Being trans in the US: attacks, legislation and hope
The Deputy Director for Transgender Justice at the ACLU, Chase Strangio, is a leading voice when it comes to the spate of anti-trans legislation that has swept the US in the last few years. Vice News sits down with Chase to understand the breadth of these laws, the political playbook behind many of these bills, and the future of trans rights in the country.
China banned “effeminate” men
In 2021, China’s broadcasting regulator issued a ban on ‘niang pao’ or ‘sissy men’ from appearing on TV and video streaming sites. The derogatory term is used to describe men with effeminate looks. Do these rules signal a return to more traditional notions of patriarchy, masculinity and even nationalism?
It’s about control, not protection
It doesn’t take a genius to recognise the gaping logical flaws in the moral panic US conservatives are trying to cause when they assert that kids are in grave danger if books in school libraries would be allowed to mention homosexuality or if drag performances remain legal while they on the other hand refuse to tackle the country’s huge gun problem, vote against child marriage bans and roll back child labour protections.
It’s quite obvious that these people couldn’t care less about the welfare of children, they would rather kids be shot than let them read books.
On the most recent episode of The Problem with Jon Stewart, the show’s namesake and host grilled an Ohio Republican, using his support of drag show bans to expose the hypocrisy behind his opposition to gun control legislation. Read on…
I’m gay but don’t like anal sex
Topping, bottoming, flip-flopping. With boyfriends, dates and guys I’d met on one night stands. I had anal sex because I thought that’s what I was supposed to do, what I’d been told to do, because being gay is synonymous with anal sex, right? And then one day I came across the term ‘side’ – a term used by gay men who don’t enjoy anal sex, and suddenly I felt seen.
That was almost ten years ago. I started having the sex I wanted to have instead, and started talking about my new identity to anyone who would listen. The surprising thing was, that the more people I spoke to, the more I started to realise how many other people felt exactly the same as me. I completely lost count of the times I’d hear – ‘Wait, that’s a thing? I feel that way too!’ – it seemed that there was a staggering number of gay men who also weren’t in to topping or bottoming, and yet hadn’t found the language to express how they felt.
A guy I used to date even reached out to say that he too now identified as a side – the irony being that for the duration of the time we dated each other, the two of us had been having anal sex that neither of us wanted to have.
And it’s not always just a preference either – there are gay guys with medical conditions that mean they physically aren’t able to have anal sex. Men with phimosis (a tight foreskin) may not be able to top, and for gay men with stomas, bottoming could quite literally be life-threatening. So why then, after all of these years, is identifying as a ‘side’ still something we hear about so seldomly? The term was coined in 2013, and yet there still seems to be so little awareness. We still very much live in a top/bottom/vers culture, and I still have to find myself explaining what it means to be a ‘side’ on a near daily basis.
Drag queens fight back against armed protestors
Right-wing media and politicians have spent months equating drag shows with pedophilia, but this San Antonio community is fighting back. When armed protestors came to town, the community met them on the streets — fully prepared. Vice News Tonight’s Dexter Thomas Jr. meets up with one of San Antonio’s drag queens and the rest of the community to see how they are handling the rise in hate.
Staying positive about being HIV positive
Jordan identifies as a sexually fluid person, and has been living with HIV for many years. After battling the fear and stigma that came with his diagnosis, Edwards learned not only to empower himself but to help others. Now the center director of the Normal Anomaly Initiative in Houston, he works to raise awareness and end the stigmas around getting tests and treatment for HIV.
Colorado shooting comes in a year of relentless anti-LGBTQ campaign
The tragic shooting at Club Q, an LGBTQ club in Colorado, is the latest event to transpire in a year marked with a jump in anti-LGBTQ legislation and sentiment, according to LGBTQ advocates.
Vigil at a makeshift memorial near the Club Q nightclub
The shooting, the deadliest attack on LGBTQ people in the U.S. since the Pulse shooting in 2016, occurred on the eve of this year’s Transgender Day of Remembrance. Just days earlier, the National Center for Transgender Equality released a report finding that at least 47 transgender people were killed in the past year.
And research is painting a bleak picture when it comes to the lives of LGBTQ Americans: The rate of suicidal thoughts among LGBTQ youth is also on the rise, and is particularly affecting both queer people of color and trans youth.
Meanwhile, across the country, legislators introduced more than 300 anti-LGBTQ bills across 36 states in the past year, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an advocacy group. Some advocates say violence can be the end result of political efforts geared toward removing protections from LGBTQ Americans.
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What No BS journalism looks like
As we are all painfully aware, mainstream media has no idea how to cover trans issues. The New York Times publishes “both sides” bullshit while The Guardian commissions frankly unhinged personal essays about how difficult it is for cis people whose partners have come out as trans, the media has proved to be woefully unequipped to meet this current moment, if not actively invested in further disenfranchising trans people.
Never thought we’d be saying this in the year 2022 A.D., but somehow, Jon Stewart has come to the rescue. Season two of the comedian’s show, The Problem with Jon Stewart, premiered on Apple TV+ last Friday, and it started off with a bang.
For starters, the episode is titled “The War Over Gender.” And although many mainstream outlets have indeed framed the current all-out attack on trans healthcare as a conflict with two equally equipped sides, Stewart, somehow, has become the highest profile cis person demonstrating how right-wing disinformation actually needs to be tackled by the media.