And yet you’re doing harm…

It was ten, maybe fifteen years ago, when I saw the ad in our lobby asking for volunteers to join the community group. I figured it would be a chance to meet my neighbours and to help find ideas to improve our community. The only one anywhere near my age was Christine. In our first meeting, the current president took an instant dislike of her. I have never seen someone hate someone else so fast. He announced it was him or Christine in the group. We both took the attitude of, oh well, his choice. That was definitely a “you problem”. Then he left. Immediately everyone else left too because “it just wouldn’t be the same without him”. Talk about welcome to the group! Christine and I persevered and worked on a bunch of ideas. A newsletter, a blog… we started looking into community gardens and spent an afternoon with an animal enforcement agent looking at dog turds in varying states of decay. The property manager claimed all the dog waste had been picked up the day before. We looked at a piles of waste that were growing mould and called his bluff.

The two of us clicked. Each time we were together we laughed and joked around. Then we added each other on Facebook. It wasn’t Facebook’s fault, I just got a chance to see a different side of her. A side that believed in con-trails, micro-chipping unsuspecting civilians, and poisoning vaccines so “Big Pharma” could sell more medication. Even then I could have probably ignored the posts except she was determined to have me see the light and not be a sheep. So she started tagging me in various articles and wouldn’t stop.

Once she sent me an article that had me raising my eyebrows so much I was surprised they weren’t on my scalp. But every claim it made had a credit, complete with a link. And, well, I always check the links. Then I was just plain sad. Every single link went to a paper that completely disagreed with the shared article.

Every. Single. One. Of. Them

They knew their audience. Those self proclaimed lions who were so much smarter than the sheep who refused to see the truth. They knew those “lions” would never click the links. That they would blindly follow anything the alternate media told them. Spoon fed by people selling them expensive crystals, space mushrooms, and coffee enemas (pro tip, it’s supposed to go in the opposite end).

And misinformation continues to tumble through our lives. From mis-attributed quotes to AI art being passed off as the real deal (sometimes to the point of being sold as real), most of that internet flotsam is easy to research. But many don’t. They trust the person who shared the information with them (who trusted the person they got the information from), or they’ve heard it before so many times that it’s been hammered in as true, or they simply don’t have the time or energy. And most of the time the info doesn’t really matter. I mean Plato is very much past the point of caring if someone else had one of his quotes attributed to them. But sometimes it matters so very much and the consequences can be life threatening.

I can’t remember exactly when it started, a year or so ago(ish), but suddenly everyone who supported transgender children (or any of the rest of the LGBTQIA2S spectrum) was a groomer, which showed that a whole whack of people have no idea what “groomer” actually means. It felt awful having those accusations thrown at me but I’ve dealt with bullies before so didn’t back away. Obviously I wasn’t alone. Their campaign was patently not working so whomever has been sharing the misinformation changed tactics. Suddenly they’re there for the children… watching out for them. They know what’s best for trans and queer children even over and above their parents, which is doubly ironic considering their rallying cry is “it’s my job to raise my children… you can’t teach them age appropriate sex ed and real, quantifiable proven history and science”. And what’s best for the children is absolutely no medical attention regarding transgender issues at all. Besides, all the multiple studies done over the past few decades are apparently wrong.

An article popped into my curated list of news. I guess the AI caught that I’m interested in queer issues and missed that I’m not interested in anti-queer issues. The writer, an Alberta endocrinologist named Dr. Roy Eappen, is another “I know best for the children and much better than their parents” type of guy. He is also pretty damn transphobic although I’m not entirely sure he knows this. Eappen proudly supports the “Do No Harm” organization, right down to placing their contact information at the end of his article. I went and took a peek.

The group, Do No Harm, started out with good intentions as an anti-racism organization then quickly devolved into, as Wikipedia put it, a “group that opposes gender-affirming care and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in medicine and medical education. The group assists state legislatures in attempts to ban gender-affirming care for youth.”

I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise since they started out as “a group [that] was formed to “[protect] patients and physicians from woke healthcare””

Isn’t it funny how racism, sexism, and queerphobia all travel together like the three muskateers. A little bundle of hate all wrapped up in self-righteousness.

Image by Raw Pixel

And Dr. Roy Eappen, is in the thick of it. His article is so smarmy and written in such an unctuous tone that I wanted to reach through my monitor and give him a good shake. He started off by praising his province of Alberta and the premier Danielle Smith for the common sense and science she has shown by protecting children from invasive and irreversible medical procedures. I understand that taking hormones changes the body. But know what else causes irreversible changes? Puberty. For an example of puberty and how the body changes, I give you my son Colin (not literally though, just metaphorically). You’d have to remove him and 18 computers from his apartment and, well, nobody’s got time for that.

When Colin was a child everyone from store clerks to bus drivers to, well, as I said everyone, assumed Colin was female. Even with a crew cut and wearing a Tonka shirt I’d get, “What a sweetie! She’s so pretty! What’s her name?” Which made telling them “Colin” that much more awkward. Now he’s a massive 6ft1in man, complete with a huge, curly beard. I doubt anyone mistakes him for a girl these days. That’s what puberty does and it’s irreversible for the most part, unless you can afford plastic surgery and a lot of electrolysis.

Eappen states that, “Last month the World Health Organization (WHO) declined to issue guidelines for transgender procedures for children on the grounds that “the evidence base… is limited and variable when it comes to longer-term outcomes”. He gleefully announces that “limited and variable” must mean they think there’s no proof that medical intervention helps and that some children suffer. I think that’s a huge stretch and since I have Google I can go to the WHO’s website myself and see what they have to say.

The WHO (and I can’t be the only one whose mind goes to the rock group first) has much to say about transgender children and teens and, as far as I can tell, none of the words were “limited and variable”. For starters, this is what they have to say about transgender (or gender incongruent) children:

Gender incongruence of childhood is characterised by a marked incongruence between an individual’s experienced/expressed gender and the assigned sex in pre-pubertal children. It includes a strong desire to be a different gender than the assigned sex; a strong dislike on the child’s part of his or her sexual anatomy or anticipated secondary sex characteristics and/or a strong desire for the primary and/or anticipated secondary sex characteristics that match the experienced gender; and make-believe or fantasy play, toys, games, or activities and playmates that are typical of the experienced gender rather than the assigned sex. The incongruence must have persisted for about 2 years. Gender variant behaviour and preferences alone are not a basis for assigning the diagnosis.

I also found this quote about how “gender-affirmative health care can include any single or combination of a number of social, psychological, behavioural or medical (including hormonal treatment or surgery) interventions designed to support and affirm an individual’s gender identity” and this one:

Gender Incongruence of Adolescence and Adulthood is characterised by a marked and persistent incongruence between an individual’s experienced gender and the assigned sex, which often leads to a desire to ‘transition’, in order to live and be accepted as a person of the experienced gender, through hormonal treatment, surgery or other health care services to make the individual’s body align, as much as desired and to the extent possible, with the experienced gender. The diagnosis cannot be assigned prior the onset of puberty. Gender variant behaviour and preferences alone are not a basis for assigning the diagnosis.

Eappen moves on to other statistics regarding transgender teenagers while claiming that people who support trans teens are, in fact, homophobic, which is so ironic because judging by my friends, a whole swathe of the trans community are gay, lesbian, or bi/pan. I know that isn’t an official double blind study. I also know I’ve seen it mentioned quite a few times (or umpteen dozen if you want numbers). Eappen claims that two thirds of boys who started out as transgender ended up as gay and that clinicians at England’s main treatment centre (which has since been closed) joked that puberty blockers were “transing the gay away”. Sadly the information regarding that study is behind a paywall and one solitary article was the only one reporting on it. He pontificates that “about 80% of all children who believe themselves to be transgender eventually come to terms with their sex without surgical or pharmaceutical attention” following that up with, “the worst thing we could do is prevent them from discovering who they really are by pushing them down the road of irreversible medical interventions”.

I have to wonder how many of those children simply gave up on being heard and eventually said what they knew the adults they’re communicating with want to hear. And how many of those children transitioned as adults. I also want to know where he got that information from. Eighty percent is a really freaking large amount. So I searched some more found this bit of information from the American Academy of Pediatrics:

The overall rate of retransition was 7.3%. An average of 5.37 years (SD = 1.74 years) after their initial binary social transition, most participants were living as binary transgender youth (94.0%; Table 2). Included in this group were 4 individuals (1.3% of the total sample) who retransitioned twice (to nonbinary then back to binary transgender). Some youth (3.5%) were currently living as nonbinary, including one who had retransitioned first to cisgender then to nonbinary. Finally, 2.5% were using pronouns associated with their sex at birth and could be categorized as cisgender at the time of data collection, including one who first retransitioned to live as nonbinary. Similar percentages were observed when examining the 291 youth who were in touch with the research team in the past 2 years (Table 2), when examining only those 280 youth who had not begun puberty blockers at the start of the study (Table 3), or if we examine only the 200 youth who had gone at least 5 years since their initial transition (Table 3).

That’s so far removed from what Eappen said I find it hard to believe they’re in the same galaxy. Eighty percent versus 2.5%. I mean I’m bad at math but not that bad! Unless he got that information via Tavistock, which was closed due to shoddy record keeping among other issues. In case you’re curious about Tavistock I found this bit of information through an article by Hannah Barnes from BBC’s Newsnight:

In March 2022, an independent report commissioned by Britain’s National Health Service found that the type of care provided at Tavistock was, quote, ‘Not safe or viable as a long-term option for the care of young people with gender related distress.’ It also found that the center had not used customary control measures that are typically in place when new treatments are introduced. Nor had the centre collected consistent data on its patients and treatments.

As for the trans girls in his study, how about did that go? Did the two thirds of the teens simply shrug their metaphorical shoulders and say, “Welp, I guess I’m gay.” That’s a huge amount of teenagers simply changing their minds. Where are all the other studies confirming this? And why are those birds chirping? Maybe it’s the chirping heard when everything else is silent. Maybe his confirmation bias study is the only one.

But, seriously, the reason why that study had so many subjects detransion is because every subject that they lost track of were counted as detransitioning. Shoddy paperwork does not mean your subjects are cisgender. And yet people still act like it’s trustworthy, like Eappen. It’s been shown that intelligent people are more likely to believe fake information because they know they’re smart and are positive they can spot the erroneous or misleading information. Here’s a short video about it:

I had almost finished collecting the information for this post when an article popped up in my newsfeed. An article about Nex Benedict. Nex, who used they/them pronouns at home and he/him pronouns at school, was a 16 year old non-binary student. He’s been described as intelligent and a straight A student, a talented artist, and an animal lover (especially his cat Zeus).

Oklahoma is a transphobic state. They’ve currently got 54 bills that try to restrict the LGBTQIA2S community with healthcare, being included at school, and the freedom to express themselves. They’ve already created a bathroom ban, forcing everyone into the washroom of their assigned gender at birth. Which is why Nex and his friend were heading into the women’s washroom. He was in a school disciplinary course (detention) along with three teenage girls he really didn’t know and they were mocking him and his friends for their clothing choices. When the girls entered the washroom, Nex spashed them with his water bottle and they proceeded to dogpile him and beat the shit out of him. Right up to bashing his head several times on the concrete floor. He blanked out for a bit. The school has pointed out that all the students walked to the nurses office under their own power several times, neglecting to mention that Nex walked there like he was inebriated and walking a roadside sobriety test. Then he and his friend were given a two week suspension, the girls received an “undisclosed punishment”.

Nex’s grandmother wanted to press charges against the girls for their unwarranted and brutal attack. She was told not to bother because Nex was the instigator and would be the one blamed. Because a bit of water is equal to beating someone to a pulp. If it was here, she’d be able to press charges. There however, it’s like a couple of four year old’s fighting in the living room, crying for their Mom because “he started it”. Sometimes it doesn’t matter a whit who started it. It’s what happened during and after that counts.

A trip to the hospital led to a diagnosis of a possible concussion then he went to bed early with a headache. And then he died in the living room the following morning. And now his family is bereft and little Zeus will never know what happened to his person.

It’s been a month since Nex died and the toxicology results have yet to be released. The Owasso police department is flopping around like a landed fish. Nex’s autopsy showed no signs of the beating being the cause of his death. Then it was too soon to tell and then a flop back. And now they’re waiting for the toxicology because they feel that “something’s going to be there”.

I read about the education superintendent, Ryan Walters, and his long list of transphobic actions. For example, last year, Walters and the rest of the educational department made a YouTube video to help end “radical gender theory” by talking about a “man” who assaulted a cisgender girl in the women’s washroom, complete with images of a crying little girl. Because nothing tugs on the heartstrings more than a stock photo. But it hit closer to home is when he called Nex’s death a tragedy then immediately went on to tell ABC that he wanted to focus on “the basics of education” and would not play “woke gender games” or back down from a “woke mob”. Feeling kind of like a martyr there Walters? People in his community are mourning Nex and Walters is busy using his death as a platform for his political view. That goes far being insensitive and uncaring.

Another example of his insensitivity is that he hired Chaya Raichik to be part of the Oklahoma Schools Library’s media advisory committee. Raichik has never lived in Oklahoma but she’s got one thing going for her, she created the queerphobic “Libs of TikTok”.

Nex had a teacher who he admired. That teacher, Tyler Wrynn, made a Tik-Tok video in support of queer and gender queer youths. Raichik used her platform to showcase him and similar teachers, stirring up a mob who sent him death threats and called him a “groomer”. He ended up resigning… for supporting his students.

Meanwhile Chaya Raichik agreed that Nex’s death was “horrible” but she also misgendered him, claimed he was mentally ill because he was trans, and stated she wanted to “eradicate gender ideology from public life.” And then there’s some walking piece of human excrement by the name of Tom Woods who, when asked about Nex, stated that he and the rest of the LGBTQIA2S community are “filth”. That’s classy, especially when you’re talking about a dead 16 year old.

These people, these politicians, they don’t seem to realize how badly they’re impacting families and children, ratcheting up the number of suicide attempts and leading to more dead children who felt unheard and unsupported. They talk about “woke ideology” and “woke mobs” and “radical gender theory”. They claim they’re there for the children. They aren’t. They claim they want to put the control back with the parents. And again they aren’t. If they were for the children, they’d ensure they never put any bills in that made a swathe of students feel hopeless. They’d realize that the more rights they take away from trans people, the more confident the general population feels in bullying and harassing the trans people in their lives. He’d realize he’s keeping medical treatments away from children which has been approved by their parents.

And I just opened a new tab to verify some information and the main article was Nex Benedict and how he’d committed suicide. The pathologist agreed there were signs of a brutal beating but it was the overdose that did him in. And I’m done, at least until tomorrow afternoon. I mean this post has taken long enough, especially since WordPress ate my entire, complete previous post and I’ve had to go back to the beginning. But now I need some space.

I’ve been suicidal before and well know the feelings of hopelessness and simply not mattering. It hurts to know he felt the same. That he looked around his world and saw more and more angry people who were against him. A school that rubber stamped approval for the other students to bully him. They even scared away his favourite teacher for supporting him and his fellow trans students. Nex had so much light to give the world and now it’s gone.

And here’s a final quote by someone with a pseudonym of Crystal who works for MSN:

With so much misinformation and panicked language floating around, it is reasonable to be concerned. Everyone wants what’s best for children.

But my suggestion would be that if you have concerns or doubts, why not have a conversation with a friend or loved one who is trans. 

And if you don’t have a trans person in your life you can speak to, perhaps you’re not in a good position to have an opinion on trans people’s rights.

A swing and a miss…

It happened in a group I belong to. I’m not going to tell you which one as I belong to several through several different organizations. I’m not going to say when either, keeping in mind I regularly have posts in the draft section for weeks at a time. I will, however, tell you the rest.

It was the beginning of the group and we all had all been sharing recent news about ourselves. Then someone said that her friend’s son had moved in with her after an altercation between him and his father. And then she commented that he said he was non-binary and that he wanted them to use them/their pronouns for him. So I was explaining to her that she needed to use they/them pronouns all the time; in her thoughts and when they weren’t even around. She was in the middle of explaining that she always tries to use his pronouns when the facilitator spoke up asking what sex he’s interested in. Talk about a jaw dropping moment.

She sounded baffled and said he was apparently interested in all genders. So I’m trying to explain to her what pansexual means and the facilitator announces that he really loves language and just couldn’t bring himself to use “they” in singular form and she chimed in agreeing with him. No wonder she couldn’t get their pronouns right if she didn’t even believe in them to begin with. And then it happened. One of the other group members piped up.

“I don’t get into that stuff,” she stated, ignoring the fact that by joining the conversation (or interrogation) she was, indeed, getting “into that stuff”. Then she continued with, “Tits and dick, that’s it. There’s nothing else, you’re either a man or a woman who have tits or a dick.”

I tried to explain to her that biologists know gender is a spectrum and that cultures around the world have celebrated more than two genders for millennia when she announced she was done and leaving. This would have been the perfect time for someone in authority should have addressed the blatant transphobia and explained why it shouldn’t have happened and that people of all genders, races, and sexual orientations are welcome but there was radio silence regarding the prejudice. Instead the woman announced that she was leaving because she didn’t like to talk about “those things”. This was quickly followed with a clamour of people assuring her that she was a valued member of the community and should stay; they were going to change the subject. So she stayed.

I barely said anything after that. I just sat looking down at my hands. The facilitator started going around the group asking everyone to rate their mood from one to ten and say something brief about their life. I was one of the last people. I took a deep breath and I told everyone I’d been at a four before the group but I was now a three.

“But why?” the facilitator asked in confusion.
“This has always been a safe place for me,” I explained. “But as a queer person I no longer feel safe here.”

Cue questions from several people about why I’d say such a thing. I said it was due to the transphobia, repeating, “as a queer person I no longer feel safe here”. Then everyone, except the one who actually spouted the transphobic words, clamoured to assure me that there was absolutely no transphobia in the group and no one said anything remotely transphobic. It just didn’t happen. But don’t worry you’re safe here, even as a queer person. It’s okay. But it wasn’t. If they couldn’t recognize transphobia then how am I to trust they’d recognize acephobia or homophobia. As a welcoming group, the transphobia should have been dealt with immediately but it wasn’t and I doubt it ever will.

This was my group, the one I looked forward to every week but now what? I felt unheard and invalidated during the group and even now. This group was supposed to to be a safe and supportive but it doesn’t feel safe to me now. I don’t know if it ever will.

When Country Proud meets prejudice…

It started with a beeping smoke detector, one that kept me up half the night. The next morning I called the superintendent about that beeping thing only to discover he was away for the weekend. So I asked my neighbour for help. He came over with a huge ladder and pried the detector apart, hoping to pull out the battery. But there wasn’t one, at one least visible, there was a lithium battery tucked away somewhere inaccessible, unless you held both a hammer and rage. That was when he invited me to help him find the instruction manual. As he was rummaging through the drawer, I noticed a stack of flyers that, if a little larger, could be seen from space. They were completely red with some black text and colourful pictures. It was very “rah rah our country is the best – or it would be if Trudeau wasn’t prime minister”. There were many blurbs about our rights and how they’re being trampled, along with having Trudeau charged with treason. There are only two reasons he could be charged. One is if he physically harmed the person on the throne and two is leading a full on attack on Canada. Since I never saw him backhand the Queen during his visit or heard about him gathering an army to invade Ottawa, I think he’s safe there.

I made note of the website, which wasn’t hard, and searched it out. The website was just as red and was dotted with colourful, patriotic, primary school style cartoons. A map of Canada, Mounties, beavers, maple syrup, and hockey. They were comforting and very stereotypically Canadian. All the text was upbeat, assuring the readers that they were doing great and making a difference, before asking for donations and volunteers. I scrolled past a few links, and then I saw it, the new pride flag with a line and circle placed in the centre. Nothing like patriotism and a dose of homophobia. I steeled myself and clicked the link.

Many years ago I had a friend who I met in the tenant’s association and, when we both had Facebook, we added each other. I hadn’t realized until then that she was a huge conspiracy theorist. And her aim was to get me to see the “truth”. One day she sent me an, I am loathe to call it an article, a series of words. There were links scattered throughout, all of them from reputable sources. I clicked on the first link and it was the same topic but exactly the opposite of what they were claiming. All the other links were the same. I realized the author knew his audience would never click the links, that for all they called themselves lions, they would blindly follow anyone who said they had the truth and assured them they were on top of the pack and everyone else were sheep. This website was the same.

The whole page was devoted to fear mongering about sexual education in school. They included a link to the Comprehensive Sexuality Education. I clicked on the link and, sure enough, it was nothing like what was written. What is it about people who claim they’re leaders and know the truth? Meanwhile they can’t even click links and Google names. I’m underwhelmed with their leadership skills.

It was about what I expected. Lots of fearmongering about what sexual depravities the children are learning from 0-4 years old where they claim the children must learn about masturbation (as if they all haven’t discovered it on their own) and that they “develop an interest in their own and others’ bodies“. This escalates all the way to 9-12 years old where they should have already had sex and be browsing through online porn. It’s both sobering and frightening that grown adults could look at this codswallop and think it was real. And then I read the last piece which involves SOGI. They claimed the program is crossing into gender confusion that is harming the well being of young students”.

Whoever is operating this organization has something against the UNFPA, UNICEF, IPPF, UNESCO and the UN World Health Organization. This time SOGI was blamed on the UN, claiming it was inspired by the human rights win of “a gay man in Australia”. No mention of who he is or what the win actually entailed, they wrote exactly what their readers wanted to know, that he was gay. Because that’s the crux of the matter, that’s why they put a pride flag next to the story. Underneath the flag it says they need to “stop the segregation of students through SOGI”. First, do they even know what segregation is? And second, they’re the ones wanting to hush the queer kids into silence and to let them know, through actions, that they’re lesser than the other students.

Last year I wrote a post about a neighbour who informed me that he was fine with the LGB’s or whatever as long as “they keep their lifestyles to themselves”. He didn’t want anything rammed down his throat. This isn’t the Church of Homosexuality and Queerness. There isn’t anyone going door to door extolling rainbows and fabulousness. Nobody is wanting to put anything into any of his orifices. But there it is. An idea has permeated through our culture (and other cultures as well) that queer people are just sex, sex, sex, and perversion.

Five or so years ago I had a friend who I met through work. We got along well. She came to my Christmas party and we went out for lunch a time or two. Then I told her about an instance that happened at Canada’s Wonderland, a large amusement park just north of Toronto. Colin and I had gone to the park with PFLAG to celebrate Gay Day. It was great! Free transportation (with snacks), discounted day passes, and a bbq dinner. It wasn’t until the next day that I heard about the couple at the waterpark. They hugged briefly and parents complained vociferously that children should not be exposed to that sort of thing and the young men were ejected from the waterpark. I told my friend about the instance only to have her tell me she agreed with the parents and the staff. Things of a sexual nature should stay in the bedroom; little children don’t need to witness that. Then I what she’d think of a straight couple doing then exact same thing and she was fine with it. Because if a straight person hugs their partner it’s a show of affection. If a gay couple does the same it’s perverse and a sign they’re going to strip and do the nasty. We weren’t friends after that.

The person who wrote that page of misinformation wrote, near the bottom, that “it’s fair to note that all men and women of any orientation and gender deserve equal rights” as if this mitigated the fact they used a crossed out pride flag as the image for the post. You can’t say everyone’s equal then slap a pride flag beside a post on degeneracy. It just doesn’t work.

And SOGI was created by the ARC foundation in Vancouver, BC

Look! There’s a groomer! And one over there!

Years ago, a country had a huge edifice of learning called the Institute for Sexual Science. The primary topic they discussed was being transgender – why people are trans and, more importantly, how to help them, something that included non-binary people. This place was not just an institute but a safe place, an STI clinic, and a place to get both gender affirming surgery for trans women and hormone therapy. Magnus Hirschfeld, the man who founded the institute, was both Jewish and gay and understood the need for a safe house. Then a man rose to power and demanded the building be torn down and every book and scrap of research burned. The fire that engulfed those more than twenty thousand books was the first and largest book burning in Germany. The man was Hitler.

That’s how safety can disappear in a second; that’s how hope gets destroyed.

Photo from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
This is the Institute for Sexual Studies; a sanctuary for the LGBTQ community

For many years trans rights has slowly been increasing but there’s a long distance to go. The knowledge that was lost in the flames has been regained and hormones and surgery are available (at least in Canada). Even children are allowed the right to be themselves; the school board has, in writing, that names and pronouns need to be respected. That’s easy right? It’s simply that people need to be their authentic selves and treated fairly, who could take offence at that? Apparently the majority of the right wing, fundamentalist population. They looked up from stripping women’s rights back by around half a century and pondered who else to drag through the mud. They finally decided on a double whammy of transgender people and drag queens, who they were already dragging, so it wasn’t exactly a long reach. It’s pretty clear that someone (plural) has been planning this for a while, right down to accusing anyone who disagrees with them to as a groomer. If you talk to one transphobe, you’ll hear the same lies, half truths, and misdirections as all the others. It’s like they’re reading a script.

The act of grooming, is not about reading story books to children in a public library, something that about 99.9% of the right wing population seems to have forgotten. It’s when a pedophile slowly and increasingly introduces things of a sexual nature, as secretly as possible, into a child’s life, with the intent of having sexual interactions with said child. Like when my younger sister came home from school with candy one afternoon. My Mom asked where she got those treats and was told, “From that man who lives at the corner”. Yes, she had gone into his house to get them even though we’d been told not to but she wasn’t all that old. This was the 70’s, when kids walked themselves to school in grade one, kindergarten if there was little traffic on the streets. My Mom immediately called the police, who assured her after a talk with my sister, that nothing had happened to her. That’s how it works though, starting small and innocent then progressing to more adult things and eventually sex. And he was a bona fide pedophile too, he was certainly not supposed to live a block from an elementary school, or invite young children into his house. Pedophilia and grooming are definitely not inviting children to listen to age appropriate stories in a library with their parents and staff right there (literally right there).

I’ve been sitting up here in the north, watching news and posts about the States. State by state tumbling down like dominos. The conservatives rant and scream about how they’re saving kindergarten children from having their genitals mutilated by surgery and from being put on hormones. Basically they’re saving children from things that weren’t happening in the first place. But when they’re informed of this they plug their ears to the truth and keep on with their campaign of cruelty. No more blockers until they’re an adult and old enough to decide, meaning yet another generation gets to go through the wrong puberty. Forced detransitioning for teens who had already started puberty blockers or hormones. To me that sounds like a ticking time bomb for suicides. I can’t imagine the terror, panic, and fury of teens who were happy and comfortable matching with the gender of their hearts, only to find out they now have to stop their blockers or hormones and go through a puberty they never wanted. The conservatives need to put themselves in those shoes.

There’s another reason I don’t believe the right’s claim to be doing all this for the children. That’s because I’ve seen how Christian conservatives treat transgender children when those kids stubbornly stay trans. I watched a story about a little girl who simply wanted to use the girl’s washroom at her school, and when I say girl I mean prepubescent child. A good portion of the interview was conducted while sitting on the roof of their house because it was the girl’s favourite place to sit. She was sad because she wouldn’t be able to sit there for much longer as her parents were already making emergency plans to leave the state with her. Not only was she dealing the fear of using the boys toilet at school, considering she was pretty much a human punching bag seeing as she was slender, slight, and feminine, but she also was dealing with guilt. She knew that the whole family was getting uprooted because of her. They were leaving friends behind and a good chunk of their belongings. The interviewer spoke to adults in her home town too. You’d think that since the religious right were so devoted to helping children they would be intent on helping her, even it was misguided assertions of telling her she’s a boy. No, they jumped right into insults and threats of violence. According to them she was an “it”, “the thing”, and a “half baked maggot”. They then moved on to bragging about beating the shit out of her. Sounds very family oriented, doesn’t it.

A few months ago I logged onto Facebook and noticed a girl I follow was moving, as in right now, due to safety reasons. They had to leave almost everything they had including her much loved hens but it was worth it to keep her safe. I really don’t think that families in the US should have to drop everything and flee. How about you? So much for the land of the free. Maybe it should be changed to the land of the free-ish.

I did a lot of reading while writing this post and discovered a number of things done mainly by parents on the right side. Like taking the kids to Hooters for a meal, which isn’t the worst except you know there’s definitely at least one Dad leaning over the table to his five year old son and pretend whispering, “Would you take a look at her bazongas???” What’s worse is I discovered multiple Moms sewing Hooters outfits for their very young daughters then taking her to Hooters to show off her outfit, complete with group photos from the staff. I don’t have anything against the staff but shouldn’t the little girl have an array of job opportunities, far later than kindergarten, and not settle for a minimum wage job with horrible pay and shitty job requirements.

Worse than that are the beauty pageants. They must be a US thing, specifically a southern US thing. Basically the Mom stuffs her little girl (it’s always a girl) into a dress designed for a woman except sized for a little girl and then she’s gussied up to look like the child version of a grown woman. Hair extensions, false nails, pancake makeup… what does it do to a little girl when her dress, makeup, and fake hair seem to matter more than her. When she’s judged on how sexy she can appear. This isn’t a hobby or activity, it’s a multi-million dollar industry formed on backs of children. And not a peep from the religious right.

Even their claim to be concerned about permanent damage rings false. First there’s circumcision and pierced ears. Whether you agree with them or not you have to admit they change the body. Circumcision is obvious (even more obvious with complications) but pierced ears (and other locations) can get infected, the body can reject the metal or, like me, they could get scars. My right earlobe sinks down, leaving my earring look like it’s flapping in the breeze. I’ve had so many people warn me I’m losing an earring. Even the most accepted practices are often performed without consent on babies and toddlers.

But I’m not really talking about that. I’m talking about things like plastic surgery on an eleven year old to make her look older. I swear there was an article about her. I must have set it down for a minute and now I can’t find it anywhere. She got her hips, buttocks, and I believe her lips. And now she and her Mom are pretending she’s older so she can date young men. I wonder how many innocent men she’s put at risk of getting labelled a pedophile. I don’t know whose performing these procedures but they’re getting done and this girl’s not the only one.

Kansas is doing it’s absolute best to ignore trans people although the children, so far, are safe. Florida’s busy banning books, oops they’re simply putting books in a different location away from children. The law is written so broadly it can encompass the whole LGBTQIA2S community. I highly doubt that’s a coincidence. And then there’s Missouri. Why is there Missouri? I just have the name jotted down, I just can’t remember why. There are so many states in the United States, so many countries in the world, it’s impossible to keep up with the hatred. I just looked and, damn, Missouri has forbidden teachers to say anything about the LGBTQIA2S community and then they need a guardian’s permission first. By the end of January they had wracked up at least 27 anti-LGBTQ bill and were leading the country. I think Texas has surpassed them; this is not a race you want to win, Texas. And they’ve started after the children. Their bill, which bans children from receiving any gender affirming surgery, has been placed on hold. The senator who introduced the bill had this to say, “Sex changes and little kids are two things that should never go together,” Proving, once again that the people making these bills do no research and speak to no one in the community.

When I was in college, I had a teacher who explained the primary difference between the parenting styles between liberal and conservatives. The liberal parents believe in following their child’s lead, discussing what went wrong, in the case of negative behaviour, and brainstorming how to make things better. Conservative parents feel like their kids unfinished as children and shouldn’t have any say in decision making until they’re nearing adulthood.

Liberal parents have children who wander into their grade one class wearing orange track pants, a lacy purple top, and mismatched shoes (one’s bright red). The parent with the child shrugs and says, “At least they stand out in the crowd.” The conservative parent’s child is well dressed and they’re noticeably scratching themself. “Quit scratching yourself,” the parent says in that hissed whisper parents use when they wish they were both silent and invisible. The parent gives the offending sweater a quick swipe before continuing with,”See, your sweater is nice and soft so stop wriggling around” It won’t be until the evening, at bathtime, when they discover the huge, torso sized rash. A parent is dispatched to the pharmacy for soothing cream and the child is slathered before bed. In the end each family has happy and content children.

And that would be the end of it except one side has decided that parenting their own children wasn’t enough, they had to take control of other people’s children as well. Other people they’ll never meet. Because they know better than those other people. And so it goes, with the right listening to the people they trust; the leaders of their churches and the good ol’ boy local politicians. And the liberals getting derided for listening to their children.

And somewhere out there, there’s a little girl worrying about her chickens.

It’s not a phobia if you just hate us…

“You know I have no problem with them,” he said loudly but cheerfully. “They can do what they want, they can be what they want. I’ve got no beef with the lgb’s, or whatever they’re called, as long as they keep their lifestyles to themselves. I don’t want anything rammed down my throat.

Rammed down his throat. That’s such a phallic term. Such a violent term. As if the person is being dragged into the bedroom and forced into a sex act against their will instead of something mundane like finding out that the new lead character on Doctor Who is gay. Their reaction is always astronomically disproportionate to what’s happening in the LGBTQIA2S community.

I stood in his kitchen and wished I was anywhere but there. I can’t even remember why I was there in the first place, either something for cats or about food. We swap food and are always up for a good chat about our cats. That day I felt some of my still new and fragile trust crumble. I can’t see that coming back.

I’ve had people say multiple times, usually in June, that the queer community doesn’t need all those parades and days now that everything is equal. That’s usually about when I stare at them in dumbfounded astonishment. Just because people aren’t being chased down on the streets (usually) doesn’t mean everything’s equal.

One thing I’ve noticed is that, when you look at fiction and in examples at school and in meetings, everyone is straight. And I mean e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e. I can’t speak for anyone else but I find it uncomfortable. Not hugely, more in a “slight wrinkle in my sock” sort of way. I found it uncomfortable before I came out too. When I want to forget something, my mind tends to throw it down the deepest metaphorical hole around, board it up, pile rocks on it, and then sit on it. So I was uncomfortable and had no idea why. I mean other than the obvious that there’s more than straight couples. There’s more than straight/gay couples for that matter. Show some imagination and initiative. Single people, throuples, families with grandparents in the home. I was going to get into queerplatonic relationships but you can’t see relationship bonds in a picture.

And even the most well meaning allies can mess up. I was in a group several days ago and the instructor made a comment along the lines of, “… whoever she was dating. You know, male… whatever…” I don’t know about anyone else but I don’t think I can find “whatever” on a dating profile. I’m pretty sure I winced. I just hope it wasn’t too visible.

But at least I live in Canada where our major LGBTQIA2S issues tend to be Jordan Peterson and his memory issues, especially around remembering pronouns. I hope someone tells him about the MMSE. It’s not difficult to take a dementia screening test and it’s certainly better to find out early. However Britain and the United States are faring far worse.

I don’t know why it’s so often the right side of the political spectrum. I mean they’re the ones who are supposed to be out there protecting the children. They’re the ones whose self professed core identity is “family values”. Except which families? From what I’ve seen they’re for family values as long as they’re the “right” families. You know, Leave it to Beaver style but with microwaves and computers.

Thing is, as soon as you’re not part of their stereotypical family, it’s all “not my kind of family, I don’t care what happens” and that goes for the children too. I have personally spoken to several parents who lost children to Children’s Aid (or whatever it’s named in their area) simply because they affirmed their trans child’s gender. One parent had to watch helplessly as her ex punished their daughter by making her hold hot sauce on her tongue for saying she was a girl. Protective services either okayed or ignored it because “what if it works?” I mean what’s a little cPTSD if she ends up cisgender, even though never in the history of ever has that happened. Even though every major children’s medical organization supports affirming your child’s asserted gender.

I wasn’t sure what was happening in Britain so I messaged a friend of mine and was sent this video with the warning that it’s long. She wasn’t kidding, it’s an hour and a half long and I watched the whole episode. The host is very interesting and very informative. While I recommend watching her, what was talked about can pretty much summed up as planned ineptitude. Trans people need to see their GP first before getting any gender specific care. Except the GP doesn’t actually do anything except send a referral to a gender clinic. Let’s say the best case scenario happens (knock on particle board) and the GP isn’t transphobic and/or wildly misinformed and they send that referral right away. Britain is supposed to provide healthcare within 18 weeks for every citizen. That apparently doesn’t include their transgender citizens. The wait just to get the first appointment at a gender clinic is roughly 18 months to five years, depending on where you live. If you live by The Laurels, for example, the wait will be around the five years mark seeing as that one’s in a busy part of London. And there’s a crucial segment of the society which this lackadaisical approach hurts the most and that’s children. GPs do not offer a single bit of trans health care and that includes puberty blockers. If they have a patient with precocious puberty, they have no problem administering blockers. But the same dose of the same medication to a similar sized trans youth? Suddenly that’s way out of the doctor’s expertise. Puberty does not stop because of wait lists, it keeps creeping up, leaving clue after clue of it’s existence. And each clue just deepens the dread of each child who did what they were supposed to (and the ones who couldn’t to be honest). They talked to their parents and their doctor. They got sent to the gender clinic. This wasn’t supposed to be happening. Except it is and good luck in finding someone on the phone who cares.

There was a church nearby-ish when I was a little girl. They sent buses all over the city and picked up any child from the foot of their driveway. I know my parents were a little concerned about letting us go off to an unknown church on our own but ultimately the chance to be down two out of three girls won out. Besides, it was a church. What could go wrong? People all over the world sigh deeply. My parents were further reassured because our friends and neighbours were going too. The oldest was a girl who got described as mature, responsible, adult, and who always followed the rules. These days she’d be described as anxious. Either way the nursery school teacher saw her as the perfect target. My class was supposed to be drawing a picture of Jesus and I decided to draw a picture of a meadow instead. It still sounds like a non-issue to me but the teacher was dead serious in her insistence that I was going to burn in the fiery pits of hell if I didn’t repent and colour Jesus. I’m pretty sure my response went along the lines of, “I think I’m going to make this flower purple”. So she moved on. To my anxious friend. And told her that I was going to burn in hell and it would be her fault unless she convinced me to draw Jesus. My friend told her parents, who told my parents, and we all got pulled out immediately. The church is still around today and is doing spectacularly well. They’ve bought at least one other church in their neighbourhood and installing a large LED sign complete with moving images. They’re also queerphobic, something that came up in an article recently. I wasn’t surprised. Religion broke my trust from the moment we met and didn’t do much to redeem itself since then. Any church that would tell a five year old they were going to hell for being different had a really good chance in being anti-LGBTQIA2S. When I go past a church my automatic thought is often, “well they’d hate me”. If anyone out there is thinking that I need to do better, no. It’s not my responsibility to guess which churches are safe and which think I’m Satan incarnate. Police your own. Make it safe not only for queer adults to come in but for the queer 8 year old in the third pew to listen in safety. They don’t need to hear that everyone in their lives, right down to their God thinks they’re damned for existing.

Sticks and stones can break your bones but names can leave you standing on a ledge

That was my first but not the last outright promise of a one way trip to hellfire and brimstone from people who proclaimed their faith in both Christ and their church. Many claimed they were a better person because of that faith. Better than me, not better than their past selves.

Pardon me, I don’t think you can hear me over your overweening ego.

There are so very many good, kind, and loving people who read their holy books, seeing only goodness and truth, then they set out to follow that path. And then there are the ones who see judgment, retribution, and wrath – of course only to everyone else. They sit in their pews feeling righteous all the while judging those around them. And one of the biggest, if not the biggest groups, is the LGBTQIA2S community. It goes right back to the beginning of this post…

“I don’t want anything rammed down my throat”

People who make statements like that are thinking about sex first and us being people second. Nothing was rammed down their throats but they think of queer people sexually and then they get upset and it’s our fault. Right? It’s like the meme where the guy shoves a stick into his own bike wheel to show he was the victim. No one made you think those thoughts and chances are they weren’t even true but, like the cyclist, you’re yelling and pointing just the same.

I had a friend a few years ago. We’d worked together for several years and now we hung out with each other and chatted on messenger. I thought she was a great person. And then I went to Canada’s Wonderland with Colin to celebrate Gay Day. Canada’s Wonderland is a decent sized amusement park in “the city above Toronto” and Gay Day is an LGBTQIA2S event offered by PFLAG with discounted tickets, a free ride, and a free meal. Colin and I had a great time and went home satisfied and with a phone full off pictures. The next day information started popping up about a gay couple who got kicked out of the waterpark area because one kissed the other on the cheek. The whole issue was badly handled by Canada’s Wonderland and PFLAG found somewhere else to go for the following year and beyond. Everyone was supportive of the couple and furious with Canada’s Wonderland and then my friend wandered in clutching her “won’t anyone think of the children?” pearls.

The park was right, in her eyes, because little children didn’t need to see things like that. When I expressed confusion over what the hell “that” was, she informed me that things of a sexual nature need to stay in the bedroom. I pointed out that straight (and straight appearing) couples kiss all the time in public then she informed me she was fine with straight people kissing (and totally missed the irony). She blocked me a short while later.

I’d actually written this a while ago. I just needed to write a closing paragraph and add it to WordPress and I was done. Then, on November 20^th I saw a post from a friend of mine on Facebook. It was brief and mentioned a shooter at a gay bar. There was no way it could be the Pulse Nightclub, not this many years later so I asked her and googled. A 22 year old walked into Club Q nightclub right before midnight (and right before the Transgender Day of Remembrance) and opened fire. Twenty six people, including the shooter, were injured and five murdered. It could have been worse, there was an army veteran in the crowd who tackled the shooter and got the guns out of his hands; plus several more who kept him down. But it certainly could be better.

As soon as the shooter got into custody he immediately said he was non-binary* and wanted the appropriate pronouns and the honorific Mx. Maybe he was trying something sneaky but…

“I’m a Mormon and a conservative Republican and we don’t do gay,” said the shooter’s father with relief. He’d heard his son was at a gay bar and was happy to discover his son had just shot over a dozen people and killed five instead of maybe looking for a date.

People make all sorts of excuses.
It’s part of their religion.
Everyone has the right to their own beliefs.

But it’s always the rights of the haters that are protected and not the ones being protected. How much is a life worth? How much is one that’s free from depression, anxiety, and cPTSD? We place so much value on words of hatred and cruelty that we diminish the lives of the people they’re aimed at. Words and hatred work together easily, dripping poison into minds, especially into vulnerable ones. I wonder how much poison the Club Q shooter heard before he packed his guns and headed out, especially considering his father’s attitude. I can only wonder who’s soaking in a hefty dose of poison before girding up their hatred so they can shoot next.

* I don’t know what pronouns the Colorado shooter is now using but everyone was using he/him and I figured that might be a clue

Facing queerphobia…

I can’t remember exactly how old I was, probably around five or six, but it was summer and a handful of us girls were on “the circle”, an area of grass at the end of our court. We were trying to think of something to do when one of the girls piped up, “Let’s play wedding!”

I was meh on the whole idea. She only wanted to play wedding because she had a crush on Peter and she could pretend to marry him. Then all she needed was someone to marry them, a bridesmaid, and one or two people to hold down Peter so he couldn’t escape. The rest of us were the audience and simply stood there. This really didn’t seem like much fun to me and a hell of a lot less fun for Peter. Then I came up with a partial solution. Why didn’t she marry one her her friends? That at least took Peter off the hook.

There was a song I loved when I was that age by The Vogues called “Five O’clock World” and, in part, it read:

’cause it’s a five o’clock world when the whistle blows
No-one owns a piece of my time
And there’s a long-haired girl who waits, I know
To ease my troubled mind, yeah!
In the shelter of her arms everything’s okay
She talks and the world goes slipping away
And I know the reason I can still go on
When every other reason is gone

In my kindergarten mind I knew I was going to grow up someday and need to work but that when I finished work she would be waiting for me and would hug me and ask me about my day. I never said anything about it to anyone but why would I? It was my normal. And then I made my suggestion to the other girls.

The girl with the crush was horrified. “That’s disgusting!” she exclaimed, staring at me in disbelief. “Why would you even say that?”

“Peter doesn’t want to play,” I protested. “And you’re all friends.”

“Girls don’t marry girls. Ever!” she announced firmly. “That’s gross!

I nodded my head. I don’t know if she was the oldest but she felt like the oldest to me and everyone knew the big kids knew more. And it wasn’t like anyone else in the world wanted to hug or marry someone of the same gender, at least not in my world and they’re the same thing at that age. So I packed up my feelings and buried them away. I’ve gotten very good at that over the years, packing thoughts away in places only my nightmares can find.

There were some cracks in my thoughts and feelings over the years but it wasn’t until I was in my 40’s and was friends with someone who was both openly queer and willing to listen that I started unpacking thoughts and memories I’d long forgotten I’d even had. I’m still unpacking. The 80’s were pretty bad. Like, hey, I’m trapped at a school event beside a teacher and fellow students who are laughing and joking about driving to the “Gay Village” of Toronto to throw rocks at the queers because it was so much fun. “And how many have you hit? Did anyone bleed?” My suicidal ideation started around that time.

Then there was yesterday. I woke up all excited and ready to start the day and even put on my ace t-shirt and rainbow socks for International Asexuality Day. Then after my exercise class I got my bundle buggy and headed out the door, determined to get some walking in plus some necessities, which I did. I also picked up a yummy looking chocolate bar, a fresh cinnamon bun for this morning (it was delicious), my favourite peanut butter cups, and four gourmet cupcakes. By the time I went to all 5 stores (two were only for one item) I was wiped and my buggy was heavier than me. I was soon on the little On Demand bus and heading home. The driver even dropped me off at the front door of my building and helped me with my buggy (bonus good mood). And then my neighbour came running out the door to show the driver her cat.

She came back inside while I was still in the lobby and then started to talk. Soon she asked me how I was doing.

“I’m fine,” I replied cheerfully. “It’s International Asexuality Day-

“What?” she replied loudly so I repeated myself, making sure to enunciate each word clearly.

“What?!?”

Okay, obviously it wasn’t a hearing issue. Maybe she’d never heard of asexuality. No big deal but I was feeling a bit grumbly. I’d brought it up as a segue into my yummy cupcakes and a definition plus a possible q&a were going to take up more time than I’d anticipated.

“Asexuality is when you don’t have sexual attraction toward-

“That’s disgusting!” she announced flatly and with finality.

Fury flushed my cheeks. I wasn’t just going to roll over and hide. Not anymore.

“I’m asexual,” I informed her.

“Disgusting!” she replied then she stormed down the hallway the opposite direction from her apartment. I silently wished whoever she was visiting the best of luck then pushed the button for my floor. One I got home I put everything away then logged into Facebook and recounted what had just happened, ending with:

“She better get coal in her stocking this year! Also, these cupcakes are going to be amazing!!!”

I figured I’d get some support (if Facebook didn’t wander off with my post and hide it somewhere) and for the most part I did. But there were a couple of dissenters and, as always, they were a complete surprise. Two women I’ve known online since around 1998-2000. The comments hit like blows.

• Maybe she was just uncomfortable because I was “discussing my sexuality” by saying what day it was and maybe that made her scared so she reacted.
• It doesn’t matter if she doesn’t know what asexuality is the whole idea of someone announcing their sexuality as a “holiday” can come across rather bluntly and confusing as it should be a personal topic.
• The whole scenario, if it happened to me, I would be left feeling like a person had no boundaries and overshared details which would leave me feeling very uncomfortable and full of red flags about the person.

• You are discussing your bedroom with someone who didn’t consent to knowing about your lifestyle.

The platform for awareness is what matters and this was not the time or place to announce you’re preferences for the bedroom.

Then I left the computer for dinner and a much needed break and came back after my lavender and chocolate cupcake (by Sweets from the Earth) and discovered that one of my friends had unfriended me while I was away from my keyboard. I guess I won’t be seeing her sunrise and lake photos this year.

And no, seriously no. Saying three words, International Asexuality Day, is not telling anyone what I prefer in the bedroom nor is it discussing my bedroom.

A “lifestyle” is country vs downtown condo or eclectic vs modern. No one says that being straight is a lifestyle. That’s because sexual orientation is not a lifestyle.

And where’s my consent? Where’s my consent when friends go into uber detail about their dates? Or when eye candy pictures get posted and people talk about dragging him into the bedroom and how hot he’s making them? Straight people discuss their “bedroom” all the time. Who their dating… who they’d like to date… that hot guy on the show… what’s going on with their husband… all of that is fine, normal, and has nothing to do with the bedroom. But I mention a holiday and I suddenly need to bring a clipboard and legal documents to make sure everyone knows exactly what three words they’re about to hear.

In short, there is nothing wrong with announcing that it’s any day, week, or month that belongs to the LGBTQIA community. It does not tell anyone anything about what someone’s doing in their bedroom any more than saying you’re straight tells them what you do.

As my friend Sylvia pointed out, there is a major holiday that celebrates sexuality every single year. I had the same two people deny it but really? They sell frigging red satin lingerie with lace for the occasion. Yes, there’s romance involved but, at the end of the day, the day’s supposed to end in the bedroom with those rose petals and itchy undies. And straight people are totally fine with that because it’s directly marketed to them. International Asexuality Day isn’t marketed toward sex or bedrooms so why is that the one that’s oversharing and overly personal?

Some days I think we’ve moved so far ahead as a society and that maybe, just maybe, it’s safe for me to peek my head out and just be myself.

Other times I realize we’re all just standing in the dust calling anything we don’t understand “gross” while throwing rocks at those we find weird.

And for the love of all you hold dear, can everyone just make enough room to stand and be myself without judgement?