Transphobia is about to be signed into law in the UK. We can fight this.
I am begging the UK trans community and its allies to attend the Mass Lobby at Parliament on June 25th, 11am-4pm, organised by Trans Solidarity Alliance.
Last year we broke the record for an LGBT+ mass lobby of Parliament. Will you help us break it again? Join us on 25th June 2026 to demand be
The new EHRC Code of Practice pushes trans people out of toilets, hospital wards, and community spaces. It normalises gender policing based on appearance and stereotypes. It becomes statutory guidance in the UK by the end of June.
Trans people are now legally their assigned gender at birth and must join gendered spaces accordingly, but if they are perceived as their lived gender, they can also be ejected from those spaces. The guidance says: either break the law, or donât pass too well.
A mass lobby is where you invite your MP to discuss your concerns with you in-person. Ask your MP to:
Demand full parliamentary scrutiny, debate, and use their free vote on the EHRC Code of Practice.
Support any motions rejecting the EHRC guidance. As of June 4th, Labour MP Nadia Whittome has submitted a prayer motion - Early Day Motion 240.
Write to Bridget Phillipson, the Minister for Women and Equalities about our concerns
Your MP does not have to be an ally, they do not have to respond to your email for you to show up and greencard them (details below the cut.) What matters is that as many people as possible show up.
I cannot stress this enough: Showing up in person matters. It is much more effective than petitions, emails, and letters.
It is a horrible, stressful time, and I am so sorry if you're trans and live in the UK. But I was at last year's mass lobby and the line for greencarding alone stretched around the back gates. It was a record breaking mass lobby and made us impossible to ignore. Let's do even better this time. Details under the cut:
Worried about what to say?
Bring your personal worries about transphobia being signed into law, and trans friends being excluded from public spaces. You are a living person who deserves dignity. Remind your MP of that. You will also get guidance and brochures from Trans Solidarity Alliance that outlines our demands. This is mine from last year.
Money issues?
Trans Solidarity Alliance provides a travel bursary that you can sign up for via the link.
Got a refusal or no response from your MP?Â
Come anyway! You can request a same-day appointment with your MP through a process called greencarding. They will come and see you if theyâre already in Parliament. Even if they donât, theyâre made acutely aware of your cause because you showed up in person. This is my greencard from last year.
Here is the EHRC Code of Practice in full. It's a tough read, but some highlights are:
Organisations canât provide trans-inclusive, single-sex services, or they risk being sued for discrimination.
e.g. domestic violence support for women including trans women, menâs rugby group including trans men (12.68).
Trans people will have nowhere safe to pee.
If youâre a trans man, businesses can't allow you to pee in the men's, and you can also be ejected from womenâs bathrooms if youâre perceived as a man. Vice versa for trans women. EHRC suggests a âthird spaceâ bathroom, which is discriminatory and unworkable for most businesses. (13.130-133)
Sports organisations must exclude trans people from single-sex competitions (13.73).Â
A womenâs only sports competition must exclude trans women because of their biological advantage or face potential lawsuits (13.74), but a trans man who has undergone testosterone treatment can also be excluded based on fairness rules (13.81).
Trans women are stripped of the legal definition of âlesbianâ, and therefore no longer have legal protections if theyâre discriminated against on the basis of sexual orientation. (2.50, 2.92).
Here is the Good Law Project's better explanation of the EHRC Code.
I have also made a PDF printout of QR codes for the government petition, email your MP tool, and mass lobby link to pass around your communities. DM me and I'll send it to you.
I was in a long-term relationship that fell apart partially because I was ace and my partner was very much not, and every time we looked for relationship help we got told that I was the problem. Not just that a significant mismatch in sexual desire could be a problem in a relationship, but that it was My Fault, Specifically, for not being willing to suck it up and have a bunch of sex I didn't want. To my ex's credit, he cared about consent much more than any of the professionals we talked to and refused to pressure me even when my (lesbian, billed as progressive and pro-LGBT) therapist was actively telling him to.
But it meant that we had absolutely no help or support when we were trying to work on the relationship in ways that *did* value my autonomy. There's basically no advice for people who want to try to make a relationship where there's a big desire gap work that isn't "well you should just have sex anyway" or "just break up lol". And that sucks!
Sometimes breaking up is necessary, and that's what ended up happening with us because there were other reasons we worked better as friends, but there *should* be better frameworks for discussing what people want and need that don't automatically assume that one partner's feelings are automatically more important or valuable than the other's.
I was dating someone who wanted to be accommodating and work with me to figure things out but lacked the EQ to do so in any effective way. It was my first relationship and I was still figuring out what being ace meant for me. Itâs been eight or nine years, but I still remember very clearly the moment I realized weâd been approaching the entire discussion as if my orientation was the problem to be solved, and that it would be equally as valid to say that hers was.
She was significantly less impressed with this revelation than I was, but I tried to hold on to it ever since (although obviously the real problem wasnât either one of us, but the mismatch and the lack of tools to deal with it). I think itâs super important to remember that we arenât the ones in the wrong while our theoretical partners are the ones in the right. I was surprised by how much Iâd internalized the assumption and I donât think Iâm the only one.
The other frustrating aspect of this is allo relationships will often have periods of time where libido does not match (I'm not derailing and this will swing back to asexual people)
Just after giving birth, during a family crisis, during a mental health episode, during health problems, during stressful periods at work
There are a lot of times when one person is horned up and raring to go and the other has no interest
And the solution often presented is that the person who is going through something should just put out because they are the problem instead of like...finding ways to engage in non sexual intimacy to reaffirm closeness
An asexual person is going to get 10x the amount of pressure and blame put on them and no advice on how non-sexual intimacy can help their relationships and if they get that at all it will only be to sell it as a bridge to sex they don't want.
I really hate the selling of intimacy as only equaling or facilitating sex. Intimacy comes in many forms and should be explored more by every couple as a non sexual act. And it the given importance it deserves. In fact I would argue if we as a society put more value on non sexual intimacy more relationships would be happier and healthier
And asexual people would stop getting shit for being themselves.
Yeah, exactly! There are many different forms of intimacy, physical and emotional, and we need to stop viewing non-sexual forms of intimacy as inherently lesser.
And also you're right that while this post is specifically about the asexual experience, these problems affect everyone; desire gaps, whether temporary/circumstantial or ongoing, affect many if not most long-term relationships. And the solution needs to reaffirm bodily autonomy and compassion for everyone, not just carve out a specific exception for ace people. Too frequently I see people and institutions that, even when they're attempting to be affirming, essentially say "Well this is what a committed relationship Needs To Look Like . . . unless you already id as ace I guess" instead of allowing their general idea of what relationships can look like to expand and become less prescriptive.
No one should be pressured into sex they don't want. This should be a basic and non-negotiable tenet of feminism. But it goes out the window as soon as it's in the context of a committed relationship that isn't otherwise abusive.
"But it's not FOR them!!!" The biggest military power in the world belongs to a christofascist nation overseen by a felon found guilty of 34 federal crimes and has greenlit a gestapo with more direct funding than the entire military of Canada for the purpose of ethnic cleansing. Let Hetero Jessica throw some biodegradable glitter at a municipal parade
At this point if anyone is trying to exclude anyone pro-queer and not hurting anyone from a pro-queer space I'm just going to assume you're a fed or something idk like something something destabilize the movement from within or whatever
always complain about things. okay, you know how programmers explain their code to rubber ducks when it's not working? same principle. an appliance breaks down. I get pissed off, try everything, go through the various stages of despair etc. I complain about it to a friend and explain why it frustrates me so bad, and suddenly I'm thinking 'wait I should try unplugging it and then doing a factory reset and thenâ' and I go home and do that and it starts working again. I keep losing my earrings. I complain about it to a friend, about how I keep them all in a little dish but then the specific one I want always dematerialises the moment I want it. my friend says 'I just keep them on the little card backs they came with' and I think well shit, I always throw those out. but then I think aha I can make a bunch of pinholes in a decorative postcard. genius. I read a story. it's about something I'm usually into, but for some reason I don't like this story at all. I complain about it, I figure out what irritates me about it, I have a great idea for a way better story. I try a new recipe, it doesn't come together. I bitch about it like crazy, about what I thought I did right and how it failed, and before I know it I'm explaining out loud which parts I'm inexperienced at or didn't understand or adjusted wrong. I need a little table for drawing on. I complain about it in the group chat, two days later someone says 'hey I spotted the kind of table you're looking for on the side of the road, do you want to come pick it up'. I complain, endlessly. my life is enriched. the art of complaining.
As a bisexual person I'm keenly aware of how such stereotypes are inevitably harmful to us, but unfortunately when I see bisexuals in fiction who are Evil and stylish and fuck like champions I can't help but go "oh work" for a sec. It's a difficult conundrum
One of the most frightening things I've ever heard is when somebody pointed out that the existence of flinching away when you touch something hot implies that at some point there was an evolutionary reason to be afraid of scary fire monsters that attacked people đš
as a former escape room host i highly recommend doing an escape room as a first date. its a great way to learn how ppl react under pressure and how well they collaborate with you right off the bat. also more than once ive seen people enter an escape room as a couple and exit broken up LOL its a fantastic litmus test
sorry to broadcast ur tags but this is also a valuable part of the litmus test! it seems like you learned a lot about how this person makes you feel in their social group. they didn't go out of their way to include you, and neither did their friends. therefore you can come to a pretty good conclusion about how you might feel being part of their life outside of an escape room; someone who doesnt include you or your feelings in a game is likely going to do the same in other situations
Strange racists and homophobes on the internet seem to have access to an alternate way cooler version of TV than me. "every white character on TV is in an interracial relationship" "every show has a gay couple in it" "main characters keep having to secretly be bisexual and nonbinary" "every show has gratuitous full frontal nudity" like damn promise?? What channel???
for real though, those DO NOT WATCH OR YOU'LL CORRUPT YOUR CHILDREN lists put out by conservative christian family groups is where I find all the stellar tv shows. Like, shit I didn't know half of those existed, thanks for finding them for me, gonna go watch 30 hours of gay tv now!
For personal context, before I went to the '98 Burning Man festival, one of the things I'd read from a couple different journalists was that "everybody" runs around naked. Which, fine by me, I'd already spent a lot of time in clothing-optional spaces, I'm not fanatic about it but it's nice.
So I got there early and set up a public shade structure on one of Black Rock City's main roads and spent most of each afternoon just watching the crowds go by. I don't remember seeing more than one actually naked person the whole week. I think a topless woman passed by my intersection maybe every half an hour, sometimes once an hour. So why in the hell were people, normally pretty smart and observant writers, coming away with the impression that everybody was naked?
Then I remembered an unrelated passage from Joel Garreau's great book about the history of the outer-ring suburbs, Edge City. Mall developers told him flat-out that they tried to keep the crowds in their malls less than 5% black. Not because they themselves were racist, but because they had determined, experimentally, that if more than 5% of the people in the mall are black, the median white shopper will wrongly describe the mall as at least half black, as mostly black. And not a few of them would describe it, at 6% black, as a mall where "only black people go." Why?
Because, emotionally, they were still upset over the last one when the next one came into view.
Same as the journalists describing Black Rock City as all naked. Same as the right-wing religious culture warriors describing television as entirely mixed-race and gender non-conforming. Not because it's even vaguely true, we know that, but because they haven't gotten over their discomfort over the last one by the time the next one comes along. The anger, not the stimulus, is the part that's continuous, so their mind lies to them that it's "all" the thing they can't get over.
Similar effect for the presence/proportion of women in things, by the way: https://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/human-nature/perception/how-17-equals-496-the-amazing-multiplying-women.htm
i love that itâs a carefully worded, well-written, non-inflammatory answer too. which asker wouldnât know because they wonât read it. i love website
Psst. Are you transmasc and a visual artist, musician, and/or author? (Or an artist of any other medium!) Reblog this post with a recent work you're proud of, or drop something in the askbox if you prefer!
I want to celebrate transmasculine art this pride month.
The only rules are A. No AI generated content (you will be blocked), and B. No explicit gore or explicit sexual content, as this blog is meant to be safe for kids. (Artistic nudity & light violence are both A-OK! Eyestrain and any potentially triggering content will be tagged!)
Thank you so much to everyone who's sent in their amazing art! Hopefully I'll have time to go through and reblog the rest of the submissions later today :D (Keep 'em coming, though! I plan to reblog/answer every single response to this post until pride month ends!)
She played bass on 10,000 songs, including the most-played track of the twentieth century. She was paid $55 per session. Her name never appeared on the albums.
Gold Star Studios, Los Angeles, 1964. A woman in a cardigan walks past the receptionist, a Fender Precision bass in her hand like a briefcase. She doesnât sign autographs. She signs a timesheet.
Her name is Carol Kaye. In three hours, she will record what will become the most-played track of the twentieth century. Sheâll pocket fifty-five dollars and head to another studio, on the other side of town, for the next session.
The record label will never put her name on the album.
Between 1957 and 1973, Carol Kaye took part in roughly 10,000 recording sessions. Not as the featured artist, not as a guest, but as a hired hand. She was part of an anonymous collective nicknamed The Wrecking Crewâelite studio musicians who actually played the instruments on your favorite records while the famous bands posed for promotional photos.
The work was relentless. Three albums before the day was over. Stale coffee in paper cups. No rehearsal. The charts arrived minutes before the tape rolled. If you couldnât read a chart and nail the take in two tries, you didnât get called for the next session.
Carol could do it on the first try.
She started playing guitar in grimy bars at fourteen because her family couldnât pay the electric bill. Music wasnât a romantic dream for her. It was survival. It was a jobâfactory work with better acoustics and lower pay.
But she was faster and sharper than almost everyone else. She corrected charts in pencil while the producer was still explaining what he wanted. In one session in 1968, she told a famous producer his arrangement sounded like a dying dog. She chose her own line. They kept her version.
That descending bass line that drives the Beach Boysâ âWouldnât It Be Niceâ? Carol Kaye. The propulsive groove of âThese Boots Are Made for Walkinââ? Carol Kaye. The acoustic-guitar intro to âLa Bambaâ? Carol Kaye. The iconic theme from Mission: Impossible? Carol Kaye.
She invented techniques on the spot, out of sheer necessity. When the bass sound was too muddy for AM radio, she stuck felt under the strings and used a hard pick instead of her fingers. The tone cut through the static like a blade. It became the sonic signature that defined 1960s pop.
Bassists spent yearsâdecadesâtrying to crack the secret of the Beach Boysâ gear to get that sound. They were studying the wrong people. They should have been studying Carol.
She received no royalties. No residuals. No gold-record ceremony. No credit on the album sleeves. When âYouâve Lost That Lovinâ Feelinââ hit number one, Carol was already back in a studio cutting a soap jingle.
The biggest bands mimed her bass lines on TV variety shows. New York marketing departments decided a mom in classic clothes didnât fit the rebellious-youth image they were selling. So they simply left her name off the album credits.
For thirty years, almost no one cared. The truth only began to surface in the late 1990s, when music researchers found the same union contract numbers on thousands of hit records. The very documents meant to preserve studio musiciansâ anonymity betrayed them.
Think about it. Every time you heard âGood Vibrations,â âRiver Deep â Mountain High,â the Righteous Brothers, Nancy Sinatra, or Sonny and Cher, you were hearing Carol Kaye. She composed the soundtrack of an entire generationâs youth.
And yet the records still say nothing. Sheâs now over eighty. She wrote instructional books. She trained countless bassists. She is finally starting to be recognized by music historians who uncovered the truth about The Wrecking Crew.
But she never got what she deserved: her name on those albums. Credit for the music that defined an era. Recognition that those bass lines everyone associates with the âBeach Boysâ were, in fact, Carol Kayeâs.
Fifty-five dollars a session. Ten thousand sessions. The most-played track of the twentieth century.
This entirely AI-generated sob story is very poignant but not great history. "Carol Kaye was a brilliant session player, contributing to many hits across an exceptionally long and successful career" is 18 words and I think substantially more accurate.
This review of a documentary about her and the other prolific session players of the 60s music scene gets the distortions across quite well - lots of session players, industry standard practices leaving them all off the record labels, mom in classic clothes or not. The stuff about no one knowing she worked on these hits runs into the fact that she wrote about it herself. The music historians digging out contract numbers did happen - because there was an extensive and very public controversy between Kaye and fans of a different session player, the late James Jamerson, over who had contributed to which records.
The "$55 per session for ten thousand sessions" thing is the most obviously false bit of the post - you think her fee stayed the same between 1957 and 1973? I think it's probably taken from a standard AFM union rate for Motown sessions at some point in the period. But I'll note as a baseline that $55 a session for ten thousand sessions is $550,000. In early 1960s money that's roughly six million dollars today. Not huge bucks for a long career, but it roughly lines up with her saying in the documentary that at her peak she was earning more than the president.
And "starting to be recognised" is a bit much - she turned down induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year and was ranked as the 5th greatest bassist of all time by Rolling Stone in 2020. Which you can find in the fairly extensive Legacy section of her Wikipedia page.
