub and Restaurant in Holbrooke as they bruskly removed her from the premise. Ms. Dier says they used transphobic slurs and tried to take her I phone after seeing she had recorded part of the incident. They then stole her state-issued ID and had it not been for a stranger outraged over her treatment, she says the employees would have kept it. Most… Read more.

TERFs are well-known for referring to their rhetoric as being "gender critical." You might think that this means that they are critical of gender in all its forms. However, TERF criticism of gender seems to only ever extend to others (usually trans people). There is a great line in SLC Punk that gets at the heart of a critique I recently made: Brandy: Aren't you, like, rebelling against society? Stevo: Put that simply, kinda, yeah. Brandy: Wouldn't it be… Read more.

The one thing that you have to realize is that everything the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) did to a trans kid in Colorado was about PJI's desire to stop a law in California that codified equality standards for trans children. Law makers in California proposed legislation that would help ensure that California's trans children would be able to have a school experience free from institutionalized oppression. PJI hated this idea and decided that were going to fight it every… Read more.

Giving the Commonwealth's high school league the benefit of the doubt its possible they thought they acted in a way that encouraged gender diversity in sports with the adoption of the state's first transgender high school athletic policy...or it could have been a preemptive strike to ensure that not one transgender student will ever play sports in Virginia. Ether way the new policy which was passed 27-0, requires the exclusion of all teenage transgender athletes except the ones who… Read more.

A reader writes: I was wondering if it would be possible to open a discussion seeking articulation explaining why and how surgical alteration is different from genital mutilation. I feel insufficiently equipped to defend the difference. Here's the deal: body autonomy. I - not some random person - get to decide what body modifications constitute "mutilation." I don't want a pierced septum and if someone held me down and forcibly priced it, I would view it as "mutilation" regardless if… Read more.

Recently the South Florida Gay News interviewed me for an article on the TERFs, Cathy Brennan and her group, Gender Identity Watch: The Web is where this feud appears to have escalated with Brennan trading barbs between journalists and advocates from the transgender community who claim Brennan and her blog are insensitive. “I believe the petition served to clearly demonstrate that many thousands of feminists view the GIW team to be a hate group,” said Cristan Williams, editor of Transadvocate.com. “I… Read more.

I recently posted the following to my FaceBook page: Is it me or is there a lot of "JESUS! STFU already! I'm complementing you and think you should have rights! What, now I have to stop asking about your genitals TOO?!? Are you never happy?!?" going around. I saw this sentiment in the fallout over Katie Couric's focus on the genitals of Laverne Cox and Carmen Carrera in her interview. I again saw this sentiment expressed after the Janet Mock interview on… Read more.

By Ryan Sallans @rsallans Over the past two months two incidents have happened that I believe will start to shift TV shows away from the typical questions and expected narratives of transgender people. The first happened when Laverne Cox and Carmen Carrera were interviewed on Katie Couric, and when Carmen was asked about surgery, Laverne interjected the importance of moving past asking about body parts and moving to “lived experiences”. In a statement after the show Laverne wrote on her blog:… Read more.

By Matt Kailey It’s not tough to compliment trans people. Like anyone else, we like to be told that we look nice, or that you love our new shirt, or that we did a good job on our speech or our term paper or winning the World Series. But there is a confusingly fine line when it comes to certain compliments doled out by non-trans people – and that confusingly fine line might be enough to discourage compliments at all!… Read more.

By Jennifer Lopez Suspects | Credit: DCPI On January 8th, 2014 a 30 year old transwoman whom wishes to remain anonymous for now, went to the Neptune Diner in Astoria Queens, New York City to eat an early morning meal with a friend.  Her friend, a 32 year old cisgender man, went to the restroom.  According to Deputy Inspector Kevin Maloney of the 114th Precinct in NYC that is when three other patrons in the diner… Read more.

I’d like to introduce you to a 16 year old high school student who I’m going to refer to as “Jane Doe.” I’m calling her "Jane" because, after an ex-gay organization orchestrated an international smear campaign against her, numerous individuals have stated that she should be beaten and killed. Jane recently moved to a small Colorado town with her two moms. Jane transitioned from male to female two years ago with the blessing of her therapist. In October 2011, Jane… Read more.

While there are many who feel that morality must be built into law, I believe that the elimination of transsexualism is not best achieved by legislation prohibiting transsexual treatment and surgery but rather by legislation that limits it and by other legislation that lessens the support given to sex-role stereotyping, which generated the problem to begin with. Any legislation should be aimed at the social conditions that initiate and promote the surgery as well as the growth of the medical-institutional… Read more.

The mere mention of the "cotton ceiling" should send rapey shivers up your spine. If you've not heard of it here's the lowdown from feminists: Transgender cotton ceiling rapists hold male-only (Planned Parenthood-sponsored) seminars, write books, host lecture tours, and endlessly spam lesbian websites and blogs with rape and murder threats over lack of male “inclusion” in lesbian social gatherings, lesbian organizing, lesbian events, lesbian music festivals, and – most importantly- lesbian bedrooms. http://tinyurl.com/ms5289e Planned Parenthood Toronto is helping to sponsor… Read more.

TW: transphobic violence Like a lot of people, I was transphobic when I was younger. Society had conditioned me to be. There were men and there were women, and anyone who didn’t fit into the narrow definitions of one of those categories was abnormal, abhorrent, a freak. I remember (much to my shame) pointing at people I saw on the bus who didn’t look like what I thought a man or a woman should look like and laughing at them.… Read more.

Right up front I will tell you that I cringe when I hear passing as a woman in relation to a trans woman. What this really means is passing as a cisgender woman. A real woman, right? We see this all of the time in trans* related support forums where trans* women give advice to other trans* women on how to look like a woman. It is all based on the oppressive sex stereotype of what a woman is supposed… Read more.

This very important case has been dragging on for a couple of years now and here's the recap: 1.) It all started April, 19 2010 with this: Back in 2010, an intersex person wanted to marry a woman and the El Paso clerk  didn't know if it was legal to issue a marriage license because this person had initially been sexed male, but had genital reconstructive surgery and had proof of her intersex status. So, the El Paso clerk wrote… Read more.

While the vast majority of the feminist word understands that in a society that punishes trans people, not being trans is beneficial. However, fringe nuts on both the left and right often bleat on about how cisprivilege isn't real. More educated, less employed   Trans Unemployment Rate,  2005 Snapshot: 37%: Xavier, J., Bobbin, M., & Singer, B. (2005). A needs assessment of transgendered people of color living in Washington, DC. International Journal of Transgenderism, 8(2/3), 31-47. doi:… Read more.

Victoria Brownworth is an award-winning journalist who likes to write about transwomen who live on the edge of society due to bigotry which means that nothing she does can ever be transphobic. Furthermore, she writes for the Philadelphia Gay News (PGN) - which (of course) means that she doesn't have cisprivilege (which isn't real, BTW). In one of PGN's Brownworth articles, she recounts how she talked a trans minor into exposing himself to her because she felt it was her privilege (even though… Read more.

I wake up, like any other woman, run my fingers through my long, bed-head hair, wishing I could stay asleep, and go to pour some cereal and coffee for breakfast.  I decided to check my Twitter and my Facebook page, and in my feed, I see a Thought Catalog post that looks interesting.  I click, I read, I find a little bit of inspiration. This has been a fairly accurate description of many mornings that I have spent before school or work,… Read more.

As a white person, I never have to think about race, except on those rare occasions when I am in a non-white majority space. I never think about being a U.S. citizen except when I am outside the country. While I have had multiple health concerns over recent years, I am still predominantly able-bodied, and as such, I do not have to think about how to navigate my way through the world. But gender is different. Everybody has a gender… Read more.

A much older adult, who was famous in the eyes of a kid, talked the minor into exposing themselves to the adult. The adult then took a good long look - long enough to memorize the details of the kid's genitals. The adult then wrote an article featuring the explicit details of what the underage kid's genitals looked like. While this might elicit a strident response from folks who care about things like the age of consent, the use of… Read more.

Victoria Brownworth has been in the news lately because she is a Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF) who has a history of interpreting the trans experience for disempowered trans people. What follows are excerpts from her 2008 Philadelphia Gay News article, Trans youth: Risking life and limb published online July 4, 2008. "Devon tells me he should have been a boy... He's handsome and, in the loose shirt, no one would ever guess he was born female... I ask him how old he is. He… Read more.

Having read The Philadelphia Gay News (PGN) article by Victoria A. Brownworth titled "Victims of the night: Stories of trans sex workers"  I was very impressed by the authors personal investment in her neighbors well being. Her writing indicates a deep compassion for the most marginalized of our community, Tiffani, a black transgender working woman and offered many teaching moments. I was totally cool with her piece until I read the comments and began wondering why trans people were so upset with… Read more.