Transgender
News
8 Things You Should Know About Consent on College Campuses

A 2017 article written by Sarah Marcantonio, then a student at Emerson University in Boston Consent (noun): Permission, approval or agreement. Here’s my definition of sexual consent: two (or more) people actively, explicitly and consciously agreeing to have sexual interactions throughout those interactions, with no party having any reservations at any point. I was taught, […]

Pop Culture
The Best Transgender Books for Kids

Happy International Trans Visibility Day (March 31st)! Unfortunately, it’s not all balloons and supportive hugs: Trump’s list of discriminatory actions against the transgender community so far is too long to list in a single post. Him rescinding the Obama administration’s federal guidelines for schools to allow kids to use the public bathrooms that match their […]

Pop Culture
Best Actor, Best Actress — Why Differentiate?

A 1995 study called “The Role of Classification Skill in Moderating Environmental Influences on Children’s Gender Stereotyping” showed that the simple organizational technique of separating kids by gender in elementary school classrooms has a profound effect on the way those kids think about gender. In her excellent book, Parenting Beyond Pink and Blue: How to Raise Your Kids […]

News
Happy Indigenous Peoples’ Day!

Some day Columbus Day will be replaced by Indigenous Peoples’ Day, just as some day trans rights will be considered civil rights by everyone. In honor of future enlightenment, let’s look back in awe of the Native Americans who got it right way ahead of their time. The following excerpt is from “Indian Country Today“: […]

Personal Essays
“I Fought For Your Freedom to Hate Me” — A Trans Veteran Speaks Out

Thanks to President Trump, trans veteran Carla Lewis must endure a tragic case of déjà vu: Each morning when I wake, I hit social media and the news. Sharing something profound or humorous is how I like to start my day. Believe me when I tell you, I was in complete shock when I read […]

Pop Culture
10 Predictions of Future Trump Policy Changes Via Twitter

On July 26th, 2017, President Trump announced a regressive and frankly hateful roll-back of an Obama administration policy which allowed trans service members to serve openly. The Trump policy announcement went like this: After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow…… — […]

News
14 Moving Tributes to the Victims of the Pulse Nightclub Shooting 1 Year Ago

By Tom Burns for YourTango We will never forget. It was an evening that united the world in horror. One year ago, on June 12, 2016, a gunman opened fire at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 people and seriously wounding over 60 more. It was an act of terrorism, targeted directly at […]

Confessions
Can You Guess Which of These Cats Is Female?

A choose your own gender-venture! Our family recently adopted two kittens. We had our pick of the litter, so we figured we’d get a girl and a boy, just like our two kids. They decided to name the girl Rey and the boy Po. (Star Wars fans relax: for whatever reason — let’s call it […]

TV
The Silver Linings of Survivor’s Public Trans Outing

Last night on Survivor, during a desperate attempt to throw a fellow competitor under the bus to save his own skin at tribal council, Jeff Varner outed Zeke Smith as a transgender man — seemingly forgetting that it wasn’t just six other players cut off from society who’d hear the news, but potentially millions. Zeke had […]

News
Did Milo Yiannopoulos REALLY Defend Pedophilia?

Conservative provocateur and all-around asshat Milo Yiannopoulos got disinvited to 2017’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), had his lucrative book deal with Simon & Schuster cancelled, and resigned from Breitbart as an editor — all within 48 hours — over comments about child sexual abuse he made on two podcasts (one in 2015, the other in early 2016) that […]

Celebrities
“Cult” Not “Author” Is the JT LeRoy Documentary You Should Watch

Laura Albert is pretending to be someone she’s not. Again. Or maybe she’s telling the truth this time. That’s the problem when someone lies so much to so many people: when should we start believing their stories about wolves? You probably know Albert better as JT LeRoy, the abused, abandoned, HIV-positive, gender-bending, teenaged, trick-turning, literary […]

News
What Do You Call a Trans Man Who Gives Birth and Nurses?

Lucky! Time Magazine recently ran an article entitled “My Brother’s Pregnancy and the Making of a New American Family” by Jessi Hempel about a transgender man getting pregnant, having a baby and nursing his child (which introduced us to our new favorite term, “chest-feeding”): Pregnancies like Evan’s—and the many that are likely to follow—will stretch our cultural perceptions […]

Pop Culture
Understanding Bruce Jenner as a Genderbread Person

This past Friday, Diane Sawyer interviewed Bruce Jenner for 20/20, and she received rave reviews for her respectful approach to the topic of transgenderism. It was a refreshing conversation, especially after so many months of tabloid headlines about what Jenner looks like in a dress, and whether or not Jenner will keep his* penis. In […]

News
Sign More Petitions: White House Endorses Ban on Conversion Therapy

Earlier this year, transgender teen Leelah Alcorn committed suicide and said, in her suicide note, that her family had forced her to see Christian therapists who told her that she was  “selfish and wrong and that I should look to God for help.” Soon after, a White House petition was launched on Change.org, calling for […]

Dream Interpretation
Dream Interpretation: My Doctor Has a Penis AND a Vagina

photo via Flickr Other people’s dreams are never interesting…except when they’re about sex. Each week, our dream analyst Lauri Loewenberg tells one lucky reader what their dirty dream means. Got a dream you want Lauri to analyze? Click here to submit it. This week, a reader asks Lauri: I work at a hospital as a professional vampire. lol The […]

Movies
Top 10 Pop-Culture Gender-Benders

We’re not going to focus on the negative portrayals of transsexuality, like in PSYCHO and SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and last year’s thankfully cancelled WORK IT television sitcom. And we’re not focusing on the history of transitioning stories that takes us all the way back to the 1930s when an intersexed, Bohemia-born Zdenka Koubkova went from female running/jumping champion to male […]