I [18NB] am starting uni in Edinburgh, Scotland tomorrow. Since I'll be living a good distance away from home, I was thinking of buying some pride merch and stuff.

However, it has crossed my mind that safety could be an issue. I wouldn't have thought that Edinburgh would have issues, but I think it's best to ask Lemmy: On the whole, is Edinburgh a safe place to be myself?

"Will Ferrell and his close friend, former head writer at SNL, Harper Steele embark on a cross-country road trip together after Harper comes out as a trans woman. Watch Will & Harper on September 27 on Netflix." (from the YouTube description)

Archived version

In the U.S., Republicans are using bills that benefit the majority to push an anti-trans agenda

Lawmakers in the U.S. have repeatedly made last-ditch efforts to pass anti-trans laws during the eleventh hour of their legislative session in recent years, notably in Alabama and Kentucky, where the bills were eventually signed into law. This year, Republican lawmakers across several states tried their hand at it again, derailing governance as usual on the waning days of legislative sessions by attempting to replace routine legislation with anti-LGBTQ+ bills or stonewalling the process of passing other bills to push anti-LGBTQ+ efforts, advocates say.

This year, though, the ground has begun to shift. In March, during the last three weeks of Georgia’s legislative session, Republicans made a contortionistic effort to ram policies targeting transgender students into bills originally written to support all students in the state. Their target: a bill creating mental health screenings and other resources for student-athletes.

That bill was reengineered into legislation to ban sex education below 6th grade, bar trans students from playing on sports teams that match their gender identity, prohibit trans students from using restrooms that match their gender identity, and allow parents to be alerted about every library book that their child checks out.

Archived version

The vision for Trump’s second term in the White House purports to protect families — but its anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric is centered in exclusion.

The U.S. Republicans' Project 2025 equates being transgender — or adopting “transgender ideology” — to pornography and declares that it should be outlawed. Under this plan, the federal government would enforce sex discrimination laws on the “biological binary meaning of sex,” and educators and public librarians who spread the concept of being transgender would be registered as sex offenders. The plan says that children should be “raised by their biological fathers and mothers who conceive them,” unless those biological parents are found unfit by a court.

These ideas have drawn national attention for their far-reaching scope, but they didn’t appear out of thin air. They all have roots in anti-LGBTQ+ state legislation that conservative lobbying groups and think tanks have supported for years, like the law that took effect in Kentucky. Contributors to Project 2025 include senior staff from Alliance Defending Freedom, whose lawyers have helped write anti-transgender legislation in a number of states and defended those laws in court. Members of the conservative groups Family Research Council and the American Principles Project, which have similarly pushed anti-LGBTQ+ bills and anti-trans rhetoric, have served on the Project 2025 advisory board.

Dr. Kade Goepferd, medical director of Children’s Minnesota Hospital’s Gender Health Program, like many providers who treat transgender youths, has received death threats. Goepferd said the growing waitlist, which has expanded due to surrounding states' bans on gender-affirming care, is more concerning. The program has seen a 30% increase in calls, leading to a waitlist of at least a year. NBC News found that clinicians in states like Connecticut and California are similarly overwhelmed by the influx of out-of-state patients. Legal risks and logistical challenges, such as insurance denials, are straining providers. Shield laws are "a tenuous protection," according to Dr. Molly McClain of the University of New Mexico’s Deseo clinic. A "majority of gender-affirming care providers NBC News interviewed had received threats, ranging from angry calls and emails to arson."

A queer icon has passed :(

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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