#Trans Refuge Bill
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The man who wanted to help kids undergo medical transition now wants to remove measures protecting kids from pedos.
A trans-identified male politician who drafted a bill declaring Minnesota a “refuge state” for the medical transitioning of minors has proposed an amendment to state legislation removing a stipulation that prohibits “sexual attachment to children” from being classified as a protected sexual orientation.
Leigh Finke, 41, is an elected Representative to Minnesota House District 66A and is cited as a chief author of HF 1655, a bill which seeks to establish gender identity as a protected category and aims to remove rights act sections of existing legislation “that allow for discrimination based on sexual orientation.”
Among the Minnesota Statutes amended by the bill is a subdivision that defines the term “sexual orientation” as having “sexual attachment to another person without regard to the sex of that person.” One characteristic explicitly stated as excluded from the definition is “a physical or sexual attachment to children by an adult.” Under Finke’s proposed HF 1655, this protective clause would be removed.
Finke was elected as a state representative last year after campaigning on a platform which largely consisted of guaranteeing medical interventions for gender non-conforming minors, including drugs which halt puberty, while referring to this demographic as “trans youth.”
Finke held several rallies for “trans kids” in the months leading up to the voting date, and the first bill that he authored as an elected official, the Trans Refuge Bill, or HF 146, allows minors from outside the state to receive puberty blockers and hormones within Minnesota. The bill was passed on April 24 and allows the state courts to have “temporary emergency jurisdiction” over children who enter Minnesota “to obtain gender-affirming health care.”
Finke was also involved in the production of two books intended as a resource for teens and parents on the topic of gender identity. Published in 2020, Queerfully and Wonderfully Made: A Guide for LGBTQ+ Christian Teens, targeted at youth aged 12 to 17 years old, tells readers that parents who do not accept a child as “queer” are not considering the child’s best interest.
“If your parents do not accept you and your queerness, then they do not know what’s best for you… Just because they love you does not mean they know what is best for you,” the passage states.
In a Facebook post just after the book’s publication, Finke shared a photo of the excerpt, emphasizing that “this chapter from my book is the most important thing I’ve ever written… Trans and non-binary and queer and gay and lesbian and bi young people: Don’t listen to your parents!”
Another passage, labeled “Adults Can Be (And Often Are) Wrong,” asserts that minors should “limit contact with any adult” who does not affirm their “queerness.” He also recommends that under-18s visit “queer sex shops” in order to get advice, presumably from adults, on breast binding and genital tucking.
When discussing the age at which children may begin to identify as the opposite sex, Finke cites research on same-sex attraction which found that participants, on average, said they first realized their orientation at eleven years old. “Transgender and gender non-conforming people often feel a disconnect between their self and their body even earlier in life,” it is stated, “but age doesn’t really matter.”
Disturbingly, in May of 2020, Finke lamented the death of pederast sympathizer Larry Kramer.
Kramer, a gay men’s rights activist and the founder of the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power (ACTUP), is prominently featured on the website of the North American Man-Boy Love Association where he is quoted as saying “in cases where children do have sex with their homosexual elders … the child desires the activity, and perhaps even solicits it.”
Finke has also made statements in support of rioting and posted an image to his Facebook profile suggesting that it is necessary to “arm trans people.” He mentioned the potential for violence during a speech at Hamline Methodist in reference to a “torrent of anti-trans legislation” which seeks to restrict medical interventions for minors. Finke stated it was necessary to “protect trans kids,” and asserted that in the near future, “there will be more riots.”
On April 21, Finke took to Twitter to boast of having assisted in inciting a disruptive crowd of demonstrators who showed up at the Minnesota House to support his “trans refuge” bill allowing children from out of state to receive puberty blockers and hormones.
Last month, Finke was awarded the title of Woman of the Year by USA Today. He was chosen as an honoree on the basis that he is “the first transgender legislator in the state’s House of Representatives, fighting to build a better future for trans youth.”
By Genevieve Gluck
Genevieve is the Co-Founder of Reduxx, and the outlet's Chief Investigative Journalist with a focused interest in pornography, sexual predators, and fetish subcultures. She is the creator of the podcast Women's Voices, which features news commentary and interviews regarding women's rights.
#USA#Minnesota#keep Leigh Finke away from minors#HR 1655#HF 146#Trans Refuge Bill#A grown man telling kids to not listen to their parents#A grown man advising minors to visit a sex shop#He was a friend of Larry Kramer
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Trans Refuge Bill - Call for Support!
Hey folks in Minnesota, the Trans Refuge Bill (HF 146) is in the House of Representatives today, March 23rd! You still have time to call your reps for support!
Don't know who your rep is? Go here - https://www.leg.mn.gov/ , put in your address, and the one at the top should be your state house rep.
Wondering what this difference is between this and EO Walz signed a couple weeks back? Same content, this one is harder to repeal if we get a republican governor in the future.
Calling people never makes a difference with politicians Yeah, maybe with the national folks, but state reps are easily bullied. Nobody knows who they are! Nobody pays attention to them! One hairy eyeball makes them scurry like rats! This is especially true for folks outside of Naomi Kritzer's domain, for anyone who might be outside of the twin cities proper
I wanna look at the bill first! Yeah, fair - https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/bill.php?b=House&f=HF0146&ssn=0&y=2023
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🗣️THIS IS WHAT INCLUSIVE, COMPASSIONATE DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE
Minnesota Dems enacted a raft of laws to make the state a trans refuge, and ensure people receiving trans care here can't be reached by far-right governments in places like Florida and Texas. (link)
Minnesota Dems ensured that everyone, including undocumented immigrants, can get drivers' licenses. (link)
They made public college free for the majority of Minnesota families. (link)
Minnesota Dems dropped a billion dollars into a bevy of affordable housing programs, including by creating a new state housing voucher program. (link)
Minnesota Dems massively increased funding for the state's perpetually-underfunded public defenders, which lets more public defenders be hired and existing public defenders get a salary increase. (link)
Dems raised Minnesota education spending by 10%, or about 2.3 billion. (link)
Minnesota Dems created an energy standard for 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040. (link)
Minnesota already has some of the strongest election infrastructure (and highest voter participation) in the country, but the legislature just made it stronger, with automatic registration, preregistration for minors, and easier access to absentee ballots. (link)
Minnesota Dems expanded the publicly subsidized health insurance program to undocumented immigrants. This one's interesting because it's the sort of things Dems often balk at. The governor opposed it! The legislature rolled over him and passed it anyway. (link)
Minnesota Dems expanded background checks and enacted red-flag laws, passing gun safety measures that the GOP has thwarted for years. (link)
Minnesota Dems gave the state AG the power to block the huge healthcare mergers that have slowly gobbled up the state's medical system. (link)
Minnesota Dems restored voting rights to convicted felons as soon as they leave prison. (link)
Minnesota Dems made prison phone calls free. (link)
Minnesota Dems passed new wage protection rules for the construction industry, against industry resistance. (link)
Minnesota Dems created a new sales tax to fund bus and train lines, an enormous victory for the sustainability and quality of public transit. Transit be more pleasant to ride, more frequent, and have better shelters, along more lines. (link)
They passed strict new regulations on PFAS ("forever chemicals"). (link)
Minnesota Dems passed the largest bonding bill in state history! Funding improvements to parks, colleges, water infrastructure, bridges, etc. etc. etc. (link)
They're going to build a passenger train from the Twin Cities to Duluth. (link)
I can't even find a news story about it but there's tens of millions in funding for new BRT lines, too. (link)
A wonky-but-important change: Minnesota Dems indexed the state gas tax to inflation, effectively increasing the gas tax. (link)
They actually indexed a bunch of stuff to inflation, including the state's education funding formula, which helps ensure that school spending doesn't decline over time. (link)
Minnesota Dems made hourly school workers (e.g., bus drivers and paraprofessionals) eligible for unemployment during summer break, when they're not working or getting paid. (link)
Minnesota Dems passed a bunch of labor protections for teachers, including requiring school districts to negotiate class sizes as part of union contracts. (Yet another @SydneyJordanMN special here. (link)
Minnesota Dems created a state board to govern labor standards at nursing homes. (link)
Minnesota Dems created a Prescription Drug Affordability Board, which would set price caps for high-cost pharmaceuticals. (link)
Minnesota Dems created new worker protections for Amazon warehouse workers and refinery workers. (link)
Minnesota Dems passed a digital fair repair law, which requires electronics manufacturers to make tools and parts available so that consumers can repair their electronics rather than purchase new items. (link)
Minnesota Dems made Juneteenth a state holiday. (link)
Minnesota Dems banned conversion therapy. (link)
They spent nearly a billion dollars on a variety of environmental programs, from heat pumps to reforestation. (link)
Minnesota Dems expanded protections for pregnant and nursing workers - already in place for larger employers - to almost everyone in the state. (link)
Minnesota Dems created a new child tax credit that will cut child poverty by about a quarter. (link)
Minnesota Democrats dropped a quick $50 million into homelessness prevention programs. (link)
And because the small stuff didn't get lost in the big stuff, they passed a law to prevent catalytic converter thefts. (link)
Minnesota Dems increased child care assistance. (link)
Minnesota Dems banned "captive audience meetings," where employers force employees to watch anti-union presentations. (link)
No news story yet, but Minnesota Dems forced signal priority changes to Twin Cities transit. Right now the trains have to wait at intersections for cars, which, I can say from experience, is terrible. Soon that will change.
Minnesota Dems provided the largest increase to nursing home funding in state history. (link)
They also bumped up salaries for home health workers, to help address the shortage of in-home nurses. (link)
Minnesota Dems legalized drug paraphernalia, which allows social service providers to conduct needle exchanges and address substance abuse with reduced fear of incurring legal action. (link)
Minnesota Dems banned white supremacists and extremists from police forces, capped probation at 5 years for most crimes, improved clemency, and mostly banned no-knock warrants. (link)
Minnesota Dems also laid the groundwork for a public health insurance option. (link)
I’m happy for the people of Minnesota, but as a Floridian living under Ron DeSantis & hateful Republicans, I’m also very envious tbh. We know that democracy can work, and this is a shining example of what government could be like in the hands of legislators who actually care about helping people in need, and not pursuing the GOP’s “culture wars” and suppressing the votes of BIPOC, and inflicting maximum harm on those who aren’t cis/het, white, wealthy, Christian males. BRAVO MINNESOTA. This is how you do it! And the Minnesota Dems did it with a one seat majority, so no excuses. Forget about the next election and focus on doing as much good as you can, while you still can. 👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿
👉🏿 https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1660846689450688514.html
#politics#minnesota#social justice#culture wars#this is what democracy looks like#republicans are evil
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Resources for trans refugees looking to relocate to/living in Minnesota (MN)
For trans folk in the Midwestern United States, or anywhere else in the country seeking refuge from transphobic legislature, Minnesota has shown to be a safer state than many in this geographical region.
Bill HF416 was passed in 2023 marked the state as a trans refuge state. This bill prevents out-of-state laws from interfering with the practice of gender-affirming care. This bill also prohibits trans children seeking medical transition being removed from their families, even if out-of-state laws would permit the removal of the child from their parents' care.
The sponsor of this bill is a trans woman and the first trans representative in Minnesotan Legislature. She publicly stated that anti-trans laws enacted or being proposed in other states are part of a cruel agenda to create a culture of fear in children, their parents and adults.
If you are the parent of a trans child, or are trans yourself and are worried about your children being removed from your care, this may be a good option for you. If you are already located in MN, these guides may also be of benefit to you, as the resource document is very extensive.
The Minnesota Trans & Intersex Resource Network have compiled these resource documents for folks who are interested in relocating, or for folks who already live in Minnesota:
Even if you are not planning to relocate, please spread this information so people who are, or are living in Minnesota, can benefit from this. Thank you for reading, and best of luck to everyone who is seeking refuge. We all deserve safety.
#trans#transgender#lgbtqia#lgbtq#lgbt#queer#nonbinary#non binary#enby#mtf#transfemme#transfeminine#trans woman#trans women#trans girl#transmasculine#transmasc#trans guy#trans boy#trans man#trans men#genderfluid#genderqueer#transsexual#resources#minnesota#relocation#our writing
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For anyone looking for a bit of good news -- yesterday the Minnesota Senate passed both a bill outlawing conversion therapy statewide and the trans refuge state bill that further reinforces our governor's executive order from several weeks ago. Both had already passed in the House, which means at this point all they need is the governor's signature.
The Minnesota House also passed a bill limiting the release of reproductive health care information, essentially stating the state will not cooperate with efforts by other states to prosecute people for receiving reproductive health care here in Minnesota. It will likely follow the others and get passed in the Senate soon.
I know this is particularly good news for Minnesotans, but I'm also heartened by the fact that two of the bills are very focused on making our state a sanctuary for individuals looking to find care here, particularly given the state of things in the states bordering us. I hope it's encouraging to some of you as well. This fight is ongoing and there are absolutely still victories happening, including ones I truly hope will spill over our borders and help others in need.
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2 minute read
JK Rowling is founding and personally funding a new service for women survivors of sexual violence. Launched days before Nicola Sturgeon’s controversial Gender Recognition Reform Bill is expected to pass through the Scottish parliament, the Edinburgh-based centre, Beira’s Place, will be female-only.
The author, who has written about the sexual and domestic abuse she suffered in her twenties, believes there is an “unmet need” for Scottish women who want “women-centred and women-delivered care at such a vulnerable time”. She hopes Beira’s Place, which will employ professional staff to provide free one-to-one and group counselling, “will enable more women to process and recover from their trauma”.
Rowling’s board of directors are all vocal opponents of the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which will permit anyone to change the legal sex on their birth certificate by making a simple statutory declaration, a process known as self-identification. Feminists, including Reem Alsalem, UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, have raised grave concerns it will open up women’s services and private spaces to abuse by male predators.
Beira’s board comprises Rhona Hotchkiss, a former prison governor, who has opposed the Scottish government’s policy of moving trans-identified male sex offenders to women’s jails; Johann Lamont, a former leader of the Scottish Labour Party and a lawyer; Dr Margaret McCartney, an academic, broadcaster and Glasgow GP; and Susan Smith, director of For Women Scotland, a grassroots feminist group founded to fight the gender reform bill. Beira’s chief executive is Isabelle Kerr, a former manager of Glasgow Rape Crisis who received an MBE in 2020 for her work supporting British citizens who had been raped overseas.
The provision of single-sex services has been a key battleground of the gender reform bill. Already in Scotland, most domestic violence refuges and rape support services are “trans inclusive” and accept referrals from both sexes. In recent years councils have removed grants from women-only refuges in favour of generic organisations. Monklands Women’s Aid in North Lanarkshire, which was set up more than 40 years ago, had its council funding withdrawn in favour of a social justice charity which also helps men.
Most controversial is Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre whose chief executive, Mridul Wadhwa, a trans woman, told the Guilty Feminist podcast that women sexual assault victims who request female-only care will be “challenged on your prejudices” and told to “reframe your trauma”.
Yet in her recent book Defending Women’s Spaces, veteran campaigner Karen Ingala Smith, the chief executive of Nia, a domestic abuse charity in London, describes how women traumatised by male violence fare better and feel safer in female therapeutic spaces.
Beira’s Place is legally permitted to exclude males under the exemptions of the 2010 Equality Act, which allows single-sex services if they are “a proportionate means to achieve a legitimate end”.
It is named after Beira, the Scottish goddess of winter. JK Rowling said: “Beira rules over the dark part of the year, handing over to her sister, Bride, when summer comes again. Beira represents female wisdom, power, and regeneration. Hers is a strength that endures during the difficult times, but her myth contains the promise that they will not last for ever.”
The service is not a charity, but privately funded by Rowling, a noted philanthropist. The amount she will donate to set up and run Beira’s Place has not been disclosed.
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What a time to be trans and alive in America. If you follow me, you are probably already horribly aware of the hundreds of pieces of anti-trans legislation that have been introduced in nearly every state, some seeking to ban trans healthcare for both minors and adults, some to ban drag, to ban trans people from restrooms, from sports teams, and in some of the most extreme cases take trans children away from parents who support their transitions. I highly recommend following The Trans Formations Project for their daily updates on the progress of these bills through the state government. They also have a very helpful tool on their website where you can search representatives by state and see exactly which legislators have introduced or voted on anti-trans bills, so you know exactly who to call and complain to about their terrible policies. The Trans Formations Project is active on insta, tumblr, twitter, discord, tiktok and FB. They are currently seeking volunteers and taking donations through their website. If you have the means, here are some other organizations you can support to combat these bills:
ACLU or especially the ACLU of Tennessee, which is ready to fight Tennessee's new anti-drag bill in court
The Trans Law Center especially their Trans Health Legal Fund, which provides resources for trans people facing investigation, arrest or prosecution for seeking healthcare
Trans Life Line, a crisis support line in English and Spanish
Trans Latina Coalition
The Marsha P Johnson Institute
TGI Justice Project
For the Gworls
Keep up your courage! Keep up your strength! We've also had some pieces of good news this week too- Minnesota has become a refuge state for trans folks seeking gender-affirming healthcare, Michigan just expanded their protections of LGTBQ citizens, and Wyoming rejected a trans healthcare ban. All is not lost, but if you see a bill moving through your state's legislation, please do make some noise about it!
instagram / patreon / portfolio / etsy / my book / redbubble store
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The Secret to the GOP’s Assault on Your Rights
Democracy is not just under attack in America. In some states, it’s being lost.
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once suggested that states could serve as laboratories of democracy, but these states are more like laboratories of autocracy.
Take Wisconsin. The GOP has so successfully rigged state elections through gerrymandering that even when Democrats get more votes, Republicans win more seats. In 2018, Republicans won just 45% of the vote statewide, but were awarded 64% of the seats.
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Btw, if you’d like my daily analyses, commentary, and drawings, please subscribe to my free newsletter: robertreich.substack.com
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Wisconsin is one of several states where an anti-democracy movement has taken hold.
But it wasn’t always this way. In fact, Wisconsin pioneered the progressive era of American politics at the start of the twentieth century — with policies that empowered workers, protected the environment, and took on corporate monopolies. State lawmakers established the nation’s first unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, and strict child labor laws.
Teddy Roosevelt called the state a “laboratory for wise … legislation aiming to secure the social and political betterment of the people as a whole.”
But for the last decade, Wisconsin has become a laboratory for legislation that does the exact opposite.
After Republicans took control in 2010, one of the first bills they passed gutted workers' rights by dismantling public-sector unions — which then decimated labor’s ability to support pro-worker candidates.
This move aligned with the interests of their corporate donors, who benefited from weaker unions and lower wages.
This new Wisconsin formula has been replicated elsewhere.
Republicans in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and North Carolina won a minority of votes in 2018, but still won majorities in their state assemblies thanks to gerrymandering.
In Texas, Ohio, and Georgia, Republicans have crafted gerrymanders that are strong enough to create supermajorities capable of overturning a governor’s veto.
Even more alarming, hundreds of these Republican state legislators, “used the power of their office to discredit or try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election,” on behalf of Donald Trump.
How did this happen? Put simply: years of careful planning by corporate interest groups and their radical allies.
And the corporations enabling these takeovers aren't just influencing the law — their lobbyists are literally writing many of the bills that get passed.
This political alliance with corporate power has given these Republican legislatures free rein to pursue an extreme culture-war agenda — one that strips away rights that majorities of people support — while deflecting attention from their corporate patrons’ economic agendas.
Republicans are introducing bills that restrict or criminalize abortion. They’re banning teachers from discussing the history of racism in this country. They are making it harder to protest and easier to harm protestors. They are punishing trans people for receiving gender-affirming care and their doctors for providing it.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. There are still laboratories of democracy where true public servants are finding creative ways to defend the rights of us all.
Elected officials in Colorado and Vermont are codifying the right to abortion. California lawmakers have proposed making the state a refuge for transgender youth and their families. And workers across the country are reclaiming their right to organize, which is helping to rebuild an important counterweight to corporate power.
But winning will ultimately require a fifty state strategy — with a Democratic Senate willing to reform or end the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade, protect voting rights, and protect the right to organize nationwide.
America needs a national pro-democracy movement to stop the anti-democracy movement now underway — a pro-democracy movement committed to helping candidates everywhere, including in state-level races.
This is where you come in. Volunteer for pro-democracy candidates — and if you don't have time, contribute to their campaigns.
This is not a battle of left vs. right. It is a battle between democracy and autocracy.
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From “I Am a Trans Texan” by April Maria Ortiz in the Texas Observer:
It strikes me, and may strike you, as a bit crazy to come out as transgender in an essay like this. I’m publicly revealing myself to be a member of a marginalized community in the midst of a moral panic targeting our very existence. Ascribe it to my defiant streak, if you will.
If you’re not aware that there is a moral panic about trans lives, then you need to pay attention. As of now, according to the list maintained by activists Alejandra Caraballo, Erin Reed, and Allison Chapman, over 400 bills targeting trans people have been filed with legislatures nationwide this year—more than in the past several years combined. Texas is at the vanguard with about 30 bills and counting. If the frenzy continues, it won’t end there, as former President Donald Trump’s recent speech and Michael Knowles’ rhetoric at CPAC on eradicating transgenderism make clear.
I’m hardly an ideal spokesperson. I’m 43, and I’ve lived my entire life up to this point (with fleeting exceptions) in the gender assigned to me at birth, which is male. Think of my biography as a cautionary tale. It’s painful and messy, and I’m going to tell you some of it. You may find this unpleasant, but I have no other way to say what I need to say. Only bear in mind that my experiences, though common, are not normative. I don’t speak for anyone but myself.
Growing up at the edge of San Antonio’s south side in the 1980s, I learned the usual things about gender and sexuality: Boys are boys and girls are girls and all that. My dad was a biology teacher. I knew the differences. But something seemed to be awry in me for, as far back as I can remember, I felt that I ought to have been a girl, or that in some strange way, I really was a girl, even though everyone treated me as a boy.
Adults policed my gender expression conscientiously, and I inferred that my feelings were unnatural and shameful. Still, I would sit in the pew at church as my parents took communion—we were Catholic—and silently rank which of the women who passed me I would most like to grow up to be. As a small, less-than-masculine child who hated sports, I became the target of bullying once I went to school. But I would lie awake every night, imagining myself becoming a girl—my only refuge from my strange alien existence.
Environmental factors didn’t make me this way. My parents were present and involved; my mother a caring, feminine homemaker and my father, a loud, masculine teacher and artillery officer who was sometimes frustrated by my unmanliness. Expecting me to grow up and marry and follow the same pattern, they enforced the “natural” gender norms they espoused every day of my life. Far from becoming trans through exposure to modern “gender ideology,” I was, simply and naturally, a trans child, even though everything in my upbringing went toward imposing a gender binary that itself represented an unacknowledged ideology. There is no “real me” beneath my transgender self. I have learned to mask it, yes, but if I were somehow to remove it, there would be no me left behind. No more could you remove the flour from a loaf of bread.
As soon as I was old enough to be left home alone, I began secretly wearing my mother’s clothes. Experimenting with femininity launched me into a deep and pervasive calm tinged with a fear of being discovered. After some years, I was found out through a misplaced blouse. I lied my way out of the tribunal that ensued—standing, panicked and alone, before my father and mother. My parents’ eagerness to accept my lies made up for their implausibility. The alternative was believing me to be some kind of queer, which I suppose is what I am.
My junior high coach, a morose sadist who later got fired and went on to a career as a campus cop, compelled boys to shower together in a dimly-lit subterranean cell. A small, undeveloped sixth-grader, I was thrust in there with big, masculine eighth-graders, their eyes ever-roving for some weakling to abuse. My unboyishness and isolation made me easy prey. As a transgender person whose brain was telling me that my body should be female, it’s hard to describe just how traumatic such experiences were. What made them unbearable—to such an extent that I began to self-harm and eventually to plan my own death—was that I had no words or concepts to describe or understand what was going on with me. I was simply a freak of nature, an abomination who had to hide in plain sight, surviving from one morning to the next, hoping that no one would discover my secret, dying a little each day.
You may believe that the problem here was not my being forced into a simplistic gender binary that left me vulnerable to abuse and trauma, but rather my gender dissonance, and that I should have been made to feel at home in my assigned gender. In other words, I should have been coerced into being a normal boy. If you think that, survey the research: It shows, overwhelmingly, that attempts to “convert” gender nonconforming people into traditional gender identities and other forms of rejection are ineffective and traumatizing—in fact, the scientific consensus is that all forms of conversion therapy aimed at altering a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity result in long-term harm—while care that affirms gender identity results almost universally in positive outcomes. It’s also clear that what negative outcomes do occur owe largely to hostile environments.
But since we’re in the middle of a panic about transgender people “invading” sex-segregated spaces, let me add this: Far be it from me to make anyone feel uncomfortable or unsafe, but I have never felt comfortable or safe in any male space. Nor, I believe, would I have felt better in a female space. I prefer privacy for doing such things as defecating and stripping naked, and I find our regime of communal showers and toilets just a little weird and, yes, oppressive. Perhaps that’s one aspect of the problem we should be examining?
There hangs in my parents’ home a circle of my annual school portraits, which show me becoming progressively sadder from year to year. My body was turning into an alien thing with the onset of biological manhood. By the time I graduated, my mounting dysphoria and social problems—I also had an undiagnosed autism disorder—led me to begin planning suicide. In secret, I painted a picture of a girl cutting her wrists. I was the girl, you see. In recurring dreams, I was a young mother. Despair held sway over my waking life.
It was either leave home or die, so I moved across the state for college. My plan was to wait a few weeks and, if nothing changed, to kill myself in a shower stall. Something did change: I found love and acceptance in the woman who became my best friend and then my wife. Several years later, I was still alive, presenting as female in the privacy of our home and as male when I went out. This made me happy. For the first time in my life, I began to approach peace.
It was the turn of the millennium. I was a shelver at the university library, which often left me alone in the stacks at night. Sometimes, I would work in the gender and sexuality section and take down books to try to understand what I was. Many of the books were out of date for that time, and much has changed in our understanding of transgender people since. In them and on the nascent Internet, I encountered terms and categories that didn’t seem to apply to me, reflecting a time when researchers developed theories with little input from the trans community itself. So my gender confusion persisted.
My fragile peace was disturbed when someone to whom we’d entrusted our key entered our home without permission and went through our things. I felt certain that my secret self must have been detected. Mortified and afraid of being outed, I threw all evidence in the dumpster. I grew a beard as a bulwark against “temptation” and began two decades of self-contradiction and mounting desperation, which brings us to today.
“You have to go the way your blood beats,” James Baldwin said in an interview. “If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all.” Belatedly, I’m coming to grips with this. My attempts to cope with gender dissonance have consumed much of my life, taking hours away from each day, isolating me from loved ones, alienating me from my body, leading to bouts of depression, ideations of suicide, and alcohol abuse. It doesn’t go away. In middle age, I’m forced to recognize that nothing short of being who I am will resolve my profound inner conflict. The word “transition” is terrifying but, however catastrophic the process of coming out may be, I’ll not be much good to those I love if I’m burned out, incapacitated, or dead.
Read more on the Texas Observer.
(🎨 Image by FocalFoto on Flickr)
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The Best Newsies Thing submissions
Race's cigar
Jack Kelly
The money the movie didn't make
King Of New York
Davey Jacobs
David Jacobs (movie)
Seize The Day
Sprace
Crutchie (uksies)
Trans Racetrack headcanons
Crutchie
92sies Mush's front flip during Carrying The Banner
Race
Spot Conlon (movie)
Javey
Javid
King Of New York (movie)
Newsies fanfiction
Kid Blink (movie)
Katherine
The tony awards performance
Spot Conlon (uksies)
The chair Mike Faist fell through
Ben Cook kicking himself in the face
Jeremy Jordan attempting to dance and almost falling on his face during the proshot bows
Bill and Darcy
Albert
Albert (uksies)
Christian Bale falling over every time he tries to dance
Race (movie)
Santa Fe
Les pretending to smoke his candy to imitate Jack
Musical Davey's character development
Mush (movie)
The Delancey brothers
"The woild is yer erster"
Bumlets spinning on the ceiling fan
Jack Kelly (uksies)
Stray x Lucky (uksies)
Elmer
JoJo
Finch
Santa Fe (movie)
"Hi i'm Andrew Keenan-Bolger and I play Crutchie in disney's Newsies"
Dancing with the stars performance
Carrying The Banner
Carrying The Banner (movie)
"GO GET EM COWBOY! YOU GOT EM NOW BOY!"
"Our man Denton!"
Bryan Denton (movie)
Unemployed by Joshua Burrage and Ben Cook
"THE POOR GUYS HEAD IS SPINNING!"
Ben warming up and Andrew putting on multiple pairs of headphones
Sarah Jacobs (movie)
Specs (Ryan Steele)
Specs
Jack Kelly (movie)
Katherine (uksies)
Out There in Santa Fe by Ben Fankhauser
"I am a kooOOOoiiiii"
Andy Richardson crawling around like something from a horror movie
Ben and Sky dancing to What If I Go
“Forget about Trey. Where’s my fucken chair?”
Andrew forgetting the strike sign
Kara accidently throwing the broom into the orchestra pit
Corey Cott singing the Santa Fe key change four bars early
"It's oyster Race" "THATS WHAT I SAID"
Sniper
Les Jacobs (movie)
Letter From The Refuge
Once And For All
Skittery (movie)
Jess LeProtto falling into the orchestra pit
Finches slingshot
Gay/Trans awakenings caused by the movie
Za Zooming Out
"Up stays, uh upstairs"
Bad weather and shopping
Tommy Bracco pep talks
Letter From The Refuge (Ben Cook edition)
Anthony Rosenthal's vlogs
Redfinch
Newsies fanart
Seize The Day (movie)
Blush
Blood Drips Heavily On Newsies Square
The stage directions for Jack shaking Roosevelt's hand
Jeremy Jordan
Ben Fankhauser
Henry
Newsies Got Swag
Brooklyn's Here
WWH (reprise) at broadway bakes and Cory keeps messing up
Anything You Can Do by Mike Faist and Adam Kaplan
Ben and Lavon singing Something To Believe In
"AAAHHHHHHHH" "See this, this is Newsies"
92sies Jack saying "ambastards" instead of ambassadors
"Tell me how quitting does Crutchie any good" "Dszahdh"
Crutchie swearing in uksies
The amount of ass-slapping in livesies
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Alabama is trying to pass a bill that will ban DEI. It will also prohibit trans people from using the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity.
I have a few friends at the University of Alabama who are very worried about the loss of programs there such as their LGBTQ+ student lounge, which has been a refuge for a ton of queer people at that college.
#I know tumblr can only focus on like one or two issues at a time#and I also know that people are burned out on this stuff after Florida and Utah#but please sign this petition
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Good News - March 15-21
Like these weekly compilations? Support me on Ko-fi! Also, if you tip me on here or Ko-fi, at the end of the month I’ll send you a link to all of the articles I found but didn’t use each week - almost double the content! (I’m new to taking tips on here; if it doesn’t show me your username or if you have DM’s turned off, please send me a screenshot of your payment)
1. Comeback on the cards for Asian antelope declared extinct in Bangladesh
“Nilgais, the largest antelope species in Asia, are reappearing in northwestern Bangladesh, a country that was part of their historical range but where they were declared locally extinct in the 1930s due to habitat loss and hunting.”
2. Tribal Homes in Minnesotta [sic] Get $1.4M for Clean Electricity
““This grant will allow us to make electrification improvements to our members’ homes and involve them more directly in our efforts to change our energy narrative and achieve our net zero goal.””
3. Pollinators Flock to Flower-Filled Solar Panel Fields
“As populations of crucial pollinators decline, developers have been seeding the grounds of their solar arrays with native wildflowers. Now a five-year study published in Environmental Research Letters confirms that this approach boosts the pollinators’ abundance and diversity—with spillover benefits for surrounding farms.”
4. U.S. House of Representatives Passes WILD Act
“The WILD Act supports funding two different initiatives: […] the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program offers critical support for voluntary conservation initiatives[, and…] The Multinational Species Conservation Funds play a pivotal role in supporting the conservation of imperiled species globally”
5. Private Gender Affirming Care Ban Fails To Advance In England After "Ferret Filibuster"
“A bill banning puberty blockers for trans youth and defining sex to exclude trans people was blocked from being heard after Labour MPs spoke at length on pet names and ferrets.”
6. Community-Led Effort to Plant Thousands of Seedlings
“Despite its urban surroundings, [the Tucki Tucki] creek serves as a vital refuge for the endangered platypus and purple spotted gudgeon populations. […] Planting native vegetation along the water’s edge serves multiple purposes. Not only does it provide crucial habitat for the endangered species, but it also helps stabilise the banks, mitigating erosion and reducing sedimentation in the creek.”
7. Court Ruling Halts Wolf Trapping and Snaring in Idaho Grizzly Bear Habitat
“[The ruling] will stop trapping and snaring […] to prevent the unlawful take of Endangered Species Act-protected grizzly bears. The decision stated, “There is ample evidence in the record, including from Idaho’s own witnesses, that lawfully set wolf traps and snares are reasonably likely to take grizzly bears in Idaho.””
8. A Boston grocery store is bringing community solar to a low-income area
“A group of energy-equity advocates in Boston is launching a community solar cooperative they say could be a scalable model for both reducing carbon emissions and building wealth in disadvantaged communities.”
9. Two-faced solar panels can generate more power at up to 70% less cost
“Scientists at the University of Surrey have built a new kind of solar panel with two faces, both of them pretty. Their flexible perovskite panels have electrodes made of tiny carbon nanotubes. These can generate more power with greater efficiency and at a cost 70% lower than existing solar panels.”
10. It's a boy! Athens zoo welcomes birth of rare pygmy hippo
“A rare and endangered pygmy hippopotamus has been born in Athens’ Attica Zoological Park for the first time in 10 years, delighting conservationists. A lack of male pygmy hippos in captivity had complicated breeding efforts, so zoo staff were “absolutely thrilled” the baby was a boy”
March 8-14 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)
#good news#hopepunk#antelope#animals#extinction#conservation#solar#flowers#us politics#lgbtq#ferret#gender affirming care#native plants#wolf#grizzly bear#boston#poverty#solar power#solar energy#solar panels#zoo#hippo#pygmy hippo#baby animals#nature#wildlife#trans healthcare#deer#yellowstone
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one of our local state representatives has a solid resume for a first-term legislator - the first openly transgender person to be elected to the Minnesota legislature, and coauthor of the Trans Refuge Bill granting protections to those traveling to Minnesota for gender-affirming care. this was a major part of her being named one of Time's Women of the Year in 2023...
...but every time I see her name I just can't help but think how "Leigh Finke" sounds like an Ace Attorney witness who's just having a chuckle. a good old giggle. godspeed ma'am
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“No matter how many anti-trans bills Arkansas adopts, the lawmakers can’t stop her from enjoying the tranquility of life inside Tilifi and sharing that with others. ‘They’re not here at my door,’ she says. ‘And if they come knocking, I’ll be ready.’ On the wall in her living room is a painted portrait featuring her ‘I’m still fucking HERE’ mantra, now a rallying cry for so many Black trans women who aspire to defy expectations and live long, full lives like Miss Major.”
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"It's a good day for freedoms": Walz signs bills on reproductive freedom and trans refuge, ban on conversion therapy https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/its-a-good-day-for-freedoms-walz-signs-bills-on-reproductive-freedom-and-trans-refuge-ban-on-conversion-therapy/
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