While Reading and Walking

Here are some ways that you can support your trans, gender non-conforming, nonbinary, and otherwise queer community this Pride Month:

- Do the research. Read books like The T-Guide by Gottmik and Gigi Gorgeous or dig into breakdowns online to understand what youth transitions actually look like, when surgery becomes involved, how hard it actually is to get your hands on hormone blockers, and much more. An informed ally is an ally who can speak up and make real change.

- Take on the burden to educate others. Too often, this falls on trans and gender non-conforming people. Speak up, argue, and work to inform and change minds. Have the tough conversations with family members and friends, but also make the more subtle corrections and notes.

- Support your local drag queens. Come out in force to their shows! Drag queens are doing terrifying work right now, because more than in decades, their mere performances are protest incarnate.

- Donate to organizations like Lambda Legal or other organizations (see Them’s great round-up, https://www.them.us/story/orgs-fighting-back-anti-trans-legislation) that are fighting for trans rights across the US.

- If you’re in one of the states that’s trying to pass anti-trans legislation, make sure you’re voting, and write to your senator! Check out ResistBot, which helps you send letters to your legislators easily over text.

I first encountered Heartstopper by Alice Oseman in its webcomic form, in random reblogs on Tumblr from people I followed. I didn’t read it in earnest, but I loved to skim whenever it popped up on my feed. It was a quiet, lovely queer joy that was honest and delved into dark topics without straying from a cozy, easy-reading feel.

So I was delighted when Oseman’s Kickstarter self-published the first volume, and when its success led to a publisher pick-up of the series. This Pride Month, I prioritized finding reading the story of Charlie, a young gay kid in the UK, falling for Nick, a rugby guy who might or might not be straight, and eventually getting to know their friends.

It was easy to knock both volumes out in a day. The story moves quickly, and its sweetness is convincing and guides us deftly through some serious issues of coming out, being queer, confronting homophobia, and sexual assault. The art is deceptively simple, clean, and warm. I can’t wait to keep reading Charlie and Nick’s story.

Content warnings for homophobia, sexual assault, anxiety.

There are all kinds of small ways that biphobia & panphobia persist in the way we think about relationships and love. I don’t consider myself to be in a “heterosexual” or “straight” relationship even though I am dating a heterosexual man, because I am not heterosexual. I am pansexual.

A lot of people don’t think it matters because I’m in a committed relationship, but my identity is not simply something for me to put on a dating app. My identity is part of who I am and is a constant. Despite what some seem to think, a bi cis woman is not only part of the queer community if she’s dating someone who’s queer. And she’s just as bisexual no matter who she’s dating at the time. Two gay men don’t stop going to Pride after they get married. Their label doesn’t vanish off of them when they’re no longer “on the market.” I am pansexual no matter my relationship status.

It’s important to me to say so because people also often just…forget. I’ve had a number of loved ones simply forget that I’m not straight. I don’t have an accumulation of “proof.” I haven’t dated widely, and I haven’t brought anyone who wasn’t a cis man home to meet the family. And so it slips people’s minds. There are benefits to being straight-passing as a couple, and I don’t take those for granted. And maybe the mistake is understandable, but it still stings when someone who you’ve actively come out to offhandedly comments to someone that you aren’t gay, and you know their follow-up is, “I mean, she isn’t really…”

You see this a lot in fandom spaces as well. People who believe someone is either straight or gay. Binary. Who never consider…bisexual. Pansexual. Somewhere else in between.

So beware of pan and biphobia this Pride Month, and try to celebrate all of the queer people in your life.

Finally got back to my novel after a few months of being busy with work and needing a break after some of the pain of querying. Casually pumped out 4,000 words. Guess I need to get out to the coffee shop more often!

Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution by Susan Stryker is a really great introduction to trans activism in the US. It introduced me to dozens of figures I didn’t know but want to know, and analyzes cultural understanding, support, and backlash to trans people and issues over the decades. Particularly pertinent in a depressing way was her summary of “the difficult decades,” in which a feminist anti-trans politics formed that modern day activists will recognize in today’s ugly TERF movement.

This is a version updated in 2017 and Stryker describes it as an extensively new, updated edition, with a new final chapter. So, I am judging it by 2017 standards, and I found parts of the first section particularly very out-dated. For example, she writes that terms including nonbinary, genderqueer, and gender-nonconforming are used for “people who reject the terms transgender and transsexual for themselves,” which is an inaccurate generalization, and that nonbinary is “an emerging terminological preference among younger generations who consider binary gender identity to be something more relevant to their grandparents than to themselves.” None of this is accurate by 2017 understanding, but the worst part is her chuckling, dismissive tone, which I found troubling.

I believe she has a bit of a Boomer tone, a grown-up dismissiveness of young people and their terms, which does nothing for her book, and which I often found grating, particularly since this is meant to be a really useful text and guidepost for people to understand trans history. She often acknowledges that something is outdated and then proceeds to stick to it, rather than shifting to respect later understandings. One very weird passage is the one where she uses three different pronouns for Leslie Feinberg, who explicitly at the time of hir death preferred zie/hir pronouns. The new final chapter is useful but I thought the digital era and its innovations for queer community were not built out enough.

Nevertheless, this was an extremely useful book for me because I encountered a lot of incredible trans icons I hadn’t yet known and gained a new perspective on trans and queer history that will help me in my activism moving forward. Stryker does a great job of unfolding the splits over time between the LGB and T movements, the feminist and trans movements, and more, all of which provides a lot of background for what we’re facing today. Despite my issues with it, I’m ultimately very glad to have dug into it and filled the gaps in my knowledge about trans history.

The Subtweet by Vivek Shraya is a compelling story about two female musicians of color in Canada who connect thanks to social media and become friends. At the time, Neela is a pretentious (sometimes almost out-of-touch), internal, alternative musician, while Rukmini is more of a social media, selfie-taking cover artist. But a leaked album could set their whole friendship ablaze.

This book’s language, like Neela, was sometimes annoyingly pretentious. But it was an effective and frustrating story about social media and the way it warps the way we communicate and the way we manage our friendships. On one hand, we think, why won’t they just talk to each other? But the truth is that in today’s world we are susceptible to instagram messages and liking their photos, subtweeting and counting retweets. Too often we hesitate to text someone directly, or we worry about being perceived as too eager, or we hide our jealousy by not sharing our admiration. Plus, how does social media mess with how we engage with and consume art, or measure our art’s value, particularly in communities that already have a harder time reaching the masses? When it seems like it’s a constant competition for attention?

I found Shraya’s craft choices really compelling—the way she brings in 1st person POV to represent real-life breaking through the social media confusion, or the way one character drops out of the story the moment her social media presence disappears. Shraya encourages us to look harshly at social media, and consider who we’re tweeting for and try harder to interrogate what stories we get only over social media.

Content warnings for racism, misogyny.

Hoping the lakeside vibes continue all summer long…

If you stay ready (with a book), you don’t have to get ready (stare down social media in the hour before a basketball game).

In absolute queer classic The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez, a young girl flees slavery after her mother’s death and finds herself adopted by the proprietor of a prosperous, well-run brothel in Louisiana. Before choosing to end her very long life, the proprietor gives the girl two gifts: eternal life, and her name, Gilda. From there, we follow Gilda through her life as a cautious, independent, queer Black vampire, from Yerba Buena in 1890 to 1950s Boston to the disturbing unknowns of 2050.

This was the perfect book to read to kick off Pride Month. Yes it’s deliciously queer and sapphic. But more important for me was the queering of what constitutes family, home, and intimacy. Family is a very conscious choice in this world of vampires. They live by a code of exchange—to honor life, and to only take blood if you leave a dream, token, boost of some kind behind. Not all vampires are like them, but they try to change only those who are ready for the life, who are open to learn their way. And so there’s a real study of chosen family, and of a group of people who are incredibly intimate even when thousands of miles apart. Gilda must learn how to be both open and independent, both cautious and intimate, and discover all the different ways there are to love.

Gomez’s vampires are old in body and soul, and earthy—they carry their home soil in the hems of their clothes and stuffed into their pallets. They learn how to be both human and apart, to blend while changing lives, or causes, for the better. The characters are vivid, rich, and compelling, and each chunk of story has its own arc and change of scene. There are little craft things here and there. The 3rd person point-of-view can skip around, a loose end or two go untied. And when you read the 2020 section, remember that the book was written in 1991.

Overall, I really enjoyed this fantasy read that felt like a classic, with its careful language and with a big scope filtered through one woman’s eyes.

Content warnings for sexual assault, racism/racist language, homophobia/homophobic language, violence, ableism, suicidal ideation.

This pride I’m asking the tough questions. Like whether you can be radical in your desire for communal support while going maskless.

I have friends who covid could kill. And I have friends who had no underlying health conditions but who covid laid horribly, terrifyingly low. I know chronically ill or at-risk people who can’t leave the house because of people like a woman I saw at the Sky game the other day, telling her children she was sick as she attended a game at a packed arena, or like a woman who tweeted she was going to her Eras Tour show despite a positive test.

I’ll be truthful. I don’t always wear my mask outside anymore. And I often wear cloth mask in lower risk spaces rather than a kn95 or n95, which is not as effective. In the summer heat, cloth masks are less likely to make me overheat, which is a serious issue for me in the last few years. But I still mask indoors when I’m not eating. I try to isolate and be careful over several days after any big event or travel. I am cautious and test often.

Because I refuse to spread covid. I take a lot of risks myself—going to concerts, traveling—and so I mask and take precautions. Too many people don’t. You aren’t masking just for you. You’re masking for everyone else. Every event I attend is weighed against my fear and timed against when I’ll next see an immunocompromised friend.

So please, this pride, if you go to huge, packed events, mask or try to isolate and test afterwards. Your pride isn’t that radical if it doesn’t put a modicom of personal comfort aside for disabled and chronically ill people who can’t celebrate this year or last year or the year before. If you’re traveling a lot, maybe plan in some time to isolate before attending a concert if you’re going to be maskless. And for frick’s sake, if you’re feeling ill or have symptoms or a known exposure, do not go to the big event. Just don’t go.

This pride, thousands of people suffering from long Covid or at high risk for it can’t attend any events for fear of being laid low by a disease we stopped taking seriously way too early. Please mask this pride.

You can always count on Charlie Jane Anders for a good read, and Promises Stronger Than Darkness, the third and final book in the Unstoppable YA series, doesn’t disappoint. The space opera has come to a heart-pounding climax: can rogue princess Elza, artist and grudging leader Rachael, and Captain Thaoh—once Tina Mains—save the world from total annihilation as the Bereavement threatens to snuff out stars across the galaxy? Or will the terrifying villain (favorite all-time villains, he scares the shit out of me) Marrant and his fascist Compassion get to the Bereavement first, and use it to accomplish their genocidal ends?

I love this series. It’s a book with a lot of space drama and trauma, but with a lot of queer joy. It’s powerful to read a book where queerness is accepted and pronouns are automatic, because there’s plenty of drama to go around, but none where that’s concerned. I love Rachael’s anxiety and the fact that she can still lead. I love the messages about being selfish where it matters, about protecting the ones we love, about finding ways around violence even in the most extreme of situations. The characters deal with trauma in realistic and painful ways. It’s believable, rich, complex, fun, emotional, and cinematic, all at once. It’s hard to let go of these characters and their accomplishments and their relationships, but I suppose I have to, at least for now.

If you haven’t picked up this series yet, now is your chance to dive in all in one go, without having to deal with a long wait between books. Go do it! There’s no better Pride Month read.

Content warnings for death, grief, trauma, body horror, anxiety/panic

It’s that time of year when poplar trees rain down allergies like snow! There are a couple streets in Hyde Park just blanketed in small drifts of white fluff, and it’s always a surreal sight.

Stacey Abrams, political activist and fiction author, spoke with journalist and author Jake Tapper at a Chicago Humanities Festival event last night. Are you more of an architect or a gardener when you write? Tapper asked her early on in the night. “I’m an architect who likes landscaping,” she said—she writes a synopsis, then an outline, then lays out a storyboard, “and then it all goes to hell.”

Abrams carves out time to write, because she loves it, and because she finds it necessary. While she doesn’t have much of a work-life balance, she’s very good at what she calls “work-life jenga.” She knows how many words she can write a day, and follows her plan carefully—she can write about a chapter a day. Right now, she has a children’s book, a teenage superhero novel, another Avery Keene book, and much more in the pipeline.

Abrams primarily writes romantic suspense—“I kill too many people to be straight romance.” Her newest release, Rogue Justice, is a political thriller, the second in the Avery Keene series. In it, Keene faces real-life issues, such as the danger of deep-fakes and the secret court that grants permissions to the government to wiretap Americans. “Everything in this book could technically happen,” said Tapper, “and I guess we’re lucky that when you had a quarter-life crisis, you didn’t decide to be a criminal mastermind.” But that was Abrams’ goal—she likes using her thrillers to send up flares, to expose vulnerabilities into things we should be paying attention to.

Abrams knows that what she’s been building, politically, is powerful. “I applied for a job twice and got rejected twice,” she said, “but the work of democracy was done both times.” She gets a lot of her drive from her civil rights activist parents, who always pushed her and her siblings. Abrams has a lot of hope in the work she’s doing to increase voter turnout, and persuade voters that their votes matter. She knows that democracy is hard work. While authoritarianism is easy, “democracy by its very nature requires that we sublimate ourselves to others.” We need do the work to do what is right: not just what would be good for us, but what is good for others as well.

When the Hibiscus Falls is a gorgeous set of short stories by M. Evelina Galang about the Filipino and Filipino American experience—from homecomings to escapes and new beginnings, from ancestors and elders to unruly grandchildren. The book deals a lot with rogue people and the way we encounter, recognize, and deal with our heritage.

In “Drowning,” a misbehaved, rebellious older sister dies, and the youngest is left with the consequences. In “When the Hibiscus Falls,” the protagonist’s cousin Mayari has fled in the middle of the Covid pandemic, and Sol arrives in Miami in an attempt to bring her home. In “Fighting Filipina,” a young girl grates under the rise of anti-Asian American hatred around her, and is desperate to protect her grandmother from its effects. There are so many kinds of stories in this collection, but Galang really hits on something powerful in how the young cannot escape their heritage, how the old are haunted by the traumas or scars of the past, and how the generations clash and come together and fall apart.

The scattering of Tagalog throughout and Galang’s rich language bring the Philippines and the characters of all of her stories into vivid life and character. I enjoyed all of these tales, and I hope that people put this on hold at their local libraries before its June 13 release. This book is massively under-hyped given how excellent the stories here are!

Content warnings for sexual assault (implied & depicted), death, grief, trauma, hate crimes, xenophobia, racism, panic/anxiety.

There are so many states in which our gender non-conforming loved ones are actively unsafe right now. The campaigns are running on deeply incorrect misinformation. Young children are not getting surgery. Teens can only access hormone therapy or blockers after several psychological assessments. And importantly, acceptance and support for trans youth—which often involves simply support and a social transition—results in teens who are less likely to die from suicide. And studies show, repeatedly, that trans-ness is not a phase. Trans youth know who they are.

Just wanting to defend our most vulnerable populations should be plenty: but it’s worth noting that the passing of laws that codify the ability of the government to police and punish certain kinds of bodies is something that everyone, cis people included, should be extremely concerned about. This issue is intimately connected to the control of reproductive rights and freedoms, and violation of bodily autonomy and privacy. It is also intimately connected to the policing of Black and brown bodies that takes place across the US every day. Every step forward in limiting trans and gender non-conforming rights is a step forward for those battles as well, setting legal precedents and frameworks.

They are tackling trans and gender non-conforming youth because it is easy to appeal to parents and their fear that their children are being corrupted by a world they’re scared of. A world where gender does not give inherent worth, where gender and sex are flexible, is a world in which certain kinds of people no longer have power. The queer community scares them, but the trans issue puts a crack in that community, as TERFs and transphobes reveal themselves. People in power thrive on disunity. The best way to counter them is by doggedly standing by all of our queer siblings, by educating ourselves and others on the facts, and by being prepared to protest and step in where necessary (I highly recommend taking bystander training for situations like this). Take a concrete step forward this Pride Month to support our trans and gender non-conforming community.