Or vice versa, etc. with some caveats (see below). As per the Wikipedia article on gender fluidity:

A genderfluid person may fluctuate among different gender expressions over their lifetime, or express multiple aspects of various gender markers simultaneously.

As I understand it, these gender markers might not be the same as sexual characteristics. For example, a person with feminine clothing and a penis could be a trans woman or femboy depending on what traits they consider defining of their gender, and might be intersex or not. Not to mention non-committal states like gender questioning and exploration, or crossdressing for entertainment or a Gerudo Town visit. They can find terms like "nonbinary" and "genderfluid" derogatory, especially if they encompass a trait they are indifferent to, dysphoric or sensitive about.

Am I wrong about something here?

A San Francisco-based coffee chain that sparked backlash with a policy to remove Pride flags from their stores has reversed its decision over a week later.

“I made a mistake and I am sincerely sorry,” said Mahesh Sadarangani, the chief executive of Philz Coffee, in a statement on Friday. “The Pride flag is a symbol of safety and belonging for people who don’t always find that in the world, and that is not something I want to take away from anyone who walks into a Philz.”

Last week, in a statement to the Guardian, Sadarangani framed the move as a step toward inclusivity. He said other flags would also come down for consistency.

Backlash from Philz Coffee’s workers and customers was swift. An online petition expressing opposition to the policy, which appeared to be started by company baristas, racked up more than 7,300 signatures. The company has built a reputation on being an ally to the LGBTQ+ community. outside of building marked 'department of education'

H.J.R. 182 says that heterosexual families are “God’s design for familial structure” and includes a list of statistics about “fatherless homes.” Anti-LGBTQ+ advocates usually cite the difference in outcomes for kids raised in single-parent households as evidence that same-sex couples are bad at raising children, even though the science shows that kids who come from queer families fare just as well as kids who come from straight families.

The resolution also denounces the “humanistic, globalist ideologies of the World Health Organization, the United Nations, and like-minded organizations that fight for population control.”

The ’50s marked the heyday of so-called “physique” or “beefcake” magazines, some of the horniest documents in queer history. Photographers like Bob Mizer, founder of the iconic Physique Pictorial, published thousands of pages of nearly naked male bodies. Flick through the pages and you could expect to see homoerotic poses featuring sailors and cowboys, bulges straining through skimpy briefs and an occasional sprinkling of oiled-up grappling. The beefcake phenomenon wasn’t unique to the U.S. In Montreal, famed photographer Alan B. Stone turned his lens on Canada’s sexiest men, selling his beefcake prints via mail order. His risqué images were advertised in the back pages of publications like Physique Pictorial; naturally, they arrived in discreet packaging. In a world before mainstream videos of hardcore gay porn, these magazines obviously made their way into many a suburban gay spank bank, but they offered more than just eye candy.

Historian David K. Johnson chronicled the impact of this overlooked queer history in his 2019 book Buying Gay: How Physique Entrepreneurs Sparked a Movement. “I had a sense that [physique magazine] readers felt empowered by these magazines because they were mass-produced,” he tells Xtra. “That meant there were thousands of other men out there doing the same thing.” Readers could find one another through letters sections—where they could sometimes find the models too. In Grecian Guild Pictorial, Johnson says, there would be a “Grecian of the Month” pin-up pictured next to his name and street address. “It wasn’t a formal system, but it became clear to me that the biggest commodity they were selling—in addition to the images—was this access to other people. It was basically analogue social media.”

There are congregations that would brand her a sinner. But here at St. Cecilia’s Roman Catholic Church in Boston, Rachel Burckardt gives voice to the angels.

She’s 71, transgender, a civil engineer by day, and a composer of spiritual music by nights and weekends.

While religion has been used for decades to ostracize many transgender people, Burckardt has found that faith drives acceptance in her community. It has been the bedrock on which she has formed her closest friendships, found moral clarity in challenging times and built radically inclusive communities in greater Boston.

Burckardt’s music is not unlike her life. She aims to produce something bright and whole, but what makes it good, she thinks, is an element, maybe a minor chord or note, that hits the ear differently, that gives it depth or sadness.

“It’s kind of like what goes along with some gender ambiguity,” she said. “It starts out off in unison and breaks into these not too difficult, but just unexpected chords.”

On Transgender Day of Visibility, a Romanian appellate court ordered the government to recognize a transgender man's gender identity on state documents—the first known court enforcement of a landmark 2024 ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union. That ruling requires all member states to recognize legal gender changes obtained elsewhere in the bloc. The Bucharest Tribunal's decision is final and cannot be appealed. While the ruling directly applies only to transgender people who obtained gender recognition documents in another EU country, it sets a significant precedent in a nation that ranks dead last among all 27 EU member states on LGBTQ+ rights, according to ILGA-Europe's 2025 Rainbow Map.

[…]

The ruling does have significant limitations. It applies only to transgender people who obtained legal gender recognition in another EU member state—it does not help trans Romanians who have never left the country and remain trapped in Romania's domestic procedure, which the European Court of Human Rights condemned in 2021 but which remains unchanged. As the Reuters noted in its analysis of the underlying CJEU decision, "as the litigation in this case was focused on freedom of movement rights, it means the process for Romanian citizens seeking to change legal gender remains unchanged."

What most people likely don't realize with today's news is that sex testing is as old as the modern Olympics. As soon as women were allowed to compete in the games, there were rumors and complaints that the women on the track were simply not womanly. In the 1930s, sports organizations forced women into what are now known as the "nude parades," in which they asked every woman to get naked in front of a panel of doctors so that they could decide if they looked womanly enough.

Covering sex testing is a lot like documenting a twisted and deeply unethical game of whack-a-mole. The same bad ideas, incorrect assertions, and misguided policies pop up over and over and over again. Today, the mole that has popped up is genetic sex testing. We last saw this particular policy emerge in the 1960s, when every woman who competed in the Olympics was forced to go through an unreliable genetic test looking for Y chromosomal material — a test that about 1 in 500 women failed. (Surprise! Lots of women have Y chromosomal material in their cells.) The women who passed this test got a "femininity certificate" they had to carry with them to every single competition. Those who "failed" were told to fake an injury and leave.

We have no idea how many women that happened to. They were sent home quietly and told to give up their dreams. Researchers, doctors, ethicists, and athletes spent decades fighting these policies, and in 1999, the IOC finally dropped genetic screenings for female athletes.

Today’s test is different, but it’s not necessarily more reliable. Even the scientist who discovered the gene that the IOC is using for this new test has spoken up against this type of policy.

Thought David Scott did a great job here.

Im 28, ive known that im non binary for about 8 years. I dont experience much dysphoria so I havent thought much about any kind of transition, outside of facial hair removal. But lately, ive been thinking it would be really euphoric to have some modest mommy milkers. Has anyone here done a small amount of transitioning to achieve tiny titties? Or if you were endowed with a small chest by your first puberty, are there any thoughts you feel would be good for me to know?

“As the Director of the Rutherford County Library System, I am professionally and ethically bound to uphold the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution,” James said in an email to the Library Board. “Public libraries serve as vital repositories of diverse ideas, both popular and unpopular. Restricting access to these materials through subjective relocation or removal constitutes a violation of the community’s right to information and a direct infringement on the principles of free speech. Our libraries are funded by and for the citizens; therefore, the right to access information—free from government interference—is a protected hallmark of our democracy.

“The 8-3 vote by the Library Board on March 16th to relocate over 100+ LGBTQIA children’s titles to the adult section is a clear act of viewpoint discrimination. Furthermore, the vote to move the books was done without following the library's established Request for Reconsideration policy. My duty to protect public access is not merely a personal opinion; it is a core tenet of the American Library Association’s Code of Ethics. As an arm of the county government, the Board cannot legally limit the public’s access to materials owned by the people based on the content of the ideas expressed within them.

“Therefore, I will not comply with the Board’s decision to relocate these books. Doing so would violate the First Amendment right of all citizens of Rutherford County and myself. Consequently, I would compromise my professional obligation to oppose government-mandated viewpoint discrimination.”

The Idaho House voted to advance a new flag bill on Thursday, sending a bill to the Senate that serves as a revised effort from the legislature to bar the Pride flag from being flown in Boise.

House Bill 561, sponsored by Rep. Ted Hill, R-Eagle, expands upon House Bill 96, which was signed by Gov. Brad Little last April. That law prohibits government entities, including universities and public schools, from displaying flags other than the United States flag, the official flag of a governmental entity, the official flags of any states in the U.S., the official flags of any military branches, the POW/MIA flag, or the official flags of Indian tribes.

The bill considered on the House Floor on Thursday is an amended version of legislation Hill introduced to the House State Affairs Committee in February to tighten restrictions on which flags local governments could fly. Concerns raised by individuals who testified and by House members at the hearing led to the addition of several exceptions.

cross-posted from: https://lemmyverse.link/lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/39660311

title of this one is Saw

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/39623964

Ahead of International Women's Day, several WeChat public accounts advocating for women's and minority rights were shut down

Ahead of International Women's Day, multiple WeChat public accounts advocating for women's and minority rights were shut down. According to incomplete statistics, the banned accounts include: "Xiaowusheng Psychology," an organization focusing on mental health for sexual minorities; "Dongxia Primavera," which addresses feminist and leftist youth issues; "Letters from Two Strangers," a Gen Z feminist account; "HerStoryNow" run by grassroots feminist groups, "自由娜拉NORA" (Freedom NORA), an independent media outlet focusing on human trafficking and the rights of people with mental disabilities, "Belonging Space," a team dedicated to the mental health of women and sexual minorities, "流放地" (Place of Exile) advocating for sexual minority rights, and "艾大荀," an account operated by female public welfare activists.

Such mass bans seem to occur annually, like some kind of sacrificial ritual. My recollection is that the first instance happened during IDAHOTB in 2021. Back then, on WeChat's interface, banned public accounts would display as "Untitled Public Account（未命名公众号）." In response, some members of the LGBTQ+ community added the prefix "Untitled（未命名）" to their online aliases as a form of protest. Yet now people have even grown accustomed to it.

Organisers have been given the go ahead to create the Byun Huisu Foundation, a non-profit which will work to protect trans South Koreans from political and societal transphobia.

What was originally supposed to be a 20-day deliberation turned into a two-year debacle after an application to create the foundation was submitted in May 2024.

The decision was repeatedly delayed over opposition from a conservative member of South Korea’s human rights regulator, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRCK), who routinely voted against fellow members of the watchdog’s standing commissioners.

She spent a year in U.S. detention before being shipped to Cameroon.

The letters threaten prison time if trans people don't get new driver's licenses with no notice.

A recent article from Jesse Singal in the New York Times seemed to indicate the organization might be quietly retreating from supporting trans youth care.

“No, APA’s position has not changed,” says a representative speaking for the APA, attaching a link to their 2024 policy statement which provided broad support for gender-affirming care. “APA continues to support unobstructed access to evidence-based care for transgender and gender-diverse individuals of all ages.”