I don't think I did so last time.

Here you go:

Left: Gage Skidmore. Donald Trump [photograph], Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED, Right: Mark Burns on the Stew Peters Show.

On Monday, former President Donald Trump announced his endorsement of Pastor Mark Burns for South Carolina's 3rd Congressional District. The pastor has previously exhibited extremist rhetoric towards LGBTQ+ and transgender individuals, calling for the arrest and execution of those he accuses of LGBTQ+ and transgender "indoctrination." Trump's endorsement threatens to swing a crowded Republican primary in Burns' direction. Given the heavily Republican lean of the district, Burns would emerge as the clear favorite to win the congressional seat should he win his primary.

Pastor Mark Burns made headlines in 2022 for calling for the return of the House Un-American Activities Committee to arrest and execute LGBTQ+ and transgender allies and individuals whom he accuses of "grooming." In a video released after his appearance on The Stew Peters Show, Burns stated, "The LGBT, transgender grooming of our children's minds is a national security threat because it is ultimately designed to destabilize the republic we call the United States of America. That's why, whenever I'm elected, I want to start holding people accountable for treason to the Constitution. I'm going to push to reenact HUAC... We need to hold people accountable for treason, start having some public hearings, and begin executing those who are found guilty of treasonous acts against the Constitution of the United States of America..."

You can watch clips of his statements from that 2022 interview here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39RHsfm-RH8

Burns has run for Congress twice before, in 2018 and 2022. Although he campaigned as a Trump-inspired candidate in those years, he failed to secure an endorsement from the former president. This year, however, it appears he has finally received that endorsement. Donald Trump posted, "There are many great conservatives exploring a run for that seat, but Mark Burns has been with me from the very beginning of our movement to Make America Great Again," adding, "Pastor Mark Burns is an America First fighter and has my complete and total endorsement." That endorsement is significant in a crowded field of nine Republican candidates. Furthermore, the previous election did not even feature a Democrat on the ballot—the winner of the Republican primary will be the prohibitive favorite to win the congressional seat.

You can see the endorsement here:

It does not appear that Burns has changed his views towards LGBTQ+ and transgender individuals. The day before receiving the endorsement, he took to Twitter to call Transgender Day of Visibility "blasphemous" and "an insult to the millions of Christians who celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ," reacting to Transgender Day of Visibility coinciding with Easter Sunday in 2024. Notably, Transgender Day of Visibility has always fallen on March 31, while Easter's date varies. Just after receiving the endorsement, Burns appeared on the far-right Freeman Report, where he claimed that Democrats are "attacking real women in America" with transgender-inclusive policies.

Trump’s endorsement is the latest sign that the candidate is embracing extremist anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-transgender stances for the 2024 election. On March 30th, Trump decried a proclamation by Biden recognizing Transgender Day of Visibility, calling it “blasphemous” and demanding that he “issue an apology to the millions of Catholics and Christians across America who believe tomorrow is for one celebration only—the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” Trump has previously advocated for targeting gender transition support “at any age” and investigating hospitals and manufacturers of hormone therapy and puberty blockers. He has also previously called for national bans on trans youth care as well as a national trans sports ban.

When asked about the endorsement on the Freeman Report, Burns stated that Trump had called him and declared him "the congressman," indicating that both Trump and Burns feel confident about the impact of the endorsement. The Republican primary election for the seat is scheduled for June 11, 2024. Should he win over 50% of the vote, Burns will represent the Republican Party in the race for a seat that has been held by a Republican since 1995.

You can access the link here.

^ PDF version from MEGA.

I don't know if it's possible because of the importance of opsec but would there be interest in a periodic outfit of the day thread? I've seen a few posts popping up and around that people don't know how to dress anymore and it might be a way to help.

I am posting this here because my experience accepting myself as polyamorous mirrors the process of acceptance and coming-out that was required by my other queer identities.

Just as our culture coerces heteronormativity, so too does it coerce mononormativity- the idea that love should be monoamous. We are taught that love can only exist between two people, that to love more than one person is wrong.

Why? Why should we feel jealous if our lover loves another? To love is the greatest joy in a human life; I would never deprive one I love of such joy. Nor could I be with anyone who would so deprive me. How vile a thought, to look upon two people and say, "Your love is wrong; I will not allow it."

For years I thought I was going to hell because I fell in love again after getting married. Today, I am with both of them, and I am in heaven.

I think we need to create more trans specific meme communities on hexbear to drag more people over from reddit. I'd like to see a punch for punch recreation of /r/traa and /r/tgcj so we can say we are a definitive place to replace reddit for trans users. Currently, blahaj has far too many issues from 196 chasers and we need to up our footing. If I have to, and I hate modding, I'll mod the traa community. I'd also like to discuss strategies for how to go about posting to lgbt spaces on reddit to get people to leave that shithole. Taking over certain communities and redirecting in some way seems like a good idea, maybe poking top posters from traa to come here

I had like an interaction where I had some decent clues that a person only introduces their pronouns after they clocked me, e.g. other people didn't do pronoun intro before, the way the "ally in question" did it felt pretty artificial (I am willing to write that off on being paranoid).

The message is "I know you are trans, you are not passing, but I am graciously allowing you to exist in this group setting". Same goes for only doing pronoun checks in a group setting when you clock a trans person. I find it worse than assuming wrong pronouns and switching after being gently corrected. Maybe because I have higher standards of would-be allies than the average person. After all, allies are supposed to have my back, not just not having a moment when I pass by. On the other hand, I have it easy for being okay with being a semi-binary trans woman, so obv enby struggles are another thing, but clocking still stings like a bitch.

Pronoun checks should be normalized to a point cis people do it intuitively, but idk if we will ever get there. If you wanna chime in, when and how did you call that behaviour out or point it out, if you saw it? Did your response work?

edit: btw idk what the fuck an hrtcat is or if they're even relevant i just wanted to post some ragebait. anyway if u need hrt go diyhrtwiki or diyhrtcafe

Please help me. I'm a white woman. Ruin my life 👍 Thank you ❤️

I LOVE MY TRANS COMRADES

Since federating, we can see MORE TRANS COMRADES. And THAT'S GREAT

I LOVE MY NEW TRANS COMRADES

I LOVE MY OLD TRANS COMRADES

WE ALL LOVE ALL OUR TRANS COMRADES

KEEP ON ROCKIN'

Hahaha your gender go poof get owned nerd

AFAB people not being hyper-feminine isn't internalized misogyny.

It should be pretty obvious that not being the patriarchal standard of 'feminine' is going to get AFAB people the most shit from the patriarchy. If we wanted to 'avoid misogyny' we sure as shit wouldn't be doing this.

An AFAB person dressing the way patriarchal men want them to in order to avoid social ostracization would be internalized misogyny, not the other way around.

I don't know why idiots think that make-up and dresses are genetic. Bro, men used to make up, powdered wigs, and heels. And don't get me started on togas and robes, that shit is just a dress. It's not inherently feminine. We made that shit up.

I'm not 'rejecting womanhood' and I don't have internalised misogyny just because I'm AFAB NB. This is literally just me being who I am inside. I won't be gaslit into performing gender in a way I don't want to.

Trans Girls Belong on Girls’ Sports Teams

There is no scientific case for excluding them

In February 2020, the families of three cisgender girls filed a federal lawsuit against the Connecticut Association of Schools, the nonprofit Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference and several boards of education in the state. The families were upset that transgender girls were competing against the cisgender girls in high school track leagues. They argued that transgender girls have an unfair advantage in high school sports and should be forced to play on boys’ teams.

Conservatives around the country have jumped on the question. Attorney General Merrick Garland was pressed on the issue during his confirmation hearing last month. State legislators around the country are pushing bills that would force trans girls to compete on boys’ teams. In describing the Connecticut case in the Wall Street Journal, opinion writer Abigail Shrier expressed a representative argument: when transgender girls compete on girls’ sports teams, she wrote, “[cisgender] girls can’t win.”

The opinion piece left out the fact that two days after the Connecticut lawsuit was filed by the cisgender girls’ families, one of those girls beat one of the transgender girls named in the lawsuit in a Connecticut state championship. It turns out that when transgender girls play on girls’ sports teams, cisgender girls can win. In fact, the vast majority of female athletes are cisgender, as are the vast majority of winners. There is no epidemic of transgender girls dominating female sports. Attempts to force transgender girls to play on the boys’ teams are unconscionable attacks on already marginalized transgender children, and they don’t address a real problem. They’re unscientific, and they would cause serious mental health damage to both cisgender and transgender youth.

Policies permitting transgender athletes to play on teams that match their gender identity are not new. The Olympics have had trans-inclusive policies since 2004, but a single openly transgender athlete has yet to even qualify. California passed a law in 2013 that allows trans youth to compete on the team that matches their gender identity; there have been no issues. U SPORTS, Canada’s equivalent to the U.S.’s National Collegiate Athletic Association, has allowed transgender athletes to compete with the team that matches their identity for the past two years.

The notion of transgender girls having an unfair advantage comes from the idea that testosterone causes physical changes such as an increase in muscle mass. But transgender girls are not the only girls with high testosterone levels. An estimated 10 percent of women have polycystic ovarian syndrome, which results in elevated testosterone levels. They are not banned from female sports. Transgender girls on puberty blockers, on the other hand, have negligible testosterone levels. Yet these state bills would force them to play with the boys. Plus, the athletic advantage conferred by testosterone is equivocal. As Katrina Karkazis, a senior visiting fellow and expert on testosterone and bioethics at Yale University explains, “Studies of testosterone levels in athletes do not show any clear, consistent relationship between testosterone and athletic performance. Sometimes testosterone is associated with better performance, but other studies show weak links or no links. And yet others show testosterone is associated with worse performance.” The bills’ premises lack scientific validity.

Claiming that transgender girls have an unfair advantage in sports also neglects the fact that these kids have the deck stacked against them in nearly every other way imaginable. They suffer from higher rates of bullying, anxiety and depression—all of which make it more difficult for them to train and compete. They also have higher rates of homelessness and poverty because of common experiences of family rejection. This is likely a major driver of why we see so few transgender athletes in collegiate sports and none in the Olympics.

On top of the notion of transgender athletic advantage being dubious, enforcing these bills would be bizarre and cruel. Idaho’s H.B. 500, which was signed into law but currently has a preliminary injunction against its enforcement, would essentially let people accuse students of lying about their sex. Those students would then need to “prove” their sex through means including an invasive genital exam or genetic testing. And what happens when a kid comes back with XY chromosomes but a vagina (as occurs with people with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome)? Do they play on the boys’ team or the girls’ team? This is just one of several conditions that would make such sex policing impossible.

It’s worth noting that this isn’t the first time people have tried to discredit the success of athletes from marginalized minorities based on half-baked claims of “science.” There is a long history of similarly painting Black athletes as “genetically superior” in an attempt to downplay the effects of their hard work and training.

Recently, some have even harkened back to eras of “separate but equal,” suggesting that transgender athletes should be forced into their own leagues. In addition to all the reasons why this is unnecessary that I’ve already explained, it is also unjust. As we’ve learned from women’s sports leagues, separate is not equal. Female athletes consistently have to deal with fewer accolades, less press coverage and lower pay. A transgender sports league would undoubtedly be plagued with the same issues.

Beyond the trauma of sex-verification exams, these bills would cause further emotional damage to transgender youth. While we haven’t seen an epidemic of transgender girls dominating sports leagues, we have seen high rates of anxiety, depression and suicide attempts. Research highlights that a major driver of these mental health problems is rejection of someone’s gender identity. Forcing trans youth to play on sports teams that don’t match their identity will worsen these disparities. It’s a classic form of transgender conversion therapy, a discredited practice of trying to force transgender people to be cisgender and gender-conforming.

Though this can be hard for cisgender people to understand, imagine someone told you that you were a different gender and then forced you to play on the sports team of that gender throughout all of your school years. You’d likely be miserable and confused.

As a child psychiatry fellow, I spend a lot of time with kids. They have many worries on their minds: bullying, sexual assault, divorcing parents, concerns they won’t get into college. What they’re not worried about is transgender girls playing on girls’ sports teams.

Legislators need to work on the issues that truly impact young people and women’s sports—lower pay to female athletes, less media coverage for women’s sports and cultural environments that lead to high dropout rates for diverse athletes—instead of manufacturing problems and “solutions” that hurt the kids we are supposed to be protecting.

God damn, transphobia is the most petty stupid shit

Shared June 5, 2023

• 0:00 Intro
• 2:11 Before Stonewall-Trans history and Magnus Hirshfeld
• 14:00 Berlin Queer Subculture
• 22:54 Nazis goes after LBGTQ+ community
• 28:20 Laws used against trans people
• 38:17 Trans survival
• 48:06 Q+A

In the 1920s, Berlin was home to a thriving transgender community, with trans-focused magazines, famous drag clubs, and Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science, where some trans people went for gender-affirming care. Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 changed everything. In this talk, Laurie Marhoefer (he/they) explores what happened trans people under the Nazi state, beginning with pre-war Berlin and then under the repressive Nazi regime. Marhoefer will look specifically at violence against trans women that was recorded in police files from the era.

Laurie Marhoefer is the Jon Bridgman Endowed Professor of History at the University of Washington. His work has been influential in international debates about the Nazi State and lesbians and transgender people, and in the public memory of the early gay rights movement, Magnus Hirschfeld, and the Weimar Republic. He is the author of two books, most recently a biography of Hirschfeld and his student Li Shiu Tong, Racism and the Making of Gay Rights: A Sexologist, His Student, and the Empire of Queer Love, and of a number of essays and articles on queer and trans histories.

👏 more 👏 trans 👏 warmongers 👏

hey! i hope you have a great day today and remember that you're unfathomably based. if things are great lately, i hope better times are close

Long story short, I’ve always been supportive of the trans community and individuals, trans rights are human rights, all that good stuff. However, I’ve never had someone in my personal life transition, until now; my FIL told my wife that they’re now a MIL. So there’s two sides to this request:

First, any general advice, resources, etc., on how to be supportive/helpful for her during the transition, and advice that would be more specific to someone that’s transitioning as a senior and as a trans woman that wouldn’t respond well to overtly left wing resources on the matter. Yep, she’s a lifelong Republican, was optimistic about Trump although I have no clue how she stands on him now (as an aside though, oh boy were the rants about drag queen story times ironic in hindsight).

Which leads into the second side: while she has started on HRT, she’s still not publicly presenting as feminine, and we haven’t told our son/her grandson yet. We’ve discussed the general concept of people who are transgender with him, but that’s not the same thing as him processing grandpa becoming grandma, and he’s at an age where I have no clue how he’s going to take it. So I’m looking for any recommendations as to how to discuss what’s happening with him, maybe some books (like third/fourth grade level) that do a good job of presenting the concept for a younger mind.

Thats it. That's the post

Seriously, this shit doesnt happen to any of my other trans fem friends who generally present a lot more fem than me.

In the last 3 months I've had 3 instances of me minding my own business (riding transit / smoking outside a concert venue) and some fucker will just come up and start shit.

The other night someone came up to me and started yelling like a Fox News reporter like "ARE YOU A MAN OR A WOMAN, ARE YOU A MAN OR A WOMAN, DONT YOU PEOPLE GO IN SCHOOLS AND [REDACTED HORRIBLE THINGS TO KIDS]

I don't fucking get it, because I generally present pretty "butch" and at a base level don't really look like someone you'd want to fight. I'm not saying I'm a big tough badass, but out of all my trans friends I definitely look like the most likely to whoop your ass. And also when I've been swung on, I've won all the fights, but not in a cool way where I feel good...I just wish I was never in that situation to begin with

Another thing that fucks me up is it's great that I can defend myself - but if it wasn't me, and it was someone smaller or more passive, how far would it have gone? Would one of my sisters have been curbstomped? I fucking hate that so much.

A few theories posited by my friends

1. Beating up someone in a dress / dressed fem isnt really badass no matter what so it happens less (but obviously still happens). So maybe presenting more butch makes you more "fightable"?

2. I simply go out more; I take transit 3-4x a day, I travel up and down my city every day, on weekends I'll generally have a big night out at least once

3. I'm androgynous in a weird way where people don't really understand what I'm going for (most of my trans friends are very binary presenting) and it's threatening / confusing / provokes harassment

I honestly don't fucking get it. I'm sure there isn't a magic answer. Just venting I guess.

tl;dr im hot and strong, people dont like it

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/280428

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/280427

Archived link because unfortunately The Nation is stingy like that.

Hello everyone,

I'm an AMAB NB person, and I want to have a more feminine presentation. I know I could read up on it, and if folks have any recommendations, I'll gladly take a look, but I feel like people here who take E have info that isn't often shared in typical sources.

Anyway, I really have no idea what it does. I've heard of some NB people taking low doses of it to maintain an androgynous look without fully going in the feminine direction. This might be right for me, as I'd like to maintain some masculine features.

So... What should I expect? Does it affect body or facial hair? Muscle mass? Breasts? Penis? Mood/mental state? Face?

I'm sure anything you can tell me would be helpful in me deciding whether this is a good option for me. Thank you!

Edit: forgot to ask. Is it easy to just stop taking it? What are the permanent effects?