[redgoldsparks]

Please call your representatives: VOTE NO on the FEDERAL BOOK BANNING BILLS HR 2616, HR 8705, and HR 7661!

Transcript below the cut.

Page 1:

There are currently THREE FEDERAL BOOK BAN BILLS aiming to ban all TRANS BOOKS from U.S. public schools! HR 2616, HR 8705, HR 7661

June 2026 / Maia Kobabe (a trans author, for three years in a row the most challenged author in the U.S.)

Page 2: 

HR 2616 threatens to cut federal funding from public schools if they “teach or advance concepts related to gender ideology,” as defined by an Executive Order signed by Trump in Jan 2025. It would also cut funding from schools unless they require “parental consent before changing a minor's gender markers, pronouns, or preferred name on any school form.” HR 2616 HAS ALREADY PASSED IN THE HOUSE! Please call your Senators to say NO ON HR 2616! 

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HR 8705 threatens to cut federal funding from public schools which teach “discriminatory equity ideology or gender ideology,” as defined by two Executive Orders aimed at suppressing “critical race theory” and trans representation. This bill is named after the late far-right activist Charlie Kirk, “The Charlie Act.” HR 8705 has passed out of committee, but has not yet been introduced in the House. Please call your House Reps to say NO ON HR 8705!

Page 4: 

HR 7661 threatens to cut federal funding from public schools which offer material deemed “sexually oriented," treating any LGBTQIA+ identity as sexual content. It specifically forbids “gender dysphoria or transgenderism,” and “lascivious dancing” (drag). This bill, titled “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act,” has 22 co-sponsors and has passed out of committee but has not yet been introduced to the House. Please call your House Reps to say NO ON HR 7661! 

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CALL SCRIPTS

“My name is [name] and I’m calling from [city, state, zip code]. I’m asking [Senator] to vote no on HR 2616. I oppose HR 2616 because it would restrict student’s access to books and it would specifically harm trans, nonbinary, and intersex students. Please stand against book bans and protect queer students!”

“My name is [name] and I’m calling from [city, state, zip code]. I’m asking [Rep] to vote no on HR 8705 and HR 7661. I oppose these bills because they would restrict student’s access to books and accurate history, and would especially harm BIPOC, trans, nonbinary, and intersex students. Please stand against book bans and support public education funding!”

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Author Maia Kobabe: If HR 2616, HR 8705, or HR 7661 pass, it would be almost impossible for any public school in the U.S. to offer or teach my books, unless they’re willing to risk their federal funding. Students would be even less likely to learn about trans stories or accurate U.S. history. 

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Please call your representatives: VOTE NO on the FEDERAL BOOK BANNING BILLS HR 2616, HR 8705, and HR 7661! 

Follow AUTHORS AGAINST BOOK BANS on insta & bluesky for updates on these bills!

insta / patreon / portfolio / etsy / my books / print store / bluesky

[lucybellwood]

Maia always makes these actions clear and accessible and I so appreciate eir work.

If you don't know who your Senators or Representatives are, you can use Ballotpedia's Who Represents Me tool! (Note: there's a field for you to input your email address on their page, but it's not necessary to get your results. They just need a mailing address to confirm who your reps are.)

Once you've got names, you can look up and save your Reps' phone numbers in your phone. I find this makes it easier when I'm wavering about feeling brave enough to place a call. Just pressing a button instead of going and looking up the phone number all over again makes it just a liiiiittle easier, and sometimes that makes the difference between calling and not calling!

YOU CAN DO IT.

[genderkoolaid]

The categories of men and women being mutually exclusive is oppositional sexism also. Which I thought we all agreed was counter to transfeminism???

unfortunately anon so, so many people have not actually agreed that. a lot of people have never heard the term oppositional sexism & i've even see some people on tumblr throwing it around & saying "transandrobros don't understand oppositional sexism" while engaging in oppositional sexism.

its also crazy because The Transfeminist Manifesto is pretty anti-oppositional sexism as Emi Koyama was capable of appreciating nuance. frankly i knowwww none of these fucking people have read the Manifesto, because Emi wrote an entire section on Male Privilege where she makes the explicit argument that trans women are capable of experiencing male privilege because anyone can, including a cis woman with a traditionally masculine name, and that trans women shouldn't downplay this since it isn't helpful to building solidarity and it allows cis women to argue they don't have cis privilege just because they are women and so the cisness cancels out.

and i fucking KNOW if someone posted that exact argument on here, plenty of the people who consider themselves the defenders of trve transfeminism on here would call it transmisogynistic and tear it apart. like.

idk man. isn't it kind of telling that so many people on here seem to think Julia Serano, a white American woman who while having her own nuanced and important contributions to transfeminism and feminism in general, also has a history of contributing to anti-transmasculine and exorsexist myths, is the founder of transfeminism.

meanwhile, the term transfeminism was first put in print by Patrick Califia, a trans man who wrote prominently as a pro-BDSM lesbian in 1997, and then in 2001 Emi Koyama, an intersex Japanese trans woman who also didn't consider herself to have a gender, critiqued white feminism for tokenizing women of color and ignoring racial analysis, critiqued perisex trans people for viewing gender as a construct but still believing the sex binary, critiqued "reverse essentialism" where trans people "adopt the essentialist notion of gender identity" because "essentializing our gender identity can be just as dangerous as resorting to biological essentialism," who i cannot stress this enough literally wrote this in the section on violence against women:

Trans men also live in the constant fear of discovery as they navigate in a society that persecutes men who step outside of their socially established roles. Crimes against trans men are committed by strangers as well as by close “friends,” and are undoubtedly motivated by a combination of transphobia and misogyny, performed as a punishment for violating gender norms in order to put them back in a "woman's place."

and STILL wrote a postscript saying a fundamental problem she saw with her manifesto was

"Overemphasis on male-to-female trans people at the expense of female-to-male trans people and others who identify as transgender or genderqueer. I take full blame for the fact that this manifesto is heavily focused on issues male-to-female transsexual people face, while neglecting unique struggles that female-to-male trans people and other transgender and genderqueer people face. At the time I wrote this piece, I felt the need to restrict the focus of feminism to “women” because I feared that expanding the focus would permit non-trans men to exploit feminism for their interest, as some so-called men’s rights groups do. While I still feel that this fear is justified, I now realize that privileging transsexual women’s issues at the expense of other trans and genderqueer people was a mistake. [...] I have thought about writing a new manifesto to address these and other insights I gained since 2000, with the confidence and clarity I have now, but for now I am leaving the task to others. If you write one, please send it to me.

& in 2008:

I wanted to write a feminist theory that counter the argument that transsexual women were so different from all other women that there is no place for transsexual women within feminism (or that feminism has no use for transsexual women). I wanted to provide easy-to-repeat arguments that pro-trans feminists can use to confront blatant bigotry and falsehoods against transsexual women. And to these ends, I think “Manifesto” was successful. But there was something unsettling about the “Manifesto.” In an effort to forge an alliance between transsexual and non-transsexual women, the piece neglected the struggles of transsexual men and other transgender or genderqueer people who do not identify as “women” unless it was convenient to include them. The piece was also weak on intersectional analysis–that is, how anti-trans sentiments and oppressions compound and complicate oppressions other than sexism, including and especially racism and classism. It borrowed from the work of women of color when it was useful–for example, to point out that transsexual women’s unique experiences should not be the basis for their exclusion because to do so would presuppose a singular universal female experience, which is obviously false–without contributing any insights as to how the inclusion of trans sensibility helps to fight racism and other oppressions. The fact is, I had only been living in my new home town for three months or so when I wrote this piece, and I was not fully in touch with my own discomfort with the white feminism that filled nine out of ten weeks of the Introduction to Women’s Studies, nor did I feel confident enough to challenge the view that feminism is simply about advocating for women and fighting sexism–and nothing more. In short, what I had written was a version of white feminism that was modified just enough to include transsexual women. At the time, I felt that it was the only safe way to write a feminist theory that advanced transsexual women’s place within feminism. I spent next couple of years meeting more people with a common commitment for justice for all, slowly building the self-confidence it takes to “transform silence into language and action,” as Audre famously stated.

(& i think there are good criticisms that can be made of the Manifesto, but that does not change my respect for it because she engaged in self-critique and wanted the work to be open to criticism, to be a beginning and not limit to active transfeminism theory and practice).

like. interesting how a lot of self-proclaimed transfeminists on here are outspokenly explicitly against the beliefs of both of the trans people who helped popularize the term. people have been pointing the problems with this shit out for 2 decades at this point & y'all think its just tumblr discourse.

The Transfeminist Manifesto is not long. the pdf is 15 pages, including the post script and 2008 reflection. you should read it. get a text to speech app and listen to it. it is important. do it in Emi's memory at least!

[genderkoolaid]

#her manifesto was so important to me when i read it and its such a good starting point#also i got scared when i saw 'in Emi's memory' and had to check; shes not dead dont worry

Unfortunately she is dead, although it hasn't been reported on widely (not surprising as she wasn't a super well-known public figure). A friend on LinkedIn wrote a post commemorating her life, and InterACT has also posted about her passing. She was apparently undergoing treatment for cancer and had been for a while:

in May she posted this to her Facebook, and it seems the GoFundMe for Aileen's also confirms she is deceased:

Donate to Keep Aileen’s Open in Emi's Memory, organized by Madison Zack-Wu

Please celebrate Emi's memory by keeping her organization Aileen’s open. Emi, c… Madison Zack-Wu needs your support for Keep Aileen’s Op

Emi was the driving force that holds together Aileen’s–a peer-led community organizing and hospitality space by and for women living and working along Pac Highway. And, if you knew Emi, you would not be surprised to hear that her work at Aileen’s is a massive undertaking, because her dedication to serving the community meant she did more than humanly possible in a 24 hour day. It is crucial that Aileen’s continues to serve women who are experiencing homelessness, criminalization, and violence. Since 2019, Aileen’s has provided hospitality space, non-judgemental and accepting community, peer support, resources, harm reduction advocacy, and outreach services. Led by 6 part-time peer staff, Aileen’s aids community dealing with issues of poverty, criminal legal, CPS, substance use, domestic violence, police harassment and brutality, sexual assault and harassment, racism, transphobia, and more. Countless people rely on Aileen’s for necessities like food, supplies, showers, clothing, and a safe place to rest. Emi has been essential in Aileen’s ability to serve the community, and Aileen's was Emi's most cherished project. Without her or other support, the organization is at risk of shutting down. Weeks ago, when asked what all Emi does for Aileen’s, co-director Leslie said “Oh, she does everything.” It is hard to describe “everything”, but Emi handled: all grant writing and reporting, administration responsibilities, fiscal sponsor management, coalition building, court and political advocacy, resource accrual for survivor support, safety planning, and training/education for staff and community. Aileen's, and all of Emi's past work, is about liberation and survival under a system that has left so many without. With your donation, Aileen’s can increase pay and hire more peer staff, transfer daily operations, buy essential supplies like food, clothes, harm reduction items, and take care of basic costs not covered by grants.

you can read an interview with Emi where she talks about Aileen's here. something i really appreciate is that when asked why its important for Aileen's to be a "women-only space", Emi clarified that it isn't as trans and nonbinary people can also come, and that they also wouldn't turn away cis male sex workers in need either.

if anyone has money to donate, supporting Aileen's is a vital way of honoring Emi's memory and keeping her spirit alive through supporting the community she put so much time and energy into caring for.

[the-cheshire-cat-grin]

Lil nas x coming back during pride month to tell us hes been taking care of his physical and mental health, finishing rehab and getting treatment for bipolar disorder, and telling us that he is excited to not only make new music but also just to live his life???? And during mens mental health awareness month????? Oh i missed him bad

[clevermanka]

Lil Nas X says he's 'feeling better' after rehab and bipolar diagnosis

The Old Town Road star was arrested last year for attacking police officers and later entered rehab.

[spaceshipsandpurpledrank]

[zigdirty]

We're not leaving this gem to languish in the comments:

[venovenous]

peace and love on Earth..

[bearloonz]

the trick about getting invested and confident in ur own concepts is to surround urself with other likeminded artists who are down to earth. i know nowadays especially people think "indie" and they think undertale or glitch pilots and they have paved the way for great things but i mean like. engage with your friends comics theyve been posting to an audience of 20-30 people. The people who are genuinely at your level with you. Who are working on their projects on the side because they still have a full time job to attend to. who go on long hiatuses because theyre in college and are crunching for tests at the moment.

maybe one day youll have all the resources you want to create your stories exactly how you imagine it at the speed you want it to be done, but until you get there you'll find so many people working with the same resources and available time that you have, and its about that network of small artists being able to support each other that can light a spark that you thought you needed an audience of hundreds to light.

[audible-smiles]

the worst part of summer is that people get sooo comfortable expressing their disgust at having to see other people’s bodies. they’re always complaining about wrinkly old men at the nude hot springs or fat women in bikinis at the beach. I hate that shit. if you’re not capable of being normal about bodies you personally don’t find attractive, just turn your head to look at something else! and if you’re not smart enough to do that, then at least do the rest of us the courtesy of suffering in silence, because we don’t wanna hear your weird comments. thanks.

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

re ehrc guidance. which is not legally binding.

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

“should I do this for people of all ages?”

that's a very good addition actually, a solid "you want me to ask people's kids about their genitals? can i have that in writing?" should make upper echelons very uncomfortable.

[memory-of-stargazing]

“It just means you have to work double as hard as most people!”

Well maybe I don’t WANT to work double as hard as abled people!! Maybe I deserve a BREAK!! Maybe I’ve been working MORE THAN double as hard for MY WHOLE LIFE and it’s led me to immense burnout & caused me to develop several MORE disabilities!! Maybe I should be ACCOMMODATED so I don’t have to KILL MY BODY AND BRAIN over trying to do what abled people can do!! Maybe I DON’T have to work double as hard!! Maybe if there’s the option to let me NOT work double as hard, I should have it, because I’m already working double as hard JUST TO SURVIVE!!

Why do you think disabled people deserve less rest than mentally & physically abled people?

[cassolotl]

A poll for Firefox users

I use up-to-date Firefox and I have used the AI kill switch

I use up-to-date Firefox and I have turned off some AI features but not all

I use up-to-date Firefox and I have not turned off any AI features

I use up-to-date Firefox and didn't know you could turn off AI features

I use an older version of Firefox with no AI features

I don't use Firefox

Remaining time: 2 days 15 hours

[cassolotl]

For Firefox users who weren't aware of the AI kill switch, type about:preferences#ai into the address bar, and you should see this:

[stjohnstarling]

In light of recent events, I have begun submitting bug reports when I see mature content labels applied inappropriately to posts, especially if an appeal has been rejected.

[a-kind-of-merry-war]

Extremely good idea - how are you doing it? Through the contact us option?

[stjohnstarling]

Yeah it’s one of the options on the Contact Support form:

[sharas-bae]

for what it's worth: after a few months of submitting help tickets as 'feedback' when i saw a post inappropriately flagged as mature, i tried following this suggestion instead. today i got my first-ever response from tumblr support on this issue, letting me know that a post i'd submitted a ticket before has had its mature content flag removed.

[stjohnstarling]

Hey it worked! Maybe if enough of us make a stink they’ll fix the fucking system.

[edupunkbitch]

This is legitimately brilliant. Bug burndown reports (the rate at which your software team can close bugs) is a major metric for most software houses.

It takes an extra step in our part, but this is part of what makes it effective. It's not one click, one reblog activism and it hits them where they care: their damn KPIs.

[red-room-studi0]

NEW SCAM ALERT!!!

If you get mentioned under ANY blog that says they're Tumblr staff. DON'T FALL FOR IT!!!!!!

Reblogging this would help spread awareness to prevent ppl from getting their accounts hacked and such.

[titleknown]

Trump Moves to Deeply Censor the Entire Internet

The Trump administration is cynically exploiting calls for stricter AI regulation to pass broad censorship measures at the federal level.

So, in terrible news, Trump's trying to pull some strings to pass this massive internet censorship bill, featuring all the kinds of internet censorship we're terrified of, including mandatory ID for accessing basically any website, specifically to crush state regulation of AI, because apparently this man will always see the moral bottom of the barrel and start digging.

So, if you live in the US and hate censorship and AI you know what to do, contact your congresspeople and tell them do not fucking dare let this through or so help us god...

[kosher-salt]

More direct source of concern

URGENT: We’re one bad D.C. deal away from the era of online government censorship.

Congress and the White House are negotiating your online speech rights away. Tell lawmakers: reject KOSA, NO FAKES, and age-verification man

[rfpreiwaphase]

5calls has NOT updated to reflect this

6/14/2026

Bad Internet Bills

All of the bad internet bills. One website.

Call now. Call often. Get your Americans on the horn. 📞 Every time you call, 🐨 will hug you

[anotherdayforchaosfay]

Antidepressant recalled over potential cancer-causing substance

A popular antidepressant is being recalled because it may contain elevated levels of a cancer-causing substance.

Click the link! The drug treats several things, including fibromyalgia.

[androdragynous]

Article dated June 14, 2026.

Thousands of bottles of Duloxetine delayed-release capsules are being voluntarily recalled by Breckenridge Pharmaceutical, Inc. The pills are commonly used to treat depression, anxiety, and fibromyalgia, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

[thatdisasterauthor]

I think the thing that annoys me most about AI on a personal, day to day, level is what it has done to grammar checkers. If you've never done a lot of editing, or used to 5+ years ago but haven't really in the last couple years, I can't even begin to describe how fucking BAD this shit has gotten. And as an author it is EXHAUSTING.

I just want to catch spelling errors and accidental double spaces and repeated phrases and whenever I use the wrong too/to or affect/effect and shit. But no. They've shoved AI up the ass of every grammar checking software out there and now they all fucking suck and make the most random, obnoxious, nonsensical suggestions.

And yeah, I can ignore all the times it's trying to get me to cut out any semblance of my own voice, or shove things into the wrong tense, or make the most random suggestions on comma usage. But if it's getting all that WRONG, what is it just straight up missing that I SHOULD be correcting? What real spelling and grammar errors are still lurking in there?

[thatdisasterauthor]

"Use Libre Office."

I get why people keep saying this (and other versions of it like "Use Adobe alternatives" and "Use Google product alternatives."). But here's the problem: I do not create in isolation. Even my own 100% personal projects are getting sent to other people whether it's editors or printers or beta readers and unless every single person in that train is using the same products, things can get wonky.

Libre Office and Word handle formatting differently on the back end, which can completely break documents if you move them back and forth between the two. So if I write in Libre Office but my beta readers are still using Word, when I send them a manuscript for review there's a good chance things won't look right and my beta reader will not actually be reviewing what I sent them.

Industry standards are industry standards FOR A REASON. Having everyone on the same workflow can be crucial to getting things done effectively and correctly without creating a lot of extra work. And those things are not going to change overnight, as much as we might want them to.

[thatdisasterauthor]

:| :| :|

Yeah, Word, let me just leave this whole chunk of dialogue without the closing quotation marks. That's the thing to do. How dare I have two punctuation marks in a row. It's not like that's how closing quotation marks fucking work.

[thatdisasterauthor]

I am going to light something on fire.

[thatdisasterauthor]

And you know, for young writers, this has got to be so detrimental just from the perspective of opening your document and seeing a million corrections that, frankly, don't need to be there. If you're a young writer you're likely not going to have the background knowledge to know what is and isn't a good suggestion, you're just going to see a document that makes it look like you made every mistake possible so clearly you must be a terrible, stupid writer and should just give up.

[catgirltoes]

What the hell happened to the energy around gender neutral bathrooms. Remember when we were fighting for all bathrooms to be gender neutral. But now we can barely argue that people can use the gendered bathroom of their choice. Maybe there's some single stall bathroom tucked away in a basement somewhere.

[homoidiotic]

Trans activist Jamison Green's passport photos before and after HRT. Left he's age 32 (1980) Right age 41 (1989) after being on testosterone for one year (x)

(read his autobiography here for free)

[homoidiotic]

updated the link to his autobiography because it was broken! here's some more pictures of him (first is mid 90s, second 2013 and last 2024)

there's an interview with him from 2017 along with some information about his life and activism. and he was interviewed on a podcast here. he's not super well known but has been a really important trans activist for decades