This is a collection of the major international and Australian events since the last Transgender Awareness Week this year. Please read and consider your place in history.
Categories
Author: Dog Knife
Intersex trans man. Follow me on social media for more articles!
Categories
Praise
A lot of creatives don’t handle criticism well. That’s very understandable. When you put a lot of time and energy and emotion into something, it can be difficult not to take it personally.
I seem to have the opposite problem: praise does nothing for me.
View original post 1,487 more words
Content Warnings: sexuality, genital mention
Cis people, straight or queer, both have a notable bad habit of equating genitalia to gender and attraction to genitalia too, even when claiming to be trans friendly and respecting their trans friend’s pronouns, etc. (all the basics of trans support.) It’s understandable that it is not easy to deprogram these assumption-based biases that appear in casual conversation.
You’ve heard it before, “Lesbians don’t like dick,” “Gay men don’t like vaginas,” etc. Both ultimately are what the implications and hints point to, definitively.
What’s wrong with this thought process? Who does it hurt? Trans people, of course, people who are questioning and in relationships with people who might have one sexuality they think might not include them based on the message of casual transphobia like this. People are complex and unique and there’s many circumstances that change things for people. Gender changes sometimes, not in…
View original post 1,182 more words
Categories
Breadcells, Digital Artist
Hi! I’m breadcells, but you can call me Matt! I’m 17, FTM transgender (he/him!) and live in England! I mostly do fanart and art of my OCs, though I still have a lot to learn with my art! I do sell some designs as handmade stickers and pin badges, and I do commissions from time to time too.
– Breadcells
You can find Breadcells newest posts on his Instagram page and you can commission his work on Redbubble.
Categories
Masks for Transgender People
Are you transgender? Are you working in an essential job without access to a regular supply of masks? We will order you a mask produced by a small, local business in your area.
If you’re a transgender person in need, please use this form to request a mask. Someone will email you back requesting more information. Contact @NixFound for more info.
Tweet
If you’re a small local business (like a seamstress making masks on Etsy) please use this form to contact us so that we can add you to our list. (We’d prefer to order from you!) Contact @NixFound for more info.
Tweet
FAQ
Why do you look for local mask maskers?
Shipping masks from local stores to people in need supports the local economy and is better for the environment.
What do I need to do to prove I’m transgender?
You don’t need to prove you’re transgender. We just need to know where to ship you your mask.
How can I support you?
You can “buy me a coffee” (donate any amount of money through Ko-Fi via Paypal) and I’ll turn around and buy masks.
Facebook’s native cross-posting option is ugly as hell. Here’s how to get more engagements on Twitter for your Facebook posts.
What you’ll need:
- An appropriate preview image for your link or article.
- A permalink.
Facebook’s native cross-posting system – the system that posts events and other Facebook pages from Facebook to your Twitter page as a Tweet – does not work flawlessly with Twitter.
The best way to post about an event or page on Facebook is to make a post about it yourself rather than using Facebook’s share option. You need to make sure that your page is optimized for mobile, as 85% of Twitter users access Twitter from a mobile device. If your post looks uninteresting or doesn’t convey relevant information, you won’t get nearly as many clicks.
For Twitter, that means the ideal image size for your posts (as of this writing, since 2017) is 1024 x 512, as that’s the size that best displays on mobile.
Sidenote: All posts on Twitter should have an image whenever possible, but the image itself shouldn’t be essential to understand the image. It should be expected that all professional organizations and brands use alt text for their images, to ensure they can be interpreted by the blind via a screen reader. Here’s a guide by Twitter on how to add alt text to your images.
Twitter will automatically shorten or lengthen all links for you to 23 characters through the t.co link shortener, giving you more room to concentrate on engaging copy. 257 characters, exactly.
For events:
Your copy should answer the following questions: what, when, and where. Due to the limited character count, you may have to get creative with how you describe your event. Remember the goal is to link people to your page, not convey all of the information through Twitter.
Sample description:
In this case, longer words (like “chicken”) are replaceable with emojis that can be read by the screen reader and understood contextually. The image is relevant and commands the reader’s attention. Information relevant to people who are interested in attending the event is all there In the course of this tweet, we can ask the question – “is my schedule clear to pick up a new chicken friend at Knuckleberry Farms and support Monkey Helpers?” – and receive an answer to that question.
It was a challenge to fill the space Twitter provided for me. I still had 14 characters left. You can include information that’s relevant to your event, such as special requirements or ticket locations. The world is your oyster.
The work that it took to produce this style of Tweet is far more informative than what Facebook generates, and is far more likely to generate engagement.
Ben Valin has run Phoenix Collective as an informal charitable group since 2014, starting with providing transgender students free clothing and binders at FAU’s Multicultural Center. Since then, he provides social media management training for young LGBT+ professionals at no cost to them with the goal of providing them with a cutting edge above their peers. If you learned something from this article, you can tip him and support his work through Ko-Fi.
Obviously, pedophiles are not considered members of the LGBT community. But to an outsider trying to navigate the system of signals that minority groups use to tell each other apart online, it can be difficult to discern fact from propaganda. This article provides definitions of terms peodphiles commonly use to signal to each other online.
This is a living document. This means that if you return to read this guide at a later date, information may be updated to reflect changes in the community. This guide is best read through one and referenced later during your casual browsing. If you have any new information to contribute, click here to contact the author.
Meme Bank
- “Pedophiles are LGBT”: Pedophiles started a campaign to be considered members of the LGBT community on that basis that (1) their sexuality is not the norm and (2) they are discriminated against in mainstream society.
Redundant, obvious disclaimer: It is impossible to have sex with children because children cannot consent – sex between a minor and an adult is always rape. Therefore, being a pedophile is not the same as being gay or transgender. The LGBT community is not a consensus, but many agree with this and those who do not are considered pedophiles. The DSM has also agreed on this point since 2010.
The original campaign for “pedophiles are LGBT” was started by a Reddit user in an intentional smear attempt against the community. However, some individual pedophiles began to co-opt the original meme in order to further normalize their behavior.
Consensus now exists that pedophilia is a distinct sexual orientation, not something that develops in someone who is homosexual or heterosexual. Some people with pedophilic urges are also attracted to adults, and may act only on the latter urges. Because people with pedophilic urges tend to be attracted to children of a particular gender, they are sometimes described in the literature as heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual pedophiles. Roughly 9% to 40% of pedophiles are homosexual in their orientation toward children — but that is not the same as saying they are homosexual. Homosexual adults are no more likely than heterosexuals to abuse children.
“Pessimissm about pedophilia,” Harvard Mental Health Letter, July 2010.
Emoji usage: Many communities use emojis to signal that they belong to certain groups online. The pear symbol (🍐) is the most commonly used symbol, but the alien symbol (👽) and the globe symbol (🌍) is also used.
Term Bank
MAP: Minor Attracted Person
Pedophiles who claim that they are “minor attracted persons” will often claim that they are using the internet to educate others on the ‘truth’ behind pedophilia and to express their feelings in a healthy manner. Some will even claim that their therapist told them to express themselves online in this way.
Fears about predatory behavior are valid. Most pedophiles who act on their impulses do so by manipulating children and gradually desensitizing them to inappropriate behavior. Then they escalate it.
“Pessimissm about pedophilia,” Harvard Mental Health Letter, July 2010.
Pedophilia cannot be cured. Instead, therapists focus on management options that associate the pedophillic desire with an unpleasant stimulus called “aversive conditioning,” or by suppressing the pedophile’s sexual urges – they do not encourage pedophiles to express their urges in a ‘healthy’ way.
Pedophiles will take advantage of the public’s lack of knowledge oon the treatment of pedophila to convince victims and their allies that they are seeing a therapist and are therefore not a danger to minors. Sometimes they will go as far as labeling themselves ‘no-MAPs.’
no-MAP: No-Contact Minor Attracted Person. A no-MAP is a MAP that explicity states that they avoid contact with minors. No-MAPs should be considered at the same risk level as MAPs, as many of them will use the title to attempt to dissaude adult allies from monitoring their behavior.
What can an adult do to help?
The best way to protect your child from predators is to maintain a communicative and supportive relationship with your child. Most children will never encounter a predator online, but your child needs to know that they can trust you enough to come to you for support.
Shaming your child for their sexuality or their developing identity sets a foundation of mistrust that leaves them vulnerable to predators of all types, whether on the internet or in real life.
Adults can help by sharing this link in response to posts made by pedophiles. Many pedophiles will try to mislead the public or potential targets to normalize their behavior. Educating the public on what to look for when talking to people online will help people know who to block before the conversation even beigns.
How can I support your work?
I am known as Hachiko, also known as Dog Knife Inc. I’m a researcher who is currently writing living articles on how to avoid dangerous groups online while I recover from an undiagnosed autoimmune disease. All contributions to my Ko-Fi go to paying for my medical treatment and developing this website.
Consider sharing an article from this website, reading an article on one of our featured content creators, or donating to my work on Ko-Fi.
Well, because they’re hacks and incapable of making a consistent living doing anything else. But we’ll come back to that.
Transgender people typically represent 1% of the population – or far less. So why do TERFS provide misleading information about how gender transition works on the internet? If TERFs applied their efforts towards silencing transgender people towards productive efforts – like raising funds for women in need – it would stand to reason that they would produce far more public good, especially for women.
Talented content creators whose careers are thoroughly invested in public social development have already realized that transgender people have a rising political and public presence. The sad, horrifying truth is that successful transgender people have been culturally selected by modern society to be hardworking, talented, and clever in order to survive. So why is there an old guard intent on doing everything they can to impede the cultural rise of a minority?
Transgender people are a minority that holds high political capital to engage with but have little to offer in the way of resistance. They often do not have the resources to defend themselves from misinformation or platform themselves. Because so few transgender people exist, information and research on them is slow-going, and was set back by the burning of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft by the Nazis during World War II.
Due to the spread of political propaganda and suppression similar to the Nazi burnings, finding information on the positive effects on gender transition can be difficult if not impossible for a parent that isn’t “fluent” in how to find reputable sources on the internet. TERFs have anticipated this by misrepresenting data, funding ethically dubious studies, and generally lying to the public about how scientific research works.
Untreated gender dysphoria can result in symptoms similar to untreated depression, anxiety, or PTSD, and can actually cause the development of those symptoms where they previously didn’t exist.
Tweet
Transgender children who are supported by their families and their communities after their transition rarely, if ever, report any of these symptoms. The goal of a TERF is to captialize off the fear of a parent or loved one of the possible negative effects of gender transition so that their propaganda can insure that a parent can never see their child truly happy.
Due to efforts by homophobic organizations since the dawn of the LGBT civil rights movement, transgender people were considered morally taboo and driven into the fringes of society. For individuals who do not have access to educational resources and who are already predisposed against trusting minorities, transgender people make perfect targets. The web traffic from a single social media post spreading disinformation can be enough to comfortably fund someone’s lifestyle through donations or promote their brand.
Don’t let TERFs profit off the discomfort and pain of your loved ones by spreading medical misinformation about children. This guide is meant as a simple explanation of the gender transition process for those unfamilar with how gender transition works. Feel free to share, comment, or contact us through our contact page if you have any questions.
How does someone transition?
Everyone’s transition is different, but that’s not reassuring to a worried parent. The best way to explain gender transition is to break it down into social and biological components.
If you’re interested in further reading from a medical authority, I recommend this post by a user known as Doc. Wolverine, which compiles many reputable sources for you to read.
Social transition
Social transition includes actions that you take in your relationships with other people, such as changing how you are addressed by others and how your information is recorded by the government. This type of transition doesn’t involve any sort of medical intervention.
Tweet
When talking about a pre-pubescent child, social transition is the only type of transition that they will undergo.
There are however some exceptions. Typically, those exceptions are if the child had pre-existing medical conditions that affect their quality of life such as their ability to pass waste, digest food, or chronic pain.
Some people prefer to change how other people address them by dressing in ways that commonly accepted cultural signals for their gender. Some transgender women will choose to wear dresses and some transgender men will choose to wear suits, much like cisgender people.
Transgender people wearing clothes associated with a gender that they identify as doesn't mean that those clothes inherently have a gender. Clothings serves a social signal to others as to how they wanted to be addressed, or as a way for an individual to express themselves.
Many transgender people choose to only undergo social transition for many reasons, but ultimately they do so because they find that they are comfortable at that stage of transition.
For an adult transgender person, that can mean binding their chest or tucking to reduce the appearance of unwanted secondary sex characteristics. While chest binding does come with some risk, advances in modern technology have make the risk of injury while chest binding equivalent to the risk of injury while wearing high heels or a corset. Don’t you love living in the future?
Medical transition
“Medical” transition, for lack of a better term, refers to various medical perscriptions and surgies that a transgender person can undergo to treat their discomfort.
Older children who are transitioning may be perscribed puberty blockers which only delay puberty, not completely put a stop to puberty. The risk of puberty blockers is comparable to the risk of putting your child on anti-depressants or mood stabilizers, except puberty blockers allow your doctor to treat the source of your child’s discomfort directly and are not a permanent regimen.
A sidenote to concerned parents – medical transition is usually limited to puberty blockers for children under the age of 18. If your doctor recommends sex reassignment surgery for your child before the age of majority, it will be due to a pre-existing condition, not your child’s transition. Please communicate with your doctor, as they’re there to help you and your child and will know your situation best. Surgery is not required for transition, but may be the best option for your child’s mental health as an adult.
“Top surgery” is a colloquial term for a double masectomy performed on trans masculine people who feel more comfortable without those secondary sex characteristics.
Part of why we have top surgery available to us today is because cisgender men have received top surgery for gynecomastia – the development of ‘female’-shaped breasts – for a very long time. In fact, the term ‘gynectomastia’ was coined by Galen the physician in the second century AD. Cisgender men will often have these breasts surgically removed for their own personal comfort, much like transgender men.
Genital surgery for transgender people is not required for transition, but many transgender people experience discomfort with the morphology and sensations they feel from their genitals, and therefore will opt for that surgery as adults.
This article may be expanded at a later date as more information becomes available.
Do you have any questions or comments about this article? Feel free to contact us! If you enjoyed the article, consider leaving the author a tip.
Are you a creator that often finds themselves hounded by bigots mass-reporting your work? Here are some known ways that you can keep your accounts safe.
In order to combat abuse of automated moderation systems, it’s important to understand how those systems work. Automatic moderation systems work by flagging Tweets based on words or even phrases that the system deems inappropriate. According to Twitter, half of all abusive tweets are removed before another user even reports them.
Automatic moderation systems aren’t perfect. They work under the assumption that the users of the site are going to behave like normal people. With rare exceptions, it’s unlikely that a tweet will be mass-reported with certain keywords that isn’t a direct violation of the TOS, so it makes sense that every tweet isn’t moderated by hand.
Except when that system is abused.
So how do you combat dozens if not hundreds of people reporting your work? While your account may only be locked for a short period of time, every second in which your work isn’t available online costs you money in promotions. So what can an independent content creator do?
Simple enough. You learn how to use social media better than they do. Here are three quick and easy things that you can learn how to do in the course of this article to protect your account from TERFs and other bigots.
- Asterisks are your friend. The asterisk symbol (*) shows up as a “wildcard” on a search engine, rendering names (like Gl*nner) essentially unsearchable. You can use asterisks on words that are likely to be reported (like k*ll) to still communicate your message to your audience without being flagged by the system.
This also stops folks from using namesearching to add you to “report” lists.
- Nothing is stopping you from having as many accounts as you want and only the reported accounts ‘count.’ Do you have a Twitter for your product or service? Always have at least two Twitter accounts – one for your product or service, and one for your personal. If your personal is locked, you can always update your followers through your art account. Retweets are also completely unreportable, repreventing TERFs from sinking a creator’s busines account with a large follower count if they decide to retweet a political post from your personal.
You have the right to speak your mind on social media as long as you follow the Terms of Service of the site that you are using. If you follow the Terms of Service and your account is still accidentally locked or reported, it’s highly unlikely that other accounts that did not post content like this will remain untouched.
- Block and forget. Block TERFs before they have a chance to engage with you. TERFS feed off the idea that their behavior is upsetting or disruptive to your work. Because it is literally impossible for TERFs to campaign in ways that involve productive work, they believe that online harassment of trans people is their work, and consider it a success when they prevent transgender people from going about their daily life.
If you have any further suggestions or techniques that you tried that work for you, feel free to drop a comment below.
Categories
Milena Popova, Writer
Milena Popova is a non-binary writer, researcher, creative consultant, and sensitivity reader based in the UK. Their main expertise is in the representation in popular culture of gender, sexuality, and sexual consent. They also have expertise in bisexual, asexual and trans (particularly non-binary) issues and representation, as well as LGBT workplace issues. Milena is keen to work with creative practitioners at any scale and across the creative industries to help improve representation in these areas through research, consultancy, training, and sensitivity reading.
Milena obtained their PhD in cultural studies from the Digital Cultures Research Centre, University of the West of England in 2018. Their research is published in journals including Porn Studies, the Journal of Bisexuality, and Transformative Works and Cultures, as well as in essay collections. In 2019, MIT Press published Milena’s book “Sexual Consent” as part of the publisher’s Essential Knowledge Series. Their monograph on sexual consent in fanfiction is also under contract with MIT Press.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/elmyra,
http://milenapopova.eu,
Cain is a trans man currently working in both Daytona Beach, FL and Savannah, GA. He currently has two Associate of Science degrees—one in Photographic Technique and one in Interactive Media. He uses his degrees to further his career in photography and writing. He is looking to expand his ventures and potentially collaborate with other trans and gender non-conforming individuals. Cain does an array of things including photography, poetry, fiction writing, and article writing. He has poetry published in the literary magazines Polaris and In Parentheses and has articles published in the college newspaper Daytona State In Motion.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CainMWilson
Poetry: https://cainwilson.com/
Photography: https://www.solsprak.com/
Categories
Finn Cannon, Songwriter
I’m a young trans guy who values and appreciates art, especially music, very deeply – it is the foundation of my world. As a songwriter, sharing my journey through hardships related to my physical/mental health, self esteem, beliefs and identity is a lifelong task. I aspire to help, comfort and compassionately lift up my friends out there in the world (yeah, you) who go through similar hardships. Sometimes the most personal is the most universal. That is how we connect with one another – through art and stories.
I aspire to be one of the greats and improve the conditions of the world. I believe in diversity, unity, purpose, love and kindness – all powerful strengths in a seemingly divided society.
Spotify | Twitter | Tumblr
Streaming: FINN on all platforms like Tidal, Apple Music
Phoenix Collective 