first on the dancefloor for the gay gordons

It happened in broad daylight. It was telegraphed ahead of time; TERFs were very clear they wanted trans men removed from public life entirely. Yet during the entire lead-up, and even since then, people have erased transmascs completely from the conversation, saying they weren't in danger like transfemmes are, and in fact alleging that transmascs enjoyed a measure of protection from TERFs, who allegedly just see them as confused little girls they want to protect.

And while people were busy being useful idiots and spreading TERF propaganda for them, while people were busy actively denying the threat to transmascs, TERFs made it so transmascs can be excluded from any public bathroom in the UK.

I know this is sarcastic but, yeah, a lot of cis people have basically done this to me. It's like the three most common cis reactions to finding out you're trans.

CW for what's below, because I give examples from my personal experiences. Proceed with caution.

I work at a library. We do this thing where, every so often, we weed the collection. It hurts to see books go, but it's necessary to make sure there's room in the library for new materials.

I have seen so much support for the library in text, and I've seen folks pass around those beautiful "queer your library" flyers. Keep doing that. That's great. Nothing wrong with that. But you HAVE to turn your words into action. We MUST remember to actually go to our local organizations and libraries and actually, with our own fucking hands, interact with these materials we want to see more of.

My branch is medium-sized for a library, maybe a little small. We don't have as many materials as I'd like, but we have fundamentals. Tell me why, even with all the verbal support I've gotten from my local community for the library as a resource for our LGBT+ community, every single trans biography and a good chunk of our vaguely queer theory books were on the list. This isn't a scheme to take the books off the shelves, it isn't another bigoted American governmental push. The only thing we look at when we weed is how long it's been since the last time the item was checked out.

Three years.

No one in my community interacted in any meaningful way with the few books on trans life and history we physically had on the shelves for three fucking years.

I promise you the materials you want and need are there, but this isn't a horde. This isn't a static safety net. You have to use them. You MUST use them or, in the future, maybe in three years, they *won't* be there anymore.

I'm also a librarian and queer books are almost always cut first when we have to weed for space or prioritize new releases over old items because no one reads them

I will say, when I worked at a large downtown location, we had a "browsing card" that we would check out items we found taken off the shelf and left on a table, as an example of a book that had clearly been read, just not checked out by anyone

it's possible queer books do actually get a bit of unfair treatment in this regard because people may be nervous or outright scared to check them out onto an account with their name on it. so they get browsed at a much higher rate, but if a library doesn't have a specific system in place (or need for it) to count browsed items, then it looks like they aren't being used and they get weeded

for other librarians, a browsing card is a great idea if you have enough staff for the extra work / enough items left out to justify it

for patrons, check out queer books even if you don't read them! you're not lying or committing any type of fraud. you're keeping books on the shelf long enough for pride season when people are interested in checking them out again and for people scared to use their own accounts or who don't have library cards

for anyone nervous about using their library card, libraries do not keep search histories of what you check out!! this means even if the government does come back with a warrant, *wet farting noise* too bad! it doesn't exist!

It feels like such a small thing, but all movements are made up of small things! We have this mindset that in order to get everything done, everyone must be doing their (or *the*) absolute best at all times. But not everyone can do the same things, to the same degree, with the same amount of productivity or success. Not everyone can; sometimes, they're the ones that need help. Sometimes people just need help.

This post is very much so intended for the people who can. I've seen a lot of replies from folks who say they don't have to (or don't think about) checking out or requesting queer books from the library specifically because they *can* buy them, can pirate them, or already have them in their house or on their computers or phones. But in instances like that, keeping these books in circulation is less for you and more for the people who can't. The folks who come to the library, who don't have access to internet--or even electricity--at home and would never--have never--been able to interact with this "ubiquitous queer community" we have here online who has made so many of these. materials so avaliable to the rest of us.

And... if I can be a little frank. Sometimes the hyperaccessibility of these materials online (through pirating, cheap e-book copies, etc) gives people a false sense of security. It implies that these things are an infinate resource, good for "When I get around to it".

And often, you won't. There's so much to read and so much to do. So much to download and so much to sit down and stare at for hours. That kind of mental scope puts books in people's hands (or phones), but never in their heads.

I live in a province that is currently trying to ban queer books from libraries, and as a library patron, this is terrifying. 95% of the books I read are from the library and a lot of them are way out of my budget to buy personally.

Making Queer History would not exist without the school library I skipped class in to write articles. It would not exist without my friends with library cards for their universities sharing them and getting me access to rare texts. I would not be able to read as much as I do without Libby and Hoopla. If I have ever given you a book recommendation, know that I likely got it from the library first.

I cannot overstate the importance of protecting libraries and checking out queer books. And I want to say thank you to everyone above for being as passionate as I am about queer books in libraries.

Happy Pride Month!

Faust is back for the 5th time! If you want to use the flag of your choice as an avatar, they're under the cut. They're free to use as long as it's for personal use only.

The image of a trans man is a simple one: A white, able bodied man who was once a lesbian and is now straight, who has taken Testosterone, gotten top and bottom surgeries, presents masculine 100% of the time, has a good paying job, and is only affected by trans bills in the sense that it would mean he would have to go to the bathroom in a different place, or he might need to fight harder for his prescription. There is nothing unique about this, his relationship to masculinity and femininity are the expected ones. He is essentially a cis man who used to be a girl.

As a result, trans male oppression does not need to be considered a complex interaction between societal expectations of assigned femininity in contrast with current masculine identity, combined with the act of transition and nature of trans identity. No, it can just be simplified to trans = oppressed, and man = privilege. There is no need for deeper though.

When a trans man is feminine online, it can just be simplified to the fact that this person is not actually a man. Trans men are simple creatures who yearn to be masculine 100% of the time. They are only trans enough when they present in this simple way.

No, this "cis" male character cannot be a trans man because that character's story is a complex exploration of how the expectations of masculinity are suffocating. Any other trans headcanon is okay, but trans men never experience masculinity in the context of forced expectation, because the lives of trans men are simple, and for them, masculinity is wholly good all the time.

There is no need to specifically platform trans men on this topic, because their relationship to it is uncomplicated. There is no need to say "especially trans men" when talking about sex work, or reproductive rights, or discrimination, or kink, or violence, or exploitation, because transmasculine experience is a simple one that can be explained in a single footnote against the other, more unique and kaleidoscopic experiences of all other gender experiences. Trans men can be marginalized in a literal sense because they are uncomplex, and unimportant because everything they go through, every else goes through in a much more vivid way.

On the social side, preventing transition is an enormous overreach with regard to freedom of expression. Legal gender change is a necessity to protect privacy.

This is all downstream of the simple idea that you should treat trans people like a type of people, an idea that a lot of people get really offended by, as they do with women, racialized people, disabled people, gay people, pretty much any marginalized group in history.

Because the moral argument is trivially against them, bigots will try to frame themselves as a rational, scientifically-minded group trying to rein in the naive optimism of their opponents. They will insist that the science is on their side, and by doing so handwave the moral argument because their point of view is "true".

It is not.

The playbook of these groups is old, reliant on a few rhetorical tricks that play on confirmation bias, and generally tries to do one thing: Engineer talking points that are wrong in ways that take scientific competence to debunk, so that a fully accurate debunking loses general audiences.

That's why it's important to get ahead of them and attack the foundations they're building their rhetoric on.

It's tempting to just fall back on the moral argument, it really is, because these shitheels are arguing positions that are pretty fucking heinous. That should be enough. Unfortunately, it gets you liberal "allies" who seem genuinely embarrassed to be on your side, because they're not confident that their position is empirically correct in addition to being morally correct.

That's why stuff like debunking "concerning" scientific results about trans youth in Finland matters.

And then you actually look onto the research.

Kids do not generally hate learning or school. Quite the opposite. Children tend to enjoy learning and are naturally curious. It is exactly the fact that they are forced into school and into the rigid structure of it that often punishes curiosity but also is hostile towards the differences inherent in people, that kids hate it.

Kids do not naturally hate medical care. While medical care is scary at times, the fear usually comes from medical care scenarios being defined by adults overriding a child's agency, not explaining things to him, and otherwise being abusive, that makes children afraid of medical procedures. Additionally the way a lot of medical procedures go hand in hand with denying a child's reality ("Look, it is not that bad") tends to be traumatizing to children.

There have been studies done in this. If you explain a child - even a toddler - what you do and why, children will generally be a lot more okay with stuff like needles and simple procedures, and will even agree to necessary surgical interventions.

If you create a learning environment that allows more for self-directed learning, and involves less specific testing, most kids actually will enjoy learning.