[insert highbrow allusion here]

OOOOOOOHH

halforc80:

msamberhazard:

msamberhazard:

tal9000:

transawareness:

The above article is an update.  Her mother went to appeal to keep her out of the psychiatric ward and lost.  She will be institutionalized because of her expression of her gender.  She will be held until she conforms to male gender and then released to foster care, not her mother who was supporting her.

Please, if you haven’t signed the petition, sign it, reblog it, ask your friends to sign it. We’ve managed to get 40K signatures for a pageant model, we’ve only gotten 11K for a little girl about to have her life ruined.  Lets get on the ball and spread the word.

Sign It.

I’ve signed this before… so this is for the signal boost.

invisiblyqueer:

Originally posted at In Our Words.

Queer is Community was born a few weeks ago, partially as a response to the “When in Boystown”  Tumblr. When in Boystown is a series of pictures and gifs accompanied by captions. One that really struck me features a distinctly muscle-toned arm with glittery bangles reaching in from off-screen with a can of hairspray, spraying a screaming person in the face. This post was originally entitled “A tranny tries to steal your iPhone.” After the blog came under fire the picture remained but the caption was changed to “A ghetto bitch tries to steal your iPhone.”

       My body literally shook with rage. i was irate. i was irate at the transphobia and the pervasive, appaling idea that trans* feminine folk are violent thieves . The amendment of “tranny” to “ghetto bitch” isn’t much better, as it not only racializes trans* femininity, it links this tendency toward violent theft to another racialized stereotype of “people from the ghetto.” And this is only one of the posts on the blog. Many were racist, sexist and fatphobic.   Some were even homophobic.

       i wasn’t angry about the blog itself, as gross as it was. i was upset at what the blog represented. There are so many barriers in our community that it makes me wonder whether it’s a community at all. Almost every queer i know has noticed them — has raged about them. Groups are intensely hegemonic. It’s not necessarily bad to want to spend time with folks of a similar background. The problem occurs when this desire stems from negative stereotypes about different types of folks and when folks alienate others from their spaces. It makes our community closed off from itself; it shuts down its diversity, its beauty, it’s capacity to grow and learn from itself.

       Most spaces aren’t intentionally inclusive. Most aren’t accessible to everyone that might want to be there. Queer is about being different than the heterosexual norm, yet our community does little to foster a positive attitude about diversity. It does little to cultivate spaces that not only accommodate but also celebrate that difference.

       My friend, Nico Lang (who wrote the Huffington Post piece on When in Boystown), and i sat down and talked about building a response to the When in Boystown blog, but we wanted to do more than simply call out a blog. We decided we wanted to address where the ideology of that blog originated. We wanted to start a conversation about all the barriers in our community. We wanted to build a starting point for growth and change.

       We remembered the arguments in our community last summer. We remembered the racism that tried to explicitly eject certain bodies from the neighborhood. We wanted to build something positive this summer instead. We wanted to open a dialogue around the racism, sexism, transphobia, ableism, homophobia, etc. in our community. We wanted our community to rebuild itself from the ground up, in an intentionally inclusive and affirming way.

       So we came up with an idea, got other folks involved in the planning process and built this event called “Queer is Community.” We’ve planned a speak-out, followed by a performance event and community discussion. The speak-out starts at 6pm on Sunday, May 27at Halsted and Waveland. The performances begin at 7pm on the 3^rd floor of the Center on Halsted.

       i’m not under any illusions that this event will be perfect or that it will solve all of our problems — it won’t.  Given the state of our society right now, it’s impossible to think that any one thing could possibly be a silver bullet. However, i do hope that it will serve as a decent starting point for a conversation that we desperately need to have about what it means for us to call ourselves queer and what it means to be a community.

       We hope this will be the start of a process of growth and change for our community. We hope it will spark many conversations. So we hope you come out and share in that. We’ve created a Queer is Community Facebook page to keep people in dialogue after the event. We don’t want to host the kind of event that is done when it ends, we want to host an event that builds momentum and raises a challenge. Come out, share your stories, receive others, and let’s work together to make queer Chicago affirming of all.

pansexualpride:

Joyce Banda, who was recently sworn in as Malawi’s first-ever female president, has said that she plans to repeal her country’s laws against homosexuality in her first state of the union address, a bold move, notes theAtlantic Wire’s Connor Simpson, since homosexuality has been criminalized in 37 African countries and Malawi will host an African Union summit in July.

Malawi has had a checkered history with gay rights. Banda’s predecessor, the late Bingu wa Mutharika, had in 2010 pardoned two men who’d been sentenced to fourteen years in prison for announcing their plans to marry, but he did so only after facing criticism from international human rights groups. Though he released the men on “humanitarian grounds only,” Mutharika made clear that he believed they “committed a crime against our culture, against our religion, and against our laws.” Banda has signalled that Malawi might be ready to set an example for greater acceptance of homosexuality in Africa and, anyway, Malawians didn’t really like Mutharika too much, at least if their rousing support for Banda just hours after Mutharika’s sudden death was any indication.

aamalie:

weird-friendless-kid:

puelhathnofury:

goodlesbianbooks:

For your general perusal, these are all the current, completed niche booklists we have put together. If you know of any books that should be on one of these lists and isn’t, please let us know!

• Asexual Lesbians/ Asexual Women in Fiction
• Lesbian Christmas Fiction
• Lesbian Fairytale Fiction
• Lesbian Historical Fiction
• Lesbian Knights in Fiction
• Lesbian Librarians in Fiction and Nonfiction
• Lesbian Pirate Fiction
• Lesbian Shapeshifter Fiction
• Lesbian Time Travel Fiction
• Lesbian Vampire Fiction
• Lesbian Young Adult Fiction
• Transgender Young Adult Fiction
• Yuri Manga Published in English
• Award-winning Lesbian Graphic Novels
• Award-winning Young Adult Fiction & Nonfiction
• Picture Books For Children With Lesbian Parents
• Lesbian Webcomics & NSFW Webcomics

…also taking suggestions for future lists. 

There’s a whole list of lesbian pirate fiction?

Well, I know what I’m reading.

reblogging this again

/gravitates immediately to “Lesbian Vampire Fiction”

WHAT IS THIS MAGIC?!

Reblogging for great justice.