The appropriations bill for the fiscal year 2023 released by Congress on Tuesday contains an additional $100 million for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Ending the HIV Epidemic in the United States initiative.
Among other programs, the funding will strengthen efforts to increase the adoption of preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to reduce the risk of new HIV infections.
In a press release, the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute celebrated the boost from Congress but noted that more must be done — including a national PrEP program.
“The increases will help expand HIV programs in the targeted jurisdictions most impacted by HIV,” said Carl Schmid, the group’s executive director. However, “given that Congress again has not fully funded the initiative and has not provided dedicated funding for a national PrEP program, ending HIV by 2030 will be in serious jeopardy.”
President Joe Biden has proposed a $9.8 billion 10-year national PrEP program, which is widely considered a crucial step in addressing the gaps in access to the HIV prevention drugs among, particularly, Black and Latino gay men and Black women.
HHS’s Ending the HIV Epidemic in the United States program, launched in 2019 under President Donald Trump, aims to bring the number of new HIV infections down 90 per cent by 2030 through investing in key strategies for prevention and treatment.
The initiative is coordinated with several other federal agencies: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Health Resources and Services Administration, the Indian Health Service, the National Institutes of Health, and the Office of the HHS Assistant Secretary for Health and Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
The HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute’s press release notes Tuesday’s appropriations bill will be the final spending package passed with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) serving as Democratic leader.
Pelosi, in her first speech as a congresswoman in 1987, said to her colleagues that “now we must take leadership of course in the crisis of AIDS.”
“The speaker’s work on this issue continued through her time in leadership, including her passage of foreign aid packages, the Affordable Care Act, and funding for the HHS’s Ending the HIV Epidemic in the United States program,” said the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute press release.
Spain’s parliament recently passed a bill that makes it easier for people to change their legal gender.
The bill allows people older than 16 to legally change their gender without medical supervision or a judge’s approval. It removes the previous requirements that applicants provide a doctor’s diagnosis of gender dysphoria and additional proof that they have lived as their gender identity and undergone hormone treatment for the past two years.
The bill requires minors below the age of 13 to still get a judge’s authorization before legally changing their gender. Minors below the age of 16 will still need parental or legal guardian approval before being allowed to change their gender.
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The bill also bans conversion therapy, promotes LGBTQ+ anti-discrimination protections, and calls for additional efforts to improve trans women’s lives.
It passed the parliament in a 188-150 vote and is now headed to the country’s Senate where it’s expected to pass.
While the bill was sponsored by the far-left Unidas Podemos (United We Can) party, Conservative party members said they worried that the bill would give legal cover for trans individuals who wanted to assault cisgender women in bathrooms and other facilities.
However, Spain’s Equality Minister Irene Montero threw water on these worries, saying, “No man needs to impersonate women to rape women, to sexually assault women. Trans people do not put us (cis) women at risk.”
“It is wage inequality, women’s care burden, and sexist male aggressors that put as at risk,” she added.
During the parliament’s vote, dozens of trans rights activists gathered in front of the building to listen to the debate on their phones, the Edge Media Network reported. Other trans activists viewed the legislative session from the parliament’s public gallery.
After the law passed, activists outside cheered and hugged each other while some burned blue, white, and pink smoke flares, mimicking the colors of the transgender movement, Reuters reported.
“We are making progress on rights as a country,” Montero said during the pre-vote debate. “We want all LGBTI people to be able to be themselves, without closets.”
Spain began allowing trans people to change their gender identity on official documents starting in 2006, but first required proof of gender-affirming surgeries. In July 2019, Spain’s Constitutional Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to prevent people under the age of 18 from changing their legal gender.
Soon, though, it will be banned for everyone, as the country just passed a new law banning sex outside of marriage, and same-sex marriages are not legal in the country.
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The law will not take effect for three years but will apply to both locals and foreigners.
The ruling against the soldiers reportedly stated that “The defendants’ acts of committing deviant sexual behavior with the same sex was very inappropriate because as soldiers, the defendants should be an example for the people in the defendants’ surrounding environment” and declared that their “actions were very much against the law or any religious provisions.”
The sentence is part of a larger crackdown on LGBTQ+ people in the country.
“This has been the increasing pattern among the Indonesian armed forces and police in recent years,” said Amnesty International Indonesia director Usman Hamid, “where [service] members were being fired or taken into court just for who they are, who they love, who they like.”
An Indonesian mayor recently called for increased raids against LGBTQ+ people. In Aceh province (the one place where homosexuality is currently banned), gay and trans prisoners face 100 lashes as punishment for being themselves.
Out gay Rep.-elect George Santos (R-NY) has admitted lying to voters about some parts of his resume, but didn’t address other alleged falsehoods in his backstory. He also said he wouldn’t give up his seat even though Democrats have said that he should.
“My sins here are embellishing my resume. I’m sorry,” he said on Monday, according to the New York Post, adding, “I am not a criminal… This [controversy] will not deter me from having good legislative success. I will be effective. I will be good.”
Among the falsehoods he fessed up to is the fact that he never graduated from Baruch College. “I didn’t graduate from any institution of higher learning. I’m embarrassed and sorry for having embellished my resume,” he said. “I own up to that … We do stupid things in life.”
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He also admitted that he never worked for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. He now claims that, while working as vice president for a company called Link Bridge, he helped make “capital introductions” between clients and investors who were at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup.
“I will be clearer about that,” he said. “It was stated poorly.”
Indeed, his campaign website had “poorly” stated that he “began working at Citigroup as an associate and quickly advanced to become an associate asset manager in the real asset division of the firm.” Link Bridge didn’t respond to media requests for clarification.
He also admitted that he was indeed married to a woman from 2012 until they divorced in 2017. He had told USA Today in October that he had “never had an issue with my sexual identity in the past decade.”
He didn’t mention his ex-wife ever during his two election bids. “I’m very much gay,” he said on Monday. “I’m OK with my sexuality. People change. I’m one of those people who change.”
The publication The Daily Beast failed to find a marriage record for Santos to the man he currently refers to as his husband.
When asked about why he doesn’t reside at the Queens, New York address in his district where he was registered to vote, the Post reported, “Santos also admitted to lying when he claimed that he owned 13 different properties, saying he now resides at his sister’s place in Huntington but is looking to purchase his own place.”
He also threw his own dead grandmother under the bus when asked about the claim that his grandparents escaped the Nazi Holocaust. Genealogical records threw doubt on this claim, suggesting they might have resided in Brazil rather than having fled from Europe. He now says the claim came from his deceased grandmother’s stories.
Even though he has previously identified as a nonobservant Jew in the past, he now says that he never claimed he was Jewish (but rather Jew-ish), noting that his grandmother told him that she converted from Judaism to Catholicism.
He also explained his claim that he lost four employees in the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting. The New York Times found that none of the shooting’s 49 victims seemed to be associated with any of his businesses. He now says that, at the time of their deaths, the four “employees” were in the process of being hired for his company (which he didn’t name) when they died in the shooting. He provided no additional information to back up his claim.
Numerous discrepancies in Santos’ past remain. No records seem to back up his claim that his mother escaped the south tower of the World Trade Center during the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. No records seem to back up his claim that he founded a charity called Friends of Pets nor that he attended New York University.
The New York Times also noted that, even though he denied ever having cashed stolen checks in Brazil, he didn’t explain why Brazilian court records alleged otherwise. Nor did he explain how he was able to lend himself $700,000 to his congressional campaign despite owing landlords and creditors thousands in the past.
Democrats like outgoing House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and upcoming House Democratic Minority Leader, Representative Hakeem Jeffries (NY) have said that Santos isn’t fit to serve in Congress and should resign.
“George Santos should resign as congressman-elect,” tweeted Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas). “If he refuses, Congress should expel him. He should also be investigated by authorities. Just about every aspect of his life appears to be a lie.”
“George Santos admits his life story is a complete fabrication,” said Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY). “His pitiful confession should not distract us from concerns about possible criminality and corruption.”
However, Santos has refused and Republican Congress members have stayed silent about his falsehoods. In fact, the Post cited an “unnamed senior GOP leadership aide” who said that Republicans joked about all of Santos’ discrepancies.
“As far as questions about George in general, that was always something that was brought up whenever we talked about this race,” the aide told the Post. “It was a running joke at a certain point. This is the second time he’s run and these issues we assumed would be worked out by the voters.”
Nevertheless, New York State Attorney General Tish James is reportedly looking into whether Santos broke any laws through his past claims.
Ireland has been ranked the worst place in the EU for accessing trans healthcare, with the system being “bogged down by waiting times” cited as an area of concern.
Transgender Europe (TGEU), a network of more than 200 trans-rights organisations, found of 27 EU member states, Ireland had the worst provision of healthcare for trans people, with Malta coming out on top.
The countries, laid out on a colour-coded map, were ranked by six criteria, with Ireland scoring just one point out of a potential 12.
The countries were ranked on the types of trans healthcare available, if a psychiatric diagnosis is required before hormonal treatment or surgery, waiting times, if any group is excluded or made to wait longer to access trans healthcare, and the ages of those allowed hormones and puberty blockers.
Ireland’s single point was given for the provision of trans healthcare, however, it scored worst in the EU on waiting times.
TGEU claimed that in Ireland, trans people could expect to wait “between two-and-a-half and 10 years from requesting to see a specialist in trans healthcare to seeing one”.
TGEU said in a statement: “Access to trans-specific healthcare varies widely in the EU.
“For instance, Malta has implemented a model of healthcare that is grounded in self-determination and based on informed consent… In Ireland, the system is bogged down by waiting times of over seven years to see a healthcare professional.”
“At the same time, the need for trans-specific healthcare and the very existence of trans identities are also facing growing attacks from anti-gender and anti-rights groups,” TGEU said.
“This constitutes a real threat to the delivery of accessible, affordable, and quality depathologised trans-specific healthcare and risks undoing the decades of progress that the community has fought hard to achieve.”
Trans and Intersex Pride Dublin (TIPD) told PinkNews in a statement: “We are not shocked by the news that Ireland has the lowest score in Europe for trans healthcare. Trans people have been saying this for years. Trans healthcare is only getting worse.
“With only one clinic in Ireland for trans adults, the current waiting list to be seen is estimated to be six years or more. When you’re finally seen, you’re put through a dehumanising and humiliating assessment and asked invasive questions.
“Trans people have reportedly been denied HRT due to numerous reasons, such as having a diagnosis of autism, ADHD, or a personality disorder, for being on social welfare or not answering those highly sexualised questions ‘the right way.’”
TIPD added that due to “failures” of trans healthcare provision, trans people are left with the alternatives of private clinics, crowdfunding, receiving care abroad, or even “self-administering” hormones purchased online.
“Trans and Intersex Pride Dublin advocates for the implementation of an informed consent-based model and for gender-affirming care to be GP-led,” the group added.
“Trans people should be empowered to make decisions about their transition themselves.”
Chilean President Gabriel Boric on Wednesday launched his government’s first LGBTQ and intersex rights campaign that seeks to reduce discrimination against the country’s queer community.
According to the Movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation (Movilh), a Chilean LGBTQ and intersex rights organization, hate crimes against the community have increased this year by 66 percent. Five people have also been murdered because of their sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression.
Boric during his campaign against José Antonio Kast, a far-right former congressman, pledged to promote LGBTQ and intersex rights and policies during his administration. The #LivingWithPride campaign is part of these efforts.
Boric’s first gesture towards the queer community was to appoint Marco Antonio Avila, a gay man, as his government’s education minister and Alexandra Benado Vergara, a lesbian woman, as Chile’s next sports minister. Ávila and Benado arrived at La Moneda, the Chilean presidential palace, with Boric on March 11 when he took office.
“President Gabriel Boric Font’s government has implemented a series of measures that seek to advance in safeguarding the rights of LGBTQ+ people,” Women and Gender Equity Undersecretary Luz Vidal Huiriqueo told the Washington Blade in an exclusive interview after the government launched the #LivingWithPride (#VivirConOrgullo in Spanish) campaign.
Vidal said “one of the relevant lines of work that the Ministry of Women and Gender Equity has developed since we took office … seeks to highlight the structural difficulties experienced by people of the LGBTIQA+ community, move towards state representation, since there is currently no institutionality that welcomes this community.”
“This is why we have taken the mandate to welcome this population, within the legal possibilities that govern the ministry,” Vidal emphasized to the Blade.
Vidal said “the gender mainstreaming network that has been reactivated with our government has opened a door to the organizations of the LGBTIQA+ community in all portfolios.”
“The advisors in charge of gender mainstreaming do not understand gender in a binary way, they have the conviction that we must also develop public policies for the LGBTIQA+ community.” she told the Blade.
Boric directed the Women and Gender Equity Ministry and his administration’s sociocultural coordinator to create and lead an “LGBTIQA+ Roundtable,” which includes organizations, activists and members of the LGBTQ Congressional Caucus to work to implement their demands because Chile thus far does not have a government institution that specifically addresses queer rights.
“The roundtable’s objective is to generate and prioritize, together with the LGBTIQA+ community, guidelines for the development of public policies on the matter, from an intersectoral perspective,” said Vidal. “More than 35 civil society organizations from all over the country, representatives of the Legislative Branch and different (Executive Branch) portfolios have participated.”
Vidal stressed “this space of constant linkage with social organizations has allowed us to know the reality that social organizations of the LGBTIQA+ community live when linking with State agencies.” She also noted “the experience has been successful, being a valuable space that will allow us to build a work path for the design of gender equality public policies relevant to the LGBTIQA+ community, to improve their lives and eradicate gender-based violence and hate crimes against the community.”
The roundtable has been meeting once a month since May. It’s last 2022 meeting will take place this month, and it will resume its work next year.
Vidal told the Blade that transgender women can now use her ministry’s public policies.
“We consider trans women as part of the diversity of women, which implies that they can access the different benefits of the National Service for Women and Gender Equity (SernamEG), which is the executing body of the ministry’s programs,” she said.
Another initiative Vidal highlighted is the incorporation of a “social name” section in the public employment pages for those who have not yet legally changed their name. This option allows people to identify themselves as trans or nonbinary.
The Education Ministry “has developed a participatory process for the design of the Bill on National Policy on Education on Affectivity and Comprehensive Sexuality. It has also made it possible for students, mothers, fathers, parents, guardians and education workers to participate in what Vidal described as “non-sexist” education workshops.
It hit me one morning this fall as I woke up: I’ve turned 70.
As I’ve been celebrating this milestone, I’ve marveled at the changes that have occurred for our LGBTQ community during my lifetime.
Marriage equality, Pete Buttigieg (or any LGBTQ person) running for president and/or the fab queer rom-com “Bros” would have been unimaginable when I began coming out 50 years ago.
Then, just three years after the Stonewall uprising, I and many other LGBTQ folk felt far more shame than pride about our queerness.
Most of us in that era wouldn’t have dreamed that, decades later, not only LGBTQ teens, but queer people our age would have marched, out and proud, in Pride parades. We’d never have thought that in the 21st century any of us would ever proudly say, shout or chant “we’re queer!”
Nothing is more emblematic to me of the progress made in LGBTQ rights from Stonewall to today than the evolution of the word “queer” from a hateful epithet to an expression of pride.
Today, the term “queer” can be found everywhere from news outlets (including NPR, the Blade, the New York Times and the Washington Post) to museum exhibits such as “Queering the Crip, Cripping the Queer” at the Schwules Museum Berlin through the end of January and “Queer Creativity Through the Ages: Artwork from the Center on Colfax Open Art Studio” at the Denver Art Museum through Dec. 31.
I can’t think of any of my under 60 friends, hetero or LGBTQ who don’t use the word “queer.” Sometimes they’re proudly writing it on Pride parade signs. Often, they use it as a neutral adjective. The way you’d say “they’re from Boston” or “he’s about six-feet tall.”
Many of my over-60 pals are beginning to use the word “queer.” If they’re not comfortable using it about themselves, they’re increasingly comfortable with others using it. My 70-something hetero cousins, who are LGBTQ allies, no longer feel I’m putting myself down when I say I’m queer.
Given that “queer” is so often used as an affirmation of identity or neutral descriptor, I was surprised when New York Times columnist Pamela Paul recently lamented the popularity of the “q-word.”
I’m an avid reader of Paul’s column. Paul, a former editor of the New York Times Book Review, is, like many writers, obsessed about language. She’s an astute observer of the culture and of how we use words.
Yet, I can’t help but wonder what Paul was thinking. “Language is always changing – but it shouldn’t become inflexible,” she wrote, “especially when new terminologies, in the name of inclusion, sometimes wind up making others feel excluded.”
Paul, who is hetero, worried that the widespread use of “queer” excludes LGBTQ people who don’t identify as queer. She was upset that so many Gen-Zers identify as queer, and annoyed that “gays and lesbians can feel crowded out” under the LGBTQ umbrella.
Paul chided new Human Rights Campaign president Kelley Robinson for using the word “queer,” and not saying the words “gay,” “lesbian” or “bisexual” in a video where she introduced herself.
People at HRC do say “gay,” “lesbian” “bisexual” “transgender” and “nonbinary,” Robinson wrote in response to Paul’s column in a letter to the Times.
“I identify as a Black queer woman,” Robinson wrote, “and when I say ‘queer,’ it’s to be as inclusive as possible, to re-center those at the margins, to embrace our differences and to embrace our power, too.”
Robinson nailed what attracts so many of us to the word “queer.”
Of course, many LGBTQ boomers and Gen-Xers vividly recall when “queer” was a homophobic slur.
A hetero friend remembers when she was seven riding on a school bus. “I was mad at a kid,” she told me, “I wanted to call him something mean. So I said he was ‘queer.’”
“My sister told me not to say that again,” my pal added, “She said it was too horrible to tell me what it meant.”
But in recent decades (starting with AIDS activists), we’ve reclaimed the word “queer.” We’ve taken away its sting: transformed it from a hate-mongering, othering slur to a source of power. It’s hard to think of a more inclusive word than queer. It includes and values all LGBTQ folk. In the wake of the Colorado Springs LGBTQ club shooting, it’s more important than ever to be proudly queer.
Kathi Wolfe, a writer and a poet, is a regular contributor to the Blade.
Trans men in India are often made to feel invisible – but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist, and that they can’t thrive.
In 2014, India’s Supreme Court ruled that trans people should be recognised as a “third gender”, and that they should not be denied fundamental human rights.
However, some still struggle to access education, healthcare, and employment. In 2019, a law was passed to prohibit discrimination in these areas, but requires trans people to provide proof of gender-affirming surgery before they can gain legal recognition, something activists have said goes against the 2014 ruling.
The law also makes abusing trans people a crime punishable by up to two years in prison – but this is a much lesser penalty than those given to other abusers, and violence and hate crimes remain pervasive.
In many conversations around trans people in India, trans men are omitted. They are often invisible, and isolated – many are forced to leave their families due to the stigma and prejudice that continues to persist.
But despite this, trans men emerge strong. These three have earned prominent positions in public and private sectors, breaking barriers and opening the doors of education and employment to the community, to help them lead a life of dignity and respect that they rightly deserve.
Adam Harry was 11 years old when he took his first flight.
He loved the experience so much that he decided to become a pilot when he grew up. His parents, from the southern Indian state of Kerala, took out a loan to send him to a flying school in South Africa. But they were less supportive when he came out as trans.
“I was born in a conservative, middle-class, Muslim family, and growing up, it was extremely difficult for me to express my identity because I wasn’t even allowed to wear a pair of jeans at home,” he tells PinkNews.
“During my school days, I didn’t have the vocabulary to express my identity, especially in Malayalam, which is my mother tongue.”
“When I was in the ninth grade, I came across an article about the [2014 Supreme Court ruling on trans rights] and then I read more articles about transgender people in India. That is when I started exploring my identity and I realised that I am a trans man.”
After Adam came out, his family stopped funding his education.
“I was home-bound for a year, which was extremely tumultuous,” he says.
“My family believed that I could be cured and took me for conversion therapy.”
After this traumatic experience, Adam decided to flee. After one failed attempt, he got out of the family home on his second try.
“I got the freedom to be myself. But it came with its own implications. I didn’t have anything. But later, I found myself a shelter and worked at a juice bar.”
Adam was able to get a private pilot licence, and funding from the Kerala state government to finish his studies and get a commercial licence.
“The real struggle began when I enrolled in aviation in India,” Adam explains.
“I was forced to hide my identity during my medicals. They didn’t have any proper guidelines for transgender people and because of that I was declared unfit to fly for six months [because of his hormone replacement therapy].”
After Adam spoke out and shared his story with the world’s media, new guidelines were issued.
They state that any individual who identifies as transgender must have completed more than five years of gender-affirming hormone therapy to be declared medically fit. They must also pass a further mental health screening that all aspiring pilots are required to undertake.
Adam is closer to piloting his first commercial flight than ever before. But he will still have to undergo a psychological and psychiatric evaluation from an endocrinologist, and an examination to check if he has undergone surgery within a year of application.
“There are still many obstacles that I and so many transgender people face even today,” he reflects.
“Society needs to treat everybody equally, regardless of their gender, caste, or colour. There’s a lot of work that’s needed to be done in terms of the progress of the LGBTQ+ community in India. We need proper guidelines including education, employment, and health.”
Krishna Panchani, a government official based in Gujarat, came to terms with his identity when he was in the seventh grade.
“I realised that the sex I was assigned at birth didn’t match with my inner self – I felt different,” he tells PinkNews.
“I’ve struggled a lot to come to terms with my identity both in the past and even today. My family didn’t accept me in the past, and they don’t want to accept me even today.”
Tired of “being policed”, Krishna left the family home and eventually took a job as a principal in a government school in a remote village. But because of his appearance, he says, people looked at him “with aghast”.
“The people in the village would stare at me and talk about me. Some people also thought that a person like me would ruin their children if I taught them. When some officers from outside came for a visit, they said my dress code wouldn’t work because it didn’t come across as ‘civilised’. But, I decided not to give up.”
Tired of the transphobia around him, Krishna decided to confront the system.
“I read all the books about rules and regulations and I realised that it was mentioned nowhere that you had to follow a certain dress code. I took that and challenged them – and I won. The government accepted me and they said: ‘We see your work, the clothes you wear don’t matter.’ But despite that, people continued to talk about me behind my back.”
Today, Krishna says he has “good status” in society, with a good job and a loving partner.
He adds: “I am different, but I am not wrong. People need to accept us with an open heart and need to treat us like everyone else. Include us in the mainstream, don’t sideline us. We all have the same heart, then why treat us differently? We also have dreams, desires, and hopes and we deserve to fulfil them. If we get wider support, our struggles will slowly fade away which will in turn make our lives easier.”
Jay Anand, a musician based in Bangalore, had grappled with his gender since the age of four.
As a child, he would go to sleep every night imagining how life would be if one day he woke up as a boy.
“I was in a relationship at the age of 13 and that was my first time accepting who I am in front of another individual,” he tells PinkNews.
Jay socially transitioned in 2020. Before that, for the first decade of his career, he lost countless gigs because he didn’t conform to the idea of a “female-fronted act – someone who would doll up”. He also missed important networking opportunities because of his own inhibitions about being visible in public.
“However, over the years, I have become a little less afraid of being myself in front of everyone and having hard conversations,” he says.
Now, Jay is a successful musician – he even recorded a song for a Netflix movie,Looop Lapeta. He’s taken control of his own life, and he wants others to be able to do the same.
“We have had enough of allowing people to make decisions for us,” he says.
“Experts need to work in collaboration with individuals to formulate better policies, practices, frameworks, and healthcare for trans people — I hope for that change in the future.
“And it’s time we stop waiting around for someone to do it for us. LGBTQ+ individuals need to come together and make it happen. And I will tell you, this has already begun.”
Aditya Tiwari is an award-winning writer and queer activist. He tweets at@aprilislush.
Nancy Eves, an ambassador for LGBTQ+ young people’s charity Just Like Us, reflects on the moment they realised they were trans non-binary – and why it was truly magical.
Being non-binary in the UK right feels very strange right now. With every passing week we’re in a better place in history for the LGBTQ+ community than ever before, but it can be hard to remember this when the bad news travels faster than the good.
It’s more important than ever to make sure we celebrate the joys of gender exploration, especially as the challenges we face can be so heavy on our community.
I first questioned my gender identity over a year ago when I came across something online, urging readers to think about how they feel about their gender.
The Twitter thread said: ‘I WANT YOU TO TAKE HALF AN HOUR SOMETIME TO THINK ABOUT YOUR GENDER.’ I thought I was cisgender at the time, so I figured this would be an interesting experiment.
From the very first question, ‘What do you enjoy about being your gender?’, I was stumped. How was I supposed to answer this? As a woman? Oh. Oh. This prompted a whole journey of realising my feelings around my gender.
And so it turns out I never was a woman. Of course, I was reluctant to tell anyone about this to begin with. First of all, I had no idea how to describe what my gender is, and secondly, I had no idea how the people in my life would react.
Complicating matters further, this was happening around the same time that I discovered that I am autistic. Having two, truly world-bending, personal epiphanies at the same time was exhausting to say the least. Luckily, I found myself able to be extremely open about the latter because my brother is also autistic, therefore this realisation was not a new one in my close circles.
However, while figuring out that I am autistic was like a lightbulb finally flickering on, figuring out that I am not cisgender was like a web of dark passageways appearing before me. Out of nowhere, my gender identity went from something I had rarely even considered, to a cataclysmic, never-ending realm of possibilities.
Learning, and then accepting, that gender is a made-up cultural concept and not nearly as biologically-essential as we are made to believe wreaked havoc with my autistic brain. Why on earth are we forced to grow up confining ourselves to these predetermined categories when the human experience is so much more brilliantly complex than that?
Dr Wenn Lawson, an autistic and trans researcher, puts this brilliantly: “The non-autistic world is governed by social and traditional expectations, but we may not notice these or fail to see them as important. This frees us up to connect more readily with our true gender.”
Through the process of unmasking, learning how to live as my authentic autistic self, I have made so many discoveries, including what I feel my gender truly is. I had confirmed rather quickly that I am definitely not a woman, but I’m also not a man. That leaves the gender binary that the non-autistic world sometimes seems to love so much out of the question for me.
I definitely rode on the wave of novelty for the first year of identifying as non-binary, not completely minding when people misgendered me because it was so new to me as well. But more recently, as I am becoming more confident in myself, complacency just feels like a self-inflicted injustice.
To reflect this change of mindset, I recently updated my pronouns from she/they to they/them. Although I am not any more non-binary than I was before, this further detachment from my assigned gender has been extremely affirming for me. However, strangely, it also increased my awareness of how inaccessible the UK is to non-binary and trans people.
First of all, being non-binary means I am technically a trans person, and with the hate currently circulating in the media and online, this was a scary thing to admit. Secondly, there is still no way of identifying as non-binary legally, so I must endure every official process that requires a tick-box exercise as if I’m living a lie. There are endless examples I could name.
To put it bluntly, being autistic already means that the world is not built for me, but being non-binary amplifies that experience tenfold.
While, unfortunately, I cannot personally alleviate all these issues, I am comforted by the fact that being trans and autistic feels truly magical to me. When you have been called ‘weird’ by everyone for nearly 25 years, figuring out that it is because your brain was never wired to ‘fit in’ to begin with is such a relief. The best part is that I am far from alone in my experience.
Admitting that I am non-binary used to leave a funny taste in my mouth, but I absolutely do not regret that I started to open up about it.
I have been volunteering with the LGBTQ+ young people’s charity Just Like Us for just over a year now, giving talks in schools about growing up LGBT+ and how to be an ally. For the majority of that time, my story has focused on my journey with sexuality because I did not feel that I could talk confidently about my gender identity just yet.
However, while delivering my story at a volunteer training session recently, I decided to weave in my journey of gender exploration and how I have come to identify as non-binary. At first, I felt panicky, frantic and nonsensical as I spoke. But then something amazing happened – afterwards, one of the other volunteers approached me to say that what I’d said had really resonated with them. I was immensely grateful to hear that sharing my story was helping others.
Dealing with the topic of gender is really hard. It may seem to cause rifts and discomfort everywhere you look, but that is because it is important and worth exploring. No matter how you identify, I highly recommend giving yourself the time and space to get to know how you feel about your gender and gender expression.
It is rare that we are given permission to really delve into such an integral part of our identities separate from medical or political settings. Take the time to revel in the mystery and euphoria of your own existence – I promise it will be worthwhile.
Fabu Olmedo is so nervous about clubs and restaurants in Paraguay that before a night out she often contacts one to make sure that she’ll be let in and won’t be attacked or harassed.
Olmedo doesn’t know if she can go out in public safely because daily life is hard for transgender people in the capital, Asunción. Now, a new group of allies in Latin America is trying to make life better by changing minds in this socially conservative and often highly religious region.
Founded in 2017, the Latin American Movement of Mothers of LGTB+ Children lobbies governments to eliminate prejudical laws and better enforce existing bans on violence and discrimination.
It’s a difficult fight that will require patience and a years of effort but the mothers are working together to help others in their position, and function as a refuge for LGBTQ children whose families are not as supportive.
“It’s all about recognizing the strength and power that we have as mothers to accompany our kids and help other families,” said Alejandra Muñoz, 62, of Mexico City. Her son Manuel came out 11 years ago and suffered so much bullying at school that he spent recesses with the teachers.
“He’s constantly at risk of being yelled at or worse in the street because of his sexuality,” she said.
Olmedo, 28, said that in July she was barred from an Asunción nightclub with her friends.
“Many times they let you in but there are violent people inside,” Olmedo said.
The Latin American Movement of Mothers of LGTB+ Children held its first in-person meeting in early November in Buenos Aires, where they attended the annual massive gay pride march on Nov. 5.
“Our main battle is to make sure our children enjoy the same rights in all of Latin America,” said Patricia Gambetta, 49, the head of the Latin American Movement of Mothers of LGTB+ Children, which has members in 14 countries and the goal of expanding to all the countries in the region.
The work of the mothers is often made more complicated by the enduring power of the Catholic Church, which teaches that gay acts are “intrinsically disordered.” The increasingly popular evangelical faith also often preaches against same-sex relationships.
There are stark differences in the acceptance of sexual minorities across Latin America. Argentina and Uruguay have been regional pioneers in marriage equality and transgender rights. Other countries in the region have yet to institute protections for the LGBTQ population.
Marriage equality became law in all of Mexico’s states last month. Honduras and Paraguay both ban same-sex marriage. In Guatemala, a conservative congress has repeatedly tried to pass legislation that would censor information about LGBTQ people. In Brazil, at the federal and state level there are bills and laws that either ban, or would ban, information about sexual orientation and gender identity, said Cristian González Cabrera, LGBT-rights researcher for Latin America and the Caribbean at Human Rights Watch.
And laws often fail to tell the full story.
“Irrespective of what legal regime a youth finds themselves in, prejudice and discrimination in the region continue to be commonplace,” González Cabrera said.
Vitinia Varela Mora said that her daughter, Ana María, decided to hide her lesbian identity after seeing other gay students bullied at her school in Tilarán, Costa Rica, which is about 124 miles (200km) from the capital, San José. She came out to her mother at 21.
In some countries, mothers who try to help their children deal with discrimination suddenly find themselves the subject of scrutiny.
Claudia Delfín tried to seek help in government offices for her transgender twins, who were facing bullying and discrimination in their school in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, when they were 16.
“They told me to go to church and look for a better path. They practically sent me to pray,” Delfín said.
Varela Mora of Costa Rica says it took her around two years to accept her daughter after the girl came out as a lesbian in what hit her mother like “a bucket of cold water.”
“There’s a lack of education, no one prepares you for this,” Varela Mora said. Now she tries to make up for that by supporting other mothers whose children have come out of the closet.
“It’s important for young people to feel they have a mom who understands them when they aren’t supported in their homes,” the 59-year-old woman said.
Groups of LGBTQ parents are “vitally important to show that regressive political projects do not respond to the needs of the region’s diverse communities,” González Cabrera of Human Rights Watch said.
Delfín said that she is one of two mothers in Santa Cruz who are activists fighting for their LGBTQ children. Elena Ramírez, Olmedo’s mom, also says that many trans children who are having trouble at home come to her for refuge.
“I’m a mom to all of them,” Ramírez, 66, said. “I know there are mothers that I will not be able to convince, but there are other children who really are in need.”
Gambetta says that all the mothers in the organization effectively end up training each other in their monthly virtual meetings.
“As mothers we have greater reach, we can raise more awareness,” Gambetta said. “When your family supports you, you’ve already won 99% of the battle.”