Argentina, a traditionally conservative country, has emerged in the last two decades as a Queer Rights powerhouse. Since the early 2000s this country has legalized egalitarian marriage and introduced non-binary IDs, state-paid gender-affirming surgeries and IVF treatments. So how did this transformation come about in such a short time, you might ask? Join the first ever Argentine Queer History Tour and find out!
Lunfarda Travel, a boutique incoming agency based in Buenos Aires, launched the first – and so far only! – tour about the history of the Argentine LGBTQIA+ community, from pre-colonial times into the massive Pride demonstrations of 2021.
The tour was created by the founder of the agency, Mariana Radisic Koliren who said: “it feels like all LGBT+ tour products in Argentina are way too focused on the G. What about all the lesbians, trans people and non-binary activists? Our Queer history is so rich, fascinating and intersectional. It’s a story of resilience and pride and it has literally transformed our lives: it needs to be out there to inspire people around the world”
The tour starts at Plaza de Mayo, the foundational block of the city, where a member of the local community explains how different indigenous peoples understood gender and sexual orientation, and how all of that was erased to favor cis-heteronormativity after the Spanish Conquista. That same square would eventually become the gathering spot for Pride demonstrations, attended by hundreds of thousands.
Throughout the tour, you’ll explore the periods, landmarks, characters and events that forged Argentina’s current reality. Enjoy unique points of view, like the role of Evita Peron in the acceptance of Queerness, visit the first subway station to commemorate a Gay Rights activist and get the chills at the National Congress, the place where our community cemented our rights for future generations. In this tour, you’ll also get to visit a community center to have drinks, make new friends and check out some of the cool artwork and culture led by local porteñes.
This tour is about helping create a better future for our community, too. Despite all our strides, there are still lots of people who struggle to have long and fulfilling lives, which is why 10% of the profits of this tour are donated to Mocha Celis, a high school that caters specifically to trans and gender non-conforming students (you can donate to them here, which is always immensely appreciated!).
Thanks to generations of gritty, perseverant activism, our Queer community is increasingly thriving. This tour is a way of acknowledging and recognizing all the people who were trailblazers, and a way of showing all that’s yet to come for our community as this new generation takes up the baton.
Lunfarda Travel specializes in shedding light on the previously untold stories of Buenos Aires through an intersectional scope. The boutique incoming agency is proudly made of over 75% of women, POC and members of the LGBTIAQ+ community, and has a commitment to fair trade wages and environment preservation. Join Lunfarda Travel for the only tours in the city of Black History or on its Jewish Heritage Walks, Graffiti and Foodie Outings and family friendly tours. The agency also organizes tailor made itineraries across Argentina, and actively welcomes all human beings
The Church of England has launched an investigation after a gay man claimed he was subjected to a conversion therapy exorcism in a Sheffield church.
Matthew Drapper, 34, says he was “born into a Christian cult [and] was raised believing Satan is at war with Christians and God is at war with the gays”.
He told the Huddersfield Examinerthat he moved to Sheffield from Buxton in 2013, at the age of 25, and joined the Church of England church St Thomas Philadelphia.
Drapper said by that point he had come out as gay, but that he had vowed to remain celibate. In 2014, he claims, the church offered him a chance to “pray that away”.
“I had thought about whether it is even worth living if I’m going to be gay,” he said,
“So, it kind of was a last resort really. By that point, I was like, ‘Well, I’ll try anything.’”
St Thomas Philadelphia has a “belief in the supernatural” and “taught a lot of stuff to do with demons”, Drapper said.
He was invited to a prayer day to “go through our deepest fears”, but this soon became an “exorcism”, he alleged.
Drapper continued: “They told me to speak against the sort of demonic hold that being gay had in my life.
“I was told to renounce the belief system of homosexuality and to cancel my agreement with Satan and to break the power of homosexuality in my life through the blood of Jesus… They told me they could see demons leave my body and go out the window. It was terrifying.”
It took Drapper months to recognise that “something really bad had happened in that space”, and he eventually began accepting his identity.
He was a volunteer at St Thomas Philadelphia at the time, but when he told leaders that he was planning to start dating, he says they said he “wasn’t allowed to work with young adults or children, because I might influence them to become gay”.
The church has denied all of Drapper’s allegations, but finally, eight years on, the Diocese of Sheffield is launching an investigation.
The Diocese of Sheffield said in a statement to the BBC that it believes “conversion therapy is unethical, potentially harmful and has no place in the modern world”, and added that it would keep Drapper informed at all stages of its investigation.
Drapper said: “If conversion therapy had been illegal at the time, then hopefully people would have known enough to intervene and I wouldn’t have gone through that trauma and had eight years of recovering from it.”
St Thomas Philadelphia said in a statement: “St Thomas Philadelphia is a caring and generous church community which does not engage in conversion therapy.
“We welcome the independent investigation initiated by the diocese into these allegations of eight years ago and will participate in it.”
The church has a bizarre and dark history, having been opened in 1998 when it was “planted out” of a huge evangelical church St Thomas Crookes.
According to St Thomas Philadelphia’s website, this planting out was “in response to significant growth and also to a sense of call to the whole city”.
But St Thomas Crookes is also known for being the birthplace of Nine O’Clock Service, often described as a “cult” within the Church of England.
Nine O’Clock Service was an alternative Christian group launched in 1986, which focused on recruiting young people through rock concert-style services featuring lasers in the basement of Sheffield’s Ponds Forge complex.
The group was shut down by the Church of England in 1995 after the group’s leader, Chris Brain, admitted to having sexual contact with more than 20 young female members of Nine O’Clock Service.
A documentary was released chronicling the scandal, and shortly before its release, Brain admitted himself to a psychiatric hospital.
I write this column as a Democrat. One who’s afraid our democracy is at risk and believing the Republicans in Congress are taking us to the abyss and leading a retreat on all the progress we have made in the areas of civil and human rights over the last 50 years.
There are three choices American voters have in the 2022 mid-term elections. The first option is to work hard to elect Democrats up and down the ballot. The second is to vote for Republicans, and the third is to stay home. If you believe LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, civil rights, DACA, and voting rights are crucial issues to move forward, then choosing anything but the first option is like the old cliché about ‘cutting off your nose to spite your face.’
We are seeing a spate of attacks on the president from various interest groups saying “he didn’t do enough or speak out enough on my issues.” In the LGBTQ community it’s the cover of last week’s Washington Blade and James Finn’s column ‘Biden’s empty political theater on LGBTQ equality.’ He gives short shrift to all Biden has done through Executive Orders, regulation and the hiring of countless members of the LGBTQ community, all of which the Human Rights Campaign recently highlighted in praise of the president.
Among the actions HRC mentions are: within the first week in office an executive order repealing the Trump-era ban on transgender military service; having the Department of Housing and Urban development withdraw a Trump-era proposal to gut the equal access rule; having the State Department make changes to passport gender markers to include intersex and non-binary people; have the administration form an interagency working group to focus on the safety, inclusion, and opportunities for transgender persons; appoint as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg who became the first Senate-confirmed gay member of a president’s Cabinet and had Dr. Rachel Levine, a transgender woman, confirmed by the Senate as Assistant Secretary for Health at HHS and then seeing her promoted to four-star admiral.
In his column, Finn counters his own claim Biden speaking out more could have seen the Equality Act pass when he admits without a change in the Senate filibuster rule it won’t. He agrees Biden doesn’t control either Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) or Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) who along with every Republican won’t vote to change it.
Then Finn tries to speak for the LGBTQ community and threatens, “We won’t vote for Biden again.” First, Joe Biden’s name is not on the ballot in 2022. Yes, he will have a clear impact on the elections and understands that. During his recent press conference he said he would be “on the road” talking about the positive things he and the Democratic Congress have accomplished and why voting for Democrats is so important to all he still wants to accomplish. It is my fervent hope Finn and others like him in various communities understand instead of attacking Biden at this time they should be out in the community at a minimum explaining to Democrats and independent voters who support more progressive issues, including all those who understand how important it is to act now on climate change, “if you want to get anything on your issue done in the next two years of the Biden/Harris administration, you must get out and vote for Democrats up and down the ballot.”
It is important to recognize how we must view the Biden administration and this president. Since the day he was inaugurated, the country has been in the midst of a pandemic. So yes, the president was forced to spend an incredible amount of his time dealing with and speaking about COVID. He was right to do so as millions of our fellow citizens were, and still are, getting sick and dying. While he was doing this, President Biden moved Congress to pass legislation totaling over $3.1 trillion to help the American people. This included both the American Rescue Plan, which Democrats passed using reconciliation, and the infrastructure bill, which got passed with bipartisan support in the Senate.
The American Rescue Plan’s goal was to give the American economy a boost, which it did. It included more than $569.5 billion in direct Economic Impact Payments for Americans in need. It also had $350 billion earmarked for emergency funding for state, local, territorial, and tribal governments to address the COVID-19 pandemic. The infrastructure bill “included among other things $312 billion for roads, bridges, public transit, airports, ports, waterways and other transportation-related needs and $266 billion for items including improvements to the power grid and developing broadband internet access for most Americans.”
In his recent press conference, Biden agreed that without a change in the filibuster rule some of his proposals will not be passed. He said he will continue to fight aggressively for all of them but at the same time will work with Congress to try to get some of his Build Back Better bill passed in smaller chunks. Even that won’t be easy. But he committed to continue to fight for what he believes in and what he ran on. Let us give him credit for an amazing first year, better than any president since Franklin Roosevelt.
Let’s focus on keeping the House of Representatives in Democratic hands and adding to Democratic numbers in the Senate. That will give Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) a better chance of passing legislation Biden supports.
It is time to stop the attacks on President Biden and Democrats for not doing enough and changing tactics to focus on attacking Republicans who are doing nothing and worse are committed to taking us backwards on a host of issues including Roe v. Wade, voting rights, civil rights and LGBTQ rights. Let those of us committed to progress be unified in attacking Republicans instead of forming a circular firing squad attacking Democrats, and participating in our own defeat.
Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist. He writes regularly for the Blade.
Possibly because the notion of Critical Race Theory is so vague to most conservative voters, when Republican Glenn Youngkin, then-candidate for Virginia governor, ran for office, he labeled himself as the “parents’ rights candidate” by attempting further to instill fear on the part of the white electorate.
He raised his racist bullhorn by declaring not only his intent to ban Critical Race Theory the day he is elected but also to outlaw the reading of the critically acclaimed and award-winning novel by author Toni Morrison, Beloved, which was turned into a major feature film.
Beloved, a truthful and painful story of the lives and loves of two enslaved black people in the U.S. South, has become an integral part of the cannon of not only African American literature but of U.S.-American literature generally.
After winning the Virginia gubernatorial election and with the support of the Virginia state legislature, new bills to limit the teaching of our country’s true past have circulated throughout the Virginia statehouse.
House bill No. 781, proposed by Republican Delegate Wren Williams, prohibits “divisive concepts” from instruction in Virginia public elementary and secondary schools. While Williams made clear his opposition to the teaching of Critical Race Theory, the wording “divisive concepts” in its vagueness closes the door on the teaching of anything and everything conservatives deem appropriate and necessary to ban.
In the wording of the bill, Virginia’s social studies curriculum will be standardized (a.k.a. controlled and regimented) and educators will teach about, “founding documents of the United States,” like “the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, the Federalist Papers, including Essays 10 and 51, excerpts from Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, the first debate between Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, and the writings of the Founding Fathers of the United States.”
Even Virginia’s elementary and secondary school students, I would hope, know so much more than the legislators attempting to enact severe constraints on curriculum and pedagogy throughout their systems of “education.”
By the 5th grade, students should have learned about the “Lincoln-Douglas” debates of 1858 in Illinois between incumbent Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas and Lincoln, his Republican challenger in the race for U.S. senator. The major topic during the series of seven debates included the candidates’ views on whether new states joining the union would permit or prohibit slavery within their borders.
In Youngkin’s inauguration speech on Saturday, January 15, 2022, he seemed to talk from both sides of his mouth when he promised, “We will remove politics from the classroom and re-focus on essential math, science and reading. And we will teach all of our history the good and the bad.”
Then within an hour following his speech, he immediately signed 11 executive orders including lifting the mask mandate for Virginia schools and ending the vaccine mandate for state employees in a school system and state with increasingly rising infection rates.
Wanting to be known as “The Education Governor,” one of his executive orders ends the use of “divisive concepts” in schools such as Critical Race Theory, which is not currently part of the curriculum.
One day later in an interview on Fox, Youngkin doubled down on his misunderstanding, the perpetuation of misinformation, and yes, the politicization of the teaching of the legacy of racism and race relations in the United States.
“We are not going to teach the children to view everything through a lens of race. Yes, we will teach all history, the good and the bad. Because we can’t know where we’re going unless we know where we have come from. But to actually teach our children that one group is advantaged and the other disadvantaged because of the color of skin, cuts everything we know to be true.”
So, whom does Youngkin designate as “we” in “everything we know to be true”?
The Virginia governor and state legislature pose a great and common example clearly demonstrating why politicians cannot and must not dictate the parameters of what educators teach in the schools throughout the nation.
Professor and Executive Director of the Human Rights Center at the University of Dayton, Shelley Inglis, studies authoritarian leaders around the world and came up with a list of ten common markers characteristic to many.
One maker states that authoritarians appeal to populism and nationalism. While “populism” encompasses a range of political stances emphasizing the idea of siding with “the people” against the so-called “elite” and can exist on the political left, the right, or the center, right-wing populism co-opts the term and juxtaposes nationalist and nativist aims. This form of populism we have clearly witnessed during this era of Trumpism.
Another of Inglis’ markers of authoritarianism is the control of information at home (propaganda and stifling of truth in schools, the media, and the larger society) and misinformation abroad.
Though Youngkin is but a petty autocrat in one state, his influence has become immense since winning the Virginia statehouse. The larger Republican Party is taking several pages from his political playbook by first, straddling the line between embracing Trumps’ brand of populism while keeping a certain distance from the twice impeached failed president.
Secondly, they have implemented Youngkin’s successful tactic of scaring parents and other community members with the false flag of “Critical Race Theory” by banning age-appropriate truthful education of young people to the realities of our history.
While Youngkin promised to allow the teaching of our history, “the good and the bad,” the schools will continue to teach a watered-down whitewashed version of what students need to know to help our country come to terms with and begin to heal from the violations to human and civil rights of the past.
Before Youngkin won his election and continuing to the present day, since January 2021, Education Week has found that 32 states have either introduced bills in their legislatures or have taken other actions that would ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory or restrict how educators discuss racism, sexism, and LGBTQ issues in the classroom. Thirteen states have already inflicted these restrictions.
Just think about it: States are passing laws and enacting executive orders banning the teaching of how the states passed laws banning the teaching of enslaved peoples under the apartheid system of U.S.-American slavery.
They are passing laws and enacting executive orders banning the teaching of how the states passed laws banning voting rights of people of color.
These very laws and executive order banning the teaching of the true legacy of race confirms one of the primary characteristics of Critical Race Theory: that racism is a permanent feature of the U.S. political and social system.
These laws challenge any reality, any truth that contradicts the pablum we are fed as young people of the nationalist narrative that this country functions as a meritocracy: that the individual succeeds or fails based chiefly on their merit, from their motivation, abilities, values, ambition, commitment, and persistence, rather than on their backgrounds or social identities.
Autocrats have a vested stake in withholding the true accounting of our past.
It seems that each new day brings a fresh debate around speech and the weight of impact that speech holds. Back in October hundreds of Netflix employees staged a walkout protesting their company’s controversial Dave Chappelle stand-up special. At issue were a number of jokes aimed at the transgender community. The protest happened in response to Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos’ defense of the special, saying that “content doesn’t directly translate to real-world harm.” This statement could not be further from the truth. Not only do words carry impact and directly translate to real-world harm, words form our conception of the world and oftentimes what is seen as truth. The language we use and condone shapes how everything around us is perceived, which is why there is great responsibility in considering the words we use before we put them out into the world.
We think about this every day at Reading Partners, an organization that places community volunteers in Title I elementary schools to support students in mastering reading skills. Because many of our volunteers do not share racial identity or a similar lived experience of the students we partner with, it is incredibly important to us that they understand that their role is to empower students who need a little extra support rather than coming to “help” or “save” them. The white-savior narrative has historically run rampant in spaces looking to mobilize volunteers for a cause and it is our responsibility to dismantle this narrative. This dismantling starts with the language we use and the stories we share about the communities we have the great privilege to partner with. Given that structural racism and oppression have created the current conditions facing under-resourced students, it is incumbent upon us that we recognize our role within the community and understand that we are here to act as a partner with students and their families whom have already created plans to address gaps in learning.
Because of the impact words yield, it is essential to carefully consider language choice, especially if it could affect marginalized and oppressed groups. Even those who have good intent, like journalists and public figures, often use outdated language and phrases that stigmatize communities or frame them through an othering lens. Some common examples of misguided language often used include phrases like “low-income students,” and “learning loss.” Both of these phrases place responsibility on students for the situation they are in despite the fact that students do not receive income, or have intentionally chosen to miss out on learning opportunities particularly with the disruptions that COVID-19 created. This type of framing has a direct corollary on how these students might be treated by teachers, administrators, and tutors, as well as how they are viewed by leaders, politicians and other people who hold power. It is therefore important that we use terms that accurately describe the situation, which may need to include political or historical context—so instead of “low-income students” we say, “historically under-resourced communities,” while a more accurate substitute for “learning loss” is actually “unfinished learning.” While these are subtle shifts in language, it completely reframes the situation, elucidating who shares responsibility for the current state of things and who does not.
It is also of note that the positive or negative connotations inherent in the language we use are hugely important to how we see those who may have different lived experiences than our own. At Reading Partners, we know that our students are not in fact “struggling” or “suffering from a lack of” something. We highlight our students as they are: “working hard,” “enduring,” “skill builders,” etc. despite growing up in a world where they have been denied access to high-quality literacy education.
It is a fallacy that words cannot do harm. Language has served to dehumanize and subjugate people for as long as it has existed and it is often those in power who have the loudest voice. We as people, institutions, corporations, media, and otherwise must think through what we say and how it might impact others. Let’s be clear—this is not about censorship or ‘cancelling’ anyone. Language changes all of the time and it can be hard to keep up with. We are simply making the appeal that those in power, and with platforms, continue learning from and listening to those who have been harmed for centuries by systemic injustice. Free speech is a privilege, and with that privilege, there is incredible responsibility to utilize language that truly aligns with and demonstrates the user’s values.
Shukurat Adamoh-Faniyan is executive director of Reading Partners DC, a nonprofit that for more than 20 years has helped empower local students to succeed in reading and in life by engaging community volunteers to provide one-on-one tutoring. If you’re interested in learning more and becoming a volunteer visit readingpartners.org/volunteer-washington-dc.
Two local organizations are partnering to distribute free copies of controversial books in response to the recent increase in attempts to remove titles from school libraries.
In Purpose Educational Services and the St. Louis bookstore EyeSeeMe will deliver free copies of “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morisson to Missourians who request it.
The organizations raised more than $3,000 in the first few hours after launching the book program, said Heather Fleming, founder of In Purpose Educational Services.
“If you look at most of the books that they are trying to ban, they are the stories of people from historically marginalized groups,” said Fleming. “We have to grapple with some of the things that have happened in our society. Number one, to make sure that they don’t happen again. But then number two, because we need to learn how to live with one another.”
Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” is photographed in this photo illustration last November at Left Bank Books in St. Louis’ Central West End neighborhood.
A St. Louis Public Radio analysis of the books being challenged in the area in November found two-thirds were written by authors of color or authors who identify as LGBTQ. “The Bluest Eye,” was the book with the most official requests for removal from libraries. It was the first book by Toni Morrison, who would go on to win a Nobel Prize in Literature and a Pulitzer Prize.
The Wentzville School Board voted 4-3 at its Jan. 20 meeting to remove the book from school libraries. That’s after a committee voted to recommend keeping the book, writing, “committee members believe that removing the work would infringe on the rights of parents and students to decide for themselves if they want to read this work of literature.”
A committee in the Francis Howell School District voted to retain the book this month and a review of “The Bluest Eye” is still underway in the Lindbergh School District.
The organizations that are planning the “banned book program” have a form for people to fill out if they are interested in receiving free copies of the book. The books will be distributed to people in Missouri and the groups plan to pick a new book each month, Fleming said.
These conversations and these types of book bans, they’re placing our students at a disadvantage,” Fleming said. “Whether people want to admit it or not, we are becoming an increasingly diverse society … students who are not culturally competent are not going to meet with as much success.”
While having surgery is not a requirement of being transgender and not everyone medically transitions (perhaps out of choice, due to financial situations, or other reasons), undergoing surgical procedures can be a big step in some trans folks’ transitions.
After surgery comes a healing process, and not just the physical kind, as trans people start a new chapter in their lives with new mental and emotional challenges. However, for some, accepting their scars from surgery is a major aspect of accepting who they are as a person.
Let’s meet three trans people who found power in learning to love their scars.
Lara Provided
Lara
Lara realized she did not identify as masculine when she was a toddler, however, they were forced by family members and religious pressures to hide their identity until they turned 30.
While coming out is still an ongoing process for Lara with other relatives and friends, she decided to have bottom surgery to affirm her feminine identity.
“I refused to get any surgeries until I came to terms with who I am and the body I was born with. I didn’t want to undergo surgery than still have the same issues with myself on the inside as before, since surgery only solves some of the challenges of being trans. The real challenge is loving and accepting who you are on the inside,” they say.
Lara shares that the biggest benefit from her surgery is that she can’t produce testosterone anymore.
“I had to come to terms with the fact that I would depend on injecting hormones for the rest of my life rather than feel the way I did with the wrong, naturally occurring, chemicals in my body. I had to accept that there was nothing wrong with me. There was something wrong with the way my body produced chemicals.”
Following on from their surgery, Lara says their scars have healed largely, but she can still feel them.
She says they are a constant reminder that she was able to become their whole, true self.
“The decision to have surgery changed my entire life. I’m reminded of that decision every time I trace my fingers over my scars, and it makes me feel validated. It allows me to move through my days with more clarity and purpose.”
When asked their advice for other trans folk learning to accept their bodies post-surgery, Lara wants everyone to know that self-love is the key.
“Scars from gender-affirming surgeries are a mark of self love. Let your scars be a permanent reminder to love yourself and your identity.”
Faye
Faye
Faye also had an emotional experience when she saw her scars for the first time after surgery.
“The first time I looked down and saw my scars after surgery, I thought they were so beautiful that I cried. I felt proud and sexy because they symbolized the fact that I took charge of a bad situation and did everything I could to ensure that I would live a long, healthy life. They prove I’m a warrior.”
She feels like she saved her own life by choosing to transition and live as her authentic self, and Faye wants the world to accept trans scars and how they mark a chapter in someone’s life.
“We need to show our real skin so others can see what that looks like. We need to show our scars because they are simply part of being human, and mine just add to the tapestry of my life,” Faye says.
She continues to assure others that, while others may see your scars and judge you, how you feel inside is what matters most.
“Only you know what you’ve been through and how much stronger you’re becoming because of it. If you want to talk about your scars and your journey, that’s fine. You are allowed to show them off.”
However, Faye also highlights how surgery isn’t just one thing, since representations of trans people in the media tend to focus on the surgical aspects of transitioning, especially bottom surgery.
“Surgery can be incredibly affirming for people like me who wish to have it. But, it’s important to remember that hormonal transitions are also valid medical options and can produce results that alleviate dysphoria.
“But, ultimately, having or not having surgery doesn’t make anyone’s experience more or less valid. Surgery simply changes the body in which you experience your gender, not your gender itself. So, to any other trans people, I remind you that your gender is valid, regardless of whether you want to have surgery.”
Ethan
Ethan
Finally, we meet Ethan, who came out as transgender in the summer of 2016. He first recognized that he was trans in his teenage years, but coming out was a journey, especially to his parents.
“Admittedly, it took both of my parents quite some time to adjust, to move through their own phases of processing and understanding, and eventually settling in a place of support and acceptance. With that, of course, came many a time of still using my birth name, or female pronouns which was impossibly hard to cope with. But, I knew they needed time and space to let the new reality become familiar territory,” he shares.
Fortunately, his family unit is now stronger than ever and he has fiercely supportive friends who are quick to correct others and advocate on Ethan’s behalf when he isn’t present.
“I had top surgery in 2019, but that in itself is quite a broad and all-encompassing term for any of the chest masculinizing surgeries transmasculine folks undergo. I had a double incision, bilateral mastectomy, with free nipple grafts.”
Ethan says his initial focus of importance when he came out was to start testosterone and effectively go through a second puberty. He wanted the world to see him the way he was on the inside.
However, once that started to kick in and the discomfort began to lessen around his image, he felt overwhelming dysphoria around his chest. Therefore, chest surgery and no longer needing to wear a binder to compress the tissue and give a flatter appearance in clothes was really important for Ethan.
He says having surgery solidified the comfort he had found in his identity, and he felt immediate relief post-op that he struggles to describe with words.
Following surgery, Ethan has been on a journey with his scars, since he initially experienced pain and frustration that his body wasn’t healing quickly as his incisions popped open.
“This means now that parts of my scars are thicker and more raised than perhaps they would have been. For at least a year or more that really got me down. I desperately wanted my scars to heal and fade to be barely noticeable so that they didn’t ‘out’ me. However, chest surgery has been a wholly liberating and genuinely life-changing process,” he shares.
Ethan does admit that surgery isn’t a “fix,” and there are still aspects of his body where he doesn’t feel comfortable, but he has developed a happy relationship with his scars.
“There are days where they itch and are tight, and that’s frustrating. But, there is comfort in sitting massaging them with creams to help with the long term fading and settling that scar tissue does over many years. I never once have felt ashamed of my scars.”
He says scars tell a story, and his are a story of strength and ownership as he began living as himself.
“Scars come in many colors, shapes, sizes, and body locations, and that’s something to celebrate.”
Let me just start with a question. How many friends outside of your generation do you have? I mean honest-to-god friends. In my friend group, as large and fungible as that can be in the District and in the age of social media, it’s sort of me and a few other Gen Xers, and then just loads of Millennials. They do look to me to pass down some knowledge, but it’s mainly to do with the ins and outs of mortgages and things like that.
But is it me? Or are gays just really, really terrible at having intergenerational friends? It’s striking. I’ve recently developed a friendship with — let’s call him — Bill. He’s almost 80. Maybe it’s the historian in me, but I just love the stories. But more on that later. For now, to ask another question, just why are gays bad at having friends removed from their respective generations?
On social media this week I posted an obituary from a Houston paper dating from 1978. It was obviously from a gay man. You can tell from the coded language, “long time resident of this city despite stays on the West Coast.” And if that didn’t give it away, it ended with this rather heartbreaking language, “his parents requested that his friends not attend the memorial services!” Bill told me these sorts of obituaries — terribly vague but also cruelly pointed — were quite common in the dark days of AIDS. And this is succinctly why I think gays are so bad at having intergenerational friends, we’ve simply lost an entire generation of elders. And what was exactly lost with that generation is far more than can be enumerated in this column.
Back to Bill’s stories for a second. There is a real value in oral histories, the telling and passing down of shared experiences make our culture certainly more valuable and rich, at the very least far more interesting. And again, this is nothing new, as cultures across the globe seek to capture personal stories and first-hand viewpoints of history unfolding. But it’s not just the story itself that’s important. It’s also the perspective and opinions. These remain nuanced between generations. Again, that’s really not saying anything new. But these varied opinions and outlooks, if not shared and debated risk isolating gay men into rigid and unchanging views crafted in echo chambers.
Also, gays place a large premium on youth. And this, again, is nothing new, nor particularly gay. We just like what we like. But as Bill told me, he’s rather annoyed that any interest he expresses in a younger man is automatically filed under lecherous behavior. Let me just deal with this right here: We all, no matter the age, display to varying degrees lecherous behavior. Just get us a little dehydrated, a little tipsy, and throw us on the sand of Poodle Beach and watch the unwanted flirting unfold. So. But still we have to do better than mistaking anyone displaying interested in us as a simple sexual advance. That seems rather juvenile.
With contact between our generations low, we are in danger of passing down a culture to future queer Americans that might seem a little lopsided and even a bit, well, shallow. But what’s to be done? I’ve commented in past columns on how we’re failing older LGBTQ Americans, especially in the District. To remedy this, we should use what I call the Chicago model and what is being done at the Center on Halsted, the city’s LGBTQ community center. The Center offers numerous programs geared to the city’s LGBTQ senior population. But one that sticks out is a sort of a buddy program, pairing seniors, even those in care facilities, with younger friends. This would certainly help us here in the District better care for our LGBTQ seniors, and would also of course help with the bridging of our considerable generational divide. So perhaps we could reproduce this here in the District.
For now, I’ll continue to buddy up and enjoy my time with Bill.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) spent Thursday plunging a metaphorical knife into President Biden’s back, even as he was on his way to Capitol Hill to meet with Senate Democrats in an attempt to salvage pro-voting rights legislation. Having betrayed her president and her party — to say nothing of the LGBTQ community — Sinema is ripe for a primary challenge when she comes up for re-election in 2024.
Infuriated Democrats in Arizona are already beginning to line up behind a replacement for Sinema. The frontrunner by far: Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ).
Gallego is hardly shying away from the challenge. Shortly after Sinema’s speech, Gallego took the House floor to deliver his own, with a not-so-veiled swipe at the senator.
“Today the House showed where it stands. We won’t shrink from protecting our democracy and the voting rights of all Americans,” Gallego said. “It’s past time for the U.S. Senate and Sen. Sinema to do the same.”
Since the race is more than two years away, Gallego hasn’t officially declared his candidacy, but there’s no shortage of frustrated Democrats happy to do so for him. A Run Ruben Rundraft political action committee (PAC) is raising money with the aim of getting him into the race.
Another PAC, called Primary Sinema, hasn’t picked a candidate, but has already raised a quarter of a million dollars to oust the incumbent in favor of practically anyone else.
Gallego would certainly represent a strong challenger to Sinema. A first-generation American raised by a single mother, he attended Harvard and joined the Marines after graduation. Although he could have qualified to become a desk jockey, Gallego served in the infantry, partaking in combat duty in Iraq and seeing his best friend killed in action.
His military background came in handy during the January 6 insurrection, as he instructed his colleagues in the House how to put on gas masks.
In Congress, Gallego has become a favorite of progressives who admired his willingness to mix it up with the opposition. While a lot of Democrats might have had the thought, only Gallego tweeted to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene that she should “shut your seditious, Qanon loving mouth.” When a Russian politician called for his kidnapping last month, Gallego quickly responded, “Fuck around and find out.”
Sinema has a lot of money in her favor, largely because she is being courted by lobbyists. What she doesn’t have are poll numbers. A survey last fall found that in a head-to-head primary with Gallego, the out Senator and incumbent would get a meager 23 percent, compared to Gallego’s 62 percent. That was before Sinema’s latest betrayal and without the Congressman even announcing his candidacy yet.
But after the past week, it’s clear that Sinema is so despised by so many Arizona Democrats that a primary challenge is inevitable. If it turns out to be Gallego — as seems likely — Sinema will be in a lot of trouble.
The Yankees were late on introducing an African-American player to their roster, adding Hall of Famer Elston Howard to the team in 1955, eight years after Jackie Robinson starred for the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Yankees seem determined not to repeat that bad history. Last week, they announced that Rachel Balkovec will become the first woman to manage a team in minor league baseball when she takes the helm of the Tampa Tarpons this spring.
It has been just over ten years since Justin Siegal threw batting practice to the Cleveland Guardians and five since she was the first woman to coach a MLB squad with the Oakland Athletics. Two years ago, Kim Ng became the first female General Manager of any of the four major professional sports when the Marlins hired her to run their team. In the two years since then, the dam has burst. Women have been hired to important on-field positions with professional baseball at an impressive clip. As baseball has lagged behind other professional sports in bringing women into the game, the current pace of hires indicates that baseball’s embrace of analytics and objective measures have finally penetrated the walls of one of the most enduring old boys clubs in the U.S. and given talented women opportunities they have long been denied.
Ten women will be coaching with major or minor league teams in 2022. In 2021, Bianca Smith became the first African-American woman to coach in the minors when the Red Sox hired her. Alyssa Nakken became the first woman in uniform during a Major League Baseball game when she coached first base for the Giants in a July 2020 exhibition against the Oakland A’s. Her jersey now belongs to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Cuban-American Veronica Alvarez is not only the coach of the U.S. Women’s National Baseball team, she also served as a spring training coach for the Oakland A’s.
The proliferation of women in baseball is not an accident. More girls than ever are playing baseball. Here, in the DC area, 160 girls participated with D.C. Girls Baseball in 2021. Baseball for All, an organization that supports and promotes girls in baseball, held a tournament last summer that drew nearly 600 girls who play baseball. There are more women than ever on collegiate baseball rosters. Major League Baseball has also devoted significant resources to girls and women in baseball, running several development camps for girls in baseball. Six of the women now coaching professional baseball participated in MLB’s Take the Field initiative, which is designed to help place women into baseball positions. To top it all off, the classic film about the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, A League of Their Own, is getting a reboot on Amazon Prime this year.
The pace of hiring is exhilarating. Unfortunately, every report of a woman being hired is followed by predictable hateful commentary on social media. Many cannot imagine that a woman may be hired for a baseball position on merit and resort to making sexist and derogatory comments. As women in baseball, the coaches are used to that vitriol and have developed thick skin and sophisticated defense mechanisms. However, also reading are thousands of girls who are inspired by the achievements of these women and they are, sadly, learning that to achieve in baseball means enduring the sexist taunts, gross come-ons, and hurtful comments.
Baseball has a long way to go. Other leagues have women officiating games, so it should be reasonable to expect that baseball will have women umpires in the near future. The possibility of women playing professional baseball is tantalizingly close as 17 year old Genevieve Beacom made history last week as the first women to play Australian professional baseball, when she threw a scoreless inning against the Adelaide Giants.
We are watching a revolution in baseball unfold before our eyes.
