darko🌙

I am begging the UK trans community and its allies to attend the Mass Lobby at Parliament on June 25th, 11am-4pm, organised by Trans Solidarity Alliance.

The new EHRC Code of Practice pushes trans people out of toilets, hospital wards, and community spaces. It normalises gender policing based on appearance and stereotypes. It becomes statutory guidance in the UK by the end of June.

Trans people are now legally their assigned gender at birth and must join gendered spaces accordingly, but if they are perceived as their lived gender, they can also be ejected from those spaces. The guidance says: either break the law, or don’t pass too well.

A mass lobby is where you invite your MP to discuss your concerns with you in-person. Ask your MP to:

Demand full parliamentary scrutiny, debate, and use their free vote on the EHRC Code of Practice.

Support any motions rejecting the EHRC guidance. As of June 4th, Labour MP Nadia Whittome has submitted a prayer motion - Early Day Motion 240.

Write to Bridget Phillipson, the Minister for Women and Equalities about our concerns

Your MP does not have to be an ally, they do not have to respond to your email for you to show up and greencard them (details below the cut.) What matters is that as many people as possible show up.

I cannot stress this enough: Showing up in person matters. It is much more effective than petitions, emails, and letters.

It is a horrible, stressful time, and I am so sorry if you're trans and live in the UK. But I was at last year's mass lobby and the line for greencarding alone stretched around the back gates. It was a record breaking mass lobby and made us impossible to ignore. Let's do even better this time. Details under the cut:

Hey artists, C. Spike Trotman, founder of Iron Circus Comics, just posted an invaluable thread on depicting different types of black hair. I’d do the thing where you screencap the whole thread and post it but it’s just too long (which is great because it’s a whole lot of useful information!) Give her a follow while you’re there.

Wow! Here’s something incredibly personal.

This is Good Bi Gender. A comic I made to express some feelings I have about my gender. I don’t really have that much else to say about it. Here it is.

[Image Description: A digital comic made with sharp, angular abstract lines and only the colors white, blue, pink, and black. The featured character is all white, except for facial features and hair colors, which changes from panel to panel. The comic reads: Cover Panel: The text “Good Bi Gender”, the words colored with the trans flag. It shows a glitchy person’s face, half pink and half blue. Panel 1: White text reads: “Hello. My name is apparently irrelevant. And my pronouns are he/him and she/her. But you can’t call me she/her. And here’s why.” Someone with a half-pink and half-blue shirt looks to the side. One eye is covered with hair, and the other eye is pink while the iris is blue.

Panel 2: The character sits happily, imagining facial hair and a masculine voice. “I don’t want top surgery. I love my chest. And I dream about being on testosterone someday soon.” The character looks at a phone, frowning. The phone shows the male symbol with an “X” through it. Text next to it reads: “People don’t seem to think that the features I dream of are very pretty though… Or they think even worse of them than that…”

Panel 3: The character’s features are all pink, and sits in a blank frame. The character reaches over to a blue frame, frowning. “I don’t like the animosity. I really despise it.” A photo of the character shows an all-blue frame and blue hair, with pink outlines and facial features. “To be a boy… I aspire to be one. I aspire to be masculine in all its handsomeness. All its prettiness.” Panel 4: The character sits in an all blue panel, but reaches back out to the pink panel. “And I’m still a girl too. I was so excited to have both. To love both. To have handsome femininity. Beautiful masculinity.” The frames break and connect, and pink and blue swirl together. The character smiles in between the frames, with one pink eye and one blue eye. “So excited. And yet I get asked…”

Panel 5: Two hands hold out two different pills to the character, one blue and one pink. They ask “Male? or Female?” using the male and female symbols.The character, facial features an array of pink and blue, looks between the two hands, distressed. “It’s both! I’m both! They’re not opposites. Not narrow boxes. I say I’m both despite the insistence that I can’t be. And I know what I look like. I know I look like a girl to most. I know that if I say people can call me she, that’s all I will get from most. Because it’s “easier”. It “makes more sense”. To have my masculinity, I am often forced to be unflinching in it and it alone. To never use she. Because if I don’t, I will never get to have he.” [The words “she” and “he” are italicized.] Panel 6: Text reads: “I’m still very happy to be so comfortable in my identity. To know, despite all that, that I am indeed a boy and a girl and both. But you know. Telling people to only use he/him for me. Guarding my masculinity all just to have it. All at the expense of the part of me who is happily and unashamedly a girl.” The character cries from one pink eye, the other hidden. The character holds a pink girl in a sea of blue, the girl crying out. In the midst of the blue, text reads: “Well, it fucking breaks her heart.” End ID]