Weekend Highlights for Queerly Trans and More (July 8, 2022)!
Gathering together contributions from 3 related publications
We have lots of great writings to catch up on and some exciting new updates!
We’ve launched 2 new publications from related perspectives:
1. Enbyous
Whether you are gender binary non-conforming or an enby-curious ally, we’ve got you covered.
The purpose of this publication is to facilitate sharing erotica/romance, (a)sexual experiences, and personal essays that can serve not only as entertainment, but also as education for potential healthy forms of sexual expression as determined by trans writers and those who respectfully love us contributing to this resource.
The most recent Queerly Trans Quintessentials article gathered together the best fiction that our writers have to offer and called on our writers to share “About Me” pages for our coming August writers showcase.
We asked out Queerly Trans writers to submit their favorite creative fiction piece they’ve published on Medium. It may be a poem, a short story, or maybe even a book chapter.
These articles are MUST READS as selected by the authors themselves!
Here are some of our recent Queerly Trans posts:
In “My Gender Spy Fuck-up Moment”, I shared some misadventures in a situation where I tried and possibly failed to pull off being closeted for a few hours to get some home repairs accomplished.
The thing is that it’s getting harder and harder to pretend, no matter how much easier things would be in the Bible Belt if I could, at least momentarily. I’m rapidly losing connection to the imaginary world in which I can claim to be someone I’m not. It’s as if the closet door now has a faulty lock and I keep falling back out, even when I want to duck back in there for a few hours.
Alistair J. Kraft addressed some familiar painful experiences that too many in our community encounter with unsupportive relatives in “The Complexities of Queer Identity and Family Relationships”.
I haven’t talked to my mom for over a decade now. She gave me a perfect out, I took it. Haven’t regretted it once. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t know.
She knows.
Everyone knows.
In “A Strange Distancing Phenomenon”, Alistair J. Kraft examines some of the social pitfalls of cis passing privilege and the relationship consequences of cis passing envy.
Especially as the more and more I passed the more and more my ex distanced herself from me as well. We broke up before she came out, but she at one point told me how she never felt comfortable around gender things and it seemed unfair that, once I came out, I took to being a man “like a duck to water.” That statement seemed weighted, so I remembered it clearly.
Jenny Starr✨ published Enbyous’ first lovely poem, called “In Between Me”. Check it out, along with our new publication!
“Shrink to fit never really worked for me Tears streaming they changed the landscape River courses meant to hide The despair of not being Mistaking myself for what I saw in the mirror”
Nominations for the Queerly Trans Reader’s Showcase
Kitty Whitemore helped me to find this gem of a writing called “How Ballet Helped Me Find My Identity as a Trans Man” by Levy Jonathan. We’d both highly recommend it.
Ballet was first introduced to me during my childhood. I took weekly classes the way many young girls, and some boys, do. For the first couple of years, I looked forward to ballet class as a physical outlet and exciting art form. I tolerated the strange emotions I felt regarding the girls in my classes, the way I felt so incongruous and out of place when surrounded by them.
Sieran Lane also has two excellent recommendations:
- Ze appreciated this article “3 Reasons to Stop Using ‘TERF’” by Kaylin Hamilton, which makes some excellent points worth considering.
Anti-trans activists have taken issue with the term TERF — Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist — for some time now. They argue the term has become a slur, since it is used by those who oppose them as a supposedly derogatory term. While TERF arguably isn’t a slur — the term only has negative connotations because it is used to broadly describe transphobic individuals and groups — there are other reasons we should stop using it. Three of them, and they all stem from the term itself.
2. Ze also recommended “What The 2022 Changes In The DSM-V Mean If You’re Trans” by Stephenie Magister, which provides some relevant commentary on medical decisions that have been made regarding our community.
The DSM-V is the book that the American Psychiatric Association publishes for medical professionals to point at and go ah, yes, this explains what you’re experiencing and how to improve your quality of life.
The DSM-IV did a lot of damage
The DSM-IV offered people with transgender experiences the diagnosis of gender identity disorder. It doesn’t take a PhD to speculate on the complications that came from treating a complicated facet of each patient’s identity as its own kind of pathology or disorder.
Do you have a reading that you’d like to nominate for next week’s Queerly Trans Reader’s Showcase? Be sure to share it in the comments section! We’re always looking for interesting perspectives on queer trans issues to promote from around Medium.
Want to write for us?
Check out our recently updated guidelines!
That’s it for this week!
Don’t forget to follow and subscribe to Queerly Trans, so that you never miss any of our wonderful stories, poems, and artwork!
Editors: KP_the_writer, Logan Silkwood
Writers: Ayven Alexander, Kai Arden, locke besse, Antonia Ceballos, Jymi Cliche, Justice Faye Dazzle, Nova, Jaz Joyner, Emma Holiday, Alistair J. Kraft, Sieran Lane, Mx. Marie Chase Lewis (Fae/They), Stephenie Magister, Michelle Paquette, Amber Poe, Jenny Starr✨, Kai Stowers, 💜 Victoria Quinn 💜, Kristy Westaway, Anabelle Weissinger, Kitty Whitemore