LGBTQ+

A queer icon has passed :(

In 1061, two men in Spain, Pedro Díaz and Munio Vandilaz, signed a legal agreement which many researchers say is a factual, non-literary example of a recognised same-sex union during the the Medieval period.

Although the task of interpreting the original document is not easy, what is certain is that the Middle Ages are far from the dark, backwards and savage era that some continue to imagine. It is important to remember that in the the Middle Ages there was even homoerotic literature, a fact that reveals a certain permissive attitude and recognition of loving and sexual relations between people of the same sex.

alt-text for thumbnail: The words: ""biological" sex is the gender binary" on a 2d digital art wooden background next to the non-binary flag

[alt text: an illustration depicting a triceratops, a tyrannosaurus rex, and a human boy. The triceratops is dressed in shorts and a sweater vest, wearing headphones, and giving a thumbs-up. The t-rex is dressed in a leather jacket and sunglasses, and is giving the human a high-five. Below the illustration is stylized text that says, "It's totally cool to be GAY AS SHIT".]

So, I'll start with heteronormativity Is annoying. Like whya re any 2 people of opposite genders evoected to be interested in each other romantically, do cishets not know what friendship is?

To cisnormativity I don't really have that much to say apart from please stop being transphobic

Monogamy normativity also pisses me off to no end. No idea how to write this down but waow, stop having love < s and just do polyamoury in your fiction. The option is right fucking there

The cishets(tm) are strange and confusing, why am I so angry lol

Sorry if I triggered you 🫂

[alt text: a tweet by @Rae_HV on Twitter. The tweet says, "sorry but as a nonbinary person I'll never feel comfortable using the men's room or the women's room; i only feel truly safe in the...". Below the text is a photo of a printed, laminated paper sign on a wall, which says, "Fiction, Sci-Fi, Philosophy, New age, Unexplained, Fantasy, Restroom", and has an arrow pointing to the left.]

Social conservatives welcomed the [Cass] report. But it has also been heralded in some liberal quarters in Britain, where even the Labour Party has supported its conclusions, and around the world as a model of open-minded rationalism, of well-intentioned — progressive, even — unbiased scientific inquiry attempting to provide information in young people’s best interests. This, they declare, is what following the science and the evidence looks like.

But is it? In an effort to evaluate the Cass report’s findings and recommendations, I spent the months since it was released poring over the document, researching the history of transgender medicine and interviewing experts in gender-affirming care as well as epidemiologists and research scientists about the role of scientific evidence in determining care standards. What I have come to realize is that this report, for all its claims of impartiality, is fundamentally a subjective, political document.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/18587310

alt-text: [yellow words saying "abolish cis puberty" next to a trans flag on a digital art wooden background]

It is victim blaming, we are not the reason homophobia exists or that people become extremely homophobic. It is not oppressed people that cause their own oppression, we don’t in some way “deserve” it.

Some aspects of the identity of sexuality may be related to physical and things we cannot control, but at the end of the day it is an identity. If they do not see themselves as gay, they are not. It is not for you to assign an identity to someone, even someone you don’t like. Even if someone might identify as gay outside of these power structures, in here they aren’t. Even if they would be gay, they participate in our oppression because being straight is beneficial to them, not because they “are secretly gay”. If they did homophobia because they were “ashamed” it wouldn’t be helping so many of them get into positions of power

yo, one thing about actually abolishing oppression towards us trans people: it requires not putting any specific puberty above another. All puberties are permanent, not just trans ones.

We have the ability to sit every person down before puberty and talk them through what it entails, and then let them choose what exactly they want to go through. Making it an explicit choice places trans and cis people into the same situation.

Even with zero medical barriers to transition once someone realizes they are trans, the social barrier of what you are "expected" to be is an issue, for multiple reasons. People who want to make big changes are often questioned and forced to prove that what they want is what they “actually want”, because it deviates from what is expected. People who deviate in smaller ways are punished in their own ways, with those deviations being treated as mistakes or failures, because another major role can't be easily assumed. They are pushed to drop everything that is not perfectly aligned with the role to not be constantly torn apart. We have the technology to provide agency, not allowing its use is oppression. The only way to abolish the hierarchy around puberty is to abolish expectations around puberty.

If you think a child doesn’t have the ability to decide what puberty they want to go through, forcing them into a random one isn’t better. If they can’t say no, then they definitely can’t say yes. People will always know themselves better than others do.

Headline undersells how he did this during the 90’s during the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell era. Was not nearly as socially or politically acceptable then as it is now in the US to do that.

And not just for one person, he was the facility adviser of a gay-straight alliance club

People who identify as LGBTQ can face major disparities and stigma when it comes to cancer care, often resulting in later-stage diagnoses and poorer outcomes than other patients.

Dr. Elizabeth Cathcart-Rake, an oncologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, is determined to change that.

This summer, Cathcart-Rake and a team at Mayo launched Rainbows, a cancer clinic tailored to meeting the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, gender-diverse and intersex patients. Rainbows will initially focus on supporting patients with breast cancer, with the goal of eventually expanding to include other types of tumors already treated at Mayo.

https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/queer-a-term-from-of-the-global-south

Archived version

The Arkansas Supreme Court recently reinstated a ban on using a nonbinary gender designation on state ID cards. A lower court had previously blocked a rule barring the use of “X” as an option for gender, but now the ban is back in effect. Opponents have attacked the rule as “erasing” trans and nonbinary people.

Arkansas governor Sarah Sanders has been leading a similar charge throughout the state bureaucracy. Early in her term, she issued executive orders banning the use of “woke” terms like “LatinX,” “pregnant people,” and “birth giver.” Sanders herself admitted that the actual use of these terms was almost nonexistent—able only to cite a single state Health Department example for using language like “human milk.”

The purpose of the policy is to “foster a learning environment that is safe and free from discrimination, harassment and bullying; and (2) assist in the educational and social integration of transgender and gender expansive students.”

Some good news for once!

Isabel Fall’s sci-fi story “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter” drew the ire of the internet. This is what happened next.