Month: June 2021

In praise of quiet trans lives

In praise of quiet trans lives

Here’s to all the trans folk just living their lives, those who slip on by and just be. Its easy to get wrapped up in the public profiles of trans folk who make all the headlines, post all those amazing instagrams or blow up your Twitter feed with awesomeness. Yet, in the quiet cracks between those glam are trans lives lived in the hum drum and workaday. Lives fulfilled, lives explored, lives mapped out in spheres beyond the drama.

LGBTQ Memorials and Monuments Around the World

LGBTQ Memorials and Monuments Around the World

Here at TalkDeath, we have talked about how LGBTQ people are not represented in death in ways that affirm who they were, who they loved, and how they lived their lives. From cemeteries refusing headstones that acknowledge gay marriage to practices of deadnaming transgender people at their funerals, there is still much work to be done to make deathcare and memorialization inclusive for everyone.

However, since the 1980s, there has been a steady increase in the number of monuments and memorials erected to address these violences. As social awareness and empathy have grown for LGBTQ people, more spaces are being created to help us collectively work through traumatic events, honor victims and survivors, and rethink the past. As architecture scholar Julian Bonder notes, monuments can be transformative in their ability to encourage critical consciousness and inspire visitors to engage in practices that envision a more equitable world.

This Pride Month, we’re featuring eight sites around the world that are doing this work by resisting the erasure of queer experiences and demanding rights and respect for all.

Attacks on trans people are also attacks on science itself

Attacks on trans people are also attacks on science itself

Not long ago, Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene — who opposes passing the Equality Act, which would guarantee federal civil rights protections for LGBTQ Americans — hung a sign outside her office. Her sign read, “trust the science.”

If only she — and like-minded others — would.

Where in the World Are All the Trans Children? Everywhere.

Where in the World Are All the Trans Children? Everywhere.

According to supporters of the raft of proposed laws targeting trans youth in state legislatures around the country, the answer is emphatically yes: Transgender children are a liberal American fad.

Are they right? Is the Family Research Council, a powerful right-wing organization that supports many of these bills, correct when it claims that children like mine are the result of “a resurgence of postmodern thinking”? Is it true, as a best-selling book has argued, that my daughter is part of a “transgender craze” sweeping America’s youth?

What’s behind the rising profile of transgender kids? 3 essential reads

What’s behind the rising profile of transgender kids? 3 essential reads

Why are trans youth more visible these days? Is it due to more widespread acceptance, or more media coverage? Just how many trans kids are there?

There seem to be few clear-cut answers. But after talking with a number of scholars who study transgender youth – and editing articles written by them – I learned that the history of trans kids and some ongoing research can shed some light on how the U.S. got to this moment.