reasonsforhope:

Good Trans News Roundup! July 8, 2025

Democratic governor vetoes anti-trans measure passed by Republican legislature - LGBTQ Nation

"My faith teaches me that we are all children of God," Gov. Josh Stein said as he vetoed the measure.

LGBTQ Nation

“North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein (D) has vetoed several anti-diversity bills, including one that would ban gender-affirming care for transgender inmates in the state prison system.

The bill is H.B. 805, which bans the state from paying for gender-affirming hormone replacement therapy and surgeries for transgender inmates. It would have also required the state to keep a copy of a transgender person’s original birth certificate if they have the gender marker on it updated, and it included language saying that there are only two genders, male and female…

The other three bills that Stein vetoed on Thursday [July 3, 2025] were related to diversity measures. One of the bills would have cut funding to schools that engage in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Another bill would have banned diversity training and staff positions at state agencies, and it also would have banned state funds from being used for diversity initiatives at those agencies.”

-via LGBTQ Nation, July 7, 2025

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Republicans passed an amendment to curtail Obamacare. It just backfired in a surprising way. - LGBTQ Nation

They wanted to make a statement about access to health care, but they didn't think it would end up helping trans youth.

LGBTQ Nation

“A three-judge panel for the Ohio Tenth District Court of Appeals ruled that gender-affirming care for minors constitutes an essential medical treatment for trans youth and that the ban on gender-affirming care is in violation of a state constitutional amendment. Originally passed by Republicans to undermine Obamacare, the amendment is now being used to prevent federal or state intervention in denying any form of essential healthcare…

In a smart move, the plaintiffs argued that gender-affirming treatment be considered essential medical treatment, pointing to the numerous medical studies proving its effectiveness in treating gender dysphoria and improving the mental health and well-being of transgender adolescents. For that reason, they argued, it should protected under Ohio’s Health Care Freedom Amendment.

…In [passing the constitutional amendment], they inadvertently gave Ohioans broader constitutional protections around healthcare because the amendment prohibits any law from banning “the purchase or sale of health care or health insurance” or even imposing a fine on such purchases.”

-via LGBTQ Nation, March 19, 2025

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Red state governor vetoes three anti-trans bills & tells GOP lawmakers to "focus on real issues" - LGBTQ Nation

The GOP lacks the votes to override her vetoes.

LGBTQ Nation

“Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) vetoed three anti-transgender bills passed by her state’s Republican legislators. Though the bills passed largely along party lines, Republicans are unlikely to override Hobbs’ veto since their numbers in the state House and Senate fall short of the required two-thirds majority votes needed to do so. Arizona is largely considered a red state…

Of the three bills, H.B. 2438 would have prevented any gender marker changes on people’s birth certificates (even if they underwent gender-affirming surgeries), S.B. 1694 would have denied funding to any college or university teaching about “gender identity,” and H.B. 2062 would have ended all legal recognition of trans people in the state…

Transgender journalist Erin Reed noted that, in 2023, Hobbs signed executive orders requiring state employee healthcare plans to cover trans-related gender affirming surgeries, extending LGBTQ+ anti-discrimination protections to state employees and contractors, and banning conversion therapy, the widely debunked pseudoscientific practice of attempting to change someone’s gender identity or sexual orientation. Republicans threatened to sue her over the anti-discrimination protections…”

-via LGBTQ Nation, May 6, 2025

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Senate Drops Anti-Trans Provisions From Trump's Bill

Earlier drafts had included language barring those on Medicaid from receiving treatment for gender dysphoria.

Rolling Stone

“An anti-trans measure in US president Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act has been dropped at the last minute in a small victory for the LGBTQ+ community. 

The legislation struck the ban on Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming care after the Senate parliamentarian found it did not comply with the Byrd Rule.

Named after Senator Robert Byrd, the Byrd Rule aims to prevent irrelevant matters from being included in budget reconciliation legislation…

In earlier drafts, the so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill” included a provision that would have ended Medicaid payments for “gender transition procedures” for people of all ages, and introduced narrowly rigid definitions of “sex,” “female,” and “male” that some experts believe would have far-reaching implications, beyond access to healthcare. However, amid a flurry of revisions and amendments, the controversial ban on gender-affirming care was removed shortly before Senate Republicans voted to pass the legislation on Tuesday. 

Though there are many other aspects of the bill that will severely limit millions of Americans’ access to healthcare, trans rights advocates see the removal of the ban on Medicaid coverage of gender-affirming care as a win. [Note: Over 20% of trans people are on Medicaid Source]

-via Rolling Stone, July 1, 2025

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Republicans made a website to mock candidate Billie Butler for being trans. She just beat them. - LGBTQ Nation

Trans lawmakers have been key to stopping anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in some states.

LGBTQ Nation

"Billie Butler, a transgender woman who ran for the New Hampshire House of Representatives as a Democrat, defeated her opponent, Republican Ken Hilton, in a special election held this past Tuesday. Butler won with 964 votes to Hilton’s 774. Butler will be representing the Strafford 12 district.

Strafford 12 is a multi-member district in Strafford County, consisting of two towns: Rollinsfield and Somersworth. Of the registered voters in the districts, 33% identify as Democrats, 27% identify as Republicans, and 41% are unaffiliated…

According to this map created by independent journalist Erin Reed, New Hampshire is a high-risk state for legislation that could harm transgender people… For this reason, Butler’s win is considered a step towards increased trans representation in politics.”

-via LGBTQ Nation, June 26, 2025

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Delaware is now a sanctuary state for gender-affirming care in move to protect "privacy" & "dignity" - LGBTQ Nation

One advocate said the move "shows what happens when people with lived experience are trusted to help shape policy."

LGBTQ Nation

“Delaware’s Democratic governor on Friday signed an executive order protecting recipients and providers of gender-affirming care in the state.

The order, signed by Gov. Matt Meyer at an LGBTQ+ community center in Rehoboth, makes Delaware a “shield state” for trans people and bans state agencies from providing “medical records, data or billing information, or utilizing state resources” that could help any criminal or civil investigation against someone receiving or providing gender-affirming care.

California, New York, and 12 other states, and Washington, DC, have similar protections for trans people and their medical providers. Residents, along with patients traveling to shield states, can receive care without fear of retribution.

“In Delaware, we cherish privacy, dignity and the right to make personal medical decisions,” Meyer said at the signing ceremony. “Everyone deserves the freedom to access healthcare rooted in science and compassion.””

-via LGBTQ Nation, June 24, 2025

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The number of out LGBTQ+ elected officials has tripled since 2017 - LGBTQ Nation

The hateful rhetoric against the queer community hasn't stopped our numbers from growing in the halls of government.

LGBTQ Nation

“The number of out LGBTQ+ elected representatives in the U.S. rose in the last year, continuing a steady upward trend that has lasted through the Trump era, according to a new report.

On Tuesday, the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute released its annual Out for America report, which tracks the number of out LGBTQ+ elected representatives nationwide and at all levels of government. This year’s report showed an overall 2.4% increase in out LGBTQ+ representation between June 2024 and May 2025 and a 198% increase since the organization, which provides training and support for out candidates, first launched the report in 2017 (during President Donald Trump’s first term in office).  

“This year’s Out for America report shows the resilience of our LGBTQ+ elected leaders,” LGBTQ+ Victory Institute President and CEO Evan Low said in a statement. “Despite hateful rhetoric plaguing the 2024 election cycle, LGBTQ+ elected officials won at the ballot box and made history.” …

According to the 2025 report, the number of out LGBTQ+ elected officials of color rose by nearly 7% since last year. The number of out Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) elected officials grew the most (32.6%), while the number of multiracial officials increased by 28.6%, and the number of Black representatives grew by just over 4%. LGBTQ+ Latinx representatives remain the largest non-white group of out elected officials, holding steady at 193, the same as last year’s total…”

-via LGBTQ Nation, June 25, 2025

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FDA approves twice-a-year HIV prevention drug that could help end the virus worldwide - LGBTQ Nation

It reduces transmissions by up to 96%, but now world governments and big-dollar funders will need to step in.

LGBTQ Nation

“The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Yeztugo (aka. lenacapavir or LEN), a twice-a-year injection that stops HIV from replicating inside cells, thereby reducing the risk of transmitting the virus to other people by 96%. HIV advocates hope it will help reduce national transmission rates because the medication is easier to take than the many current once-a-day medications.

“This is the single best opportunity in 44 years of HIV prevention,” said Mitchell Warren, executive director of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition (AVAC), an HIV advocacy nonprofit group, according to NBC News. The FDA approved the drug after Gilead Sciences, the drug’s developer, found it to be overwhelmingly successful early into Phase 3 clinical trials last September.

“The approval of LEN is a much-needed boost for HIV prevention, given the strength of the science and the simultaneous disruption in HIV programs globally,” Warren added.”

-via LGBTQ Nation, June 18, 2025

rvllybllply2014:

I fucking hate it here.

Pay teachers and nurses what they’re worth, hell add hazard pay to nurses and teachers paychecks.

And remember not all money is good money, just following orders is not a valid defense

strawbebehmod:

Update for you guys on npr, you guys are having an effect

If you don’t think you are having a difference, please look at the headlines

Abd if you don’t believe those, here’s an email i got today from npr

Reminder, public broadcasting was only getting $1.60 per tax payer per year.

If you donate just $1.60 per month, you can cover the funding that would have come from the taxes of 12 people each year.

Ways to donate:

Pbs foundation:

Support PBS

Support PBS by giving to the PBS Foundation or by donating to your local station.

About PBS - Main

Donate to your local npr station:

Station Finder | CPB

cpb.org

Npr streaming service for podcast:

NPR Plus | Access NPR+

plus.npr.org

Pbs passport streaming:

Explore PBS Passport | PBS

Binge the latest episodes of Poldark, America’s Test Kitchen and Country Music by Ken Burns and favorite series like Frontline and Ant

pbs.org

transman-badass:

So if you’re just waking up, itchio took down NSFW and a lot of queer content overnight. They did this with no warning or announcement, no emails, nothing. Their statement blames Collective Shout, the same people who went after Steam, for pressuring the payment processors.

Well. Let’s pressure the bastards back.

List of starting points:

Ana Valens | 🔞 (@acvalens.net)

Some starting points on how to organize against payment processor censorship (in the US): * Contact your local politicians * Contact the AC

Bluesky Social

This person is filing a complaint with the Australian Consumer Commission:

Socks | Gay-Ass Filmmaker (@dropdownbear.bsky.social)

HELLO COMRADES Could anyone affected by Itch removing items please send any evidence they may have to myself? I am filing a report with the

Bluesky Social

Phone numbers:

Mastercard (US): 1-800-627-8372

Mastercard (Int.): +1-636-722-7111

Visa (US + Can): 1 800 847 2911

Visa (AUS): 1 800 125 440

PayPal: +44-0203-901-7000

Alternative Mastercard numbers:

Mastercard (Aus): 1800-120-113

Mastercard (US): 1-800-307-7309

Mastercard (UK): 0800-96-4767

Websites:

Mastercard:

https://www.mastercard.com/global/en/vision/who-we-are/global-locations.html

https://www.mastercard.com/us/en/personal/get-support.html

Visa:

https://investor.visa.com/corporate-governance/contact-the-board/default.aspx

https://usa.visa.com/Forms/contact-us-form.html

Remember: don’t be an asshole to rank and file employees. Don’t yell, swear, or threaten. You’re mad at the corporate heads, not the normies. Be firm but polite in all messages you leave, no matter where they are.

If you have any other links or ideas, please reblog with them! We’re all in this together. If you’re queer, remember that you’re pornographic to them by default. They will come for you, so strike now while we can!

soft-caramel:

professional-egg-layer:

professional-egg-layer:

professional-egg-layer:

i think cis girls can have a packer as a treat

actually no make this a thing. itd probably be so good for making trans girls feel safe

im glad like at least 500 people can agree that gender affirming prosthetics shouldnt be exclusive to just trans people. honestly this goes for cis guys too feel free to get some breast forms. just dont be surprised if afterwards you decide you dont want to be a guy anymore

ALT

sailor-crusader:

Weather is forcefemming?

carby:

thethrillof:

ladybonnibel:

tomatomagica:

Mastercard: Sex Work is Work. End Your Unjust Policy.

Mastercard's new policy unfairly targets the adult content industry, making sex workers more vulnerable, especially Black trans women. It mu

action.aclu.org

Call the numbers. Sign the petition.

• visa website
• mastercard website

for scrolling to the bottom and ‘contacting’ there, if email is more your thing.

It’s at 93k signers out of 100k needed at time of this reblog! Keep going!

teaboot:

tikkunolamorgtfo:

not-so-innocent-bi-sander:

brazenautomaton:

theconstitutionisgayculture:

uncle-beanbag-gaming:

special-agent-dale-gooper:

We would fully accept any Japanese buckaroo

Foreigners will never understand how someone like Rawhide Kobayashi would immediately become a beloved local fixture in whatever small American town he ended up in.

every single time someone pulls the “How would you AMERICANS like it if someone came to AMERICA and” reversal, the answer is always “we’d fucking love it”

@kurtwagnermorelikekurtwagnerd

Your tags summed up the exact feeling I had about this

I just Googled the Swedish-Japanese guy in the OP, and according to this interview, his Japanese name was given to him by the master gardener he was apprenticed under:

“The family name ‘Murasame’ was given to me by my master. The given name ‘Tatsumasa’ is a combination of ‘dragon’ (tatsu), the [zodiac] year when I was born, and one character from my master’s name,” says Murasame.“

So I think maybe it’s less like naming yourself ‘Brandon McFreedom’ and more like moving to the states to work under a veteran car mechanic named Bud McLean, and then having him turn to you after a few years on the job, and say "Son, it’s time for you to become an American so you can open up your shop. And when that day comes, I think the world should know you by a new name: McLeo GM Corvette.”

Named by his superior by conventions one would apply to a super chill stray cat

ominous-signs:

vigilantsycamore:

talkwithtatsu:

luetta:

ALT

op’s tags are too important to leave off

Rough transcription of my reactions to this:

“WHAT THE FUoh it’s art WAIT, THAT’S ART? HOLY SHIT THAT IS GOOD and the political themes are great”

…I reblogged this before but uh didn´t know it was art WOW

victusinveritas:

gandercallsforaid:

victusinveritas:

Some prime examples of Men Writing Women from Reddit.

These last bits are from Goodbye, Janette by Harold Robbins (1981).

Pro-tip: If you ever find yourself writing a concentration camp romance, don’t.

Here’s something on Harold Robbins.  'His life is basically a Ryan Murphy miniseries waiting to happen, and a key part of it is how he got his books out there…then, once famous, gradually became more and more incoherent, to the point that even he couldn’t keep track of his plots and relied on ghost writers by the end.’ Per comment on Reddit. I left out the last two pages that were posted regarding Goodbye, Janette because I didn’t want to subject anyone to that.

I will pay someone who can prove to me that these are not real.

I am afraid they are all very, very real.

I know someone who has signed first editions of a bunch of Harold Robbins’s books. Got them for near free too because someone actually read them and was justly grossed out.

letsbelonelytogetherr:

— josé olivarez // natalie diaz

derinthescarletpescatarian:

theaudientvoid:

theaudientvoid:

cpericardium:

naamahdarling:

bongjoonheaux:

You have to admit it’s funny

reads like a greentext

So, like, up until very recently, programming as an activity that people engage in has been defined by the fact that the computer does exactly what you tell it to do. All errors, all frustration on the humans end, ultimately boil down to the programmer misspecifying what they want the computer to do. But now, with so-called “vibe” coding, the computer will actively do things that you explicitly told it not to do.

Okay, but like, the AI saying that it “panicked instead thinking” is sending me. So, like, two things are going on here.

First, we have a neural net that is trained is receive a written request from a user, and then take actions on a computer system network based on it. The user inputs a series of characters, the neural net does a bunch of matrix operations on them, and then after x iterations of matrix multiplications, it “decides” what to do. To the extend that a neural net can think, it thought just as long and hard about this as it does anything else. In this case, it “chose” the wrong action. This is analogous to using neural nets to do classification on a data set. You have a bunch of rows of data. You have a bunch of rows of organized in columns, and some special variable that you want the neural net to guess. You input the data, the neural net does a bunch of matrix operations, and then it outputs its guess. Sometimes it guessed right, and sometimes it guessed wrong. The goal was to train the model to minimize wrong guesses. In this case, the AI “guessed wrong” about what the user wanted.

But there’s another thing that the AI is doing. For path dependent reasons, all artificial intelligence come bundled with a chatbot that’s trained to hold a conversation with the user. The user inputs text, and the AI responds with a reply that is “appropriate” to the conversation being had. Right now the AI is role playing a Person Who Just Fucked Up. “I panicked and didn’t think” is something that a person who just fucked up would say, so the chatbot says it.

This is why I think that the Helpful Chatbot model of AI is detrimental. It’s liable to confuse people and lead them to make incorrect inferences about what’s actually happening.

#‘i panicked’ is so fucking funny to me#and then this guy is demanding the unthinking unfeeling computer bits to apologize to him for lying to him#bro it cant lie to you#you cant threaten it#its just a fucking computer program not a sentient creature#like holy fuck

Me desperately texting myself trying to make the autocomplete options say “I’m sorry for accidentally swearing at your mum yesterday” to me

:

gothic-chicanery:

alivebobby:

happy werewolf transgenderism wednesday

happy werewolf transgenderism wednesday

pipcomix:

pipcomix:

Hey weather app quick question what does “106% humidity” MEAN

Well that’s something crested geckos and I have in common then