Absolutely! Formal education on gender/gender diversity needs to be available (and, in the case of public schools, required) well before college level.
In a simple experiment, researchers at the University of Chicago sought to find out whether a rat would release a fellow rat from an unpleasantly restrictive cage if it could. The answer was yes.
The free rat, occasionally hearing distress calls from its compatriot, learned to open the cage and did so with greater efficiency over time. It would release the other animal even if there wasn’t the payoff of a reunion with it. Astonishingly, if given access to a small hoard of chocolate chips, the free rat would usually save at least one treat for the captive — which is a lot to expect of a rat.
The researchers came to the unavoidable conclusion that what they were seeing was empathy.
Fuck yeah kindness!
Life is basically good.
rats > humans
I was reading this post the other day about using certain words when talking about men, specifically FTMs, and it said that one of the words that were unsuitable was “beautiful”. It really confuddled me because I use the word beautiful for all people - male, female, agender, bigender, trigender,…
I call my boyfriend (who’s trans) beautiful all the time, and I don’t think it’s inappropriate at all. In fact, it’s super appropriate, actually, considering that my boyfriend is beautiful (regardless of gender, trans or not). That said, it did take me a minute after I started dating him before I felt comfortable using “feminine” (ugh) endearments to describe him; it took some feeling out to know that we’d gotten to a place where I could tell him he was beautiful without having to worry that he’d take offense, and where he knew that absolutely no offense/affront to his gender was meant. I enjoy the fact that both my boyfriend and I are at a place in our understandings of gender where this queering of adjectives, if you will, seems pretty natural and unthreatening. I don’t think either of us think of adjectives as belonging one gender category exclusively, or as an appropriate compliment for members of only one gender/presentation. One way I’ve used adjectives like “pretty”, “beautiful”, or “gorgeous” in a way that is also affirming of male gender identity is by placing the word “boy” after them in a sentence (my boyfriend is often reminded that I think he’s a “pretty boy” or a “gorgeous boy”, and I think he loves that I very evidently see him as thoroughly inhabiting both of those spaces, and that they’re not oxymoronic at all).
LGBTQ* Published Articles You May Have Missed
A Gender Not Listed Here: Genderqueers, Gender Rebels, and OtherWise in the National Transgender Discrimination Survey
by Jack Harrison, Jaime Grant, and Jody L. Herman
In the landmark 2008 National Transgender Discrimination Survey, respondents were given the latitude to write in their own gender if the predefined categories were not representative. This article reanalyzes the survey data to determine the experiences of those respondents who chose to write in their own gender. By examining several key domains of the study—education, health care, employment, and police harassment—it becomes evident that gender variant respondents are suffering significant impacts of anti-transgender bias and in some cases are at higher risk for discrimination and violence than their transgender counterparts in the study.
Continue reading HERE.
People are calling today “Feminist Christmas” because the anti choice policies in Oklahoma and Texas were struck down in the courts. If we can have a “Feminist Christmas” while a black trans woman is facing jail time for trying to survive a racist and transphobic attack and three other trans women of color were reported murdered just last month, then Feminism, and each of us as feminists, is failing.
i’m getting ready to go to the doctor to talk about changing my hormone dosages. i want to find out if it’s possible to maintain my current in-between body.
A few months ago i looked in the mirror. The act of looking in the mirror is nothing special for me, i do it a lot; at least once per outfit. What was striking was that i realized that i was happy with my body. i was enamored with my tiny tits, the relatively light accumulation of fat around my hips and ass, the lessened muscles on my arms that still left behind some definition.
This body is a long way from where it was when i started hormones, but it’s also still a long way from where i thought it was going to end up. When i’d started hormones i wanted to get read as a cis woman, to live in stealth. That was the only trans* story i really thought was possible in my life. That’s shifted.
i began feeling empowered by being trans*. People started seeing me as trans*. Folks began telling me things like “i don’t see you as man or woman, just as elle.” At first this felt unsettling, but as i became more and more comfortable in myself it felt infinitely more affirming than it ever did to be accepted as a woman (although there were moments when that was, admittedly, quite nice). i learned to truly reclaim myself in several ways.
A beautiful piece written by a beautiful friend of mine.
I’ve been searching for these words for a while, and didn’t even realize it:
“…the most comfortable is when people read me as a completely unique and deeply queer individual. These moments allow me to feel my interactions are somehow genuine.”
My favorite PostSecret of the week! Who says sex and gender always have to line up perfectly?
My love of animals and queerness just collided…