Dignity. Always Dignity.

My sister gets migraines, and is struggling to find things that will help. She is currently on week three of the worst one she's ever had. But her birthday is this week! And currently being ruined.

So, what helpful migraine related gifts can I get her? What do you find works?

I am begging the UK trans community and its allies to attend the rescheduled Mass Lobby at Parliament, now on Wed Sept 9th, 1pm-5pm, 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 became statutory guidance in the UK on August 5th, 2026.

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. Our demands have changed. Ask your MP to:

Write to Ministers and Prime Minister Andy Burnham to say they are profoundly concerned by the rolling back of trans rights, and that they believe that it is time for Parliament to legislate to protect equality for trans people.

Ask parliamentary questions focused on protecting trans people’s rights and defending trans people’s abilities to live safe and dignified lives.

Speak up both inside and outside Parliament in defence of trans people’s rights.

Meet regularly with trans constituents to understand their lived realities. 

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.

We have already had some wins because we took action. The 2026 EHRC guidance has already rolled back its most harmful elements because of mass campaigning by individuals like us, and groups like The Good Law Project. This summer, 166 MPs signed the Early Day Motion 240 to reject the EHRC Code of Practice, because of our campaigning. That is 1 in 4 MPs.

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:

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@batmanisagatewaydrug @utracjuszka

Candela Obscura is the strawman put forward in this post, but it’s a game that actually exists:

I'm nonbinary, and in recent years the people who have been the most exorsexist to me have been binary trans people. Binary trans folks, yall piss me off every damn day on this website. And if I was unable to see past short-sighted ideas that prioritized comfort above autonomy, safety, liberation, authenticity, I could conclude that binary trans people are my biggest enemy. But they aren't. Not even close.

It's not trans people following you into bathrooms, it's not trans people shouting shit when you walk past, it's not trans people killing us. If we want to play oppression olympics, I've got more reason to hate you guys than you do to hate each other, but it's such a cowardly position to take. It's so inauthentic.

Not because trans people aren't doing harm in this shit storm, the race to acceptance and assimilation comes with a body count, but the crabs in your bucket are not the ones who put us here.

This is WHY I am critical of ideology and not of groups. Reactionary movements are an attempt to take back power as a powerless group, but it only empowers you to violence over other powerless people, because your power is granted BY the oppressors. We must build power as a collective against them.

Trans unity is not a fake-smile-we-all-love-each-other bullshitfest, it is a recognition that we are not each other's enemies, even when we are not each other's friends. The shittiest trans woman deserves the things I am fighting for, the most vile trans guy MUST have access to what we are dreaming of. That is the point. And my unity extends to cis people, not just because i do not want to be another barrier to the closeted trans person finding people who will take them in, but because the gendered liberation of cis people is tied to my liberation too.

We are on lists, we are struggling to afford our care, we are abused by people and systems beyond our control, and fighting against a massive machine for our right to live. Of course it makes sense that bullying someone you think is doing transness wrong makes you feel big. Of course it makes sense that you think policing hard borders stops people from getting what you are afraid of losing. But it doesn't work like that. We are too intertwined that cutting each other off is like cutting off our own arm out of spite. Our oppressors LOVE that you have one less arm to fight them with--it doesn't do shit to them!

But it feels like control. It feels like action. When you feel stuck and hopeless, doing something, often especially out of anger FEELS like progress--like movement.

We do not preach "loving" our fellow trans people out of a naive belief that we could all just get along, but because the only way to survive is to survive together. The only way to thrive is to celebrate the wins of others. The only way to move forward is with all of us.

When Life Gives You Corpses is a brilliant YA about a cursed praying mantis who falls for a young witch. Yield Under Great Persuasion is a raunchy, but surprisingly sweet story about two men repairing their relationship. Fabulous Bodies is a horror story about a queer rockstar rising from the dead.

This is Where the Future Bleeds is a fantasy set in a vividly imagined land, where two women (who happen to kiss) are the key to healing the broken sky. You're No Better is a story about a teen struggling in the shadow of his murderous parent. Oil on Canvas is about a woman who finds disturbing paintings in the home of her dead mother.

(Some) Queer Presses:

Lurid Editions are "a publishing project committed to intentional and conscientious acts of archival repair". They are "attentive to how marginalised histories are forgotten and remembered, [and] hungry to rediscover overlooked queer books". They've just received funding from Arts Council England to engage queer readers in a project to contribute to the archive!

Cipher Press "We’re really keen on the idea that queer and minority stories are for everybody, and we want to make our books – and the stories they tell - accessible to all" (what an amazing mission statement!)

Anamot Press "Anamot [Անամոթ] means shameless in Armenian. ⁣⁣Anamot Press publishes poetry and prose on intersecting experiences of gender, sexuality, race, migration, class, belonging and loss - with no shame."

(Some) Queer Bookshops

Queer Lit Oh man, I remember when this was just a tiny little shop, and now they're the biggest LGBT+ bookshop in Europe! They do amazing work in donating books about being trans to schools and parliament! They have a pay-it-forward board that will make you sob with its notes of love and support. (You can tell I wish I still lived nearby)

Lighthouse For Scottish friends - "a queer-owned and woman led independent community bookshop. We are an unapologetically activist, intersectional, feminist, antiracist, lgbtq+ community space"

Gay's The Word The OG Queer bookshop in the UK. One day I will make my pilgrimage!!

The Keeper of Lonely Spirits is about an old man cursed with immortality, loss, grief, and the meaning of home

despite being a child of the 80s whose parents, understandably, had no experiential basis for teaching internet safety, i knew internet safety. no real name, no real location, don't share your age more than a rough range if at all, etc. why did i know those things? because adults in my first fandom communities taught me and other kids who showed up in those forum and chat spaces. they moderated or deleted messages that shared too much, laid ground rules, shepherded us. i knew those people in community, not in isolation (another tip the forum babies were given).

when my parents tried to ban me from all fandom internet-- a thing that was 80% of my social experience, as a rural, autistic, homeschooled teenager-- i posted a farewell in the forum (after a whole day of angry crying and arguing). one sweet member of the forum was a 20-something mom with two toddlers, and she wrote a lovely letter for me to print for my parents explaining how the community was moderated and what a benefit it could be and offered her own email and phone number if they wanted to chat.

they didn't reach out to her, but that letter is why i was allowed to stay online. just having the offer and the explanation was enough to reassure my parents. i wasn't besties with this woman, just a casual friend in the same space, but we stayed in touch. i respected her and the advice she and other adults in that community gave and it kept me safe in other interactions going forward

i'm friends with many of the people from that community on facebook now. they're still friends with each other. that kind woman? i watched via internet as her kids graduated. she watched me get married and have my own kids.

one of my older friends in another fandom was in her thirties when i got my driver's license as a teen. she celebrated with me. she sent my oldest kids a baby shower box that contained blankets that became their special blankies they still have saved somewhere as teens.

those relationships have been some of the most important ones of my teen years. they were people who enjoyed fandom chats with me, but also invested in me as a PERSON and not just as a kid they were tolerating. in the right context of healthy friendship, their advice and perspective kept me safe and helped me grow.

but also.

here is a fact: kids want to connect to people.

and right now, the only real way to do that, for many, is online.

it's not just the unwalkability of us neighborhoods. it's not just the restrictions by parents on where and how their kids can move.

first of all, offline spaces for kids are few and far between, and when they do exist, kids are often prohibited from accessing them by parents. i wasn't allowed to walk to my local library on my own until i was twelve or thirteen. (to be clear, it was under a mile away, i had the ability to contact them via a smart watch, and i'd been there before.)

and in the us in particular, there often aren't things within walking/biking distance. that library i mentioned was all of one room, was typically unaccessible (open tuesday, thursday and saturday; twenty-one hours a week, with 14 hours and 10 minutes, tops, being actually accessible given the high school hours). glancing around the neighborhood now, i could walk to such exciting places as (checks google maps) a notary, several places to do one's taxes, a gas station, or a paint store. to be fair, there is also a walkable playground, more pizza places than seems possible for a town of that size to support, and a swimming pool, but on days with bad weather (and this is pittsburgh, so a fair number of days) that aren't tuesday and thursday, a kid growing up there, even if allowed, and even if there are sidewalks, wouldn't be able to do much (not without the relentless shadow of consumerism hanging over them at the pizza places, anyway.)

now, let's compare my grandparents' home when i was growing up. glancing around on google maps, it looks like there's even less. seriously, it looks like a soulcrushing dystopia from above. where the fuck is a kid who lives there supposed to go to hang out with friends? walgreens?

meanwhile, for many queer kids, access to online spaces is a lifeline -- literally, sometimes. being able to know you're not alone is incredibly powerful, being able to know that there are words for what you are beyond whatever slurs your parents/society calls you is powerful.

people don't tell the stories of those kids, because it's in no one's interest. the big corporate companies don't want to offend anyone, so they're not going to highlight the story of the queer kid who realized they were queer via social media. and goodness knows the parents aren't going to be publicizing that story.

are there real and valid dangers social media poses? yes. absolutely.

i said this in the tags of another post, and i'm slightly reworking it:

if you're a queer kid in a queerphobic environment, the internet can be incredibly helpful. furthermore, the way these rules work, either only big tech will be able to afford age-gating, or people will migrate to smaller forums and then the lawmakers will panic and extend it over them as well. and I'm younger than some of the big tech companies. I don't remember an era without social media. the first website where I really interacted with other people in a way that wasn't specifically aimed at kids, I was probably twelve, and it was the comments section of a website went down about six months after I joined. it was a tiny community, the posts were infrequent, and it was held together, so far as I can tell, by sheer optimism. I loved it. fuck, I still do. I adored it. it showed me what the internet could be.

yeah, maybe the space wasn't intentional. yeah, maybe it wasn't made for human connection. so what? that's the beauty of those spaces. human communication networks are like dandelions -- they spring up, and, no matter how hard people try to get rid of them, they just. keep. coming. they will grow from a crack in the sidewalk.

and there will always, always, be a crack in the sidewalk.

anyway, as dragon-in-a-fez mentioned somewhere else, enjoy Ageless Linux.

Farage framed the by-election as an opportunity for Clacton voters to judge him, rather than the “Establishment” and the media deciding whether he was guilty of any wrongdoing by not declaring the £5 million donation. 

However, according to The Times, a senior Reform source said Farage was “poorly advised” about calling the by-election.

The article said that “young advisors” around him had not checked whether the investigation would resume if he is re-elected and had “incorrectly assumed it would not”.

Media reporting at the time Farage triggered a by-election in Clacton made clear that the parliamentary standards probe had been paused but not scrapped, and could be resumed if he returned to Parliament.

It seems Farage and his team were not aware that the investigation had been paused and not cancelled.

Farage received the £5 million gift in April 2024, before he became an MP. He said it was a “private gift” and that he had no intention of returning to politics at the time, so it didn’t need declaring.