LGBT Visibility is Transformative

OUT OF THE CLOSET AND ONTO THE SCREEN. This is an LGBTQIA blog dedicated to illuminating the LGBT community on television, movies, and in the outerwebs. Visibility of the LGBT community on screen is so important because images hold meaning. People are bombarded by media images on a daily basis. The images they see in the media become their frame. Media images are a type of education. LGBT images in the media lead to more visibility, which leads to more eunderstanding, more tolerance, more acceptance, and more love.

[magdolenelives]

Gay and Lesbian Latinos Unidos march at the Los Angeles Christopher Street West pride parade, June 1982. Photo courtesy ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives Photograph Collection.

[softjunebreeze]

Laverne Cox Is The Woman We’ve Been Waiting For

“It is revolutionary for any trans person to choose to be seen and visible in a world that tells us we should not exist.” 

Photos by Jeaneen Lund for BuzzFeed.

[janetmock-deactivated20221031]

AM Tonight host Alicia Menendez and I did something fun, awkward and enlightening. Alicia suggested that I “flip the script”on her during our interview about my book Redefining Realness and ask her all the invasive questions I’m asked to prove my validity during interviews.

The following is a series of screengrabs where I ask her to prove her identity as a woman to me by asking about puberty, her transition from girl to woman, her genitalia and whether she used tampons. This was beyond uncomfortable but I hope our demonstration illuminates the problem in our media culture and it serves as a teaching moment for us all about self-determination and the fact that we are all valid, real and don’t need anyone’s interrogation into our lives, bodies and identities.

You can watch the full interview about my book Redefining Realness at Fusion, where I discuss my childhood, sex work and the power of telling our own stories.

[micdotcom]

Monica was arrested for “walking while trans” — and now her supporters are fighting back

In the Grand Canyon state, “walking while trans” may very well be a criminal act.

That was the message sent last Friday by the Phoenix judge who convicted transwoman Monica Jones of “manifesting prostitution” following her arrest by undercover police officers in May of 2013.

Read more | Follow policymic

[projectqueer]

Gay teen’s house spray-painted with anti-gay graffiti

TW: gay slur

A teen was shocked after he discovered an arrow spray-painted pointing to his bedroom, letting others know a ‘fag’ lived there.

[boghogs]

giving trans women roles to cis men 

robs trans women actors (who can’t get cis women roles) and gives those roles to cis men who already have an enormous amount of roles and opportunities

reinforces the false idea that trans woman are somehow equivalent or analagous to cis men in costume 

like really thats all there is to it. theres nothing you can say that justifies this practice

[projectqueer]

The rapid collapse of opposition to gay marriage we are witnessing did not just happen, and it was not inevitable. But it is. The question now on the table is: will orthodox Christianity (and other traditional faiths), be stigmatized and marginalized as the equivalent of racism in the American public square? Will Biblical morality be wiped out as an acceptable public position in America? Or will we regroup, rebuild as a subculture, and survive to become the possibility of a new foundation in the future? Hiding or pretending is not going to help us, now. We have to face the truth.

— Maggie Gallagher — one of America’s most high-profile proponents of marriage discrimination — admitting defeat in a new blog post. Gallagher called for the anti-equality movement to “[accept] where we are” and work to preserve homophobia as an acceptable prejudice in civil society.

(SOURCE)

[paigereiring]

According to a 2011 UCLA study, about 11% of Americans admit to having experienced same-sex attraction. Malinda Lo did some research, and after looking at the statistics, I was shocked to find that only “94 YA books published in 2013 include LGBT main characters or are about LGBT issues." Since approximately 5,000 YA titles were published in 2013, that means approximately 1 in 50 books contained an LGBT main character or involved LGBT issues.

That’s not even close to representation.

Some people like to argue that publishing LGBT YA isn’t lucrative because cishet readers don’t want to read about queer people. What those people don’t understand is that queer people consume all kinds of media that contains only straight people in it - just as much as cishet people consume it. In my experience, my cishet friends read just as much as my queer friends do - and my cishet friends read queer lit! If LGBT people are expected to consume straight media without complaint, then why shouldn’t straight people be expected to consume queer media?

When interviewing tumblr users about their views on why lesbian fiction is important, Harmony Ink Press’s [Nessa Warin] noted [in her article for KT Grant’s blog] that it’s not just important because lesbians exist, but also because “it’s hope for the future and inspiring confidence and teaching teenagers about the world and slowly but surely bringing about change." Queer media isn’t just important for queer people; it’s important for everyone. 

So what can you do about it? Well, you can start off by buying and reading some more queer books. YALSA has a fantastic guide on getting started with all kinds of different genres.

Go support LGBT publishers, too! Harmony Ink Press has a pretty big selection of “positive LGBT YA" books, as does Prizm Books.

Whatever books you read, review them, share them, get other people to notice. Give your favorite YA book to a friend and make them read it. Make them pass on the message.

For publishers, demand matters. Money matters. So the best way to get the Big Six publishers to start carrying more LGBT YA books is to buy LGBT YA books.

The disparity between the number of queer people and the number of books that contain them is reprehensible. We are living in the twenty-first century, and yet we still do not have proper representation of the queer community.

It’s time to change that.

[harmonyinkpress]

Excellent points.

[evrydayfeminism-defunct]

[projectqueer]

Orange is the New Black Star Joins Line-up of Trans Exclusionary Music Festival

Lea DeLaria has joined the lineup for this year’s Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, an event that explicitly forbids trans people, like her Orange Is The New Black costar Laverne Cox, from attending.

UPDATE: Orange Is the New Black's Lea DeLaria Withdraws From MichFest

[projectqueer]

By Cristan Williams

The original Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) was passed in 1994 and signed into law by then President, Bill Clinton. As you can imagine, the original act was not explicitly trans-inclusive. However, when the VAWA came up for reauthorization in 2012, lawmakers worked to ensure that trans people were covered. Republicans in the House and Senate fought the reauthorization of VAWA because it was explicitly inclusive of LGBT people and had provisions for helping battered undocumented immigrants.

Additionally, the The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops came out against VAWA specifically because would not allow groups to discriminate against the abused and battered based on their “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.” In February 2013, the House (286 to 138) and Senate (78 to 22) voted to reauthorize VAWA and President Obama signed the reauthorizetion on March 11, 2013.

Click the header link to read the full article.

[projectqueer]

Orange Is the New Black's Lea DeLaria Withdraws From MichFest

[closetvisibility]

Responding to Twitter questions about her decision to perform at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, which does not admit transgender women, out actor Lea DeLaria announced that she will not participate.

[projectqueer]

Gay Men Caught Engaging In Acts 'Against The Order Of Nature' To Stand Trial

[closetvisibility]

A Ugandan court on Wednesday started hearing the case against two Ugandans accused of engaging in gay sex, the first trial of homosexuals here since a severe law was enacted in February. 

[projectqueer]

No LGBT representation in N.C., as gay candidates take a beating in primary

[closetvisibility]

Three openly gay candidates vying for office across North Carolina lost in their respective primaries on Tuesday, and with those losses — for the first time in a decade — no openly LGBT person will be counted among the state legislature’s 170 members come January.

[bisexualsaregreat]

The word ‘bisexual’ is still blocked on Google.

The word ‘bisexual’ is still blocked on Google.

The word ‘bisexual’ is still blocked on Google.

If you haven’t signed the change.org petition yet, sign it now. 

[a-little-bi-furious]

Boosting because young bisexuals are told to google for resources and to find a bi community and the word is blocked because it’s considered dirty.

[dasenergi]

Why not ask whether heterosexuality exists? Are there truly people out there who are so disgusted by the same sex that they’ve never had a dream, a thought, a moment of desire for another person of the same sex? If so, why do these people have such a revulsion? Is it cultural? Is it biological? Both? We take heterosexuality for granted, but we still don’t know if it truly exists. All primates (with the exception of humans) are bisexual. Bonobos and chimpanzees especially. In human societies that are not corrupted by homophobia or biphobia (see Greeks, Canaanites, and various modern tribes), the people are bisexual. I think heterosexuality should be assumed to be a cultural invention until proven otherwise.

Kevin Johnston (via heteropoops)

[projectqueer]

LGBT Syrians seek refuge in Lebanon

[closetvisibility]

Civil war has killed more than 200,000 people.