GLSEN

[GLSEN]

Meet The First Trans Homecoming Queen In North Carolina

H/T: TransCafe

[GLSEN]

All students have the right to participate in school activities and freely express their gender identity, yet GLSEN’s National School Climate Survey found that 18.1% of LGBT students report being prevented from attending a school dance with someone of the same gender and 19.2% of LGBT students report being prevented from wearing clothes of another gender at school. We are ‪#‎GLSENproud‬ Prom King is working to improve those statistics.

As North Carolina finds itself in the middle of a divide, Prom King aims to challenge institutionalized transphobia and gender roles to create safe spaces for LGBTQ youth by understanding their needs and daily challenges.

[GLSEN]

Gender- Reveal Celebrations for Babies Can Be Cute. They Also Help Explain the Trans Bathroom Panic.

It’s accepted among progressives at this point that gender is a kind of performance within constraints—something we actively create from the limited cultural materials we encounter. As such, it matters enormously for older children and adults as a way of making sense of themselves in (and for) the world. But it’s also a type of performance that babies and toddlers lack the neural connections to deliver—they are genderless, and thus destabilizing, and so we steady ourselves by, for instance, affixing hair bows on people who might not even have much hair.

A gender reveal will tell a future baby’s loved ones precisely nothing about what is actually important about her first months and years on Earth: her temperament, her response to food, the ease with which she sleeps and self-soothes and explores her expanding world. Babies and toddlers are mysterious; you really have no idea who they are, but you get the sense that they know you inside-out. A fetus is even more mysterious; you don’t even know what she looks like, and yet there she is, closer to you than any person could ever be. It’s understandable, I suppose, why some parents want to grab onto an either-or marker of certainty in the fundamentally uncertain situation that is pre- and early parenthood. But gender isn’t really there for the grabbing.

H/T: Slate

[GLSEN]

Thank you, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, for promoting respect for all people!

[GLSEN]

We are #GLSENProud to support those rallying across North Carolina today in opposition to HB 2! This dangerous law has stripped LGBT people of protections, lost the state millions in business, and has targeted transgender people across the state. We urge the North Carolina General Assembly to hear protesters’ demands and #RepealHB2. Add your voice!

[GLSEN]

The legislative session in the North Carolina General Assembly will officially begin on Monday. Tell lawmakers it’s time to repeal HB 2!

[GLSEN]

Not in the Name of My “Protection”

The North Carolina Republican Senatorial Committee launched a new fundraiser late last week. The fundraising site features an image of a man entering a woman’s bathroom and encourages donations to “thank NC Governor Pat McCrory and Legislative Leaders for fighting to keep our children safe and passing a common-sense law to stop grown men from sharing locker rooms and bathrooms with young girls.”

I’ll pass, thanks. Painting pure bigotry as an attempt to “protect” women from the dangers of bathrooms is an old American story, and one we have a duty to reject.

H/T: HuffPo

[GLSEN]

Bathroom Bills Aren’t About Religious Freedom

In order to believe transgender identities are somehow sinful, you would have toinvent scripture that just isn’t there. This would also require one to conflate gender and sex either lacking the knowledge that they are not one in the same or just refusing to believe the medical community. You would also have to believe that sex is binary, while ignoring the biological reality of intersex individuals. You would need to also forget Jesus’ words of praise to the gender minorities in biblical times. Of course, this doesn’t even begin to cover how bathroom usage is somehow part of North Carolinians religious practices.

H/T: HuffPo

[GLSEN]

Trans Student Writes Powerful Facebook Post To North Carolina Governor: “This Is What Trans Looks Like”

HB 2 harms students and communities by making discrimination legal in North Carolina. We’re ‪#‎GLSENproud‬ of student activists like Adam speaking out against this blatant discrimination in support of LGBT people; show your support for LGBT students when you register for GLSEN’s Day of Silence here: http://glsen.us/1Sr6tyD

I am tired of the stares, the murmured hate, the aggression when I dare to hold another man’s hand on the street.
I am tired of my racing heartbeat, the catch in my breath, the worst case scenarios I have to think of when I walk in a public bathroom.
I am tired of my state supporting hatred and bigotry.
I am tired.
But that doesn’t mean I will ever stop fighting.
This is what trans looks like, Gov. McCrory. I am trans, I am queer, I am a lover, a writer, an actor, and a singer. I am a person of faith and when I was formed from the dust of the earth, the same breath of life that filled your lungs also filled mine. Do not mistake your privilege for superiority. It will not serve you forever. But for now, at the risk of sounding crude, suck it, McCrory.
I am trans, and I am not going away. Deal with it.

H/T: BuzzFeed

[GLSEN]

Discrimination Doesn’t Belong in Schools!

Every student deserves schools that are safe, affirming, and free from discrimination - including students in North Carolina! If you have experienced discrimination in school, take action and file a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education here.