Police investigating the murder of Tracy Single, the 16th trans woman of colour killed in the US this year, have arrested a man she had been dating.
Joshua Dominic Bourgeois was arrested Friday, August 23, on suspicion of Single’s murder, according to ABC News.
The 25-year-old became a suspect after investigators learned he had been in a “dating relationship” with Single, also known as Tracy Williams.
Police said she was found dead with a puncture wound and several lacerations in a gas station parking lot in west Houston on July 30. She was 22 years old.
It took officials two weeks to identify her body with the help of local LGBT+ activists.
Tracy Single was ‘larger-than-life’.
Originally from New Orleans, Single had been living in a west Houston apartment after spending time at a shelter for homeless youth.
Friends told local paper the Houston Chronicle that she was a “larger-than-life” personality and who loved fashion, drag and performance.
After moving to west Houston, she would visit the a local centre for people “of all sexual orientations and gender identities” who were experiencing homelessness, where she would give peers and mentors dance lessons.
Her death was described as a “big loss for the community” by Courtney Sellers, executive director of the Montrose Grace Place centre.
16 trans women of colour killed so far in 2019.
Single’s death is the latest tragedy in an epidemic of violence against trans women of colour.
At least 15 other trans people of colour have been shot dead or violently killed so far this year, according to Human Rights Campaign.
Human Rights Campaign said that “it is clear that fatal violence disproportionately affects transgender women of colour, and that the intersections of racism, sexism, homophobia, biphobia and transphobia conspire to deprive them of employment, housing, healthcare and other necessities, barriers that make them vulnerable”.
When Maurice “Reese” Willoughby died by suicide last week, it came at the tail end of months of cyberbullying after a video emerged of him defending his girlfriend — a transgender woman named Faith — to a crowd of people who were hurling transphobic and homophobic comments.
“You f— what?” shouts the person holding the camera, in a video that racked up millions of views.
Willoughby was an aspiring rapper from the Philadelphia area, and initial reports stated that he took his own life because of the bullying seen in the viral video. However his girlfriend, Faith Palmer, said on social media that he struggled with drug addiction and intentionally overdosed.
“Oppressors will always find a label for you, so it’s better to have your own that’s a positive word that puts you in a positive light.”
PIPER DAWES
For transgender activists, however, the viral video was a rare opportunity to shine a light on the harassment and violence inflicted on the cisgender (non-transgender) people who openly love transgender people.
Kiara St. James, executive director of the New York Transgender Advocacy Group, said this moment is a time to teach people about the concept of “transamory,” which she defined as people who are attracted to and seek out relationships with transgender people.
“Transamory has had many names,” St. James told NBC News. “One of the original names, which was more stigmatizing, was ‘tranny chaser,’ which we don’t use any more. But for a lot of community members, there were a lot of gentlemen who dated a series of trans women. The term was used to kind of say that they had a fetish for trans women.”
“I think that as we have evolved, we have understood that there are people out there who are transamorous, who intentionally seek trans women or trans men for relationships and, it’s something that’s ongoing,” St. James continued.
For viewers of the hit FX drama “Pose,” this will be familiar: The show features several transamorous story lines, particularly with Angel, a sex worker and model, played by Indya Moore.
Indya Moore as Angel and Evan Peters as Stan in “Pose” on FX.JoJo Whilden / FX
In a tweet posted Tuesday, transgender author and “Pose” producer Janet Mock shared the video of Willoughby being bullied and condemned his harassers.
“These men screaming at him are beyond fragile, standing on a shaky altar of masculinity, too insecure to do what Reese did: Unapologetically love a woman who everyone says is unworthy of love,” she wrote.
Mock later shared an image from “Pose” of transgender woman Angel and cisgender man Lil’ Papi, whose romance blossomed in season 2.
St. James said she has been using her platform as executive director of a trans advocacy group to draw attention to transamory, because the violence that is faced by so many transgender women is the same violence faced by those who openly love them.
“Over the past couple of years, especially around Trans Day of Remembrance, we talk about the number of especially black trans women who have been murdered. Oftentimes, they were murdered by someone who they were intimate with over a period of time,” St. James said. “One of the reasons for those types of incidents is fear from the transamorous man of being outed.”
Ashlee Marie Preston, a trans activist based in Los Angeles, echoed this sentiment on Twitter: “When trans attracted men kill us; it’s out of fear that this will happen to them if they are outed.”
St. James said one of the ways to fight back against the violence that so many trans women face is to “create spaces where we see transamorous relationships as normal and healthy.”
“Transamorous does not necessarily mean men who are attracted to women, it can be men who are attracted to men who are of transgender experience; it can be women who are attracted to trans women; it can be women who are attracted to trans men — it’s not just a cis male-trans woman situation; it really runs the gamut of sexual orientation,” St. James said.
Piper Dawes, a trans woman living in northern England, was one of the first people to coin the term “transamory.” Her 2013 blog post used the term after wrestling with more stigmatizing and cumbersome terms like “gynandromorphophilia.”
“Oppressors will always find a label for you, so it’s better to have your own that’s a positive word that puts you in a positive light,” Dawes told NBC News.
Dawes said she realized that some people she dated really preferred transgender people. “It’s not fetishized, but it is a specific love for people like me,” Dawes said.
So, she created the term so that people could find a better way to express their attraction. “I don’t think, really, that it’s necessary to delve deeper than that, because it’s such a personal thing,” Dawes said.
St. James said that showcasing positive transamorous relationships also works to dismantle the stigma felt by trans people themselves.
“Too often, trans women are socialized to think that we cannot be in relationships, so the only way that we can really express ourselves is through sex work and things of that nature,” St. James said.
“I’m in a relationship, so I’m always sensitive of where we go,” St. James said of her and her boyfriend. “Even though he is very comfortable being seen with me, I still have that reservation of making sure we are in spaces where no harm will come to either him or me.”
“I think that’s something that a lot of transamorous couples think about if we go out in public,” she added.
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255, text HOME to 741741 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional resources.
There’s a new antiretroviral, from a new class of medication, currently being tested for both PrEP and HIV treatment. Named islatravir (formerly MK-8591), this Merck drug is showing promise as part of a novel drug delivery system and because of its long half-life, great potency and high barrier for resistance.
“It is clear that PrEP and HIV medication alternatives are evolving,” said Christopher Hall, MD, MS, AAHIVS, vice president of medical affairs at San Francisco AIDS Foundation. “More options are needed especially for PrEP, because a single agent will never meet the needs of all people. Personal choice certainly will take on greater significance as alternatives evolve.”
Islatravir in a PrEP implant
Based on a design similar to that used for the Nexplanon/Implanon birth control implant, the islatravir implant is a removable implant designed to be inserted under the skin in the upper arm for a year. In the study presented by Matthews, researchers tested the drug concentration levels delivered by the islatravir implant over 12 weeks in 16 individuals.
The implant device, with size shown relative to a penny. The implant is 4 cm in length x 2 mm. Photo courtesy of Merck.
In a double-blind, placebo-controlled study, the researchers tested two doses of the islatravir implant: 54 mg and 62 mg. Throughout the study, the researchers collected drug concentration levels in plasma and PBMCs, and were primarily interested in how much time the drug concentration levels fell below a threshold of 0.5 pmol/106 (a threshold which is believed to provide an adequate level of drug for HIV prevention based on animal studies).
At both doses, drug concentrations remained above the 0.5 pmol/106 threshold for the 12 weeks of the study, although the lower limit of the estimated range for the 54 mg dose dipped below the threshold for a brief period. The 62 mg implant delivered drug concentration levels well above the threshold for the duration of the study.
In a later analysis, the researchers projected that the 62 mg implant would lead to concentrations above the threshold for at least 12 months, falling below the threshold at around 16 months.
Slide: Randolph Matthews, MD, PhD
“This supports the potential of the islatravir implant as a once-yearly PrEP option,” said Matthews.
Future research, he said, will continue to test other prototype implants and additional doses.
“Just as in birth control, implanted, long-acting pharmaceuticals are likely to earn a place in the biomedical HIV prevention armamentarium,” said Hall. “While more study is needed, clearly the future of PrEP is one of greater alternatives, with agents that bring fewer side effects, are less susceptible to resistance, are easier to administer, and improve the experience of people who take them. The future promises a broader array of options than we have seen since the advent of FDA-approved Truvada for PrEP in 2012, and it is bright.”
Islatravir for dual-therapy HIV treatment
There are a few unique characteristics of islatravir that may make it suitable as part of a two-drug regimen, said Molina. In preclinical studies, islatravir showed more than 10-fold greater potency compared to other approved antiretrovirals. The drug is also known to act against a number of resistant HIV variants, has a long half-life and has a high barrier to resistance.
“This [two-drug regimen] may maintain efficacy comparable to a three-drug regimen,” said Molina.
To test this, a double-blind study involving 120 treatment naïve adults living with HIV randomized participants to receive islatravir 0.25 mg, 0.75 mg, 2.25 mg or doravirine plus 3TC (lamivudine)/TDF (tenofovir disoproxil fumarate). At 24 weeks, or once viral loads were suppressed to <50 copies/mL on the triple-therapy, 3TC was removed.
There were very high response rates to the dual therapy at every dose level of islatravir.
After 24 weeks on the dual therapy, close to 90% of people receiving either islatravir 0.25, 0.75 and 2.25 mg with doravirine had viral loads <50 copies/mL. (96% of people receiving the control treatment of doravirine, 3TC and TDF had viral loads suppressed to this level.)
There were very few adverse events during the study, with two out of 90 participants receiving islatravir discontinuing the study because of adverse events.
“These results are quite promising, and demonstrate that the dual combination of islatravir and doravirine has the potential to be a potent, two-drug regimen and supports its further exploration in Phase 3 trials,” said Molina.
More research on islatravir’s safety and efficacy is needed before the drug may be granted FDA approval and brought to market. Based on the results of these studies, Merck plans to continue Phase 3 research on islatravir for HIV treatment as part of a once-daily, oral two-drug regimen. Using islatravir for PrEP, Merck is pursuing a Phase 2 study, set to begin enrolling in September 2019, that will evaluate the safety and tolerability of once-monthly oral islatravir.
An African American transgender woman in the Chicago area is suing national convenience store chain Circle K, alleging she was fired from one of its stores and retaliated against after reporting co-workers’ use of racial and transphobic slurs against her.
Judi Brown claims in the lawsuit filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois that a manager and other Circle K employees at the store in Bolingbrook, Illinois, harassed her based on her race and being transgender.
Brown, 26, said she was fired after she complained about the alleged discrimination.
“The discrimination and harassment were traumatizing and needed to be called out,” Brown said in a press release by the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing her. “It was not fair.”
The lawsuit comes a week after the Trump administration filed a brief with the Supreme Court arguing that transgender workers are not protected by civil rights laws.
In Illinois, the state’s Human Rights Act includes specific protections for employees on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation, the ACLU said in its release.
When Brown worked as a Circle K cashier from May 2016 to June 2017, a store manager asked her “offensive and sexually explicit questions” about her romantic partners, sexual and reproductive anatomy and her plans for sexual reassignment surgery, the lawsuit claims.
She also alleges that a manager refused to refer to her by her chosen name in company documents and that another co-worker sometimes used male pronouns to refer to her and called her a “man in a dress.”
Brown also claims she “was forced to endure a racially hostile work environment” and that a manager used the N-word to refer to African American customers. The lawsuit says that a manager requested that employees closely watch African American customers and that another employee called Brown a n—–.
She says in addition that a manager made an “offensive comment” about the way “you people do your hair.”
Circle K said Wednesday in a statement that it “is an equal-opportunity employer with a diverse workforce, including transgender employees and fully cooperated with agency authorities during the previous investigation into this claim.”
When Brown reported the alleged harassment and discrimination, she said Circle K failed to act and instead retaliated against her by denying her a promised promotion, overscrutinizing her work and ultimately firing her, the lawsuit says.
Brown was scheduled to work on a Sunday during Chicago’s Pride celebration, even though she typically worked a Monday-to-Friday schedule, according to the lawsuit. She said her bosses knew that she intended to perform at the parade, and when she learned she was scheduled to work, she informed a manager that she could not. She said she was never notified that she was fired and found out when she couldn’t clock in for work during her next shift.
“I was in absolute shock after being fired,” Brown said. “I followed all the rules for taking off on that day so I could celebrate with my community — and they picked that day to terminate me. I felt so humiliated.”
Carolyn Wald, an attorney with the ACLU in Illinois, said Circle K’s actions were unacceptable and illegal.
“Employers should never advance the bigotry of some employees over the safety, well-being and success of others,” Wald said.
Brown is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, including for lost wages and benefits, attorneys’ fees and damages for emotional distress.
The US district judge made the ruling in the case of four trans Wisconsin residents, who were challenging a 1997 provision that excluded coverage of “transsexual surgery” for Medicaid recipients.
Judge William Conley said on Friday, August 16, that the state’s Medicaid programme was discriminating against trans people by not covering trans healthcare.
The four trans people who filed the lawsuit argued that gender-affirming healthcare for trans people was medically necessary due to the medically recognised condition of gender dysphoria.
“There is now a consensus within the medical profession that gender dysphoria is a serious medical condition, which if left untreated or inadequately treated can cause adverse symptoms, such as anxiety, depression, serious mental distress, self-harm and suicidal ideation,” Conley wrote in his judgment, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.
In the 38-page ruling, Conley said that trans people in Wisconsin were being discriminated against on the basis of sex under the federal Affordable Care Act.
Conley’s ruling follows a temporary injunction against the provision that he issued last year.
Insurance companies that manage state Medicaid plans also “acknowledge that gender-confirming hormone and surgical treatments for gender dysphoria can be medically necessary”, Conley said.
Wisconsin is among nine US states that have explicit Medicaid exclusion for trans healthcare, according to the ruling, which also estimates the cost of gender-affirming treatments covered by Medicaid to be between $300,000 and $1.2 million per year.
Wisconsin spends $3.9 billion a year on its Medicaid programme.
Trump proposing nationwide rollback of trans healthcare.
On May 24, the Trump administration filed a 204-page proposed regulationthat would roll back healthcare protections for trans people.
The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published the document proposing eliminating gender identity as one of the factors in healthcare and government policy.
The regulation would reverse changes made by the Obama administration and came as another knock to the transgender community.
The brief was submitted in a case concerning Aimee Stephens, a transgender woman who was fired from a Detroit funeral home after she informed her employer that she was beginning her gender transition. The case, R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, et al., is one of three cases concerning LGBTQ workers’ rights that the Supreme Court is expected to hear this fall.
Aimee Stephens and her wife Donna, right.Courtesy ACLU
The brief, submitted by Solicitor General Noel J. Francisco and other Department of Justice attorneys, argues that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin, “does not bar discrimination because of transgender status.”
“In 1964, the ordinary public meaning of ‘sex’ was biological sex. It did not encompass transgender status,” the brief states. “In the particular context of Title VII — legislation originally designed to eliminate employment discrimination against racial and other minorities — it was especially clear that the prohibition on discrimination because of ‘sex’ referred to unequal treatment of men and women in the workplace.”
If the Supreme Court sides with the Trump administration, it will be overturning a decision by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which sided with Stephens in March 2018.
“Discrimination against employees, either because of their failure to conform to sex stereotypes or their transgender and transitioning status, is illegal under Title VII,” Judge Karen Nelson Moore wrote in the 6th Circuit’s decision. “The unrefuted facts show that the Funeral Home fired Stephens because she refused to abide by her employer’s stereotypical conception of her sex.”
Moore added that requiring the Christian business owner, Thomas Rost, “to comply with Title VII’s proscriptions on discrimination does not substantially burden his religious practice.”
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the conservative legal group thathad petitioned the high court to hear the Stephens case, said the lower court overstepped its bounds by “redefin[ing]” the term “sex” in Title VII to “mean something other than what Congress clearly intended.” Just hours before the Trump administration submitted its brief, ADF submitted one of its own, arguing that “judicially rewriting sex discrimination in Title VII will spill over into other federal laws that prohibit sex discrimination.”
“It will deny women and girls fair opportunities to compete in sports, to ascend to the winner’s podium, and to receive critical scholarships,” the ADF brief states. “It will also require domestic-abuse shelters to allow men to sleep in the same room as female survivors of rape and violence. And it may dictate that doctors and hospitals provide transition services even in violation of their religious beliefs.”
In addition to Stephens’ case, the Supreme Court is set to hear two cases dealing with workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Those cases — Zarda v. Altitude Express and Bostock v. Clayton County — will be consolidated.
The Trump administration has made its position clear on the scope of sex discrimination in Title VII, so Friday’s amicus brief did not come as a surprise to those following the cases. In July 2017, the Department of Justice submitted an amicus brief with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the Zarda case opposing the extension of Title VII discrimination protections on the basis of sexual orientation. And in October 2018 — prior to the Supreme Court decision to hear the Stephens case — the DOJ filed a brief with the high court siding with the funeral home. In the Stephens case, the federal government is pitted against itself, since the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is a defendant in the case.
The Supreme Court will hear the cases next term, which begins in October.
Nearly 200,000 transgender people in the United States have been exposed to so-called conversion therapy at some point in their lives, according to a study published Thursday by The American Journal of Public Health.
“Conversion therapy” refers to efforts to change an LGBTQ person’s gender identity or sexual orientation and has been condemned by nearly every major health association, including the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Using data from the National Center for Transgender Equality’s 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey and UCLA’s Williams Institute, researchers from Harvard and The Fenway Institute estimated that 187,923 trans people across all 50 states — or approximately 13.5 percent of the country’s estimated 1.4 million self-identified trans individuals — have been subjected to attempts to change their gender identity by a “professional,” such as a psychologist, counselor or religious adviser.
“Our research team was extremely concerned to find that this practice, which is widely discredited by major medical organizations, was so prevalent,” Dr. Jack Turban, a resident physician in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the study’s lead author, told NBC News in an email.
The researchers broke down the data in several ways, including by state. Respondents in Wyoming, South Dakota and Montana were the most likely to experience gender conversion therapy in their lifetime, with more than 20 percent of respondents in each state reporting they had experienced gender conversion therapy methods.
In addition to examining lifetime exposure of psychological attempts to change a person’s gender identity from transgender to cisgender (PACGI), researchers also examined exposure to such conversion efforts from 2010-15, “to capture the diagnostic change from ‘gender identity disorder’ to ‘gender dysphoria’” by the American Psychiatric Association.
Gender identity disorder was historically used by mental health professionals to diagnose trans individuals despite objections from advocates, who argued that the term further stigmatized trans people by assigning them a lifelong mental health diagnosis. Gender dysphoria, which is used to describe the emotional distress over “a marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender,” has been deemed the more accurate terminology by the APA since 2010.
Researchers found that 5 percent of trans people reported exposure to conversion therapy from 2010 to 2015. The number of individuals varied across states, but similar to the lifetime exposure results, respondents from South Dakota (16.3 percent) and Wyoming (9.1 percent) were the most likely to experience gender conversion therapy at some point during this five-year period.
Most major medical organizations, including the American Medical Association, have labeled gender identity conversion efforts as unethical and state that they can lead to adverse mental health outcomes.
Trans individuals suffer elevated risks of anxiety and depression compared with the general U.S. population, according to experts. In an earlier study, Turban looked at such mental health outcomes for transgender individuals and determined that exposure to conversion therapy is “associated with severe mental distress, suicide ideation and suicide attempts.”
Turban said he hopes his findings will highlight the magnitude of this controversial practice for state legislators who are considering legislation to ban the practice on minors.
“In the past, some state legislators have argued that such bans are not necessary because gender identity change efforts do not occur in their state,” Turban said.
He cited as an example former Maine Gov. Paul LePage, who vetoed a 2018 bill to ban conversion therapy in the state because he said there was “no evidence” that the practice was employed.
“Our findings show that this is false,” Turban said. “Transgender people in every U.S. state reported exposure to gender identity change efforts.”
In the last 30 months, 13 laws have been passed protecting minors against conversion therapy. Currently 18 states, along with the District of Columbia, ban the practice on minors.
Pretty much everyone knows Illinois is one of the most welcoming places for LGBTI people in the US.
From Boystown to a plethora of LGBTI-owned and friendly businesses across the state, it’s a place where people of all backgrounds live and thrive. To embrace the state’s diversity, the Illinois Office of Tourism created a new campaign to spread a message to the LGBTI community and the rest of the world: that Illinois is Amazing for All.
The six-foot-by-23 wooden sculpture became an instant hit with the 200,000 visitors at the two-day festival. The sculpture is now sitting in the heart of Chicago’s LGBTI district, Boystown, at the corner of Halsted and Newport.
But why did Hoffman want to join Illinois in sending this message to the LGBTI community? Gay Star News sat down with him to reveal all about the now-iconic sculpture.
So why did you want to create this artwork to encourage LGBTI people to visit Illinois?
My main belief is the importance of public art and how it changes lives when you come across it.
A little bit of my background: I make stickers saying ‘you are beautiful’, as well as other outdoor installations. I started those in 2002. And we’ve now printed five and a half million stickers, and done these sort of installations around the world.
The message is that no matter who you are, you can see these stickers and know ‘you are beautiful’. And I think that that’s an incredible message. I think that came from struggling with self-esteem and different issues growing up and stuff.
So Illinois Office of Tourism reached out, because especially in Chicago, this project is very prolific. They wanted to partner and collaborate on this other great message – that Illinois is Amazing for All.
What inspired the design for the #AmazingForAll sculpture?
Basically, I make things in two very distinct ways. One is that things blend in like signage and then the other way is a handwritten style. When you do it that way, there’s a human connection there. Like someone is literally saying something to you. Then when you blow that up in scale, it’s just really incredible.
The sign in construction | Photo: Matthew Hoffman, Instagram
It must have been incredible when you debuted at Northalsted Market Days. How was that feeling? What was it like to have thousands of people see it?
It’s my favorite thing. I’m definitely someone who wants people to experience the work I make. I really stay in the background with a lot of the stuff I do. I try to keep a lower profile just because I don’t want it to be attached to my baggage. Like, who’s this person and what it’s about. This is a message for you in that moment. And so enjoy it.
So it was super cool to just see people enjoy it. It’s one of those things that when you watch people walk by, they smile, then they run up to it. And they ask their friend or a stranger to get their photo taken in front of it. That’s a really incredible experience.
It’s cool because not everybody is going to see that in person. They are sharing it around the world so all sorts of people are able to see it on their feed.
Have you lived in Illinois long?
I was born in Ohio and then we moved around. I went to school in Indiana. Eventually I moved to Chicago in 2002. So I’ve lived in the Midwest my whole life and I’ve been here about 17 years.
What’s life in Illinois like for LGBTI people?
I feel like it’s open and inviting. I’m not talking firsthand – I’m straight – but it seems open everywhere. There are some areas that need to get better, but it’s great for a really good portion of the state, especially in Chicago. I think it’s great.
Where’s your favorite place to eat?
So I’ve got an 11 year old. Me and him generally like the worst places, you know. But there’s this one called – Rosati’s [a Chicago pizza restaurant]. Yeah, we go like almost every day.
The completed sculpture when it debuted at Northalsted Market Days | Photo: Illinois Office of Tourism
What’s one thing everyone should do in Chicago?
There are these great architecture boat tours. That sounds like a tough sell to some people. But it’s a great way to explore the city and learn about things. We take the boat tours every year. It’s pretty cool because it goes down the river through the whole city, you learn a lot about the history, and then it actually takes you out on the lake, which is pretty fun.
So what plans do you have for the future?
We just put up a couple ‘you are beautiful’ pieces on fences, and one on a building. And we are going to do more of those. And then we also have a space where we have our studio, with a store and a gallery in the front. It’s in the Avondale neighborhood at 3368 N Elston Ave.
So we’re doing everything that we can to be a part of the community and bring people in. Our next big show is 20 July. It’s called Beautiful Together. And we’re inviting like 200 different artists to make a ‘You are beautiful piece’ and add their voice to the message. So that’s kind of the next big, big thing as far as our fun summer installations.
This article was sponsored by the Illinois Office of Tourism.
We are already midway through summer and LGBTI travelers, one of the most dynamic travel audiences, mold the landscape of the global tourism industry with their travel choices.
Travel by Interest, a gay travel website that turned into a global hotel-choosing tool, researched what gay travelers search for ahead of their summer holidays, and ‘Gay Beaches’ proved to be the hottest trend in Google with more than 58,000 average monthly searches.
But… could a gay beach, even if that gay beach is one of the best in the world, become a reason to choose your next destination? In some cases yes; in others no. One thing is for sure: gay men love beaches – who wouldn’t, as they are relaxed and carefree, making socializing much easier. But what did gay travelers search for regarding gay beaches?
The pattern ‘gay beach + destination’ seems to be very popular for both alternative and famous destinations. Yet, the searches do not just focus on destinations but also on more generic ideas, like gay beach resorts and – interestingly – gay beach weddings. It seems like year by year, gay men become more romantic!
Before we begin presenting the most searched gay beaches in the world, it is worth mentioning that in addition to the leaders in ‘Gay Beach’ related searches, United States & United Kingdom, we found a vivid interest from Canada, Brazil, and India.
During our research, we found many gay summer destinations, which were to be expected. But, on the top of all of them, we found the one and only Gay Barcelona, with the keyword ‘Gay Beach Barcelona‘ being hit approximately 1,600 times per month.
Next comes the notorious ‘Gay Beach Mykonos‘, which counts approximately 1,000 Searches per month in Google, while the most popular months are naturally from June to August. Mykonos is home to various gay beaches, but when people search this keyword, they most probably search for Elia Beach.
‘Gay Beach Miami‘ searches average approximately 1,000 per month, while the keyword’s peak months are January, March, April & May – when the relevant searches reach up to 1,300.
Stuck in the middle: Still Popular, but fewer searches
Photo: Shutterstock
Some destinations surprised us as they had fewer searches than what we would expect. For example, Gay Beach Sitges is one of them, averaging 880 searches per month.
With a similar number of searches, we found Gay Beach Fort Lauderdale. However, the competition is so high on this keyword, that companies have to pay up to 5 euros per click to be shown on the first page of Google Results. It’s obvious that Fort Lauderdale will be companies’ least favorite destination of the year.
Gay Beach Tel Aviv, on the other hand, might have an average of 770 monthly searches per month on Google, but this doubles in May, right before Tel Aviv Pride. Gay Beach Ibiza proves to be an iconic keyword opportunity, gathering an average of 720 searches per month. The keyword shares almost the same searches with gay bar Ibiza and gay hotel Ibiza.
Finally, Gay Beach Lisbon has approximately 590 searches per month, a number that’s doubled during the summer months from June to September. The keyword “Gay beach 19 Lisbon” has also made its appearance through our research.
At the bottom: Fewer Searches, but still on demand!
Photo: Drew Sullivan on Unsplash
Lastly, we found some destinations – popular or not – which aren’t in the top positions. However, they still gather a respectable amount of searches. Gay Beach Bali is searched approximately 320 times per month, peaking during March. We should note that there are not any gay-only beaches in Bali – only gay-friendly.
The keyword Gay Beach Greece is also on the rise with 260 avg. monthly searches. Many islands and popular seaside destinations in Greece feature at least one gay beach. It’s nice seeing more gay travelers interested in learning more about them.
Gay Beach Ipanema is the only gay beach on our list that attracts more searches than the usual combination “gay beach + destination”. This keyword averages 210 searches in Google per month, while “Gay Beach Rio” gathers only 170.
Our research on the keyword ‘Gay Beach’ has brought forward many popular gay destinations, but also many alternative ones. Gay Beach Bali is definitely among the most unexpected keywords found on our report. So, tell us your opinion. Which of the above keywords did surprise you the most? And, don’t forget to let us know which trend you would like to cover on one of our next articles!
A group of LGBTQ creators has sued YouTube and its parent company Google, alleging that the video platform was regularly restricting their abilities to make money with their videos based on their sexual orientation.
The lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in California Tuesday and first reported by The Washington Post Wednesday morning, seeks class-action status.
YouTube did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday morning.
“YouTube is engaged in discriminatory, anticompetitive, and unlawful conduct that harms a protected class of persons under California law,” the lawsuit alleges. It was filed on behalf of the creators of GNews!, Bria Kam and Chrissy Chambers (BriaAndChrissy), Chase Ross (uppercaseCHASE1), Lindsay Amer (Queer Kid Stuff) and Amp Somers (Watts The Safeword).
In their lawsuit, these creators allege that YouTube regularly labels their videos as offensive or sexually explicit simply because of their sexual orientation. They also allege that their videos are regularly being demonetized, that YouTube changes their thumbnail videos, and excludes them from content recommendations, resulting in suppressed view counts.
This all happens while YouTube doesn’t enforce its content policies against users harassing LGBTQ creators, the lawsuit alleges:
“Defendants’ control and regulation of speech on YouTube has resulted in a chaotic cesspool where popular, compliant, top quality, and protected LGBTQ+ content is restricted, stigmatized, and demonetized as “shocking,” “inappropriate,” “offensive,” and “sexually explicit,” while homophobic and racist hatemongers run wild and are free to post vile and obscene content on the pages and channels of the LGBTQ+ Plaintiffs and other LGBTQ+ content creators.”
To further make their case, the plaintiffs published a video on YouTube Wednesday morning:
The lawsuit comes just a few months after YouTube faced a backlash over the way it handled homophobic speech on its platform. At the time, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki apologized for its handling of a particularly high-profile case, which involved the far-right YouTube commentator Steven Crowder mocking gay Vox journalist Carlos Maza.
“I know the decision we made was very hurtful to the LGBT community and that was not our intention at all,” she said during an interview at Recode’s Code Conference.
The lawsuit alleges that this was just a PR exercise: “Instead of taking LGBTQ+ reports of viewpoint discrimination and selective restrictions on LGBTQ+ content seriously, Ms. Wojcicki spent some of her “personal vacation” time doing carefully scripted PR or “selfie” interviews with selected YouTubers.”
The lawsuit also cites recent reports by the New York Times that suggested that the video platform was in part to blame for the election of Brazil’s far-right and homophobic president Jair Bolsonaro, and reference recent appearances of Google and YouTube executives in congressional hearings.
In addition to monetary compensation, the lawsuit is also asking the court to order an injunction that would stop YouTube from “censoring, restricting, restraining, or regulating speech based on the discretionary use or application of discriminatory, animus-based, arbitrary, capricious, vague, unspecified, or subjective criteria, rules, guidelines, and/or practices.”
