Today the governor of Texas released an official statement directing Family and Protective Services to investigate families of transgender minors on allegations of child abuse (with the intention of separating trans children from their families). It includes a “duty to report”, directing those who know or suspect the existence of a trans child to report it.
This is not a law, nor is it technically actively enforceable. But it is an official statement by a governor that WILL cause real consequences. It also emerges from all of the OTHER anti-trans legislation in action.
30/50 U.S. states are currently proposing legislation against the existence of trans minors (or sometimes people up to 21 years old).
As a trans person who transitioned as a minor in one of these states, I’ve been fighting against these laws for years with little to no news coverage. I am begging for people to care about this. These laws prohibit access to gender-affirming care, accuse families of trans minors of child abuse, jail doctors, and prohibit trans people from playing in sports. Some of these laws have already passed. Some are going to.
Here is a thread of resources in regards to what is happening in Texas right now.
Here’s a thread of GoFundMes of Texas families of trans children who are trying to move out of the state.
Here is a website where you can track these anti-trans bills in the U.S., see what is happening in your state, and see what action you can take.
Stay safe. Protect and uplift trans youth.
Black kids deserve to be treated like kids.
Black kids deserve to be able to grow up at their own pace instead of being held to adult standards as children.
Black kids deserve to grow up without fear that white adults will somehow feel “threatened” by them and make them suffer for it.
Black kids deserve a safe place to unload their thoughts and feelings without being belittled or punished for it.
Black kids deserve a support system.
Black kids deserve to be taken seriously.
Black kids deserve to take up space.
Idk who needs to hear this, but you are not damaged goods, you are not less than and you are not bread that is several days old. You are still you, you are worthy and will always be. You are wanted and you are needed, sometimes it is just a matter of figuring out where you fit in. You deserve to be appreciated and to feel appreciated, and you will, you just gotta hang in there and don’t give up. 🌸
An old and homely grandmother accidentally summons a demon. She mistakes him for her gothic-phase teenage grandson and takes care of him. The demon decides to stay at his new home.
Flautist Melissa Jefferson plays slaver James Madison's 200-year-old crystal flute in the Library of Congress.
Inktober #24 Silent Hill 3’s Heather and Valtiel
Abusive parents are the only ones who go convincing their children they don’t deserve basic resources and need to be grateful for being allowed to have any. First, you have to be grateful for having a roof under your head, then you have to be grateful that you get to eat food, then you have to express gratitude for being able to own clothing, then for being allowed basic resources like books and a bag so you can go to school, you have to be grateful for a ride, for a bed to sleep in, for being allowed to live.
These are not things that should require any gratitude. Every child brought in this world has every right to food, shelter, comfort, clothing and any other resource they need to feel safe and happy and to develop all the interests and hobbies they want to. Anything else is unacceptable. Do we bring children in this world just to have them fear for their own lives? Do we have children so we could starve them, have them hurt or killed with cold and heat, to deny them living space and right to comfort? Do we bring children in the world so we could torture them? If not, then there’s no fucking reason they should be grateful they aren’t being killed on purpose.
What abusive parents are trying to do is make the child feel it’s not allowed to exist anywhere past the boundaries the parents set. If they can convince a child they don’t have a right to living space, next thing they can convince the child is that having their personal living space is selfish, that they’re taking living space from someone else, who actually deserves it, and acting out of bounds when they want to move out. It makes sure children don’t ask for money, so they can’t accumulate money and escape. Hell, it even makes sure that when children are offered money they don’t feel they’ve earned, they’ll refuse it, and it will make it a lot harder for children to get financially safe and independent if they come into adulthood strongly believing they deserve nothing. They will work for next to no wages. They will struggle so hard. Survival will become something terrifying and out of bounds and will force them to come back to parents.
You take your living space as you please. You eat and spend all you can. You take everything and live wherever you want. The assholes don’t get to tell you what you deserve or not. The monsters don’t get to define where or how you’re allowed to exist. Those who would force gratitude for things you have every right to, actually have nothing on you. You do not owe them shit. You were in fact, entitled to the living space the second you were born. You were entitled to food and clothes and any resource you needed. What’s more, you were entitled to loving parents who would make sure you grow up unharmed, healthy and with the best start in life they could have possibly given you. You were entitled to more than they ever gave you. It’s them who owe you a childhood. It’s them who owe you a home and a family. Not you who owes them because sometimes they would remember they in fact had a kid, and it was in fact, illegal not to feed and clothe them. Fuck the guilt tripping. You deserve more than they gave you.
I need each and every person who sees this to pay attention to what is going on with the Indian Child Welfare Act.
The same SCOTUS that refered to tribal land as a territory of the state is about to hear a case that might overturn ICWA.
ICWA allows Alaska Natives and Native Americans control over the adoption and foster care placement of Native American and Alaska Children. In practice what this ensures is that if a Native American or Alaska Native child cannot be raised with their parents', the extended family will be given custody. If the extended family cannot care for the child, the child is placed with a family in their tribe or, barring that, with a family who is Native American or Alaska Native.
This act is important for two reasons:
For centuries, Native Americans and Alaska Natives were forcibly assimilated into White culture. From the 1800s to the late 1900s, children were taken from their families and either adopted out to White people or put in boarding schools. If parents refused, they were sometimes incarcerated, and they could lose custody of their other children. There are cases where tribes would hide their children and tell people who came that they had none...so the white people started showing up uannounced. The children sent to these schools were abused. Some were murdered. And survivors still live with the trauma. ICWA was passed to stop this...but not even 50 years after it being passed, it's at risk.
Native Americans and Alaska Natives are constitutionally guaranteed sovereignty. We all know the government picks and chooses when it wants to honor that, but Native Americans and Alaska Natives are supposed to have sovereignty. The idea that one country can step in and tell sovereign tribes and nations that they are not allowed to control the placement of their own children should be absurd. The U.S. doesn't tell Britain what to do with their foster care system...but the SCOTUS knows that Native Americans and Alaska Natives don't have an army or navy like Britain does. Because of this the SCOTUS believes it has the right to violate years of precedent and treaties. It knows that it will be protected no matter what it decides.
So I'm asking people to keep an eye on ICWA. I'm asking them to boost the signal. And I'm asking them to protest if it falls.
FANTASTIC.
Saving people, hunting things
I had this in mind for happening sometime after Stanford manages to somehow un-goldify himself.
Sorry, Eight Ball but not really