thedailywhat:

PSA of the Day: Nonpartisan pro-accountability “grass-roots community advocacy organisation” GetUp! says it’s time to end marriage discrimination in Australia.

After watching this short PSA, hopefully you’ll agree it’s time to end marriage discrimination all over the world.

[towleroad.]

Just something I thought you’d all enjoy. For the Americans, hope your Thanksgiving was filled with good food and good people. For everyone else, hope your day was filled with the same. :)

- Jaye

Resources for Jews and Jewish schools with GSAs

pflagmom:

This is a pdf you can download. Lots of good information and relates to TDOR -Transgender Day of Remembrance.

- Laurel

Queen of the Universe 2011

“The Queen of the Universe Pageant is a transgender beauty pageant that was created and run by “Empress LaRey” until the rights were sold to Karina Samala, a transgender activist who also won the Queen of the Universe title in 1991.”

- Adia 

On the feminine trans guys thing that’s blowing up my Dash…

gemmaseymour:

I don’t know about you, but when I was a kid, we didn’t have XBoxes and PS3s and DSs and iPods and the Internet and we weren’t so afraid of pedophiles, so we played outside our houses. With each other. In groups, even. Like, we went over to our friends’ houses, and ate whatever their parents made us for lunch. We didn’t even have to call. All we had to do was be home by suppertime, or before it got dark.

We got to know each other, in person. In public, and in private.

The world was a little different then. Sexual and affectional orientation weren’t discussed. Gender identity was only beginning to be discussed in the academic community. But, the policing was still there, and even stronger than it is today. Things are easier, today. More open. Ellen came out. Will & Grace was a big hit. Brokeback Mountain made a lot of money in mainstream movie theatres. Even The Crying Game has been useful, in some ways.

See, the thing I’m trying to say is, there was always that kid in your town, the one who was…weird. The little boy who acted more like the little girls, but not because he was taught to act that way, not because he was putting on an act, and here’s what’s really weird to some people…not even because he was trans or even gay. He was just like that.

And there was always that other kid, too, the girl who was not just a tomboy, but didn’t even care if she ripped her tights and got mud all over her new dress and patent leather Mary Janes while she was teaching you a fucking lesson about how girls throw or who can kick whose ass, or whose ass at what. And she wasn’t trans, either. She didn’t grow up to be a lesbian. She didn’t even have a role model for that kind of behavior, and her parents were pulling their hair out because they were afraid the whole neighborhood thought they were bad parents when they were doing everything they could think of to teach their daughter to be “ladylike”. She was just being herself.

Then there were the other kids, who had no difficulty playing Barbies with the girls across the street in the morning, and racing bikes with the boys down the block in the afternoon. The boys who unabashedly dotted their “i’s” with little hearts and still kicked your ass at Dodgeball. The girls who went to ballet class and then got their traps out of the garage and went crabbing, enjoying both equally. (That was me. I was one of those kids.)

Gender identity and expression run the gamut from ultra-femme to super-macho, and there’s really no telling from one aspect of someone’s personality if that’s necessarily going to have any bearing on another aspect. Sure, some of us actually did turn out to be trans, or gay, or lesbian, or queer, or ace, or genderqueer, or any number of different ways to be. But lots of those kids didn’t.

Look, I get that, especially for some of you young dudes out there, when you see a trans guy who looks to you like they’re not putting much effort into looking like you, it pisses you off. I mean, it’s hard enough being trans as it is, amirite? Then you get this little shit muddying the waters. As a transsexual woman, I’m no stranger to those reactions, and I’m woman enough to admit that I’ve had them, and that they’re kinda problematic.

But the thing is, it’s not up to you. It’s not up to any of us. The reason why we have so much trouble with these feelings is that the ideas of what gay, or lesbian, or trans, or just in any way different from what most people are going to expect people “ought” to act like is imposed upon us from the outside. That’s why being any of these things sucks so much in our society. It’s because we’re constantly swimming upstream trying to forge our own way of being that makes us comfortable with ourselves.

So, let’s not do this to each other, OK? We get enough of that from “them”, and really, you ought to know better. There’s no one way to be. And being like that is just buying in to a whole lot of bullshit that’s better left in the distant past.

Even among the trans women I know most closely, since I’m a trans woman myself and their interests tend to align a bit more closely with my own, there’s a huge range of identity, expression, and circumstance.

I know femme trans women who couldn’t pass to save their lives, not because they don’t wear the right clothes or the right makeup, or have the wrong mannerisms, or the wrong voice, but because they just have the unfortunate legacy of long-term testosterone exposure. I know butch trans women who you would never suspect of being trans, not because they “look like men”, but because they “look like women”, and let me tell you something, that’s pretty fucking hard to pull off, and might be the Holy Grail of Passing. Being all hard-edged, butch, punk-rock and trans, and still being read as feminine and female is many orders of magnitude less common for trans women. It’s one of the reasons why so many of us appear to be so vain. It’s not because we have no brains, so to speak, or because we’re reifying the gender binary system, it’s just a survival tactic in a lot of cases.

Hell, I even know trans women who look just like cis guys and don’t even bother wearing “women’s” clothing. And you know what, where I come from, we still call them “she” and “her”, not because we’re just being polite about it, but because that’s who they really are, and we know that sometimes other issues get in the way of hormones and surgery and new wardrobes and changes to your mannerisms.

Whatever they look like, when they tell you they’re trans, respect that, and respect *them*. You don’t have to be friends with every trans person in the world, you don’t have to be like any other trans person in the world, and you don’t even have to agree with any other trans person’s choices of identity, expression, or orientation.

All you have to do, is let them be, and let them be them. You can still be, and you can still be you. They’re our brothers, sisters, and siblings, and for fuck’s sake, it’s the Transgender Day of Remembrance, today, so remember this: Our killers don’t give a fuck how well we pass when they want us dead. In fact, if anything, they tend to be even more dangerous and violent when we put so much effort into how we look that they think they’ve been “fooled” or “tricked”.

Your external appearance isn’t who you “are”, nor are the clothes or cosmetics you choose to wear, or not wear, as the case may be. You would think that trans people would be the first to grok that.

Very interesting perspective that I think more people should consider. 

- Adia

(Source: gcvsa)

Message to a blogger who asked a question

Just a few minutes ago I received and answered an ask from you about civil unions vs. marriage and I accidentally answered privately when I meant to publish it.

I didn’t catch your blog name all the way or I must have mispelled it when looking for your blog, so please resend what you said as I believe it is important for other people to know.

Thank you!

- Keiha

A Baptist church in North Carolina has voted to stop legally marrying anyone until homosexuals have marriage equality.

barebackobama:

“As people of faith, affirming the Christian teaching that before God all people are equal, we will no longer participate in this discrimination,” the church’s statement says.

The vote was unanimous and brought tears to the eyes of some of the 100 or so members who stood to vote in favor of the “statement on marriage ceremonies.” 

Just thought you all would like to see this.

- Jaye

(Source: towleroad.com)

thegang:

“TRUE MEN” by Brian Shumway

Project Description: 

Gender can be a perplexing thing. Despite being flexible and malleable, it defines and confines who we are and how we express ourselves, especially through behavior and dress. Men in particular are bound by the dictates of gender. To be a ‘real man,’ being manly and masculine (or at the very least not outwardly effeminate) are paramount. Expression of one’s manhood, especially in public, must remain within a narrow range of acceptable social norms. Little boys are conditioned as such from birth, almost as a universal absolute. But this ignores the full story of male identity. There is a large spectrum of male experience that is deemed off limits by popular society. The men in this portrait series fall outside traditional notions of manliness and masculinity. They possess an effeminate manner, dress, or look, a ‘girlishness’ that is as much a part of being male as weightlifting and football. They boldly embrace expressions of male identity which flaunt the confines of conventional conceptions of manhood and what it means to be a man.

- Adia

Cisgender Privilege

PFLAG - Our Trans Children

transapien:

This pdf is like the holy grail of information of what transgenderism and transsexualism is. Think of it as “trans for dummies”. It has loads of information while keeping clarity as it’s key goal.

- Laurel

Anonymous said: I was wondering why gay people need to have Marriage. Why isn't Domestic Partnership enough? This isn't meant to be antagonizing, I'm a younger person and I find this question hard to answer when people ask it of me.

Thank you for this question. :-)

The issue of domestic partnership vs mariage is that it is basically like saying it’s the “same but equal”, which does not exist. It’s reducing a same-sex couple’s partnership, vows, promises and love to a second class type status. 

Many anti-gay people make the argument that it’s because marriage is a sacred religious act, but if that were true and they actually cared about preserving the sanctity of marriage than they wouldn’t allow agnostics or atheists or non-religious people to get married. They would force them to live under the title of domestic partnership as well. 

I hope this has helped answer your question!

- Keiha