Vagina-having people have a shorter urethra, which means we’re more prone to UTIs because the bacteria doesn’t have to travel as far to get up into your bladder and cause a problem.

Which means if you’re exposing your bits to bacteria (as with sex), peeing will flush out bacteria in the urethra. (Urine isn’t actually sterile - that’s a myth - but you’re *supposed to* have a little bit of bacteria - that’s how bodies work. But it still flushes things out that shouldn’t be there.)

If you’re one of the people saying “You meant ‘women’”, fuck you. I meant “people who have a vagina, regardless of their gender or lack thereof”, and you can go fuck yourself with a cactus.

In the Western imagination, Tibetan identity/brand is largely confined to a mythical, asexual, masculine spiritual figure. In this light, my existence as a queer, fashion-loving, atheist Tibetan woman starts to become disorienting and surreal. Now that I have made these confessions, tell me, do I still qualify as sufficiently “Tibetan” to the orientalist eye?

Western bourgeois fantasies about Tibet and the harmful racial stereotypes they peddle simply have no need for the real Tibet and the suffering my country endures.

The real Tibet is subservient to the myth of Tibet. This myth, however, has real power and it has become the dominant framework through which the West perceives Tibetan political struggle. The myth reduces Tibet to a museum exhibit. The myth conflates the politics of Tibet to a question of the survival of a dying, one-dimensional civilization. The myth prevents Tibet’s political concerns from being taken seriously. The myth invites sentimentalities rather than political expediency. The myth ensures Tibetans never get the institutional and governmental support we tirelessly lobby for.

I teach the sex education curriculum of Our Whole Lives at my local Unitarian Universalist church, right now we are teaching the kindergarten-1st grade class. We don’t get a whole lot of support from the congregation, although we do have a small budget we can use for supplies and training new teachers. I want to get more involved and get them more involved.

One of the ways I want to do this is help change the culture to be more trans inclusive, since gender education is a big part of comprehensive sex education. I swear I’ve seen print outs or signs for churches and other organizations on how to be more welcoming to trans people including always including your pronouns in introductions to make it more normalized, avoiding gendering and binary language, etc. but I can’t find one anywhere! I want to put it on the cork board in the foyer so everyone can see it and start changing their behavior.