Culture

As more and more states in the United States criminalize abortion, the amount of surveillance, and the negative consequences of that surveillance, are going to increase. That’s just a sad fact. With that in mind, we’ve put together some basics on how to protect your privacy during each step of the process of seeking abortion help. We made this with reproductive care in mind, but many of the steps here also apply to situations like abusive relationships and the increased criminalization of trans people, families and healthcare.

One of the trends that gives me hope for the future is seeing more and more queer media on shelves and screens. It's heartening that, even in the face of alarming and depressing times, queer and trans people still manage to make art and tell stories. Too, with the pushes to censor queer content, it...

I want to talk about joy. About feeling sweatily, vibrantly alive and connected and lifted up by community. I want to talk about dancing. Specifically partnered dancing, where two people dance together. Dancing is where I find sanctuary, where I celebrate the good days and find my way through the...

Pride is difficult for me this year, as I imagine it may be for many others. For a lot of reasons, I've struggled to feel much hope recently. Maybe some of you reading this can relate. I've never lived in a world where queer and trans people didn't face discrimination, demonization, threats of...

The Care We Dream Of: Liberatory and Transformative Approaches to LGBTQ+ Health, edited by Zena Sharman, was created in collaboration with fifteen contributors from across North America, and "merges practical ideas with liberatory imaginings about what queer and trans health care could be, grounded in historical examples, present-day experiments, and dreams of the future. At its heart, The Care We Dream Of is a spell of transformation, one that’s both a loving invitation and an urgent demand to leave no one behind as we dream a more liberated future into being." In conversation with Garbiel Leão, Sharman talks about all this and more.

It's been less than a year since I wrote a blog post like this. In that time, there has been an increased wave of right-wing attacks on trans youth at the state level, trying to ban young trans people from sports, trying to ban trans stories from shelves, trying to revoke your access to medical care...

The bimbo is a product of a misogynistic imagination, a sex object and an ableist stereotype. Her image is tied up in ageism as well, being forever young and childlike. Because the outlines of the bimbo stereotype are so bold, and her character so outrageous, she also makes perfect material for drag and other kinds of gender play and parody. And, because gender is weird, people have begun to mess with language so that people of all genders can play with it as well. But is all of this, like, okay?

Abortion can be hard for many adults to understand and process, let alone for kids. As with so many potentially major life events, they are often left in the dark without any comment or explanation as if nothing happened, or receive a rigid lecture from an authority figure imposing only their singular point of view. The book "What’s an Abortion, Anyway?" proposes a new, more fluid and non-judgmental way to explain this event to the small ones.

Indigenous people have long been persecuted and oppressed on their own unceded land by the government of the United States and the picture gets darker with intersectionalities like gender, orientation and social class. SB8 is tinged with white supremacist, patriarchal and elitist values disguised as ways to help Texans. In an interview with Scarleteen, co-founder and sex educator Nicole Martin of Indigenous Women Rising (IWR) speaks on SB8 and Indigenous people.

Jane’s Due Process is an abortion fund in Texas that expressly supports young people. HK Gray was a young person helped by Jane’s Due Process, and who later joined their ranks as an organizer. HK has experienced many ordeals before, during and after her pregnancy, and understands from both professional and personal points of view exactly how disastrous a law like Senate Bill 8 (SB8), which you might know as the Texas Abortion Ban, can be.