Pride month is all about celebrating the queer experience and showing the world that there’s no shame in loving who you love, but being queer isn’t always glitter and rainbows. Sometimes it’s tears and secrets and a seemingly never-ending stream of challenges. Over the years, comic creators have shown an eagerness to explore these different facets of queerness in their work, whether they’re telling grounded autobiographical stories or heightened genre tales. There’s a wide world of queer comics to explore, and these 9 picks offer strong starting points that approach LGBTQ+ content from different angles.
Category: Gender Identity
Transgender women’s right to use Hampstead Heath ponds acknowledged – BBC News
The rights of transgender women to use a women-only pond in north London have been acknowledged in a new policy.
Swimmers on Hampstead Heath will be able to use ponds “aligning with their gender identity”, the City of London Corporation’s (CoLC) has said.
Admission will be granted on a case-by-case basis under the policy.
However, Stonewall said the 2010 Equality Act already protected trans people from being discriminated against when accessing services.
via Transgender women’s right to use Hampstead Heath ponds acknowledged – BBC News
YouTube removes advertising from account accused of homophobic abuse | Technology | The Guardian
Carlos Maza, a video journalist for the US news site Vox, went public last week with a complaint that the rightwing YouTube personality Steven Crowder was engaged in a long-term homophobic harassment campaign. In a compilation video Maza created of some of his mentions on Crowder’s show, the host attacks Maza as a “gay Mexican”, a “lispy queer” and a “token Vox gay atheist sprite”.
via YouTube removes advertising from account accused of homophobic abuse | Technology | The Guardian
Survey finds 70% of LGBT people sexually harassed at work | UK news | The Guardian
Nearly seven in 10 lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) people have been sexually harassed at work, according to research for the Trades Union Congress revealing a “hidden epidemic”.
The survey, published on the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia on Friday, found that more than two in five LGBT people (42%) said they had experienced colleagues making unwelcome comments or asking unwelcome questions about their sex life. More than a quarter (27%) reported receiving unwelcome verbal sexual advances.
Two-thirds (66%) said they did not tell their employer about the harassment, and a quarter of these said it was because they were afraid of being “outed” at work.
The survey found LGBT women were more likely to experience unwanted touching and sexual assault at work. More than a third (35%) reported experiencing unwanted touching, for example hands placed on their lower back or knee.
via Survey finds 70% of LGBT people sexually harassed at work | UK news | The Guardian
Muhlaysia Booker, a Black Trans Woman Who Was Brutally Attacked in April, Has Been Killed
In April, Muhlaysia Booker, a black trans woman, was brutally beaten in broad daylight in an attack that was captured on video. This past weekend, she was shot and killed in Dallas. Booker was 23 years old.
According to the Dallas Police Department’s Vincent Weddington, officers responded to a 911 call early Saturday morning and found Booker “lying facedown in the street, deceased from homicidal violence.” She was identified a day later. Booker is at least the fourth black trans woman to be shot and killed in 2019, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
via Muhlaysia Booker, a Black Trans Woman Who Was Brutally Attacked in April, Has Been Killed
What the Equality Act Means for LGBTQ and Women's Rights
Currently, there are no explicit federal laws protecting LGBTQ individuals from discrimination. In roughly 26 states, you can still be fired for being LGBTQ, for example (though on the state or city level, there may be local laws that protect LGBTQ individuals). There is also no explicit federal law barring discrimination of women in public businesses.
via What the Equality Act Means for LGBTQ and Women's Rights
How Do We Make Cis Men Give a Shit About Abortion?
Anti-abortion activists have been bashing away at abortion’s legality and accessibility for decades, but the past two weeks have been especially dramatic. On May 15th, Alabama passed the most restrictive law in the nation, which would grant no exceptions for rape or incest victims; this on the heels of Georgia’s so-called “heartbeat” bill that aims to ban abortions after six weeks, before the vast majority of people will even realize that they’re pregnant.
Inside this maelstrom of terrible laws came Alyssa Milano’s ill-conceived and not even real sex strike, which continued to show up in news stories and across social media as Missouri passed its own near total abortion ban. Milano’s announcement (which can be read in its original tweet form here) justifiably set off an avalanche of angry (and witty) rebukes, most of which lodged the same objections: such a strike is predicated on heteronormativity and gender essentialism; it positions sex as labor, as though we have sex with as our bosses; it doesn’t account for the striker’s own desire for sexual pleasure and intimacy; and it flirts with the conservative talking point that fertile cis women shouldn’t have penis-in-vagina (PIV) sex unless they intend to carry any resulting pregnancy to term.
Poly Parents Are Losing Custody of Their Kids In Brutal Divorce Battles – MEL Magazine
Naomi had been married to her husband David for 15 years when he asked her if she was open to trying polyamory. After some hesitation, she agreed, and the two joined a lifestyle group called True Friends and Lovers in Alexandria, Virginia, in the D.C. area. Although neither had actually slept with another person outside the marriage yet, Naomi, a preschool owner, found that joining the group was a completely transformative experience. “Here I was being exposed to this whole lifestyle,” she recalls, “and I felt like I had probably [wanted to be] polyamorous my whole life.”
Eventually, Naomi (a pseudonym) befriended Eric, a man within the community who lived with his wife and an additional female partner. After a few months, Naomi began seeing Eric romantically. It was around that point that David started to become uncomfortable with her involvement with the poly community, despite the fact that he had also been intimate with other women in the community. “He’d be fine for a couple days, and then he’d say, ‘This isn’t how I wanna live my life,’” Naomi says. “Then he’d ask, ‘When’s the next party?’”
via Poly Parents Are Losing Custody of Their Kids In Brutal Divorce Battles – MEL Magazine
YouTube Is (Still) Silencing LGBTQ Sex Ed – MEL Magazine
YOUTUBE IS (STILL) SILENCING LGBTQ SEX ED
Why it’s doing so is unclear, but the impact — shutting down one of the few places the queer community can get good information about sex — is undeniable
via YouTube Is (Still) Silencing LGBTQ Sex Ed – MEL Magazine
Birmingham LGBT lessons: Head teacher threatened – BBC News
A head teacher at a primary school giving lessons on LGBT equality has received threatening emails and phone calls.
Police are investigating messages sent to Sarah Hewitt-Clarkson at Anderton Park Primary School in Birmingham.
There have been seven weeks of protests outside the site from which “hundreds” of pupils were kept away on Monday.
Birmingham MP Jess Phillips has called for an exclusion zone at the school to limit where people can demonstrate.
Ms Hewitt-Clarkson has branded the protests aggressive.
The city council is looking into Ms Phillips’ request, with the authority’s leader saying some outside the school are “peddling hatred”.
via Birmingham LGBT lessons: Head teacher threatened – BBC News