This is why I get so fucking hung up on letting the conversation be controlled by people who are antagonistic to us. When we allow the conversation to be guided and shaped and the terms of engagement set by people who are driven by their obsession with what’s in our pants and how we pee, we get to a situation where multiple Justices are fixated on this topic even in cases where the lawyer is representing a cisgender gay man, and trans rights aren’t even part of that specific case.
Leaving aside entirely the fact that one of the cases will absolutely impact any person who doesn’t dress to gender norms, and that will definitely affect cis LGB+ folx, the fact that transmisia/transphobia/transmisogyny has been shoved to the forefront of conversations about the LGBTQ+/queer community, and that TERFs have jumped into bed with right-wing evangelicals, is now blowing up in the faces of the entire community.
Look: it doesn’t matter how much you pass. It doesn’t matter how much you try to cleave to “normal, but gay, and definitely not one of the Weird Queers” standards. When you say “but I’m not like [whatever group it’s ok to try to kick out of the community this week]” or “they’re not part of us, they’re just [spicy incels/spicy bis/men in dresses/transtrenders/mogai weirdos]”, let this make it entirely clear that the actual cishets do not see a difference between you and the Queerdos™️, and they never will.
You cannot kick other members of the community to the ground and climb onto our backs and use our bodies to clamber up onto the sidewalk of Respectable Street. It will never, ever work like that. They might tolerate you if you’re rich enough, and you might get to hug war criminals like GWB if you’re Ellen, but let’s be clear, you’re being tolerated because you’re rich.
You cannot make yourself safe at the expense of other LGBTQIPA people. You cannot. The very act of doing that makes you more unsafe. Being a pick-me gay and playing purity/respectability politics will not make you safer. By definition, it puts you in greater and more perpetual danger.
Let this be your wakeup call, if you’ve been sitting here playing the politics of division. The cishets don’t see any difference between us, in the end. The homophobes and the transphobes and the biphobes and the acephobes and - they want us all to go away.
All of us. Maybe on an individual level, a cishet might deem you One Of The Good Ones, As Long As You Behave. But systemically? We’re all the same to them.
Supreme Court Justices can’t tell the difference between employment discrimination issues regarding a cis gay man and a transgender woman, and they think the biggest issue is bathroom usage. And the longer we allow ourselves to be split into tiny fragments and bits of the community shoved to the corners, the more vulnerable we all are.
There’s fresh evidence that eating a healthy diet, one that includes plenty of fruits and vegetables and limits highly processed foods, can help reduce symptoms of depression.
A randomized controlled trial published in the journal PLOS ONE finds that symptoms of depression dropped significantly among a group of young adults after they followed a Mediterranean-style pattern of eating for three weeks. Participants saw their depression “score” fall from the “moderate” range down to the “normal” range, and they reported lower levels of anxiety and stress too.
Alternatively, the depression scores among the control group of participants — who didn’t change their diets — didn’t budge. These participants continued to eat a diet higher in refined carbohydrates, processed foods and sugary foods and beverages. Their depression scores remained in the “moderate severity” range.
Ape Meets Girl’s The Lost Boys poster, which debuted at New York Comic Con, is now available online from Hero Complex Gallery. The 24x36 screen print is limited to 185 and costs $65.
