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 don’t 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?
Come anyway! You can request a same-day appointment with your MP through a process called greencarding. They will come and see you if they’re already in Parliament. Even if they don’t, they’re 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 can’t provide trans-inclusive, single-sex services, or they risk being sued for discrimination.
e.g. domestic violence support for women including trans women, men’s rugby group including trans men (12.68).
Trans people will have nowhere safe to pee.
If you’re a trans man, businesses can't allow you to pee in the men's, and you can also be ejected from women’s bathrooms if you’re perceived as a man. Vice versa for trans women. EHRC suggests a ‘third space’ bathroom, which is discriminatory and unworkable for most businesses. (13.130-133)
Sports organisations must exclude trans people from single-sex competitions (13.73).
A women’s 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 ‘lesbian’, and therefore no longer have legal protections if they’re 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’m blindsided by authors using ai in their works. how can readers and writers tell if the writing is ai generated?
I’m gonna assume writers know whether or not their own works are ai because they either write them themselves or have ai write for them.
but as for readers (or writers who read other writers’ works), no, you can’t tell unless the writer themself says their works are ai generated. anything else is witch hunt, speculations and possibly wrongful accusations — all of which harm the writing community as much as ai does, if not more.
so if at any point you think an untagged work is ai and if that bothers you, quietly click away. but you can never know for sure based on vibes. because everything ai writes, a human writer does. that’s what ai was trained on and what it was trained to mimic.
I’ve already talked more about this here, here, here. and more on my other blog @writingdose here and here.
You can notice certain telltale signs in some of the writing, such as short sentence stacking and usage of "not x not y but z" structures. But you have to be familiar with AI writing styles to be able to notice that.
I’ve been writing “not x, not y, but z” way before gen ai became a thing. I’ve read works that have “not x, not y, but z” in them, and I’ve read those works way before gen ai became a thing. I’ve also been using em dash way before gen ai became a thing, and I’ve seen em dash used in so many written works way before gen ai became a thing. I know for a fact some human writers actually prefer short sentence stacking too.
every “ai telltale” is something humans write before, otherwise ai wouldn’t have been able to mimic it in the first place. because it needs human-made works to mimic on.
when I say ai witch hunt, speculations and accusations harm the writing community as much as ai does, if not more, “not x, not y, but z” and em dash are one of the main things I’m talking about.
also for some of us, the way we naturally talk as autistic people often makes people assume we are AI/using AI. Before that I used to just get "you talk like a robot" or just "weird". And keep in mind that all of those websites and programs that claim to be able to 'detect' AI use are shite.
The Beast - Patrick Wolf
Your boots I’m no longer licking
Tonight I reclaim my tongue
I am not your weapon
I’ve been so long worrying
What I was doing wrong
I forgot my rights
You banished me
To the border
Then you hate
What I became to survive
No table at the feast
But my place is certain
You can not spare me the peace
So I become the beast
The Good Place really went off when they had Eleanor talk about her mother changing. Like, they really hit the nail on the head.
like THIS??
This is EXACTLY how it feels to see someone you love, someone who should've treated you so much better than they did, grow and change for the better. Like, part of you knows that they're better now and you shouldn't be mad, but part of you is like, "Then why didn't they do this before? Where was this change when I needed it? Was the reason why they were so awful...me?".
so i’ve eliminated my phone from the “staying up all night” equation by getting an alarm clock and charging said phone in another room, but this resulted in a second, secret problem of staying up too late drawing because i still had my tablet. i don’t wanna move my tablet to another room as well because i like having a little bit of drawing time before bed so for about a week i was like….. oh i’ll just force myself off at the correct time eventually. one of these days that will happen.
but last night realized i'm never gonna just gain the willpower to curb my bad habits at random, that’s the entire reason i took the phone out of the room, so i just. set my tablet to turn completely greyscale from 12:30am to 8am to prevent me from staying up all night drawing. and guess who actually fucking went to bed the second his tablet turned grey.
moral of the story and a lesson i think everyone can take from this is don’t expect yourself to just get over your bad habits through sheer force of will. it won’t fucking happen. instead make them as annoying as possible to continue. make them completely unsatisfying. sabotage your bad habits.
hey can everyone do me a favor and put in the tags why they chose their name? even if you don't go by a chosen name irl, you can put why you chose your online name.
If you're like me and have celiac disease, you unfortunately have to work a little harder to get enough fibre in your diet (on account of the no wheat/barley/rye/many oats, and things like rice being lower in fibre). I have found that adding something with fibre to snacks (e.g. some almonds, an apple) is helpful. I also think it's okay to add things like psyllium fibre (just make sure not to take it too close to medication) helpful).
Something I find helpful when disordered eating thoughts happen
I try to keep in mind with most kinds of dietary modifications is adding not subtracting - that means instead of deciding 'oh I'm not going to eat X anymore then', you go 'I will still eat X but I'm also going to add Y'.
Also, when increasing fibre in your diet, do try to do it gradually otherwise you can end up having some GI upset like bloating, and make sure to drink enough water.
I think it's actually essential to children's moral development to be exposed to short stories moderately beyond their reading level where a bunch of fucked up shit happens and then instead of offering a moral lesson or any sort of emotional or narrative resolution it just ends.
(Ideally these stories should be presented in the form of poorly curated anthologies with the most generic titles imaginable, thereby rendering their contents impossible to identify or find later in life and leaving the affected individual wondering whether they dreamed the whole thing.)
legend tells of a mysterious being called “nuance” that allows multiple things to be true at the same time. some say you can still hear its voice whispering in the trees
watching everyone talk about going to blue sky like it isn't VC funded and won't sell you out the instant the investors want their payout, just like twitter. but there is nothing i can do, the only alternative i have to offer is the fediverse
janainaart
theartofmadeline
blakekathryn
titsay
jbbartram-illu
izzy806
stormborns
