Blogaround

A Cardassian (from Star Trek) wearing a Trump-style red hat that says "Make Cardassia Great Again." Image text: "I will build a subspace graviton field and I will make Bajor pay for it." Image source.

1. After North Carolina’s Law, Trans Suicide Hotline Calls Double (posted April 20) Oh god.

What It's Like to Use a Public Bathroom While Trans (posted March 31) [trigger warning: anti-trans violence] "You stand outside the bathroom for maybe a minute or two to make sure no one is coming out or no one is coming in. Then you go inside and if you hear someone, you just look down and hope they don't look at your face.... You run into the stall and you lock the door as fast as you can, and then you do what you have to do. If you hear someone walk in, or you hear someone else in there, you have to wait until they leave. Once you hear that they are gone, you can run out. Washing your hands is a difficult situation because it takes time, so hopefully you brought disinfectant."

2. Massachusetts Seeks Incarceration Alternatives for Parents (posted April 13) "A bill under consideration could help keep families together when a parent is the primary caregiver and is convicted of a nonviolent crime."

3. When Black People Were Not “Ladies” or “Men” (posted April 26) "Additionally, there was no concern about men going into bathrooms with “little girls.” Just if you were “colored” you all had to share the same bathroom."

4. What's Wrong with Voluntourism? Everything (posted April 18) "I have many childhood memories in Nicaragua that include voluntourists and missionaries. I remember that they were really kind, almost too kind. When you grow up poor, you have a lot of street smarts and reading people comes second nature. It was like they were trying to make up for something."

5. Beyonce, Black Feminist Art, and this Oshun Bidness (posted April 30) "Alone, the album is a tale of singular journey of personal growth. Read against the text of the film however, it becomes something else. Like the patron saint it claims as its sire, the film utilizes Oshun’s needle to stitch the album’s singular story into a larger diasporic narrative of community comprised of black women’s struggle, sacrifice, survival, and transformation."

6. Bill would force faith-based colleges to reveal LGBT exemptions (posted May 2) "“There is an alarming and growing trend of schools quietly seeking the right to discriminate against LGBT students, and not disclosing that information publicly,” said HRC President Chad Griffin."

7. ID to Pee? (posted May 2) "All of this is completely unrelated from what appears to be the most common form of bathroom predation—male employees placing hidden cameras inside women’s restrooms in their establishments. Where is the outrage about that, I wonder? I’ve as yet seen no attempt to legislate against male employees cleaning women’s restrooms, or entering them when they’re closed."

8. My Church Basketball Coach Wasn’t Transgender (posted April 28) [trigger warning: child sexual abuse]