President Andrzej Duda of Poland should veto a regressive and discriminatory bill that threatens sex education, including about sexual orientation and gender identity, Human Rights Watch said today.
The proposed legislation is a revised version of a bill including similar provisions that Duda vetoed earlier this year, calling for unity at a time of crisis due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“Duda should swiftly veto this harmful new bill,” said Kyle Knight, senior LGBT rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Accurate and inclusive age-appropriate sex education is a crucial element of the rights to health and education and is critical to promoting healthy relationships and reducing gender-based violence, adolescent pregnancy, maternal mortality, and HIV.”
The bill would centralize control over Polish schools and limit already restricted access to comprehensive sexuality education. The bill is informally called “Lex Czarnek 2.0” after Education Minister Przemysław Czarnek, who initiated the first bill and has been promoting the revised version. The legislation would give government “educational welfare officers” the authority to decide what extracurricular or educational activities can occur on school grounds and establish a complex bureaucracy around approving or refusing such activities.
On November 29, the opposition-controlled Senate, the upper house of Poland’s national legislature, rejected the bill, sending it back to the Sejm, the lower house, controlled by the ruling Law and Justice party. On December 2, the Sejm rejected the Senate’s veto and passed the bill. President Duda has 21 days to decide whether to sign or veto it.
Nongovernment organizations are the only providers of comprehensive sexuality education in many places in Poland. The state school curriculum includes misinformation about reproductive health and sexuality and perpetuates myths and discriminatory stereotypes rather than providing evidence-based sex education in line with international and regional standards.
The bill would increase the authority of regional school superintendents, appointed by the education minister, over school principals and grant superintendents the power to block activities led by nongovernment organizations in schools, a decision currently in the hands of parents’ councils.
Because school superintendents are appointed by the government and the government has targetedcomprehensive sexuality education and those who provide it, the changes could lead to ideological control over schools and politicized choices about who can provide educational activities. Superintendents would also be involved in decisions about removing principals, potentially politicizing that process as well.
If the bill becomes law, it would have a chilling effect on teachers and organizations that provide comprehensive sexuality education, and de factoprohibit Polish schools from addressing topics of sexual orientation, gender identity, and reproductive rights, Human Rights Watch said. The bill puts a host of children’s rights at risk, including the rights to information, education, and health.
Dozens of civil society organizations, teachers’ unions, and local authorities’ consortiums associated with the Free School Coalition have warned that the measure would gradually deprive schools of autonomy and create fear and distrust among teachers, who may fear repercussions if they step out of line with the government. Education and rights advocates have pointed out that Education Minister Czarnek recently approved a new official textbook that contained biased and discriminatory content.
Czarnek, known for efforts to reshape the school curriculum in line with a conservative, Catholic agenda, claims the new law is necessary to “protect children.” He has promoted gender stereotypes, including emphasizing women’s “destiny to bear children,” and the near-total abortion ban introduced in 2020. Czarnek also positions himself as an opponent to so-called “gender and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) ideology,” a term used to demonize gender equality and the rights of women and LGBT people. In December 2020, over 170 academics from around the world called for an international “boycott” of Czarnek, due to his “homophobic, xenophobic and misogynistic views.”
Another bill that could have a detrimental impact on education was referred to government committees for further review in April. If passed, this bill, introduced by Law and Justice allies, would potentially criminalize anyone providing sex education or information with prison sentences of up to three years. Even without more stringent laws, teachers and school administrators who support sexuality education or reproductive rights have already been harassed, dragged through administrative proceedings, and threatened with losing their jobs.
The bill would also affect 200,000 child refugees from Ukraine studying at Polish schools, which rely heavily on civil society organizations to provide specialized assistance such as psychosocial and language support to refugee children. Many organizations offering such services also work on LGBT or women’s rights. The bill would place additional bureaucratic requirements on such organizations, which could prevent them from receiving approval to work in schools at all.
“President Duda already decided once that vetoing a variation of this law was the right thing to do, and he should do the same again,” Knight said. “Students, teachers, and parents across Poland have spoken up to make clear just how harmful and unnecessary this legislation would be.”
Same-sex married couples handle stress better than different-sex spouses do, according to a new study.
The study, published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships by researchers at the University of Texas Austin, found that while stress is common in all kinds of marriages, same-sex couples are able to deal with it better together.
By analysing survey responses of 419 couples on dyadic coping – coping as a couple – in both same-sex and different-sex marriages, researchers revealed that same-sex spouses were able to be more positive and collaborative in handling stress compared to their counterparts.
Same-sex married couples handle stress better than different-sex spouses do, according to a new study.
The study, published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships by researchers at the University of Texas Austin, found that while stress is common in all kinds of marriages, same-sex couples are able to deal with it better together.
By analysing survey responses of 419 couples on dyadic coping – coping as a couple – in both same-sex and different-sex marriages, researchers revealed that same-sex spouses were able to be more positive and collaborative in handling stress compared to their counterparts.
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The differences, researchers said, stem from links between gender and coping strategies.
For example, women married to men said that their spouses were more ambivalent and hostile in responding to stress compared to women married to women.
According to study author Yiwen Wang: “This research shows that while there are some gender differences in dyadic coping efforts, the effects of supportive and collaborative dyadic coping as well as of negative dyadic coping on marital quality are the same for all couples.
“Our findings also emphasise the importance of coping as a couple for marital quality across different relationship contexts, which can be an avenue through which couples work together to strengthen relationship wellbeing.”
The study’s authors believe that because the stress was handled better by both male and female same-sex couples, the key to their dyadic coping is their ability to work together to deal with stress, using their similarities in stress responses and their shared gender-related experiences.
Debra Umberson, Wang’s co-author, said that coping with stress collaboratively may even be more important for same-sex couples, who are less likely to have familial and institutional support compared to straight couples.
“Including same-sex spouses and looking at how they work with each other to manage stress as compared to different-sex spouses can help us better understand the ways in which gender dynamics unfold in marriages,” she said.
“Same-sex couples face unique stressors related to discrimination and stigma. Coping as a couple may be especially important for them as they do not receive as much support from extended family, friends or institutions as different-sex couples do.”
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Hot Octopuss are offering discounts as part of Black Friday, including their popular Guybrator. The masturbator, for people with penises is hands-free and app compatible, so you can enjoy it solo or with a partner. So which toys have been discounted, and which one is right for you?
If you were diagnosed with HIV in the first fifteen years of the AIDS pandemic, your doctor might as well have handed you the diagnosis with one hand and with the other a death certificate, just waiting for the appropriate date to be filled in. Having HIV was an almost certain death sentence. Those of us who were diagnosed as HIV-positive in those years were told to “get your affairs in order,” meaning, “prepare to die.”
Many of us did exactly that: we quit work, lived on SSDI payments, settled debts if we could, alerted our friends, and learned to live with the constant expectation that we could meet an ugly, painful death at any time. Very few of us were able to “keep hope alive.”
That long-awaited hope arrived in 1996 with the advent of HAART (Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Treatment), the first efficacious treatment for HIV. Suddenly, the possibility of “living with HIV,” instead of “dying of AIDS,” became a reality for those of us with access to HAART. We rejoiced — we were going to survive the virus that had taken so many of our friends, lovers, and family from us! We tore up those proffered death certificates — we were going to live!
We soon realized, however, that surviving the pandemic, living with HIV, would bring its own problems. Those of us who couldn’t work and lived on SSDI were trapped in poverty; and the outrageously expensive medications we took, while saving our lives, caused innumerable new medical problems: chronic fatigue, accelerated ageing, loss of bone density, liver diseases and failure, a propensity for various cancers, enhanced risk of cardiovascular diseases, and myriad comorbidities. Further, in the pre-U=U days, we lived in fear of transmitting the virus to others. And surviving did nothing to lessen the stigma we faced for being HIV-positive, often within our own communities, causing an epidemic of isolation, loneliness, despair, and depression.
Human beings are meant for more than just “surviving,” we are meant to thrive. But how does one thrive while living with a still-debilitating, stigmatized virus? To find out how some have thrived, and not merely survived, I talked with three long-term survivors, friends from a Thursday night writing group, about their growth from surviving to thriving.
Harley, a San Francisco resident, was thirty-four when he acquired HIV; at seventy-six, he has lived with HIV for forty-two years. Like many of us, Harley said he reacted to his diagnosis with “shock and sadness, fear and depression, isolation and hopelessness, desperation and confusion. I was relieved to finally know my serostatus, but it caused distractions at work and negative projections of my profession, social life, love life, family relations, and fear of the future.” After a period of depression and self-mourning, Harley was determined to take care of himself. “I made a commitment to myself that I would not only survive, but strive to thrive.”
That commitment led Harley to a very proactive approach to living with HIV. He connected with other HIV-positive friends; read all the current information about HIV; attended community meetings led by doctors; joined support groups at San Francisco AIDS Foundation, the Shanti Project, and the Stop AIDS Project; joined an HIV-positive yoga class; quit smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol; and began a healthy natural diet. Of course he continued to encounter barriers to thriving—economic challenges; job stress; the continuous loss of friends, neighbors, co-workers and community members. He credits “yoga, acupuncture, meditation, dharma talks, humor, comedy, dancing, hiking, and swimming” with helping him stay healthy enough to thrive.
Harley said, “service became a new medicine for me. I volunteered at San Francisco AIDS Foundation’s telephone Hotline when it first started at old drafty building on Valencia Street. I also trained at Shanti and became a ‘buddy.’ I spoke at local schools as an AIDS educator and became active with AIDS political activist groups like Project Inform and ACT-UP.” Significantly, he changed professions and started work full-time at an HIV medical clinic. These days, he said, he now deals with “normal geriatric issues rather than HIV fears.”
Rebecca Dennison was diagnosed with HIV in 1990, although she is certain she acquired the virus in 1983 and lived with it for seven years before her diagnosis. “I was devastated. In June 1990, HIV was considered a death sentence. I thought I had only months to live. I was about to start law school when I found out. I decided not to go. Partly because I didn’t think I’d live long enough to finish.” In those days before the ACA, and before the Ryan White Care Act passed, Rebecca continued to work in order to retain her health insurance. “To me, being uninsured meant you were going to die even sooner than you would otherwise. So having insurance was as big an economic issue as having an income.” With the support of her workplace, she continued to work until she could get covered through her husband’s insurance. Despite the support of dear friends and her husband Daniel, “I felt alone and alienated. People were kind but they really couldn’t understand what it was like to be me. I felt like I was living in a 4th dimension where we all saw the same world but experienced it differently. For a while, I felt really angry at HIV-negative people for the privilege of being able to walk away if they wanted. And then I felt ashamed of being angry because I knew it wasn’t fair to be mad at people for being healthy.”
At first, after her diagnosis, Rebecca was afraid to make plans beyond one year. She had planned to become an immigration lawyer specializing in asylum law. When that plan collapsed, “I didn’t know what to do with myself. But AIDS activists, friends, and family all encouraged me to follow my heart and get involved in AIDS activism–and I did.” She threw herself into fighting for herself and others. “I joined ACT UP Golden Gate, went to all the Project Inform town meetings, started going to conferences, and then started WORLD, an organization by, for, and about HIV-positive women (because they were missing in most of those places). Through that work I got to be friends with women from all over the world, especially after I helped start the ICW (International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS).
“Of course, coming to love all those people also meant losing hundreds of people as well. That part was tough. It was tragic to see people die in what should have been the prime of their life. And the cumulative grief of hundreds of people dying while most of the world really didn’t give a damn… that wore me down.” She paused her HIV work in 2003 and went off to raise her daughters. After a while, “I just missed it too much. Various histories of AIDS started coming out and the vast majority left women out completely, which really bothered me. So I started writing, got into therapy, and eventually started reconnecting with other long-term survivors. One of the silver linings of COVID was that we were forced to learn how to meet by Zoom. Suddenly, that opened all kinds of doors. I’m in two weekly writing groups with long-term survivors, which I wouldn’t have joined if I’d had to cross the Bay Bridge to attend—and I’m loving it. The writing always provides a way in to connect with more depth than we might if we were just making small talk.”
Activist, writer, and long-term survivor Harry Breaux learned he was HIV-positive in 1984. Harry had contributed blood samples to a CDC clinical study of hepatitis. The samples from 1979 were negative for HIV, but samples he gave in 1981 were positive for HIV. Thus, he deduces that he contracted the virus in 1980, at age thirty-five; he celebrated his seventy-seventh birthday in March 2022.
“Initially, I was not surprised when I was called in and given the results of the HIV antibody test,” he told me. “After having so actively participated in the sexual freedoms of the 1970s, I knew that I probably had been exposed and probably had contracted the virus. As a slow progressor, my physical life changed very little, but my mental and emotional life was devastated. As long as I felt ‘healthy,’ I continued to live a ‘normal’ life on the outside, but mentally and emotionally, I lived with the knowledge that every little change in my physical condition, every sniffle, every pimple, every cough prophesied the beginning of my march toward death. It just never came for 15 years. Then when I did approach death in 1996 [diagnosed with AIDS], the ‘cocktail’ came along to save me.”
Like the majority of us long-term survivors, Harry faced barriers to thriving. “Finding supportive and stable housing and sufficient financial assistance to care for myself. Finding social support from others who understand my situation or the situation of those in similar circumstances. Finding medical services sensitive to my unique physical condition of being HIV-positive and aging.” He credits San Francisco AIDS Foundation, Openhouse, PRC, the Shanti Project, and other organizations with providing rent and food subsidies as well as opportunities to connect with other HIV-positive survivors. “When I first noticed that I was driven by a different sexual impulse and believed I was the only one, that I was flawed, I felt alone and lonely. Being HIV-positive and surviving so many friends left me feeling old, alone, and lonely. But finding the HIV Community and its strength has allowed me to look at my life as one of thriving through the experience of surviving. No longer alone and lonely as a person with HIV, I now recognize thriving as a viable present and future.”
I asked all three of these survivors what “thriving” means to them as opposed to “surviving.” The three of them gave me similar, almost identical definitions. Here’s Harry’s definition:
“Thriving to me means being able to function as a ‘normal’ human being; being able to experience joy and sadness and peace along with love and compassion; being able to take care of my own personal needs. being mentally alert and creative; being able to contribute to the society around me; being able to maintain my independence; being able to experience the ‘normal’ ageing of my body appropriate to my age; being able to assist others.
“Surviving to me means just being able to breathe, move, eat, and shit.”
As members of the AIDS Generation, we long-term survivors have a deep well of knowledge and experience to share with the newly diagnosed. Unsurprisingly, when asked for advice to the newly diagnosed, all three stressed the same things: know that HIV is no longer fatal if you stick to your medications and take care of your health; educate yourself about the virus, its effects, and how to combat them; learn the history of the pandemic; know that you are not alone, flawed or damaged by this virus, but you are challenged to maintain your hope and tenacity in its unyielding face; know the science, listen to the professionals, and seek to find your own way through; release any sense of shame you may have for being positive; maintain your social life by connecting with other HIV-positive people; volunteer in your community; never hesitate to ask for emotional or financial support from the resources that are available; remain hopeful.
Rebecca offered the most eloquent advice I can think of:
“Pursue your passions. People who feel happy take joy in the happiness of others. People who feel loved want others to feel loved. People who are inquisitive and curious inspire curiosity in others. If you can find a way to lend your time and talent to making the world a better place, all the better. I have seen how having a sense of purpose helps people who are struggling get out of bed in the morning. There’s no ‘right’ way to do this. You do you. Make your art. Write your poetry. Draft awesome legislation. March in the streets. Teach a child to read. Feed someone who’s hungry. Save a redwood tree. Rescue puppies. Grow tomatoes. Smile at the bus driver. Be kind to the checker at the grocery store. Whatever experiences you’ve had up until this point make you a truly unique individual with skills and insights and interests unlike anyone else’s on the planet. If you have a degree, great. But if you don’t, you’re still an expert in lots of things. Don’t overlook the fact that everyone has value and has something to contribute.”
I’ll give Harley the last word: “Trust in your future. Keep Hope Alive.”
LGBTQ+ Liberal Democrats are quitting the party after senior officials revised a transphobia statement to protect “gender critical” views.
There was outcry among LGBTQ+ Liberal Democrats and allies when the party’s revised “formal definition” of transphobia leaked online.
Days later, the party formally published its new statement during Trans Awareness Week. On their website, the Liberal Democrats say the definition was revised in light of “recent legal cases” which have brought “greater clarity to the interpretation of the law in this area”.
The new definition says the party rejects “all prejudice and discrimination based upon race, ethnicity, caste, heritage, class, religion or belief, age, disability, sex, gender identity or sexual orientation”.
While the statement says disciplinary action “may be taken against members who exhibit transphobic behaviour”, it also states: “Holding and expressing gender critical views, whether in internal debates or publicly, is protected by law”.
Members of LGBT+ Lib Dems, the party’s LGBTQ+ group, have told PinkNews that they’ve been left “upset” by the new definition.
PinkNews understands that some party members have quit the Lib Dems entirely over the new transphobia definition.
Liberal Democrats have ‘lost numbers’ over transphobia statement
Charley Hasted, vice chair of LGBT+ Lib Dems, told PinkNews that their group knew the definition was being revised and that they were consulted on it in advance – but their recommendations were ultimately not taken into account.
According to Hasted, LGBT+ Lib Dems advised the party to seek further legal advice and to consider precedents set in two cases which were decided upon by the European Court of Human Rights.
However, the party appears to have ignored their advice, Hasted says.
“We’ve lost numbers, and frankly, we have more members threatening to go over this,” Hasted says, adding that they personally know “at least three” who have quit citing the new transphobia definition as the reason.
“I think anything from the party that doesn’t include a commitment to get the [legal] advice that LGBT+ Lib Dems specifically said they should be getting is going to lead to more people leaving.”
Hasted is particularly frustrated by the new definition – and the way it was released – because it came shortly after trans and non-binary party members had a meeting with Liberal Democrats leader Ed Davey, where they talked about how they party could better support trans people.
“It’s this disconnect that keeps happening,” Hasted says. The whole affair has made the party “look awful”, they say.
It’s mainly one person. I’m not going to say who it is, but it’s one person who throws his weight around a lot.
“That’s not who we want to be in the party in the main. We’ve got a few people who are a problem and they are creating a problem, and it didn’t need to happen.
“We know that at least one of those members tried to push for the definition to go even harder than it did.”
In the end, they think the party tried to strike a “middle ground” between what LGBTQ+ members were saying and what “gender critical” campaigners wanted.
“It’s mainly one person. I’m not going to say who it is, but it’s one person who throws his weight around a lot.”
Much of the commentary on social media has focused on the decision to publish the revised definition during Trans Awareness Week, a decision Hasted describes as “shocking” and “appalling”.
They believe it was leaked deliberately in the lead up to Trans Awareness Week in a bid to “hurt trans people as much as they could”.
“The key point is this is being fought. There are thousands of Lib Dem members who are fighting this because we don’t agree with it,” Hasted says.
‘Pro-trans majority’
Gareth Lewis, chair of LGBT+ Lib Dems, still harbours hope the definition will be revised again in the short term.
“I don’t think anyone is very pleased about it including the people who voted to pass it. I think people felt it was something that had to be done,” he says.
Lewis says a new federal board and council have just been elected and that they will come into force in January – a move which could potentially pave the way for a further revision.
“There’s now a pro-trans rights majority on most wings whereas previously it was 50/50,” Lewis says.
“We’re having a lot of conversations with the party leadership involved in these sorts of things and I think there is a general feeling that this hasn’t gone well and that something needs to be done quite drastically to fix it,” they say.
Lewis believes the statement was revised in the first place because the party is too “risk averse”.
“I think that represents a big problem for our party,” they say, adding that the party is too inclined to “buckle” too quickly on issues it should stand firm on.
It’s not just grassroots members who have been left disappointed by the revised definition – some of the party’s most senior figures have also expressed their dissatisfaction.
Nobody deserves to be the victim of misogyny, homophobia, and in the same way nobody deserves to be misgendered or deadnamed.
Liberal Democrats MP Layla Moran urged the party to “listen” to LGBTQ+ people on the issue of transphobia.
“I share the disappointment of our trans siblings regarding the way the change in definition has transpired and urge the party as a whole to keep listening and trying to do better,” Moran told PinkNews.
She continued: “The Liberal Democrats have a proud record of fighting for all LGBT+ rights. We believe in the safety, dignity and wellbeing of every individual.
“In parliament we are campaigning for a total ban on so-called conversion therapy, including protections for trans and intersex people, and for reform to the outdated Gender Recognition Act.
“We will always fight for every person to feel not just accepted but celebrated and supported by society to lead fulfilled, productive lives – whatever that means for them.”
Cleo Madeleine, communication officer at Gendered Intelligence, said the fiasco shows the extent to which “the divisiveness of the culture war” has infiltrated politics.
“It’s not about saying, you have to believe a certain thing to be a member of a political party – it’s about saying, everyone has a right to participate in politics on an even footing,” Madeleine says.
“Nobody deserves to be the victim of misogyny, homophobia, and in the same way nobody deserves to be misgendered or deadnamed.
“We really hope that the Lib Dems, particularly with their chequered past on LGBT+ rights, stand firm on this.”
When contacted by PinkNews, a spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats said: “Following two legal cases that established new precedents, the party commissioned legal advice which was put to the federal board – the most senior elected governing body in the party.
“The Board voted in favour of the published definition of transphobia which was the strongest option available consistent with that legal advice. We will continue to support trans people within our party, through our policies about gender recognition which are clear, and through our independent complaints system which has zero tolerance for transphobic cases of bullying and harassment.”
Did you know that you could be discriminated against by insurance companies for taking PrEP?
I didn’t.
Recently, I have been searching for long-term disability insurance options while living in California. Long-term disability insurance could offer some peace of mind if some tragic, unforeseeable event left me unable to work. I chatted with an insurance broker, who scanned providers nationwide, and reported back to me that because I took PrEP daily, most insurers wouldn’t allow me to participate in their program. Drugs prescribed for PrEP such as Truvada, Descovy, and Apretude are on a list of “unaccepted” medications.
I received what she said matter of factly. I only heard the information at that moment. I didn’t really process it. It was only later that evening, that the news settled in and it truly struck me–what the actual fuck?!
An insurance policy that excludes people taking PrEP is rooted in misinformation and stigma, and actually has counterproductive outcomes.
We should be encouraging communities, especially those at high-risk, to take PrEP. PrEP reduces the risk of getting HIV from sex by about 99% when taken as prescribed, therein offering the promise of finally managing and ending the spread of this virus when combined with access to screening services.
While only 3% of the 1.2 million people for whom PrEP is recommended were prescribed it in 2015, that number rose to 25% in 2020, demonstrating the notable gains achieved. But what’s stopping this number from reaching 100%? I believe it’s interactions like those between this insurance broker and myself that contribute to the hardship that people still face for trying to protect their health.
California’s first openly gay Insurance Commissioner, Ricardo Lara, has decidedly taken on insurance companies to protect those seeking access to PrEP services. An investigation by the Department of Insurance examined life, disability income and long-term care insurance companies and discovered evidence that “some insurers had denied or limited coverage, restricted products available through accelerated underwriting, placed conditions on coverage, or charged higher rates to users of pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, medication.”
Accordingly, The Department of Insurance issued a notice reminding insurers a person’s history of PrEP use cannot be used as a justification to deny life, disability or long-term care insurance coverage or charge higher premiums for that coverage under California’s The Equal Insurance HIV Act, which becomes enforceable starting January 1, 2023.
But insurers don’t have to wait until then to do away with discriminatory practices. That’s why I texted the insurance broker and asked her if she could be an ally for queer people and remind the underwriters she’s in communication with that this should not be allowed and, at least in California, won’t be allowed soon. She didn’t respond, but I hope she’s thoughtfully considering my message.
The impact of this law especially brings me comfort as a Black, gay man, because I’ve seen how HIV and AIDS have disproportionately impacted my community. Tools for combating this virus should not be made any more challenging to access than they already are. Some estimates show that 1 in 2 gay black men may contract HIV in their lifetimes. Anything we can do to provide relief to our already-hurting community is welcomed.
Apart from institutional forces such as the archaic, discriminatory insurance policies that create stigma around PrEP use, there are also social ones. Some folks who take PrEP are called “Truvada whores.” There is a perception that because they’re taking the medication they must be very sexually active, and unfortunately both everyday folks and even the medical community themselves aren’t immune to this perception.
In actuality people who take PrEP are a part of the solution for stopping the spread of HIV. But, they may feel like they’re doing something wrong or that they have to hide thanks to this stigma. No one should feel like they’re being punished because they’re trying to take control of their health.
Terrance Wilder was diagnosed with HIV at the age of 20, and now works with San Francisco AIDS Foundation to help others gain access to PrEP. He’s deeply concerned about making sure access to PrEP is available to people who need it the most.
“If a person doesn’t have a stable place to live or consider themselves homeless, PrEP most likely will not be as much of a priority for them although they may be putting themselves at risk daily,” Wilder said. He’s also seen how transportation can be a barrier as some folks may can’t make it to their appointments or to pick up their medications, and mental health disparities can be barriers for folks in many ways.
Laws are just one tool to affect change in our society. How we treat each other and support each other on the individual level creates an environment that moves our society towards addressing health access and equity as well. One of the most dangerous things we can do for society is to allow being uninformed to create additional harm onto communities needing our help the most.
Many of us have been cut from our usual networks of care, affection, pleasure and exchange during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the context of queer life, this seems especially palpable: So much of how we engage with each other centers around community, contact, and proximity, conditions which now might evoke potential danger and anxiety, risk even. One of the many transformations undergone in the pandemic, then, relates to the amount of time we’ve been forced to spend in isolation, barred from care and kin.
I, like others, found myself yearning anxiously for the outside world. And yet, in those same conditions, I also discovered an opportunity to go inward and cultivate a relationship that often faded into the background of an exciting and rich social life I longed to return to. I discovered a new relationship with mind, and this reinvigorated relationship has extended bountifully towards the shared queer life I practice with others in the world. Here, I seek to make a case for mindfulness as a vital aspect of queer communal care, one that is not separate from the concrete societal equity, justice, and health we so passionately strive towards.
Mindfulness and meditation tend to conjure up a wide variety of images that often distract us from what it actually is and how one could actually integrate such a thing in everyday life. On the one hand, there’s a tendency to associate meditation with a predominantly white and affluent “wellness fanatic” eager to jump on board with the latest form of cultural theft. On the other, there’s a mystified idea of meditation as the solemn activity of monks, a thing utterly incompatible with the busy and dynamic lives we often lead.
To address the first misconception: meditation and mindfulness (terms that serve as umbrellas for a rich and diverse set of culturally-specific practices) should not be considered the sole purview of the rich and trendy. Despite the aggressive forms of marketing and branding that have sought to make meditation yet another signifier of class, this practice does not belong to them. Arguably, it doesn’t belong to anyone at all, even if it is a central aspect of a variety of non-Western spiritual and cultural systems. This urge to brand and create the marketable “identity” of the “meditator” is antithetical to meditation itself.
The second misconception might be harder to overcome at first, given our tendency to relate to things by measuring up our insufficiency, to feel like these things are not for us, that our lives are anything but solemn. But, for all the truly spiritual potential that mindfulness can bring to one’s life, meditation should not become an untouchable, sacred, and pure thing.
Meditation essentially describes our relationship to mind, and our relationship to mind is truly all we have. All we do and say––all the ways in which the world, our environment, and our communities arrive at us and beckon our attention––passes through this elusive thing we call mind.
To be mindful, or to practice mindfulness, is not to sit and become anxious at the failure to block out all thoughts and be completely “blank.” It is, however, to slow down our reactiveness to these thoughts and external stimuli. To allow, to let be. It can involve breathwork or mantra repetition. But it can also look like informally taking the first five minutes of the morning and, instead of sprinting for the phone, to become aware of those first instances of consciousness as we emerge from sleep, before our attention scatters to the many things that are or appear to be urgent. To tend to our minds with the same care we seek for the world.
Perhaps more fundamental than the term “meditation” in a meditation practice is the word “practice” itself. It’s easy to forget that a practice already implies that we will struggle and falter a bit. It means, importantly, that we begin again and that we surrender the usual reflex of harsh judgment. It also implies that meditation is not a thing to be conquered, dominated, and perfected once and for all. To begin again, fresh and new each time, carries with it a very subtle but transformative teaching: mindfulness is a practice of recurring and insistent self-compassion.
The more we are able to allow ourselves––in those five or two or ten minutes of sitting in silence with our mind––to return to the breath even as we inevitably trail away (and we will, many times, even as “advanced meditators”), the more we become aware of how we can practice this compassion and non-judgement in other spheres of our lives, the spheres we inhabit in common with the consciousness of others, in the communities we hope to build and rebuild justly. A softness with self engenders a softness with the world in turn, but it must be practiced gently first within, then without. How could this not be but a building block of more compassionate and present communities, this care turned inward?
This was probably one of the early insights I gained from starting a meditation practice. Being part of that great social world outside my mind also meant being constantly at the mercy of comparison and harsh self-critique regarding the adequacy of my body or my social status. Queer people of color, especially, experience this kind of isolation and self-comparison in disproportionately higher levels given a world predicated on neutral whiteness and upward social mobility, where “queer” has often implicitly meant access to capital and to normative ideas about embodiment and attraction. We pursue these without question and seemingly to no end.
Mindfulness––the initial failure, the distraction and restlessness, their invitations to begin again––interrupted and made me aware of these habitual patterns of violence to the self. It has made all the difference to cultivate and nurture this inner space, a space I then am able to practice in community with others, where I become more present for those with whom I share and practice love queerly, and where I have so much more to offer.
Undoing these silent violences living in our mind is not separate from our communal efforts to eradicate violence in our relationships, encounters, and communities. During the first major lockdown in 2020, I attended a virtual community sliding-scale meditation with Rev. angel Kyodo williams, a Black writer, activist, and ordained Zen priest. This moment also coincided with the powerful wave of anti-racist activism and protest in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. Rev. Williams, predicting our tendency to criticize our attention span and our relationship to meditation, reminded us midway through the session that the undoing of carceral and police logic begins with a commitment to its undoing in ourselves. In meditation, this undoing looks like an ability to begin again, without shame or harsh discipline. I felt, in the BIPOC-centered space that seemed so opposite to social action, the seeds of compassionate and equitable futures to come.
Mindfulness matters to a queer communal future because this future stems precisely from the very now in which we live and breathe, from the very selves that dream up utopian possibility. A gentle and personalized daily practice of meditation is not antithetical to societal change. Rather, it paves the way for a sturdy foundation of compassion with self, one that puts us in a place where we are able to work towards holistic and all-encompassing health. There is no equity in common until we are all afforded space for the mind to relax, for the breath to settle, and for the openness required for empathy––one of the fundamental aspects of health, justice and equality––to thrive.
A note on some resources: here’s the website to sign up for rev. angel’s amazing and financially-accessible sessions, which happen at several moments throughout the year. I would also highly recommend her book Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation. Meditation apps like Waking Up, for example, will give out renewable free one-year subscriptions on the basis of self-reported need. The meditation app Liberate has a wealth of Black-centered guided meditations.
Developing your first crush as a teenager should be an exciting experience, but for Beverly, it was terrifying.
The problem was that the person she harboured feelings for was a girl. Growing up in Zimbabwe, Beverly knew same-sex relationships were not accepted.
Like so many before her, Beverly tried to convince herself that it was just a phase, but a couple of relationships with men between the ages of 19 and 21 left her with no doubt that she was a lesbian.
That realisation was a painful one for Beverly. Homosexuality is criminalised in Zimbabwe, and public attitudes to queer people are unkind. She knew she could face violence, persecution and discrimination for being openly gay.
In the end, she made the painful decision to pack up her things and flee to South Africa in search of safety. Her journey since then has been at times rocky, but it’s also been life-affirming – and it’s allowed her to live as her authentic self.
Beverly’s story is just one that PinkNews is sharing this holiday season as part of the LGBTQ+ Refugees Welcome campaign.
Over the festive period, PinkNews is sharing stories of LGBTQ+ asylum seekers and refugees from all across the world. Some have found safety, while others are still grappling with harsh asylum systems that are designed to keep refugees out.
LGBTQ+ people have to ‘live a lie’ in Zimbabwe
Beverly had to flee her home country because she could see just how bad things were for LGBTQ+ people there.
She recalls how she forced herself into relationships with men from the age of 19 in a desperate bid to live the traditional life society expected of her.
After just two years of dating men, Beverly found herself a single mother of two children – and she was becoming increasingly aware that her sexuality was not a phase, as she once hoped it was.
Being openly LGBTQ+ in Zimbabwe is “very, very hard”, Beverly says.
“You have to live a lie. When I was dating this woman in Zimbabwe, we had to go around and say we were sisters or we were friends. You can never come out in Zimbabwe.
“The LGBTQ+ community in Zimbabwe, they have to hide. The moment they find out you are part of the community you are over and done with. I had a cousin of mine, she came out as a lesbian and she was sentenced to jail.”
In 2007, Beverly went to South Africa with her daughter and she gradually worked up the courage to come out.
Some of them thought it’s satanic, it’s demonic, that there’s something wrong with me.
“The first person that I came out to was actually my daughter. She was 14-years-old, she saw me hanging out with this woman. I kind of explained to her that she’s not my friend, we are actually dating.
“She quickly embraced me and she was like, mum, as long as you’re happy, I’m happy.”
Everything “fell into place” once her daughter had accepted her as a lesbian, although Beverly did lose some friends when they found out about her sexuality.
“Some of them thought it’s satanic, it’s demonic, that there’s something wrong with me. So I just ended up saying, as long as my family’s OK with me being a lesbian, that’s all that really matters at the end of the day.”
Life was good for Beverly until the COVID-19 pandemic hit, which resulted in her losing her job in hospitality.
It was a turbulent time, but it led Beverly to get involved with the Dream Academy, an initiative which offers classes to those who need them.
After taking classes herself through the Dream Academy, Beverly was given the chance to run her own class on parenting.
“It has been nothing short of amazing,” she says.
Those classes also inspired Beverly to rebuild her relationship with her son, who was raised in Zimbabwe by her sister.
“When I came out, he started rebelling, he would do graffiti in his room, he would spray paint ‘no lesbians in this house’.”
Beverly travelled back to Zimbabwe to meet her son face to face so she could talk to him about his sexuality. The trip was a success – they are now closer than ever.
Beverly’s refugee status was revoked
While Beverly has built a life for herself in South Africa, where she now lives with her partner, she still doesn’t have permanent residency.
When she first arrived in the country, she claimed asylum – but her refugee status was ultimately withdrawn when she briefly travelled home to Zimbabwe to visit a sick family member.
I’ve got friends and family back home who have to live a lie, basically, they just can’t come out.
When she speaks to PinkNews, Beverly only has a guarantee that she can remain in South Africa for a couple more months. She is hoping she will be able to get an extension.
“It’s not a day anytime soon that the LGBTQ+ community is going to be accepted in Zimbabwe, that much I know,” Beverly says.
“I’ve got friends and family back home who have to live a lie, basically, they just can’t come out.
“But for me I am out and proud on my social media – everyone knows – so for me to go back to Zimbabwe into hiding would roll back everything.”
It’s because of people like Beverly that PinkNews launched the LGBTQ+ Refugees Welcome campaign. The initiative is raising funds for Micro Rainbow, a charity that provides safe housing for LGBTQ+ people seeking asylum, and for OutRight Action International’s LGBTIQ Ukraine Emergency Fund, which distributes money to activists on the ground in Ukraine.
This holiday season, PinkNews is sharing the personal stories of refugees and people seeking asylum. The series will put a spotlight on the painful realities LGBTQ+ people across the world face that force them to leave their homes, from familial violence to anti-LGBTQ+ laws.
But that’s not all – the series will also show how a person’s life can change radically when they’re granted asylum. When they can get to safety, LGBTQ+ people have the chance to thrive.
PinkNews wants to show how living without the threat of violence or persecution can help queer people build beautiful, kaleidoscopic lives – but they can only do so if they’re given the proper support.
Please give what you can to the PinkNews LGBTQ Refugees Welcome campaign on GoFundMe. Through GiveOut, we will be directly donating to OutRight Action International’s LGBTIQ Ukraine Emergency Fund, helping the activists and organisations on the ground in Ukraine and surrounding countries to support the needs of LGBTQ+ people turning to them for life-saving help.
Our second beneficiary, Micro Rainbow, creates safe homes where LGBTQ+ asylum seekers from Ukraine, Afghanistan and beyond can be safe while they endure the UK’s gruelling asylum process.
At Twitter, Melissa Ingle worked on civic integrity and political misinformation as a senior data scientist. Before the U.S. and Brazil elections, she wrote algorithms to moderate harmful content on Twitter. She was one of the 4,400 contract staff who was denied access to Twitter’s internal systems last month because of Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media platform and then fired.
She tells The Advocate that her job involved a lot of data analysis.
“I would help to write the machine learning algorithms and monitor any kind of report on these algorithms that that scroll through Twitter for tweets that violated our terms of service specifically as it involves political misinformation in the [target] country,” Ingle says.
“We monitored Brazilian elections, Japanese elections, the E.U., the U.K., Argentina, Mexico,” she says. “Anywhere we had a substantial presence.”
She says many teams interfaced with each other and collaborated to understand each location’s needs.
“We worked cross-functionally with many different teams to help us understand the laws and the policies and also to help us with the human review process,” she says.
She explains that content moderation teams dealt with many types of misinformation and hate speech and that the department reflected the health of Twitter.
“So we’re the health of Twitter. And this is not anyone’s personal health. This is the health of the platform, So that’s making the platform a non-toxic environment that people want to spend time on and that the advertisers felt comfortable with associating brands,” she says.
“This was, of course, coupled with the human review team, where they’re going through the tweets sort of mechanically, hand by hand, and looking to see if things [existed]that violated our terms of service,” Ingle says.
She adds, “So I say that to set the stage because what has changed with the massive layoffs is that approximately half of my team of data scientists and senior engineers were laid off seemingly at random. And then, one week later, the vast bulk of the contractors were laid off. And that included me.”
Ingle was laid off on November 12, but she was not offered severance or a financial incentive as a contractor.
She says that the severe cuts to staff and Musk’s erratic behavior have significantly threatened the platform’s stability.
“We’ve seen a really sharp increase in abuse. And this can be measured,” she says. “Before I left, they reported that we were seeing a 50 percent increase in abuse day over day, from the time before Musk purchased [Twitter] to the time when Musk bought it.”
A recent report by the Fletcher School at Tufts University shows that the platform is headed in the wrong direction under his leadership – at a particularly inconvenient time.
“And so, in other words, there are no more people there anymore,” she says. “There’s no more contractors to monitor things, to catch things. And on the other hand, on the machine learning side, only 15 of us initially left. And then the other contractor and I were laid off, leaving 13, and then [on November 17], at least three people walked out in response to Musk’s letter demanding they work extremely hardcore hours.”
She says that in the long term, the algorithms will get continually worse at detecting hate speech and harassment, which has become evident on the platform since Musk’s acquisition.
Ingle also discusses her experience with the lead-up to her termination.
“Before he purchased the company, you know, he was seeing some things that were extremely disparaging towards content moderation, which is my department. So he felt he didn’t trust us,” she says.
“And this really didn’t instill a lot of trust in us,” she adds.
She says that the week before Musk’s purchase, the environment at the company was chaotic.
But after the acquisition, people became dejected, Ingel says. She says that nobody knew what they should be working on for the first week, including her.
“So I just kept doing what I had been doing, in the hope that I could keep this place relatively free of misinformation,” she says.
As a transgender woman, Ingle says she felt supported at Twitter pre-Musk.
“There were a couple of transgender-focused Slack channels, there were LGBTQ-focused channels, and in general, people were free to, you know, live their lives, and my boss and department work were very supportive of my identity.”
“Elon Musk has tweeted out quite a few homophobic and transphobic memes, including most recently, the attack on Paul Pelosi,” she says. I mean, it’s absolutely ridiculous and only serves one purpose, which is to incite homophobia. That’s the sole purpose of that.”
She says that in the aftermath of Musk’s tweets, staff challenged him wanting to know how he can protect LGBTQ+ employees given his history of tweeting misinformation and homophobic and transphobic memes.
“And he just gave this kind of stock answer, ‘oh, we’re committed to diversity and, you know, honoring all employees’ without really specifically trying to address what he or his followers have been doing,” she says.
Ingle says that ultimately what’s sad is that as a former employee and a power-user of Twitter for more than a decade, the platform has been a catalyst for good, with the Arab Spring and amplifying the Black Lives Matter movement.
“I found an incredibly supportive LGBTQ community just through following people and tailoring with my likes and my retweets my own experience to focus on issues of relevance to this community, and I’ve learned so much and really been inspired by so much that I’ve seen.”
She adds, “It’s just incredibly sad that it might be going away.”
A Seattle-area pub was hit by gunfire yesterday, days before a scheduled drag queen story hour and bingo night.
The Brewmaster’s Taproom in Renton, Washington, just south of Seattle, was hit a single gunshot to their front window in a drive-by shooting around noon on Wednesday. The pub’s monthly Drag Queen Storytime and Rainbow Bingo events will go on as planned on Saturday.
Brewmaster’s owner Marley Rall told LGBTQ Nation she was working at home when she got a text from an employee at the coffee stand next door to the pub. “They just texted me and said, ‘Hey, I just watched this.’”
Rall said the assailant had removed the license plates from the car and was wearing a mask and gloves.
Rall posted to Facebook: “So just an update for everyone. Our taproom was shot at today around noon. We believe it has to do with the people who are upset about our Drag Queen Story Time. We would like you to know we are still going to have drag queen storytime. But we also want to be transparent with parents. Renton PD is aware and has set up cameras.”
“Hatred isn’t pretty,” one commenter posted. “Hang in there. A lot of us will be there to support you! Grateful for your inclusion of all people.” Rall, who lives with her husband in Renton, calls herself a staunch ally of the LGBTQ+ community.
The shooting comes after plans for a protest at the event by right-wing anti-LGBTQ+ groups came to light. “We are aware of the chatter and threats,” Rall wrote in a Facebook post Tuesday. “Every month we get emails and phone calls about our Drag Queen Story Time. Never have we had issues, but this time feels different.”
The single gunshot came from a silver four-door sedan hours later.
Rall said she noticed unusual activity on the tap room’s Facebook page Monday night. “I get a notification,” Rall said, and a woman “had posted on our newsletter, ‘This is fucking disgusting,’ and ‘You’re fucking groomers and you’re pedophiles,’ and then had scrolled through our Facebook page to go find another post from the month before, specifically for our drag queen storytime and bingo.”
Rall was also made aware of a protest flyer originating with right-wing group Wake Up WA State that had spread across social media and was shared by advocacy group LGBTQIA+ Renton and a local councilwoman. Calls for protest also made their way to Reddit, where one poster suggested shooting up a transformer to deprive Brewmasters of power during the event.
“So I screenshot it and send it to the city,” Rall says. “This is a thing and somebody clearly wants to replicate what was going on in North Carolina.” She was referring to a
Following the shooting Wednesday, Wake Up WA State scrubbed their Facebook account of any reference to the event.
“Wake Up WA State is shutting its pages down at least for now,” wrote group organizer Justine Andrina. “We talked about it a lot and made this decision because the people running the groups are putting themselves at risk at this point and the benefit is outweighing the risks [sic].”
A deleted post archived by a Brewmaster supporter illustrated Wake Up WA State’s role in the protest and purported cancellation.
Andrina shared: “Per the organizer holding the protest: ‘Based on some recent developments we’ve decided to pull the plug on Saturday. Someone took a shot at the bar today.’ I don’t know if it was a false flag or a patriot who got too hotheaded. Either way, it now seems like a major security issue and since children will be present, we made the decision to cancel. If you are able to make a note of that on Wake Up WA FB, it would be appreciated. Thanks.”
“Whoever did this to Brewmasters,” Andrina wrote, “you’re sick in the head.”
Rall says both her parents lost family in the Holocaust, and they made sure she could recite the poem First They Came.
“Just because it doesn’t personally impact you, one day, you’re going to turn around and nobody’s going to be there, because it will,” she said. “This is about keeping everybody safe, and making sure that everybody continues to feel comfortable coming out and being their authentic self.”
As the first out, gay member of the state Legislature, Democrat Brian Sims represented Philadelphia’s 182nd District from 2012-2022. During the last election cycle, he ran an unsuccessful primary campaign for lieutenant governor, taking second place in the contest.
Sims announced last week that he’s taking on the newly-created position of managing director of public policy & government Affairs for Out Leadership, a 98-member business and nonprofit organization urging state-level conversations on LGBTQ+ issues and public policy.
His goal is to connect the dots of lobbying and policy in a way that members will be prepared for discussions around queer civil rights in an increasing hostile and violent atmosphere.