First she and many other celebs (including Jameela Jamil and Paloma Faith) signed a letter condemning violence towards trans women, which I know sounds like a sort of non-brainer but I mean have you seen this goddamn country?
Then I found this on Twitter:
Glad to see Olivia Colman sign a letter of solidarity with trans women. Never said this story before but in 2018 when anti-trans feminists tried to harass me out of hosting an Amnesty women’s event (they failed), Olivia Colman came up to me on the day and gave me a hug ❤️
If you haven’t seen this, it’s an Australian miniseries about a transgender girl starting high school, aimed at kids. The BBC just started showing it on CBBC so I watched it all today. It’s very good.
It deals with a lot of things that have (depressingly) been seen in the headlines. Everything from unhelpful adults to cyberbullying to friends suddenly turning out not to be friends after all. Oh some of the cisgender kids in this are awful and every time they came on screen I was like-
-except the main character in this, Hannah, is clearly a better person than me. Seeing her triumph over the bullies in every concievable way is extremely satisfying.
(Also, she is actually played by a trans actress! Evie McDonald.)
I also like that though we’re told about the insults and horrible things hurled Hannah’s way we don’t actually see them most of the time, which is good in that it greatly reduces the chances of anyone having to suddenly relive their own traumatic experiences when watching.
I hope this show encourages and empowers trans kids (it seems to be doing so) but I also kinda hope it makes certain cisgender kids change their behaviour.
Miami Heat star Dwyane Wade has spoken about his transgender daughter in an interview with Ellen DeGeneres. The NBA player, who has four children with his wife Gabrielle Union, spoke to Ellen DeGeneres about his 12-year-old Zaya coming out as trans. Dwyane Wade says it was ‘his job’ to educate himself. In an an interview…
Fun fact: Though being gay in the 40s sucked, being gay in the military was easier, and pretty common. There were apparently, at one point in time time so many lesbians in the military that when they tried to crack down on it, the girls wrote back and said “Look I can give you the names, but you’ll lose some of your best officers, and half your nurses and secretaries.” And they pretty much shut up about it unless you were especially bad at subtlety. (Source: Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers. A good source for gay history from 1900s onwards.)
Sergeant Phelps worked for General Eisenhower. Four decades after Eisenhower had defeated the Axis powers, Phelps recalled an extraordinary event. One day the general told her, “I’m giving you an order to ferret those lesbians out.’ We’re going to get rid of them.”
“I looked at him and then I looked at his secretary. who was standing next to me, and I said, ‘Well, sir, if the general pleases, sir, I’ll be happy to do this investigation for you. But you have to know that the first name on the list will be mine.’
“And he kind of was taken aback a bit. And then this woman standing next to me said, ‘Sir, if the general pleases, you must be aware that Sergeant Phelps’s name may be second, but mine will be first.’
“Then I looked at him, and I said, ‘Sir, you’re right. They’re lesbians in the WAC battalion. And if the general is prepared to replace all the file clerks, all the section commanders, all of the drivers—every woman in the WAC detachment—and there were about nine hundred and eighty something of us—then I’ll be happy to make the list. But I think the general should be aware that among those women are the most highly decorated women in the war. There have been no cases of illegal pregnancies. There have been no cases of AWOL. There have been no cases of misconduct. And as a matter of fact, every six months since we’ve been here, sir, the general has awarded us a commendation for meritorious service.’
“And he said, ‘Forget the order.’
– The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America
I’ve reblogged this before but it didn’t have these comments and HOLY HOT DAMN DID IT NEED THEM.
So, when someone sits down to write a fiction about Women commandos, and a Dudebro steps in to say “Huh, that is so unrealistic huh.”
Harold… oh, Harold…sit down, shut up, and stay out of our way.
History is infinitely gayer than a lot of people want to admit <3
The Government is reportedly planning to reform gender identity rules to make it easier for people to choose their own gender in law.
Under plans being considered by ministers, adults will be able to change their birth certificates at will without a doctors’ diagnosis, while non-binary gender people will be able to record their gender as “X”.
The Sunday Times reports that changes will be included in a planned Gender Recognition Bill, set to be published in the autumn.
As part of this consultation, the UK government has a survey that is open to all UK LGBTQ+ people until October 2017 – click here to take part.
Some have asked me to make a post regarding gay men being rounded up in Chechnya. Now, let me just clarify that details are very slim because the government is denying this (obviously) and there are a lot of posts on tumblr with misinformation. So I’ll do as best I can here:
An independent Russian newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, and human rights activists have been providing this information. “In Chechnya, the command was given for a ‘prophylactic sweep’ and it went as far as real murders,” the Novaya Gazeta reported.
According to the newspaper, dozens of men between the ages of 16 and 50 have mysteriously disappeared off the streets. Reports say that authorities aided in these roundups by posing as men looking for dates online. They also say that some of these men are well known religious leaders and/or popular faces on local television.
The Russian LGBT Network has set up a hotline for those seeking help and evacuation from the region. They told the media that they have received reports of what’s been happening in these prisons. “Gay people have been detained and rounded up and we are working to evacuate people from the camps and some have now left the region. Those who have escaped said they are detained in the same room and people are kept altogether, around 30 or 40. They are tortured with electric currents and heavily beaten, sometimes to death,” Svetlana Zakharova from the Russian LGBT network said.
A spokesman for Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya’s leader, is claiming that the reports are “absolute lies and disinformation,” and said that “You cannot detain and persecute people who simply do not exist in the republic. If there were such people in Chechnya, the law-enforcement organs wouldn’t need to have anything to do with them because their relatives would send them somewhere from which there is no returning.” They are even claiming that these reports were nothing more than an April Fools joke because the Novaya Gazeta article was published on April 1st. The Kremlin is also denying any knowledge of these reports.
The Human Rights Watch in Moscow told the media that they’ve gained information regarding these attacks that include torture, humiliation, and at least three reports of murder.
Note that it’s very difficult to get much information on this because almost no independent journalists or rights activists are able to work in the region due to restrictions. A journalist from the Novaya Gazeta has spoken out against Kadyrov before and was murdered only days later.
A Chechen activist who claims to work on human rights in the republic (and works on Kadyrov’s human rights council) has denied the claims. She told a Russian radio station “In our Chechen society, any person who respects our traditions and culture will hunt down this kind of person without any help from authorities, and do everything to make sure that this kind of person does not exist in our society.”
Novaya Gazeta said they have been able to confirm their information with an “unprecedented large number of sources in the Interior Ministry of the Chechen Republic, in the administration of the head of the republic, the FSB Department for Chechnya, the Chechen prosecutor’s office finally local LGBT activists.” They are also saying that a former military headquarters is the site of the camp.
