Teachers who become aware that a child intends to transition will be expected to tell their parents, the UK government’s long-awaited guidance on the topic is expected to say.
After months of speculation, the government is expected to issue guidance this week on how schools should respond if a child says they plan to socially transition.
According to The Guardian, teachers in England will not have to “out” children to their families if they are simply asking questions about gender identity – the Tories’ right-wing faction apparently pushed to make this a feature of the guidance.
In the end, the government seemingly decided that children asking questions about gender at school was fine – but the guidance will draw the line at transition plans.
“Children can be very confused about these things and just want to have a conversation about it and what it all means with a trusted adult,” a government insider told The Guardian.
“That shouldn’t necessarily mean it is automatically flagged to parents.”
Tories initially wanted to ban social transition at school
The guidance is set to be issued after months of delays, leaks and backlash from both those in favour of improving trans rights and those opposed.
The government’s schools guidance first made headlines months ago when it was reported that ministers wanted to ban social transition in schools entirely.
Social transition generally refers to changing a name, pronouns or presentation – a young person who does so may dress differently, but social transition varies from person to person.
However, after months of internal wrangling – and warnings that doing so could be unlawful – ministers apparently realised that they would have to introduce new legislation to ban social transition in schools.
A Tory insider told The Guardian that women and equalities minister Kemi Badenoch “was not planning any change” to equalities legislation but that she “would generally like to go further” on the guidance.
However, they said she is not currently planning on amending legislation.
“If you open up the equalities act then lots of other groups would want to make changes and you’re also likely to have people pushing for stronger protections on trans issues than we already have,” an insider said.
In addition, the government’s guidance is expected to advise schools that they should have separate toilets and changing facilities for boys and girls.
However, another part of the guidance has been dropped – the government reportedly wanted the guidance to say that children who want to socially transition should have to see a doctor before doing so. That will no longer be a part of the guidance after the NHS said it didn’t have capacity.
“I can feel it around me. Energy. So many different types of energy,” DC Comics’ Jules Jourdain notices as yellow, orange, and pink vibrations envelop him on a street corner, only visible thanks to their special powers.
“I still look the same on the outside,” Jules considers. Even though he’s gaining a reputation as the new superhero Circuit Breaker, the trans and nonbinary character (he/they) doesn’t yet know how to control the overwhelming power coursing through his body — it mostly just makes him feel isolated, scared, and dangerous.
Luckily, another well-known DC Comics superhero, The Flash, arrives and helps Circuit Breaker use his powers to control time and space. This isn’t the mainstream version of The Flash that most people know from old comics, TV, and film. They’re Jess Chambers, a non-binary variant of the well-known hero, just one of the many queer superhero variants that exist in the DC Comics multiverse.
Jourdain explains their trouble to The Flash: “Life or death… change or stasis… control or submission… man or woman. Thinking in binaries always feels limiting to me,” he says. The Flash encourages him not to overthink it, but to trust his intuition and let his power lead him from the inside.
Finally, having mastered his powers, The Flash takes him to a dance club. There, Circuit Breaker dances shirtless alongside his leather-clad friends — happy for the first time since coming out as a superhero. There, Jourdain realizes, “With the death of the old comes a chance at the new.”
In the real world, conservatives tell queer youth like Jourdain that they’re mentally ill and that books about their experiences “sexualize” and “indoctrinate”other kids just by existing.
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Censors have long accused comic books of corrupting young people. American psychiatrist Fredric Wertham’s 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent, which blamed comic books for causing juvenile delinquency, resulted in a moral panic that compelled publishers to establish the self-censoring Comics Code Authority (CCA). The CCA forbade comics from any negative depictions of government as well as depictions of “gore,” “nudity,” “profanity,” or “sex perversion.”
Individuals who seldom encounter LGBTQ+ people or queer stories may interpret inclusive comics as indoctrination, finding it hard to “embrace what they don’t see,” gay comic book and young adult writer Rex Ogle told LGBTQ Nation. “[These people] lash out. And books are an easy target.”
If young readers and free-speech advocates are holding out for a hero, DC Comics, one of the United States’ oldest and largest comic book publishers, might just be the streetwise Hercules they need. In the past year, the powerhouse publisher behind such iconic heroes as Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman has quietly stood behind and even increased its LGBTQ+ content.
Over the past several years, DC Comics has used its deep multiverse to introduce queer and gender-swapped variants of longtime characters like Superman (Jon Kent), Green Lantern (Sojourner Mullein), Aquaman (Jackson Hyde), and the Flash (Jess Chambers), as well as introducing new LGBTQ+ characters like Galaxy, Xanthe Zhou, and Circuit Breaker. Additionally, DC Comics’ multiverse sometimes results in different individuals assuming the same superhero identities on different timelines or universes, such as when Damien Wayne and Tim Drake both fight crime as Batman’s sidekick, Robin.
In June 2023, the company released a slew of new and re-issued material as part of its Pride Month offerings, including DC Pride 2023, its third annual Pride-themed anthology of new material. Two other releases – DC Pride: The New Generation and DC Pride: Through The Years – contain landmark queer-themed work with most of the writing and artwork by LGBTQ+ creators. The diversity of voices and visual styles make a strong case for the form – with its marriage of words and images – as a riveting place to discover contemporary queer storytelling.
“DC Pride: The New Generation.” Image courtesy of DC Comics.“DC Pride 2023.” Image courtesy of DC Comics.
DC Comics’ continued production of queer content feels especially important in an era when several large corporations have reconsidered (or outright scaled back) their outward commitments to LGBTQ+ communities in response to conservative boycotts and media pressure seeking to make LGBTQ+-allyship “toxic” to companies’ brands.
DC Comics’ releases provide a powerful reminder that comic book characters reflect more than just corporate trademarks. Superheroes can serve as symbols to help readers understand abstract concepts like justice, empathy, dignity, and diversity. And who doesn’t want to see themselves – or someone like them – as the hero of the story? For most of these narratives, representation is just the start. Some contain LGBTQ+ characters fighting bigotry, while others show queer heroes finding community in a classic team-up. For many younger characters, coming to terms with their powers draws a relatable parallel to the exploration of sexual and gender identity.
Young queer people often find agency and comfort in these dynamic and colorful stories, especially since they don’t always feel supported in their homes, schools, offline, and online communities. According to Dr. Jonah DeChants, a research scientist at The Trevor Project, “Recent political attacks aimed at transgender and nonbinary youth have not only threatened their access to health care, support systems, and affirming spaces at school, they’ve also negatively impacted their mental health.”
In addition to inspiring young people, some of DC Comics’’ recent LGBTQ+ stories also have a broader cultural impact. Some right past wrongs by giving killed, neglected, and forgotten characters a second chance. Others feature tributes to recently deceased LGBTQ+ pioneers of superhero storytelling, like gay actor Kevin Conway and transgender author and activist Rachel Pollack.
These themes explore what it means to be queer in a quarrelsome world and how real-life super-queeroes can survive, thrive, and cultivate their unique abilities and identities to become heroes in their stories.
Redefining ‘Justice for All’
DC Comics As Robin sulks during a Pride parade, the bisexual caped crusader Superman (Jon Kent) kisses his gay journalist boyfriend Jay Nakamura.
In addition to the 500+ anti-LGBTQ+ bills introduced at state and local levels during the 2023 legislative session, reported hate crimes based on gender and sexual sexuality have steadily increased since 2014, rising by 70% between 2020-2021.
Phil Jimenez, one of the first out gay comic book writers and artists at DC Comics, in his introduction to DC Pride 2023, questions how to position anti-LGBTQ+ narratives in Superman or Wonder Woman’s universe. How would established queer heroes, anti-heroes, and villains respond to such attacks? Would pursuing “justice for all” seem like activism in that world or “just the right thing to do”?
Several writers in the DC Pride releases tackle this question by telling stories about the symbolic importance of having publicly out LGBTQ+ superheroes.
In “Super Pride (originally published in 2022), Jon Kent (Superman’s son) and Robin (Damien Wayne, Batman’s son) attend their first Pride march.
Robin prepares for the parade by bringing smoke bombs, electrified netting, and electromagnetic pulse generators because a community under political attack is “vulnerable to literal attack,” he argues.
On the other hand, Jon attends the parade in his Superman outfit but with a cape of different Pride flags. He says the iconic “S” shield symbolizes the hope and the possibility of making the world a better place. But for today, he tells his boyfriend, “I want [Pride] to mean that I see you. That I am you. That there’s no wrong way to be yourself.”
With that encouragement, Jon flies above the Pride-going crowd and creates a rainbow. Nick Robles’ artwork and Triona Tree Farrell’s vibrant color palette make the moment pop with joy.
Though endearing, the interaction almost feels like it comes from another era. In its annual crime report for 2022, the FBI noted a 19% increase in anti-LGBTQ+ incidents compared to 2021. Anti-transgender bias crimes increased by 35% overall. It’s no wonder that the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) declared a state of emergency for LGBTQ+ Americans during Pride Month last June.
Maybe Damien Wayne’s fears weren’t too far off the mark.
Compared to “Anniversary,” Josh Trijullo’s story published in DC Pride 2023, one gets a sense of how superheroic advocay has shifted over recent years.
DC Comics Apollo warns Midnighter as he faces off against anti-LGBTQ+ protesters in Josh Trijullo’s “Anniversary,” illustrated by Don Aguillo. Image courtesy of DC Comics.
“Anniversary” features married gay superhero couple Midnighter and Apollo considering their visibility as LGBTQ+ role models during their wedding anniversary. Don Aguillo’s expressive, painted artwork follows the duo as they mentor a group of drag queen vigilantes, visit the iconic Stonewall Inn, and step into the middle of a tense LGBTQ+ rights protest and counter-protest on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.
Midnighter wants to bust skulls, while Apollo worries that the violence will spread. They’re joined by Alan Scott, the WWII-era Green Lantern, who advocates a more measured response, lecturing them on the history of LGBTQ+ civil rights. He encourages the couple to think of themselves as “more than costumed mystery men.”
Agreeing that visibility and pride are ways to start fighting back, the couple goes one step further, adopting a hacktivist approach. They remarry on the spot, broadcasting the ceremony to every conservative news network and social media channel they can jam in the DC universe.
One important thing hasn’t changed in the year between these stories’ publications: the underlying faith that comic book superheroes function best as symbols. But maybe it’s not enough just to be a symbol anymore.
In his book Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud notes that comic books reinvent new symbols regularly in response to a changing society. Maybe some of these new superheroic symbols just give older ones new purpose and direction.
DC Comics’ take on chosen family
DC Comics Nonbinary spirit envoy Xanthe Zhou talks to lesbian superheroine Batwoman about healing familial wounds in Jeremy Holt’s “Lost & Found,” illustrated by Andrew Drilon. Image courtesy of DC Comics.
Not only has the increase in anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and legislation negatively affected 66% of LGBTQ+ teens and young adults’ mental health, but only 38% consider their homes as LGBTQ+-affirming spaces.
To fill the gaps of mutual support and love, many queer people cobble together a chosen family of non-biological kinship as a vital way to thrive. This search for a chosen community forms a key part of several of the DC Pride team-up stories, a convention in which two characters who typically appear independently take on a challenge together. In fact, some of the more interesting team-up stories gently subvert the conventions of this classic comic book staple in surprisingly queer ways.
The 2021 story arc of Robin (Tim Drake) acknowledging his bisexuality made national headlines. But writer Nadia Shammas’ “Hey, Stranger” picks up on Drake’s journey, flipping the traditional superhero team-up story to show that you never really stop coming out, even to those closest to you.
“Hey, Stranger” marks the first official meeting of Tim and Connor Hawke — a young asexual, BIPOC martial artist who calls himself Green Arrow — since each first discovered their individual queer identities.
This team-up is unusual in that it happens after Tim finishes battling some thugs. Bruka Jones’ artwork depicts a series of quiet but intense moments as the two characters test (and ultimately reaffirm) the value of their friendships, while Tamra Bonvillain’s dawn-tinged palette underscores the story’s emotional weight.
Another team-up story that plays with finding community appears in Jeremy Holt’s “Lost & Found,” featuring the new character Xanthe Zhou. As a nonbinary Chinese-American “spirit envoy” trapped in the realm of the living, they literally exist between several worlds and are unable to find their place. A magician and trickster, they conjure useful spirit world objects by burning small pieces of folded joss paper.
Like the team-up in “Hey, Stranger,” the fighting becomes secondary to the bigger story. Xanthe encounters Batwoman (Kate Kane) in a Gotham City graveyard, defending the Kane family mausoleum from would-be thieves. After trying to help, they listen to Kate mourn her mother’s death that occurred during her childhood.
Smitten, Xanthe gives Kate a folded joss paper tree to burn and shares their insight about the cycles of life and death, healing and rebirth. Leaving Kate in thought, Xanthe realizes they may have a place in the world after all.
In some stories, fighting villains becomes a metaphor for desire. Since depictions of healthy queer intimacy remain rare in visual media, it’s important to recognize that some queer heroes can be lovers as well as fighters.
Queer writer Stephanie Williams’ “Confessions” presents a sly and sultry take on this dynamic. In it, Nubia, Queen of the Amazons, recounts a “forgotten” team-up as pillow talk with Io, her beloved consort. The fight — in this case, a tag-team charity wrestling match for a women’s shelter — includes the aptly named Justice League giantess Big Barda as her teammate.
DC Comics Ghost-Maker stands back-to-back with his lover and colleague Catman while battling baddies on a rooftop in Rex Ogle’s “The Dance,” drawn by Stephen Sadowski.
Rex Ogle’s “The Dance,” drawn by Stephen Sadowski, also provides erotic subtext and a steamy twist on the superheroic team-up with a queer homage to every Batman/Catwoman rooftop tangle since the pair first met way back in 1940. The story features anti-hero Catman (Thomas Blake) and Ghost-Maker (Khoa Khan, from Batman Inc.) fighting baddies together on a Gotham City rooftop.
Sadowski’s fight sequences, full of kinetic pencil work and thicker inks, seem well choreographed. The push-and-pull dynamic between Khoa and Blake makes the pair’s familiarity with one another’s bodies exceedingly clear — and it’s just as clear where they’ll head after the fight.
“I wanted the conflict to marry the sensuality of the body,” Ogle explained to LGBTQ Nation. “We’ve seen the tension between Batman and Catwoman forever, so I wanted to show another coupling.”
In one final glorious splash page, the erotic subtext of the superhero team-up gets revealed at last in all its naked queer glory as Catman and Ghost-Maker embrace in bed.
When a growing sense of queer identity & superpowers converge
DC Comics Aquaman talks to his boyfriend about his closeted childhood and unaccepting mother in Alyssa Wong’s “A World Kept Just For Me,” illustrated by W. Scott Forbes. Image courtesy of DC Comics.
For many LGBTQ+ people, the closet remains a lonely and fearful place. Within superhero stories, the isolation that comes from having superpowers is an experience that has often functioned as a metaphor for the isolation of closeted life.
Marvel’s X-Men may have started as five white prep school kids from suburban New York, but, as comics critic Sara Century notes, queer readers could easy to see mutants through the lens of LGBTQ+ civil rights. Their powers make them different, which, in turn, makes them the targets of hate and bigotry. Some could pass as common humans; others couldn’t. But until a decade or so ago, few of the X-Men had actually come out. The X-Man Northstar came out in 2002, and the better-known Iceman made national headlines when he came out in 2015.
Comparatively, some of the most interesting Pride-themed releases from DC Comics move beyond easy metaphors by focusing on how the closet and the coming out process shape the ways in which heroes use their wondrous abilities.
Greg Lockard’s “Public Display of Electromagnetism” suggests that the closet can provide a place where queer kids begin to develop self-reliance. For a younger hero like The Ray (Ray Terrell), the closet’s isolation felt both figurative and literal. The character still wrestles with the trauma of his parents literally confining him in a dark room, away from others, so that his light-based powers won’t manifest.
While he’s out to his Justice League teammates, Ray still melts down when his boyfriend kisses him in front of them. He overcompensates during a subsequent fight with the villain Shadow Thief, who easily overwhelms him with a wave of darkness, snuffing out Ray’s powerful photon charges. Although Ray finds himself reliving the trauma of his closeted youth, he digs into the root causes of his inner darkness to find the inner spark that allows him to harness his powers, shatter the Shadow Thief’s trap, and save the day — after all, Ray still needs to return his boyfriend’s kiss.
Aquaman (Jackson Hyde) also faces a history of negotiating the caped closet in Alyssa Wong’s “A World Kept Just For Me.” In this melancholy story, Jackson shows his boyfriend the small desert town in New Mexico where he grew up. Like Ray’s parents, Jackson’s single mother kept him far away from anything that would trigger his water-bending abilities.
Jackson’s story illustrates queer resilience. His powers developed in tandem with his growing sense of queer identity. He’d practice them in the shower to avoid unwanted attention while publicly struggling to become what he felt his mother wanted: “Normal, Unassuming. Human. Straight.”
Yet, as Jackson shares the pain of his closeted life with his boyfriend, he realizes that those experiences shaped the sense of morality and justice that makes him a hero.
DC Comics Trans male hero Circuit Breaker begins to understand and accept his superpowers in “Subspace Transmission,” written and illustrated by A.L. Kaplan.
Compared to other characters, Circuit Breaker (Jules Jordain) is the new kid on the multiversal block. Hailing from the playas of rural Nevada, the ability to sense and absorb kinetic energy from the world around them paints a decidedly queer picture.
Jules’ second comic book appearance in “Subspace Transmission” (DC Pride 23) functions as a kind of queer superhero origin story, with writer and artist A.L. Kaplan wisely focusing on the best part: the hero discovering who they are and what they value in relation to their new abilities.
Strange and overwhelming at first, Jule’s powers are a conduit for entropy, the ability to sense and steal kinetic energy and reduce the world to stillness. As they struggle for control over their powers, Jules recalls the fears faced when coming to terms with their gender identity and body while transitioning.
“Bodies are mutable,” Jules realizes after another failed attempt to harness their abilities. “Life or death. Stasis or change. Control or submission. Man or woman. Thinking in binaries always felt limiting to me.” And with that insight, they come to peace with the strangeness of their new abilities.
It is in these moments that Kaplan’s artwork shines. As they explore their powers, the waves of energy swirling Jules evoke psychedelic posters and 1970s rock album art.
For decades, LGBTQ+ comic book fans could only see themselves as metaphors rather than well-rounded queer characters. Being queer may not be a superpower in itself, but it provides LGBTQ+ characters in the multiverse with unique perspectives on their extraordinary abilities. It also provides affirms that our lived experiences matter — maybe that awareness itself is the real superpower.
Dismantling old tropes
Comic books haven’t always been kind to queer characters. Consider Extraño, DC’s first openly gay superhero. First appearing in 1987, when industry standards prohibited writers from using words like “gay” and “homosexual,” Extraño became a pastiche of stereotypes.
Early stories depicted Extraño as a sassy Peruvian sorcerer whose architectural hair, flowing purple robe, and pirate boots made him look like Liberace cosplaying Doctor Strange. The character all but vanished a year or so later, but only after contracting HIV from an “AIDS vampire” called the Hemo-goblin. No, really.
Extraño’s fate became a textbook case of “bury your gays,” a storytelling trope that remains alive and well in current pop culture (just watch It: Chapter Two and cringe at the gay-bashing scene). But now, queer writers are digging those bodies back up and giving them new life.
In a terse Substack post from May 2022, nonbinary writer Grant Morrison took aim at writers who use alternate versions of major characters as cannon fodder. For them, burying queer characters “for no defensible reason” deprives them of their storytelling potential.
DC Comics The long-lost Red Racer kisses his partner Flashlight in “Love’s Lightning Heart,” written by Grant Morrison and illustrated by Hayden Sherman.
One of the architects of the DC Comics multiverse, Morrison has created several LGBTQ+ and gender-swapped versions of major heroes in recent years. One of them, Red Racer (an alternate version of The Flash), was revealed to be happily married to his universe’s Green Lantern equivalent. Morrison had established the character as a founding member of a multiversal Justice League. However, Red Racer died in a Superman comic book, sacrificing his life to save the title hero.
In “Love’s Lightning Heart” (the lead story in DC Pride 2023), Morrison sets out to rectify this loss. The result provides a trippy, high-concept story of love overcoming death. It follows Flashlight, Red Racer’s grieving husband, on a mad, universe-breaking quest to return his beloved to the living. The story takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of an Art Deco-infused parallel universe and suggests that Red Racer’s return may herald the start of a new story arc brimming with possibilities.
Other LGBTQ+ writers strive towards the same goal as Morrison by reviving queer characters who have been buried, depowered, disfigured, or just plain forgotten. In Christopher Cantwell’s “My Best Bet” (DC Pride 2023), the wily magician and conman John Constantine plays a long game with Superman (Jon Kent) to rescue the soul of Oliver, a former boyfriend who had been dragged to Hell in the final issue of Constantine’s 2015 solo series and ignored … until now.
Queer villains get dug up and dusted off, too. Cannon and Saber — the antagonists in Rex Ogle’s story “The Dance” — have been depicted as an openly gay couple since their first appearance in 1984, but they last appeared over 30 years ago — welcome back, boys!
Even Extraño has returned from the comic book dead. Writer Steve Orlando reintroduced the character in his 2017 GLAAD Media Award-nominated series Midnighter and Apollo. Since then, Extraño has become a mentor for younger queer characters and the founder of a network of LGBTQ+ superheroes called Justice League Queer.
But don’t call him Extraño. Nobody has done that in years. “I’ve since buried that name,” he tells Midnighter, seeming to hint that he does the same to anyone who uses it. Now Gregorio de la Vega, he’s reclaimed his proud place as the first out queer superhero in the DC multiverse.
Grappling with justice & legacies reimagined
DC Comics For nearly two decades, Rachel Pollack’s Coagula was DC Comics’ only transgender superheroine. Apparently, the Justice League couldn’t handle her.
In an interview with Lambda Legal, queer poet and essayist Kay Ulanday Barrett argues that stories by and for LGBTQ+ people “honor our grief” as well as “help us remember our glory and community triumphs.” Recent book bans and content challenges seek to erase those histories. The DC Pride releases counter that threat by honoring the legacies of two recently deceased groundbreaking queer elders.
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Rachel Pollack, who passed away from non-Hodgkin lymphoma last April, is best known for her beautiful, strange, and spiritual run on Doom Patrol in the early 1990s, in which she introduced Kate Godwin, a trans lesbian superhero who went by the name of Coagula. Kate was the first — and for nearly two decades — the only transgender superhero published by DC Comics.
A former sex worker, Kate gained the ability to turn liquids into solids (and vice versa) after she spent a night with multi-gendered energy being Rebis. She initially tried to join the Justice League, but they rejected her. “I suspect they liked my powers,” she tells a friend, “but couldn’t handle me.”
Kate soon found her chosen family with the Doom Patrol, a collection of wounded heroes and superpowered outsiders whose adventures bordered on the surreal.
Pollack had been invited to contribute new material to DC Pride 2023, but the sudden progression of her illness prevented this. Instead, the anthology features tributes to her legacy from industry giants like Neil Gaiman and upcoming talents like transgender writer Jadzia Axelrod.
Gaiman reveals that Pollack created Kate Godwin as a response to Wanda Mann, a sympathetic but doomed transgender character in his Sandman story arc “A Game of You.” (Wanda will likely appear in the second season of Netflix’s adaptation, The Sandman.)
For Axelrod, reading that first comic with Kate Godwin in 1993 felt “like a lightning bolt from heaven.” Not only had DC Comics published a story featuring an out trans lesbian, but this smart, funny, kind person became the point of view character for the reader. The comic inspired Axelrod to create a trans-alien superhero named Galaxy, who currently appears in the Hawkgirl comics.
Kate Godwin seldom appeared after Pollack’s run on Doom Patrol ended. Another writer seemingly killed her off-panel a decade later.
However, Coagula may soon return. A trans woman named “Kate” (drawn in Godwin’s signature black tank top and jeans) appears briefly at the start of Axelrod’s 2022 story “Up At Bat” (reprinted in DC Pride: The New Generation). There, Kate runs a wellness group in Gotham City, and serves a friend and mentor to Alysia Yeoh, a trans urban vigilante and Batgirl ally.
What better way to honor Pollack’s legacy than reviving Kate Godwin, recognizing the achievements of these two pioneering women? Maybe the Justice League will finally accept her for her full, authentic self.
And anyone who grew up watching cartoons like Batman: The Animated Seriesor Justice League Unlimited, can instantly recognize Kevin Conroy’s rumbling, husky voice as Batman. Conroy passed away in November 2022 from intestinal cancer.
Before his death, Conroy collaborated with illustrator J. Bone on the autobiographical graphic story “Finding Batman.” First published in 2022, the story receivedwide fan acclaim and subsequently won the 2023 Eisner Award for Best Short Story. It also appears in DC Pride: The New Generation.
Conroy writes movingly about the need to maintain a public mask while struggling against homophobia within the entertainment industry while watching his family members succumb to mental illness and substance abuse. In his audition for Batman: The Animated Series, he used these experiences to channel the torment that Bruce Wayne faced as a child, the ones that led him to become a masked vigilante.
Conroy developed a voice from his own traumas that became one of the definitive takes on the character. J. Bone’s artwork – sharp, thick pencils and blue washes – provides a compelling screen for Conroy’s experiences.
“It is nearly impossible to write and draw heroes,” writer Jimenez says, “and not grapple with the very concept of justice and what it means to act heroically.” Although Conroy did not create heroes in the conventional sense, “Finding Batman” suggests that his celebrated portrayal of Batman came from a life of grappling with those same struggles.
When marginalized groups face discrimination in the health care system, the results can be far-reaching and drastic. Across LGBTQ+ communities, this experience is all too well known. For years, activists have pointed out that health care for LGBTQ+ Americans is “under attack,” and bias is thriving. People frequently face gaps in health services, treatment, and outcomes.
There’s another aspect of this problem that needs to be addressed. It’s one that has a direct, immediate impact on the health and wellness of millions of people: an information gap. In many cases, LGBTQ+ Americans have learned not to trust traditional sources of health information. Many also have had trouble receiving the information they need from these sources when they ask for it. As a studyfound, “There is breadth of evidence documenting LGBTQ+ individuals’ experiences of heterosexism, homophobia, overt discrimination and pathologization in the health care setting, which has proven to be a barrier for LGBTQ+ individuals seeking health information from doctors.”
This problem doesn’t just apply to doctor’s offices. It also applies to other entities such as government health agencies, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies. We explored this in our new survey.
We found that LGBTQ+ Americans are substantially more likely to get sick due to a lack of information. Twenty-seven percent of LGBTQ+ respondents told us that they have gotten sick in the last 12 to 18 months because they did not have the information they needed to make decisions about their health. (Eighteen percent of non-LGBTQ+ respondents said the same.)
To be clear, LGBTQ+ Americans are active in seeking out health information. But the sources they’re turning to don’t always have all the accurate, relevant, inclusive information that they need.
We looked at where LGBTQ+ Americans are going when they need health information. Much like Black Americans, LGBTQ+ Americans have curated sources they trust. We call these “chosen circles.” Two findings in particular were striking.
Forty-one percent of LGBTQ+ respondents in our survey said they get health information from TikTok — a figure about twice as high as the 21% of non-LGBTQ+ respondents who said the same.
News reports have discussed the role of TikTok in reaching members of LGBTQ+ communities, particularly younger people. The San Francisco Chronicle podcast Fifth & Mission called the social media platform “a lifeline for LGBTQ youth.” Mashable reported that, according to the Trevor Project, TikTok is where LGBTQ+ youth of color feel safest and most comfortable online.
The fact that LGBTQ+ communities are specifically seeking health information on TikTok presents an opportunity for health agencies and organizations. They should build up their efforts on this platform. It’s up to them to make sure that videos are available, providing accurate, helpful information about a wide range of health topics.
They should also work with popular influencers on the platform to reach LGBTQ+ Americans with important health information. More than a third (36%) of LGBTQ+ respondents in our survey said that online influencers they follow are an important source of health information. And they share information as well. More than a third said they have shared their own health information, or reposted health information from other sources, on social media. So these platforms can be especially helpful in improving health outcomes.
In our survey, more than a quarter (28%) of LGBTQ+ respondents said they turn to mental health therapists and counselors for emotional support in making health decisions. Again, this figure is lower among non-LGBTQ+ Americans.
This offers another opportunity for health-focused agencies and organizations. By working with people who provide therapy and counseling to LGBTQ+ communities and getting them the latest, most useful information on all sorts of health problems, these agencies and organizations can reach people in need.
Our survey also finds that no matter where they’re getting information, LGBTQ+ Americans understandably want to see people like them front and center. They want information specifically designed to reach them, addressing their experiences and unique challenges. And in all communications, they want health information providers to show that they understand the broad diversity of LGBTQ+ communities, spanning different races, religions, gender identities and more.
The need for change is urgent. By listening to, learning from, and partnering with members of LGBTQ+ communities, health agencies and organizations can create real transformation, empowering people with information to live healthier lives.
Tayla Mahmud is the executive vice president of health equity and multicultural strategy with M Booth Healthm a health consultancy and communications agency. Peter Matheson Gay is its chief impact officer.
Pope Francis has formally approved allowing priests to bless same-sex couples, with a new document explaining a radical change in Vatican policy by insisting that people seeking God’s love and mercy shouldn’t be subject to “an exhaustive moral analysis” to receive it.
The document from the Vatican’s doctrine office, released Monday, elaborates on a letter Francis sent to two conservative cardinals that was published in October. In that preliminary response, Francis suggested such blessings could be offered under some circumstances if they didn’t confuse the ritual with the sacrament of marriage.
The new document repeats that rationale and elaborates on it, reaffirming that marriage is a lifelong sacrament between a man and a woman. And it stresses that blessings should not be conferred at the same time as a civil union, using set rituals or even with the clothing and gestures that belong in a wedding.
Read the full article. Last week the Protestant Church of England made the same move, with similar stipulations. The cult already loathes Pope Francis, so expect today’s news to fuel even more screaming.
Experts have long explored what has come to be known as the “lesbian wage premium” – the fact that on average, lesbians around the world earn about 9% more than heterosexual women. The number is even higher in the United States, with lesbians earning about 20% more than straight women.
In a recent video, TikToker Aria Velz analyzed several studies to explain why this might be. “We can start at the obvious,” she said, “lesbians tend to be more educated than straight women, are less likely to have children, live more predominantly in cities, and have more professional jobs.”
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But she explained that even when controlling for all of that, lesbians still earn more. So she brought up another hypothesis: Women in heterosexual relationships are still expected to take on more emotional and domestic labor than men, whereas lesbians tend to more equally share those duties. As such, heterosexual women are more likely to sacrifice career advancement for domestic responsibilities.
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Velz also pointed to studies that show lesbians who have lived with a previous male spouse make less money than lesbians who have never lived with a man.
“The lesson here is not that lesbians are better at making money,” she said. “It reconfirms that the domestic labor situation at home contributes to how women earn more outside the home – and lesbians have just learned that lesson first.”
But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Despite the extra earnings for lesbians, Slate pointed out in 2015 (when the lesbian wage premium was first identified), that lesbians were still a lot are likely to be poor than straight women as well as the general population. And because women in general still make less than men, two women in a couple still tend to miss out on key earnings.
As Slate put it, “Any benefits to being lesbian are canceled out when couples’ earnings are considered in aggregate—there, lesbians fare the worst of anyone.”
There are still hundreds of conversion therapy practitioners in the U.S., despite many state and local laws limiting the discredited and harmful practice of trying to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
A Trevor Project report released Tuesday, “It’s Still Happening,” identified more than 1,320 conversion therapy practitioners in 48 states and the District of Columbia. More than 20 states, D.C., and numerous cities and counties have enacted laws barring licensed professionals from subjecting minors to such therapy, but those laws don’t affect what counselors offer adult clients, nor do they affect the work of unlicensed practitioners, including many of those who are affiliated with a religious institution. Some faith-based therapists, however, do hold state licenses.
Many of the therapists the Trevor Project identified operate in states that have restrictions, according to the report. And the number is likely an undercount, given that “conversion therapy is increasingly underground and conducted in secret, with many practitioners not publicly advertising their services in a way that can be documented,” the document states.
“While public awareness of the harm and unscientific foundation of conversion therapy has grown dramatically over the years, many believe it to be a thing of the past. This new report shatters this misperception, revealing troubling evidence that conversion therapy is far from being a relic of history,” Casey Pick, director of law and policy for the Trevor Project, said in a press release.“Conversion therapy practitioners are widespread across the country, with many of them utilizing their licenses and credentials to attempt to legitimize the dangerous and unethical practices they aim to impose on vulnerable LGBTQ+ youth. The findings of this report underscore the urgent need for policymakers, state licensing boards, professional associations, accreditation agencies, healthcare leaders, and faith communities to take action today to end this insidious and exploitative industry.”
The Trevor Project’s researchers identified “more than 600 practitioners who hold active professional licenses and over 700 practitioners who operate in a ministerial (official religious) capacity,” the report says. They performed online searches and reviewed all leads that they uncovered.
Pennsylvania, Texas, Minnesota, Missouri, and Ohio had the most identified licensed and unlicensed practitioners, in descending order. Minnesota is the only state in this group with a ban on conversion therapy for minors. The South had the largest proportion of the providers identified — 33 percent — followed by the Midwest, with 28 percent. Hawaii and Vermont were the only states with no identified practitioners.
Conversion therapy has been condemned as ineffective and harmful by every major medical and mental health group in the U.S. The American Psychological Association has found it is “associated with an extensive list of long-lasting social and emotional consequences,” the report notes. “These include depression, anxiety, suicidality, substance abuse, a range of post-traumatic responses, loss of connection to community, damaged familial relationships, self-blame, guilt, and shame.”
It is rooted in the idea that being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer is a mental illness that needs to be “cured” — again, something rejected by leaders of the mental health field.
To end conversion therapy, Trevor Project officials call for more state laws limiting the practice and better enforcement of those that exist. They also urge the federal government to take action through regulatory bodies and for Congress to pass legislation classifying conversion therapy as consumer fraud — such legislation has been introduced but has yet to pass.
“Lifting the curtain and exposing this underground practice is a shocking realization of how much work still needs to be done to put a stop to the deeply entrenched conversion ‘therapy’ industry,” Troy Stevenson, director of state advocacy campaigns for the Trevor Project, said. “Governors and state lawmakers have a particularly unique responsibility to act — and act urgently. They have extraordinary power by way of legislation, regulation and executive action to end this abusive and pervasive practice across the country.”
“Every parent wants their child to be well and to thrive, which is what makes this report so astonishing, and frankly, frightening,” added Brian K. Bond, CEO of PFLAG National, a partner with the Trevor Project in the movement to end conversion therapy since 2012. “When therapists, counselors and trusted faith leaders misrepresent their services, families pay the price. Until lawmakers take action to end these practices, PFLAG National advises LGBTQ+ people and families to avoid services that promote therapies using terms such as ‘conversion,’ ‘reparative,’ ‘reintegrative,’ ‘unwanted same-sex attraction,’ ‘sexual attraction fluidity exploration,’ and ‘rapid-onset gender dysphoria.’’’
Gay and bisexual men at high risk for mpox infection should get vaccinated for the virus even after the current outbreak ends, government health advisers said Wednesday.
The committee’s recommendation now goes to the director to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and — if she signs off on it — is sent out as guidance to U.S. doctors.
More than 30,000 U.S. mpox cases were reported last year. The number dropped dramatically this year, to about 800. But because the virus doesn’t naturally circulate in the U.S., any single case counts as an outbreak, according to the CDC.
Mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, is caused by a virus that’s in the same family as the one that causes smallpox. It is endemic in parts of Africa, where people have been infected through bites from rodents or small animals.
The virus was not known to spread easily among people, but cases exploded in Europe and the U.S. in the spring and summer of 2022, mostly among men who have sex with men. Deaths were rare, but many people suffered painful skin lesions for weeks.
A two-dose vaccine, Jynneos, became a primary weapon in the U.S. It’s recommended primarily for men who have sex with men who have more than one sex partner, who have recently had a sexually transmitted disease, or who are at higher risk for infections through sexual contact for other reasons.
About 500,000 people in the U.S. have gotten the recommended two doses of the vaccine, about a quarter of the 2 million who are eligible, CDC officials said.
The new recommendation may serve to remind people the virus is still out there, and that people can be infected during international travel, CDC officials said.
The daily average of new U.S. cases is one to four per day, though some people likely aren’t being diagnosed, CDC officials said. Two deaths were reported in September, bringing the total to 54 in the U.S. since mpox hit last year.
San Francisco had more than 800 cases last year, but the count dropped to an average of only one per month in the first half this of year. The number of cases rose to seven in August, 20 last month and at least 10 so far this month.
“Things are much better than they were last summer,” said Dr. Stephanie Cohen, who oversees STD prevention work at San Francisco’s health department. “But there are (still) many more cases than there should be.”
A transgender woman and a gender-nonconforming gay man, both Black, were fatally shot while driving around their home city of Toledo, Ohio, in November.
A suspect was identified in their killings, but he was later found dead in Cincinnati.
Trans woman Amiri Jean Reid and gender-nonconforming man Kejuan Richardson, both 21, were shot in the head in the early evening of November 14 before crashing their vehicle, TV station WTOL reports. They were pronounced dead at a local hospital.
Toledo police classified the deaths as homicides and issued an arrest warrant for Jorenzo Phillips, 19. But he was found dead in Cincinnati on November 23, Thanksgiving Day, of a gunshot wound that was apparently self-inflicted, according to another TV station, WXIX. No information has been released regarding his motive.
Richardson, a Toledo native, worked for KFC and was a fan of Avengers movies and basketball, Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondentsreports. Reid was known for her “ribald sense of humor,” the site notes, and her love of wordplay. “She also shared experiences of transphobia in her social media feed,” according to the site.
“Amiri’s life was cut short by senseless violence, and this narrative has become far too common for Black trans women,” Tori Cooper, director of community engagement for the Human Rights Campaign’s Transgender Justice Initiative, said in a press release. “Although our community can find solace in the Toledo police identifying her killer, the sad reality is that it won’t bring Amiri back and she won’t be able to experience the joys that come with living a long and full life. Despite the tragic ending of Amiri’s life, her spirit will live on, and we must never forget her name.”
“The killing of Black trans and gender-nonconforming people is a devastating trend that continues to rise,” Cooper added. “We’ve seen too many lives, like Kejuan’s, taken far too early, and as a Black trans woman, it makes me angry to read yet another headline of a murder within the trans community. Despite Kejuan’s life ending so tragically, it is important to remember them for all the amazing things they did while they were still here without disregarding the horrific way that they died. Kejuan and Amiri’s lives must be celebrated to remind those with hate in their hearts that the trans community will not be silenced.”
When Jenny Fran Davis set out to write her second book, she had already tasted literary success with her debut novel, 2017’s young adult coming-of-age story “Everything Must Go.” But instead of following her previous book’s proven path to acclaim, the queer 25-year-old author chose to write an adult fiction title that would probe the “interior world of femme characters.” In the end, the unapologetically titled “Dykette” — a comedy of manners centering on a desperately self-conscious femme lesbian named Sasha — became one of the most buzzworthy titles of 2023, demonstrating a growing fervor for LGBTQ fiction that is transforming the book world.
“This book really came along at a time where we’re in this renaissance of gay literature. There was an immediate audience that wanted to accept it with open arms. There was a receptiveness that I don’t know would have been there five years before,” Davis told NBC News, drawing a contrast between 2023 and the year her first novel came out. “Just the title alone would have been scarier for publishers even five or 10 years ago, but there was definitely this sense of, ‘People want this now,’ and I think publishers are always looking for what readers want.”
The release of “Dykette” (Henry Holt and Co.) in May coincides with a yearslong surge in the popularity of LGBTQ fiction, which continues to drive sales even as the broader fiction market slows in the wake of the Covid-19 book boom. Beginning with a smaller but noticeable uptick in 2019, those sales reached record figures this year, resulting in 6.1 million units flying off shelves in the 12-month period ending in May.
And the numbers are holding strong: In the 12-month period ending in October 2023, LGBTQ fiction sales reached 4.4 million units, up 7% from the prior 12-month period and 200% from the 12-month period ending in October 2019, according to exclusive data provided to NBC News by Circana BookScan. In contrast, the data showed that total fiction sales were down 3% in that latest year-over-year time period and up just 27% in the four-year span.
“There’s been LGBTQIA fiction forever, but what really makes this different over the last five years is that those storylines have been moving from a more niche area of fiction into the mainstream,” Kristen McLean, Circana’s lead book industry analyst, told NBC News of what she calls a “generational story.”
More than just migrating from the margins, queer fiction titles are thriving against a backdrop of record attempts to censor works by and about the LGBTQ community. This meteoric rise, according to McLean and other industry experts, is due to a confluence of factors, including younger readers’ openness toward issues of gender and identity, a new generation of writers employing queer themes and, perhaps most importantly, the pandemic-era rise of TikTok’s literary-minded arm.
‘Different flavors of storytelling’
After a tumultuous few years, it may not be surprising that fiction is the genre driving sales of LGBTQ books, as opposed to the less-transportive nonfiction space. A more elusive part of the narrative, however, is what’s bringing in new buyers of queer fiction. To answer that, McLean pointed to the fact that varying styles of fiction books carrying an “LGBTQ+” tag — or BISAC code, the U.S. book industry’s three-tiered book categorization system — are reaching readers in record numbers.
“It used to be that the only books carrying an LGBTQIA tag very specifically had that storyline front and center, and that is giving way to all kinds of different flavors of storytelling,” she said, noting what she sees as a “broadening of perspectives” that’s attracting new and less traditional readers of queer fiction.
Now, “we see growth in fantasy, in general fiction, in sci-fi, and that really speaks to the richness of the story world and the fact that these things are cross-pollinating,” she added of books that carry “LGBTQ+” as their secondary BISAC code.
To McLean’s point, there wasn’t just one type of queer fiction title that captured the popular imagination this year. Following in the footsteps of Alice Oseman’s “Heartstopper,” the screen adaptation of Casey McQuiston’s young adult hit “Red, White & Royal Blue” was a wild success. Sapphic titles like “Dykette” and Tembe Denton-Hurst’s “Homebodies” repeatedly topped 2023’s most-anticipated and best-of lists. And Justin Torres’ genre-defying work “Blackouts” took home the coveted National Book Award for fiction last month, while Eliot Duncans “Ponyboy” was reportedly the first book with a transgender protagonistto be longlisted for the prize.
Even bookstore aisles are starting to look different because of the way queer themes are appearing in a variety of texts, according to Suzi F. Garcia, editor of the LGBTQ nonprofit Lambda Literary.
“As access to these kinds of books has grown, we’re seeing more nuances come forward. So it’s not just an LGBTQ shelf in a bookstore anymore. They’re taking up room on every shelf,” Garcia said of queer titles in general. “You’re seeing writers from other genres getting interested in exploring fiction, because they see it as a more gay-friendly space. You see a lot more cross-genre writers too, and they’re bringing their audiences with them.”
Because of those new audiences, Garcia added, publishers across the industry are expected to have LGBTQ titles in their catalogs, lest they lose sales to smaller operations that specifically cater to fans of queer fiction. And increasingly, according to McLean and others, that has meant mining unexplored spaces like self-publishing for fresh talent, as well as paying attention to what young readers are posting about on BookTok.
A next-generation book club
BookTok, the corner of TikTok dedicated to literature, began gaining traction in the early days of the pandemic, when homebound readers started consuming and posting about books en masse. Progressively, that led to a growing number of BookTokers — who skew younger, more male and more diverse than the average book-buying population, according to Circana — discussing genres within fiction, like romance and fantasy, which have thrived on the platform. And industry watchers have not hesitated to connect that interest to recent sales trends.
“Most of the authors that are growing in the romance space right now are next-generation authors, and it’s closely tied to BookTok,” McLean said of writers like McQuiston and Oseman, who — along with Mo Xiang Tong Xiu and Rick Riordan — are among the year’s top-selling writers of LGBTQ fiction, according to Circana. “In fact, we see a lot of these authors taking share from romance bestsellers like Nora Roberts, Debbie Macomber or Nicholas Sparks.”
Kevin Norman, a BookTok influencer with nearly 250,000 followers, is quick to agree that social media engagement is what’s driving sales of queer fiction specifically. He attributes the popularity of genres like romance, fantasy and “romantasy” in print and on social media to the way that younger readers have learned to use platforms like TikTok to advocate for the books they love.
“Romance was a genre that, for a long time, got shunned and [was] not taken seriously. With social media, people are now able to talk about their favorite niche books and bring them to the mainstream,” Normansaid, adding that TikTok “really made books cool.”
To some, it may seem like a leap to say that posting about books on social media is translating to print sales, but the numbers show an overlap between genres that are popular on BookTok and those driving trends.In June, Circana reported that romance titles accounted for 30% of the uptick in LGBTQ fiction sales, and, according to Circana’s data for NBC News, romance was among the highest-selling LGBTQ categories in both adult and young adult fiction as of the end of October.
Booksellers — like Leah Koch, co-owner of the bicoastal romance bookstore The Ripped Bodice — also say they can see the influence of younger readers not just online, but in their shops, too.
“People age into the romance genre every year, but this happened a lot more rapidly. All of them just joined at once, basically,” Koch said, describing BookTok as “a new generation’s form of a book club.”
The Ripped Bodice is a romance bookstore with locations in New York and Los Angeles.Madeline Derujinsky
“More importantly, they actually buy books. They’re not just talking about them or taking pictures,” Koch said. “It has an actual economic consequence on our sales, on the type of people who are coming into the store, on the books that they’re asking for.”
It isn’t just new romance titles that younger readers are buying. Among many BookTokers, there’s a fervor for rediscovering older works, which has significantly bolstered sales of a number of backlist titles, including Colleen Hoover’s works and Taylor Jenkins Reid’s 2017 sapphic sensation, “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.” And some up-and-coming influencers are going in a different direction altogether.
Zoë Jackson — a BookTok influencer with almost 65,000 followers and the founder of a book club dedicated to “complicated female characters” — says she’s been successful on social media specifically because she recommends “indie” LGBTQ fiction like Sarah Rose Etter’s surreal novel “Ripe,” rather than blockbuster romances.
“For a while, the main queer books that were being talked about [on TikTok] were the few big queer romances that, at this point, are ubiquitous,” Jackson told NBC News, naming Madeline Miller’s 2011 Trojan War retelling, “Song of Achilles,” and “Red, White & Royal Blue.” “I love those books too, but people like to see things they don’t see right when they walk into Barnes & Noble.”
Beyond ‘token acceptance’
While powerful, the rise of BookTok hasn’t meant that traditional publishers, and many of the ways they do business, have been upended completely. But, according to Michael Reynolds — the editor-in-chief of independent publisher Europa Editions, which released this year’s standout erotic text in K. Patrick’s debut novel, “Mrs. S” — the rising interest in LGBTQ fiction is putting pressure on publishers to be much more active in that space.
“When the book industry sees that there’s segments of the market in growth, then it tends to run off to that segment,” Reynolds said. “I think that’s what we’re seeing now, in terms of the output on the publishing side of things.”
Reynolds, whose tenure has brought “My Brilliant Friend” author Elena Ferrante to the English-speaking world, said that while traditional publishing has been famously good at ignoring audiences for decades, once it senses an appetite for certain kinds of books, its added value is “ferreting out talent” and getting quality works on the shelves. But, he acknowledged, the key part of that process is having a readership that’s then willing to buy those works.
“One of the nice things about the moment we’re living through is that it’s not simply token acceptance; it’s commercial success,” he said. “It really does make a difference — that bottom line — when you’re doing something new.”
Kendall Storey is the editor-in-chief at Catapult, which released two of the year’s most talked-about works of sapphic literary fiction: Marisa Crane’s “I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself” and Ruth Madievsky’s “All-Night Pharmacy.” She said she views the way the publishing industry is adapting to the fervor for queer fiction as a fairly predictable course correction.
“To say that we’re seeing more and more successful books exploring issues of gender and queerness is to say that literature is doing what it’s always done, which is representing different experiences and ways of seeing over time,” Storey said, noting that almost half of Catapult’s 10 bestsellers from last year were LGBTQ titles, up from just one in 2021.
While publishers seem optimistic about how rising LGBTQ fiction sales reflect on their sector at large, others in the book world are critical of how long it’s taken the industry to get to this point and are eager to see more steps forward.
“If you were to look at the queer shelves when we opened in 2016, like 99% of [the books] were from indie presses or self-published. There were very few traditionally published queer romances; I could probably count them on one hand,” Koch, the Ripped Bodice co-owner, said.
“Seven and a half years later, they’re still only doing a couple a year. That adds up to a lot of books, but we’re still really early in the life cycle of this,” she added, referring to traditional publishers’ hesitancy to invest in a larger array of LGBTQ fiction.
Like Koch, Garcia from Lambda Literary is eager to see publishers meet the moment by encouraging authors to take risks and further experiment with genre and form as part of the next phase in queer fiction’s evolution. Looking forward to next year, she said, “I’m hoping that’s what we see: a lot more audacity from fiction.”
Three days after Roe v. Wade was overturned, Sam Guidogave birth to his first child. His doctors, unsure of what was still legal, didn’t prescribe misoprostol — a drug used in medication abortions — to help with contractions.
That was another blow, another way in which Guido felt he wasn’t in control of his labor. Guido hadn’t wanted to give birth in a hospital at all — he was afraid to be there. As a transmasculine and nonbinary person, they have faced the same ignorance and discrimination in medical institutions that many trans people in the United States experience. But a home birth just wasn’t an option; health insurance wouldn’t cover that or midwife care, and Guido’s apartment was too small.
Instead, Guido enlisted chosen family and friends to advocate for them in the hospital. Having other trans voices in the room ensured that they were respected by hospital staff as they brought his daughter, T, into the world. Guido asked that The 19th only use his daughter’s first initial for privacy.
“They made sure everybody who came into the room knew that I was going to be ‘Papa,’ that I was T’s ‘Papa,’ and that the language that they used surrounding myself and my body was all appropriate,” he said.
T is now 17 months old. Guido is grateful for the small wonders of parenthood, like watching T learn to blow kisses and give high-fives, becoming her own person more every day. He and his partner, Joey, both grew up with siblings, and look at them as some of the most important relationships in their lives. They want T to have that kind of special connection. So for the past six months, Guido and Joey have been trying to conceive another child. It has been a beautiful and queer process — but not without struggle.
It’s taking longer than it took with T. Seeing one negative pregnancy test after the other has made Guido feel constantly like he’s doing something wrong. While trying to conceive, Guido has gone without testosterone, which many transmasculine people take for hormone replacement therapy. Without it, he struggles to regulate his emotions as his hormones fluctuate. His period has come back, which causes him significant gender dysphoria.
Prior to his daughter’s birth, it took Guido a year and a half to find a safe and trans-affirming primary care doctor near where he lives in Janesville, Wisconsin.
(Jamie Kelter Davis for The 19th)none
Yes, they want to get pregnant. But pregnancy means being vulnerable once morewithin the medical system. Prior to T’s birth, it took Guido a year and a half to finda safe and trans-affirming primary care doctor near where he lives in Janesville, Wisconsin.
It means risking harassment from strangers when going out in public while pregnant and looking too much like a man.
It means taking on the same emotional and financial turbulence as other couples who go through fertility treatments that, for whatever reason, aren’t working.
But trying for another pregnancy has also led Guido to discover new facets of their identity. As an asexual person, it has brought them closer to their partner as they both explore what intimacy looks like while trying to conceive.
Being a pregnant transmasculine person in the United States is full of these dualities — joy and pain. The 19th interviewed two transmasculine people who were elated to become new parents, but experienced isolation and discrimination in a health care system that assumes all pregnant people are women, and by a society that still views pregnant men as abnormal.
Guido’s last pregnancy showed them that being pregnant actually felt affirming to them — not dysphoric, as it does for some other transgender men. They have often felt like they have to justify those feelings.
“I was surprised at how little dysphoria I felt when it came to pregnancy. It felt very natural to me … in a way that didn’t challenge my gender identity in any way, shape or form,” he said.
Instead, Guido grappled with feeling invisible and isolated during his first pregnancy. Outside of his close circles, he couldn’t talk about this huge part of his life with other queer or trans people. In one queer postpartum group he tried to join, other trans people were uncomfortable hearing about his pregnancy, while some queer people pointedly said that pregnancy was an experience that only women had.
He didn’t see anyone else like himself.
Guido is acutely aware of how alone being a pregnant transgender person in rural Wisconsin can feel.
(Jamie Kelter Davis for The 19th)none
“You pick up a pregnancy book, and it refers to you as ‘mama.’ You walk into pregnancy support groups, and it’s a group of cis women plus you, and everyone’s looking at you weird because you have a beard,” they said.
Those instances made Guido aware of how alone they were as a pregnant transgender person in rural Wisconsin.
In rural areas, transgender people tend to have fewer resources and face higher risks being out than trans people in urban areas, according to a 2019 report from the Movement Advancement Project (MAP). With fewer accepting employers, doctors, housing options and nearby LGBTQ+ spaces, discrimination can have a more profound effect and make hostility harder to bear.
However, regardless of where trans people live in the United States, they often face discrimination within health care. That includes being denied insurance coverage for routine sexual or reproductive screenings that are still treated as women’s health issues like Pap smears and mammograms, according to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey. Others must teach their medical providers about trans people in order to receive proper care. Often they are asked invasive questions.
The country’s medical system is extremely ill-equipped to care for transmasculine people, said Kellan Baker, executive director and chief learning officer of D.C.-based LGBTQ+ health care provider Whitman-Walker. It gets even more difficult for pregnant transmasculine people, especially for those who experience gender dysphoria around pregnancy, to access good care, he said.
“People assume that trans men would never want to get pregnant because of dysphoria. Or people think that testosterone is birth control, which it isn’t,” Baker said.
Health care professionals often assume that trans pregnancies don’t happen — or if they do happen, that they are so rare that it doesn’t affect their practice. This leads to doctors who don’t know how to give people proper care, Baker said.
“When people don’t have the right tools to fully understand the health care needs of trans people, it can be deadly,” Baker said.
In a 2019 study in the New England Journal of Medicine, that risk is laid clear. A 32-year-old transgender manwent to the emergency room with severe abdominal pain, only to discover several hours later — to his surprise, and to the surprise of medical staff — that he was pregnant. At that point, there was no fetal heartbeat.
The patient was correctly identified as a man when admitted to the ER. But his treatment did not correspond to his actual physiology or needs. His symptoms weren’t treated as an urgent case of abdominal pain in pregnancy and his elevated blood pressure was assumed to be hypertension.
Guido’s last pregnancy showed them that being pregnant actually felt affirming to them — not dysphoric, as it does for some other transgender men.
(Jamie Kelter Davis for The 19th)none
That same lack of knowledge among medical staff about trans people, and what kind of reproductive health care they need, also affected Kayden Coleman, a gay Black transgender man, during his first pregnancy in Philadelphia in 2013.
That ignorance among medical staff is part of why Coleman didn’t know he was pregnant for five months.He didn’t experience the same symptoms as most cisgender women would. He didn’t have breasts, so heightened tenderness was not a factor, and he didn’t have morning sickness. He only experienced fatigue, so his doctor assumed he was not pregnant.
“My rule of thumb is if you’re having sex with somebody with a penis that doesn’t detach, you can get pregnant. And you should be checking. And you cannot rely on your medical providers,” Coleman said. His own doctor at the time was a transgender man. It still didn’t occur to him that Coleman might be pregnant. “We’re kind of on our own out here,” he said.
Once he started to receive care, Coleman enjoyed taking photos of his stomach and sharing updatesas his first pregnancy progressed. He didn’t feel any gender dysphoria — he wanted to be as visible as possible.
“Ten years ago, there was no representation of Black pregnancy for trans men,” he said. “I felt like we needed more of that. So I volunteered as tribute, I guess.”
Childbirth was traumatizing because of how Coleman was treated by medical staff. He wasn’t listened to, he said. After he was induced, medical staff misgendered him and ignored his requests for a C-section until he reached what he described as a mental breakdown. After his daughter Azaelia was born,he struggled with postpartum depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.
It wasn’t until he met a nonbinary doula through a queer Philadelphia-based Facebook group that he felt truly helped and supported. They offered a depth of knowledge and warmth that went far beyond anything Coleman was offered in a doctor’s office, explaining what he was going through in a way that made sense.
Coleman didn’t know he was pregnant for five months. He didn’t experience the same symptoms as most cisgender women would. He only experienced fatigue, so his doctor assumed he was not pregnant.
(KAYDEN COLEMAN)none
“I couldn’t be left alone with my child without having a panic attack. So she helped me through that as well,” Coleman said. She took care of Azaelia so that Coleman and his former husband could rest, and talked him through the common experience of postpartum depression.
“Just her explaining all of the aspects, like the PTSD and all of that, helped tremendously for me to be able to talk myself off the ledge when I was feeling like I wanted to unalive myself,” he said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which only tracks how many cisgender women face the issue, says that about 1 in 8 women with a recent live birth have experienced postpartum depression. There’s minimal comparabledata on the birthing experiences of trans people, and what little research has been done has largely excluded nonbinary people and trans women and has focused on White people’s experiences.
What’s known is that trans men often experience loneliness, anxiety and isolation during pregnancy, which makes trans-inclusive health care all the more important. Transgender men and women both face limited access to gender-affirming fertility preservation services, on top of erasure, stigma and discrimination within the reproductive health care system.
And considering the grave Black maternal mortality rate in the United States — Black women are at least three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause compared to White women — more can be assumed: that Black transgender men, and Black nonbinary people, face even greater dangers when accessing reproductive health care.
When Coleman found out he was pregnant with his second daughter, Jurnee, New York City was shutting down due to the coronavirus.He had to navigate medical spaces without anybody else there to advocate for him due to heightened pandemic restrictions. He couldn’t bring a doula to medical appointments like he’d planned to. Those appointments were hostile, he said.
A receptionist at a perinatal office in Brooklyn told Coleman that he wasn’t supposed to be there — it was for women only. He had referral papers from his doctor so he was able to be seen, but he said the receptionist never apologized for trying to dismiss him. He said the ultrasound technicianat that same office laterrefused to use his correct pronouns or stop calling him the mother of his child.
Coleman’s daughters pose for a family portrait at a park in Gaithersburg, Maryland, in 2020. Coleman felt that much of his treatment throughout his second pregnancy was motivated more because of racism than because of transphobia. (KAYDEN COLEMAN)none
It wasn’t a new experience for Coleman to be misgendered. But this was worse than what he had gone through before. He was stuck, COVID-19 limiting his options. He couldn’t just find a new perinatal office or a new place to get an ultrasound.
Coleman felt that much of his treatment throughout his second pregnancy — including medical personnel repeatedly asking him if he wanted an abortion even as he talked about how happy he was to have another child — was motivated more because of racism than because of transphobia.
“Them knowing I’m pregnant takes a backseat to their fear, or their microaggressions, towards Black men,” he said. “If I would have lashed out or lost my cool, now I’m the angry Black man, and who knows what could have happened.”
Those experiences robbed Coleman of moments of joy during his pregnancy that he can’t get back, he said. He remembers leaving an ultrasound appointment with Jurnee’s other dadfeeling hurt, angry and uncomfortable. And those moments kept piling on.
“As soon as you’d get one thing rectified, here’s another one. Eventually the office got it together, the ladies in there were even nice. But that was towards the end of my pregnancy,” he said. “The next move was to be in the hospital.Now I have a whole other staff that I have to deal with. And a whole other list of microaggressions that I have to deal with.”
Guido also struggled after T’s birth, experiencing a brief period of postpartum psychosis followed by depression that lasted for eight months. They started medication for their symptoms and saw a therapist weekly, feeling overwhelming guilt for not being as attentive of a parent as they wanted to be.
Their experiences with postpartum mental health issues underlined for them how vital it is for other transgender people to have access to birthing and postpartum spaces that are meant specifically for and led by trans people. Right now, even finding reproductive health care at institutions knowledgeable of trans people is difficult. And when Guido didn’t have trans-competent health care, he had to educate his own medical providers about his basic existence while trying to get help.
Guido hold his partner’s hand at their home in Wisconsin. Guido also struggled after his daughter’s birth, experiencing a brief period of postpartum psychosis followed by depression that lasted for eight months.
(Jamie Kelter Davis for The 19th)none
“My gender is intrinsically tied to this fertility journey and is a non-removable piece of it,” they said. “It’s already a very personal and difficult process currently, to conceive. I don’t really need additional factors making it harder.”
As Guido continues his journey to conceive again, he has found a new postpartum support group for queer and trans parents in Madison, roughly an hour’s drive from where he lives. The group meets every month. He joined them for the first time on a sunny, crisp Saturday in late October. The older kids — the 3- and 4-year-olds — played in the park as the adults swapped stories and ate packed lunches.
That meeting was an emotional moment for him. It was the first time he had ever interacted with another transgender parent who had gone through a pregnancy. Not only was his experience as a trans person being understood, but he wasn’t being doubted for his lack of gender dysphoria while pregnant. That was actually a shared experience between himself and the trans man that he met, who had brought his own family.
“It was just a relief to be like, ‘Oh, you get it. You’ve been there,’” he said. He’ll be back in the spring when meetings start again — when he expects to meet other trans parents like him.
Prior to his daughter’s birth, it took Guido a year and a half to find a safe and trans-affirming primary care doctor near where he lives in Janesville, Wisconsin.
Guido is acutely aware of how alone being a pregnant transgender person in rural Wisconsin can feel.
Guido’s last pregnancy showed them that being pregnant actually felt affirming to them — not dysphoric, as it does for some other transgender men.
Coleman didn’t know he was pregnant for five months. He didn’t experience the same symptoms as most cisgender women would. He only experienced fatigue, so his doctor assumed he was not pregnant.
Coleman’s daughters pose for a family portrait at a park in Gaithersburg, Maryland, in 2020. Coleman felt that much of his treatment throughout his second pregnancy was motivated more because of racism than because of transphobia. (KAYDEN COLEMAN)none
Guido hold his partner’s hand at their home in Wisconsin. Guido also struggled after his daughter’s birth, experiencing a brief period of postpartum psychosis followed by depression that lasted for eight months.