The Resource Library

“As long as I can remember, even before I was five years old, my valuation of my individual existence has been based on work. Being a workaholic has done nothing for my self-worth but crush it over and over again. This year has been full of disappointments, and it feels like every stumble in my career sets back my healing progress. Anything that goes wrong in my work life negatively impacts my mental health, which makes it harder to overcome anxiety to work, and the cycle continues until I collapse and can’t work at all.

However, capitalism doesn’t give most of us a break to rest. The more marginalized, the less often we can access rest. Our society is driven by the myth that working harder, longer hours means an eventual payoff like stability, vacation time, or just a job we don’t completely loathe. Yet the reality of capitalism is that the system is built to deny these resources to many in order to provide comfort to few.”

“Heteronormativity is something that is pushed upon everyone by society every single day, and it’s something that we’re constantly, internally and externally pushing back against, despite knowing that no matter how hard we try, it’s futile. Society won’t change and neither will we. So we can’t stop struggling for individuality, we can’t stop trying to distance ourselves from this culture that doesn’t belong to us and we can’t stop trying to preserve our own identity.”

“Blackness, especially when attached to a black woman’s body, is overwhelmingly gendered masculine. “When antebellum middle-class white women were ‘angels of the house’— beautiful, pious, chaste, and delicate — black women were thought to be the beasts in the fields, who did not need their bodies, sensibilities, and virtue protected. While the 19th-century slavery-based American economy depended on this distinction, the bestial view remained long after black bondage passed away,” writes Winfrey-Harris. The tenets of white femininity fail to stand on their own unless we are constantly reminded of their shadow: the strong, masculine black woman.”

“On the day that my husband died, I was two weeks short of my sixty-seventh birthday, and I thought that once I got through the terrible grief and the distress of having to leave the rolling grasslands of southern Saskatchewan, where I’d lived for thirty–three years, for Calgary, I would still have time ahead of me in which to enjoy a wonderful new life. Glimmering faintly on the horizon were art galleries; concert halls; the opera; professional theatre; new, like-minded friends; and maybe, some day, even a relationship. But what I didn’t have a clue about was that I was about to be old nor about what being old would mean to my dreams and desires. I suppose this is because, while dreading old age with every fibre, I was, at the same time, in full denial that it would ever happen to me, and so I was shocked down to the soles of my feet when it did.”

“Whether in an emergency room, a therapy session, or sitting through a routine checkup, trans people are often subject to blatant transphobia in health and mental healthcare settings. More insidious, however, are the myriad ways trans people experience microaggressions. Though microaggressions — defined as indirect, subtle, or unintentional instances of discrimination against members of a marginalized group — are not typically motivated by malice, they can still have a significant negative impact on a patient’s experience, contribute to lower standards of care, and can serve as a deterrent the next time a trans patient needs care.”

“When I was growing up, my chosen family of QTPOC youth helped keep me alive when therapists, hospitals, and crisis hotlines couldn’t. For too many of us, that wasn’t enough.

Mental healthcare is a vital, often life-saving tool – one to which we all deserve access. Unfortunately, like most resources that exist under capitalism, it’s heavily regulated and legislated to a dangerous degree. The result is the mental health industrial complex: a vicious system linking policy and the economy to our health.”

The children’s book publishing world ― both the real-life creators and fictional characters ― is still lacking in diversity, but there are some important titles paving the way for adults and kids to have open conversations about the LGBTQ community.

For Pride, we put together a list of books that introduce young readers to what it means to be gender nonbinary or gender nonconforming, inform them on how to live beyond gender stereotypes, teach them about queer families and LGBTQ icons, and more.

how many women need to die before they see how many femmes hacked, stabbed, shot how many clits do they need to cut how many skulls broken, necks slashed, limp bodies piling up in wells, in pits, in walls and abandoned in the woods how much suffering do they want as proof how many times shall we recount our abuse

“Dating apps are wonderful things to entertain you on the toilet but I can’t be alone in thinking they low-key mean that romance is, y’know, dead?

Surely there had to have been a time before absentmindedly rejecting dudes based on things that would never be deal-breakers in real life (wearing hats, holding up a fish)?”

“She started her Playboy essay with these words:

“When I got pregnant at the age of 16, getting an abortion wasn’t the first idea that popped into my unripened brain.””

“The first time I know that I am fat and that is bad is when I am ten.

That is the year I become a lifetime member of Weight Watchers. My mom says I asked to go on a diet. I don’t remember what precipitated this request, but I am sure she’s right.

I weigh 135 pounds at the first weigh in. When I find that first weigh in card ten years and 150 pounds later, I cry. I was my adult goal weight at 10.

Goal weight. It’s a phrase that causes mini-PTSD symptoms even as I type it. Along with words like “food diary” and “carbs” and “weigh in.””

“Ines says if she had one less client per night, she’d be a better human rights defender. In the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta, the demands of sex work mean the transgender activist never seems to have enough time for the advocacy and protection work she wants – and needs – to do.

Ines is an activist who develops security and protection strategies for other sex workers in Yogyakarta. Across the country, Indonesian human rights defenders have told me the risks they face have never been greater. The counter is in the midst of a two-year crack down on sexuality and gender rights; last week, police arrested 58 people in a raid on a “gay sauna” in Jakarta, some of whom now face 10 years in prison. Human rights defenders protecting the community have been threatened, attacked, slandered and threatened with death. Sex worker rights defenders say their night-time profession multiplies the threats they receive as activists.”

“This year, alongside more than 40 other trans and nonbinary survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, I published Written on the Body: an anthology full of letters survivors have written to our body parts. We write to rebuild, to question, to validate our own experiences. These relationships are non-linear, and we write ourselves into existence beyond Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Remember us, remember your body, and remember that all of these stories exist within your own communities.”

“LGBTQ campaigners are arguing that trans men and non-binary arlieople will be “denied abortion access” when the medical procedure is legalised in Ireland following its historic referendum.

Radical Queers Resist (RQR), which had been covering up graphic anti-abortion images across Dublin with pride flags, has said that the proposed abortion legislation laws will exclude trans men and non-binary people.”

“My views on sex have changed radically in the past five years. I grew up in a Christian home and went to a public school whose idea of sex education was “abstinence and secondary abstinence” followed by a close look of STDs and teenage pregnancy. That’s like teaching someone how to drive a car by telling them to just not drive it if they don’t want to crash. That makes no sense: we are going to drive a car. Teach us how to drive the car safely. (The car here is sex, if that was unclear.)”

“The word “cripple” makes me cringe. It’s uncomfortable. So when Andrew Gurza, a disability consultant and podcaster from Toronto, suggested “Getting Naked With A Gay Cripple” as a title for our upcoming video... I was horrified. 

Andrew delighted in my horror, and explained how he’s reclaimed the word - and how he uses it as a shield of sorts. Moreover, the discomfort that non-disabled people feel around the word is a great conversation starter.”

“I created #BlackLivesMatter with Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, two of my sisters, as a call to action for Black people after 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was post-humously placed on trial for his own murder and the killer, George Zimmerman, was not held accountable for the crime he committed. It was a response to the anti-Black racism that permeates our society and also, unfortunately, our movements.

Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise.  It is an affirmation of Black folks’ contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.”