fwiw, in the early days of the internet - think mid 90s/early 2ks - the first thing happened a looooooooooot. it was the #1 way my 14yr old self saw dick pics, just trying to find other queer women to talk to - and bam! one of those people pretending to be a lesbian would send me a (verrrrrry sloooooooooow loading terribly shot) picture of their dick. sometimes i could be talking to someone for weeks before they got bored, or annoyed, or they were mad i wouldn't send them pics, or drunk, or whatever, and bam! suddenly a big long awful email about how i wasn't really queer complete with a pic of their junk.

otoh, i was also friends with many trans women at the same time, both online and off, and none of them have every been inappropriate with what they shared of themselves and how they shared it. in fact, it was their influence that finally put a name to a bunch of weird feelings i have always had and allowed me to see that i am genderqueer.

this might be something that interpretation depends on what sort of internet communities you came up in. i didn't even consider the transphobic interpretation until i got to the comments because the first thing happened to me and other women i knew at the time so often.

i nearly spit coffee out of my nose at that part.

so i somehow have never seen the l word? i can only blame the straight side of my queerness...

should i watch it? i can never tell if people (women, queer women) like it and like to make fun of it or hate it and like to make fun of it...

hello! i was gone for 15ish years! grew up here, moved back because these roots just kept pulling at me. dealing with jerks like latour has been rough, but it's still home.

here's an article covering most of it. i can't wait to vote him out.

the city council meetings when my town got our anti discrimination ordinance were brutal. i wish it were something i could just blame on "lawmakers" (in my case the lawmakers were actually mostly on the pro-inclusion side) but unfortunately there's a fairly vocal group of transphobic fearmongering citizens here and they are proud to wave that ignorance and hate around. i was especially disappointed as female sexual assault survivors (a group i'm part of) used their prior assaults - which didn't take place in bathrooms by strangers or women - to bolster their safety claims. i am proud of the overwhelming majority of people who stood up and supported our ordinance, and the incredibly brave trans women who spoke on their own behalf. little by little we chip away at this hate, hopefully.

my town got an anti-discrimination ordinance, it got reversed on a special election (you might have heard about the michelle duggar robocalls), then we voted again and it went forward. a few other towns in our state did the same thing. the arkansas legislature responded by banning all anti-discrimination ordinances. we're waiting for a variety of court cases to wind themselves through, hoping we'll prevail. we've already made it successfully through a couple challenges.

just this last week, an alderman (who was helped into office through bathroom panic and the duggars money) approached a woman while she was doing her job, demanded to know her gender, and said he was a man and could "prove it" (he claims this wasn't a threat to expose himself, because he thinks we were all born yesterday). he's also demanded to know the gender of a city contractor and makes statements about how "you just can't tell." we're stuck with him for 3 more years.

transphobia is a blight and states barring towns from being more inclusive are giving comfort to that bigotry. i am eager for federal action that enshrines lgbt protections, with special focus on the rights of trans people.