Hello

Her immune cells responded to that tiny little needle wound as they normally would, and only then detected something wrong with the surrounding cells, attacking the cancer they now associated with that trivial damage.

A cat is a small creature in the middle of the food chain that is fully aware that you are a very large thing that could stomp its head in at any moment and yet it chooses to rest its tiny little head on your leg for a nap and spreads out on the floor near you exposing its belly and its most sensitive organs. It brings dead mice and bugs to you to share food.

Don’t you get it? This tiny thing trusts you. It wants to help you too. It licks your leg thinking that it’s helping. It kneads on you to find comfort. It shares its body warmth with you in the cold and gives you your space in the heat. It hisses at other mammals it sees outside including other cats in an effort to protect its family.

Hi everyone! I know times are tough right now for a lot of people.

I personally live in a state that has a Republican governor, and a Republican house and senate majority, and there have already been multiple bills passed and signed into law that affect the trans community in my state, and particularly trans minors.

There is no magical year in the past when everything was perfect— when I was in middle school, we were debating whether same-sex marriage should be legal in social studies class— but it wasn’t always like this. There wasn’t as much visibility of trans identity but there was also a lot less deliberately targeted institutional transphobia.

I didn’t have the same experiences as people who are teens now, so I can’t say that I know exactly what it’s like. But I have a lot of empathy for what it’s like to be denied the medically necessary care that you need to live in a body that you are comfortable in.

While many of us have similar experiences (I wasn’t able to medically transition as a minor either since I didn’t have parental consent, even though it wasn’t restricted by law at the time) I think it’s really important to recognize that what trans pre-teens and teens are going through right now is genuinely different than what people like me (on the oldest cusp of “gen Z”) experienced because the political environment has changed a lot in just a few years.

Many of the archived answers on this blog hail from that earlier period and are now outdated— there didn’t used to be state-level laws restricting trans folks from using the bathrooms that match their identified gender, there didn’t used to be state-wide restrictions on participating in sports, access to things like puberty blockers was limited by a lack of providers and not having supportive parents who would consent to gender-affirming care more than it was limited by state overreach limiting physicians’ ability to practice evidence-based practice, and so on.

I’ve been busy with school so I haven’t had time to go through and update those things, and it’s also so painful to have to do, to have to take down a link and say that those things we said were your rights aren’t really your rights anymore.

So yeah. Things are rough right now. But that’s all the more reason to do what we can for our community. I want to encourage any followers who have grown up with the blog and are now young adults to please do what you can to directly help trans youth. I used to attend events held by an organization that held activity and support groups for LGBTQ youth as a teen, and returned to a similar group for a while as an adult group facilitator. I write testimonies against bathroom ban bills and submit them for the house and senate hearings in my state. And so on. We all have different skills so please see what your local organizations are doing and then get involved! No need to reinvent the wheel— if you genuinely live in an area with absolutely no initiatives at all, figure out what a similar group does in a different area and replicate that model.

And to my trans teens and pre-teens out there, I want to let all of you know that I really really really believe in you. And I believe that you’re going to be able to survive this. And that you will not only survive but eventually thrive. You are not alone. I know it sucks a lot right now, but it won’t be forever. I don’t have all the right words to say but I want you to know that there are a lot of people out there who do care, who are fighting for your rights, and that we’re really really rooting for you every day.

The surrounding pink/brown is Arizona

The top right yellow corner is the Navajo nation

Any pink/brown inside the yellow corner is Hopi reservation

Any further yellow inside that is further pieces of the Navajo nation inside the Hopi reservation

This is what we trained for. This is our moment. We need to get a lot louder and way more petty.