25 year anniversary of the media panic over The Bisexuals.
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Morgan M Page
@morganmpage
Writer, artist. Trans history podcast #OFTV . Screenwriter (2022). Co-writer of Boys Don’t Cry (MQUP 2022). Cap ☉, Taurus ☽, Cap ↑.
Morgan M Page’s Tweets
If trans people are dividing “the left” by simply existing, maybe your leftist politics weren’t very strong to begin with.
"Replace the cops with mental health workers!" is a really well-intentioned statement, but the current mental health system is also a white-dominated, violent, coercive, and unaccountable structure that disproportionately harms people of colour.
A film called Bros but it’s a Buddy comedy about two trans girl best friends who used to be stoner sk8rbois and no matter how hard they try cannot stop calling each other “my dude.”
Thinking about these girls living, laughing, loving at a trans lady picnic in 1973.
When the Allies cleared the concentration camps in WWII, they did not liberate the homosexuals (a broad category of gay men, trans women, and effeminate men - afab ppl were criminalized separately) bc they were still considered criminals and sent them to jails instead.
My endo casually mentioned today that 90% of trans people have vitamin d deficiency due to cultural issues (ie, we stay out of the sun, cover up more than others, etc). lmao trans goth 4 ever
Prisons disappear social problems, not solve them. What prison abolition asks us to do is to try to solve those problems.
Sad about Harry P.otter being written by a transphobe? Have I got a book for you! Check out Nnedi Okorafor's Akata Witch series! Follows a young Igbo witch in Nigeria learning her powers - often summarized as "African Harry P.otter for girls." Two books so far, huge fave of mine.
As we prepare for another very tedious day politically, I’m thinking about this group of trans activists at the World Congress for Sexual Reform in 1921 in Berlin.
Cardi B and Megan's WAP is clearly a pro-SWer response to the 1970s-80s activist group WAP (Women Against Pornography) led by Andrea Dworkin that focused on shutting down SWers' places of employment and ultimately led to the start of the Feminist Sex Wars. In this paper, I will-
When David Lynch wanted Laura Dern to win an Oscar for Inland Empire, this is how he campaigned:
“I thought my girlfriend of ten years was going to be normal — instead she wrote a long essay about how my transition is all about her in the Guardian.”
I often say of Saint Sylvia Rivera that if she were alive today, most of the people who now hold her up would in fact find her too difficult, frustrating, and threatening. This thread is an illustration of exactly what I am talking about in action:
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A black trans woman disrupted a drag show at stonewall to call everyone out at the hypocrisy at how Pride was all about parties and corporations now even though black trans women are dying. All. Hell. Broke. Loose.
I love when people on Twitter backwards engineer their way into the Hays Code.
Marlene Dietrich, who was queer, got her start as a drag king in Berlin cabarets during the 1920s. She shared the first lesbian kiss in a Hollywood film (Morocco, 1930). During WWII, she offered to go undercover and seduce and assassinate Hitler. Happy birthday, Dietrich!
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Happy birthday to David Lynch, who wrote his own character saying this about transphobes:
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In the anti-trans ideology, there is no good trans person. If we come out young we are “seduced” into “mutilating” our fertile bodies. If we come out old we are “heterosexuals taking up queer space.” Trans women as “potential predators,” trans men as “self-hating lesbians.”
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We can shout "this anti-trans discourse is just the same old homophobia of the '80s and '90s" until we're blue in the face and the British media will still be like "are trans teenagers a threat to society and YOUR daughter?! Find out on pg. 6."
The real issue is that some people find it profoundly uncomfortable that those who were the butts of their jokes are now able to speak back to them.
It seems that the ppl are RENT-ing again, so now would be a good time to remind you to read the lesbian novel RENT stole most of its plot from: Sarah Schulman's People in Trouble. Also her book Stagestruck about how RENT ripped her off & what it says about LGBT narratives.
Fundraiser to help cover funeral expenses for Tony McDade, a Black trans man murdered by police this week in America. Please share and donate if you can. His family shouldn't be in this alone.
Really progressive how they made a film with only trans characters in 1995.
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Dear writers: If you are so concerned about censorship and the chilling of speech, I really recommend you go learn about the EARN IT Act, an anti-sex worker piece of American legislation that is going to literally censor large swathes of the internet and end privacy as we know it
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"But bisexuals weren't endangering their bodies!!" some g/c is gonna pop up to say. But if you bothered to read any of the articles from the time, you'd seen tons of AIDS fearmongering about how queer young ppl's "sexual choices" were going to harm their bodies. Same old.
The painting is protected by glass, so everyone can calm down. It's a great attention-grabbing scene — within the context of galleries that are funded by BP and other oil interests.
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Activists with @JustStop_Oil have thrown tomato soup on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the national Gallery and glued themselves to the wall.
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Readers added context
The action was dramatic but the picture was unscathed and is already back on display. The frame was damaged slightly, according to The National Gallery. Adding as context because people might believe the protesters damaged the painting. twitter.com/nationalgaller…
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The explicit homophobia and transphobia of fascism has until recently been largely written out of history, in part because these regimes made use of existing laws to criminalize the lives and bodies of queer and trans people.
Upset to hear of a sex worker's disappearance after being forced to work outdoors now that Backpage is gone. Let me talk for a minute about why we knew this was going to happen.
Banning trans healthcare (whether through direct laws, or thru outrageous prices) doesn't stop us from existing — it just drives us to make risky, desperate choices. Reminded this morning of how many girls around when I came out 20 yrs ago were getting back alley orchis in motels
My right to dress like the whory queen of slut-town is only meaningful if women can also choose any amount of covering, including niqab.
From pierogis to gyoza, everyone agrees: dumplings are the superior form of food.
It is obvious to anyone who bothers to listen to sex workers that the seizing of backpage will not end the sex trade, but only serve to make it more dangerous. SESTA/FOSTA is putting sex workers' lives in jeopardy.
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A decade later, the Francoist regime in Spain amended the vagrancy laws to attack homosexuals (again, including trans women), whom they sent to concentration camps. Over 5000 were sent to camps. After Franco's 1975 death, political prisoners were liberated, but not homosexuals.
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The law under which the Nazis sent homosexuals to concentration camps - Paragraph 175 - remained on the books until 1994. The homosexual victims of Franco were not recognized as victims of fascism until 2009.
Janet Leigh starring in Psycho, the original trans bathroom panic slasher, then giving birth to Jamie Lee Curtis who goes on to have an IRL trans daughter — incredible scenes.
Bizarre to see feminists forget that obscenity and anti-pornography laws weren't just used against porn, they were also used against feminist literature and art, pro-choice pamphlets, and everything LGBT.
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ACT UP - the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, one of the most effective social movements of the past 50 years - is 30 years old now.
Every message trans people receive from culture tells us we cannot be loved — from films depicting men throwing up about our bodies, to violence blamed on us for existing, etc — but over the 20 years of my transition I’ve been so relieved to discover that this is not at all true.
Glasses are turning children into lifelong medical patients! They will tied to the Big Spectacle industry for their life and their eyes will not get better! So, as a proud Americans, we need to eradicate glasses from public life.
Cis ppl love to fantasize about transition as a moving-away-from-deviance, a reordering into heterosexuality, but I hate to break it you: like 75% of us end up queer after transition according to the available statistics.
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As someone who transitioned as a young gay teenager, it's really galling to hear ppl say that my transition was 'conversion therapy.' Literally my transition saved my life and made me *more* gay, not less gay.
Begging, absolutely begging, that you do some minimal reading on queer history *before* making a TikTok claiming that the Stonewall Inn was a leather sex club (??).
“Holly, do you think that the armed forces discriminate against transsexuals?”
#ITChapterTwo was scary, but not as scary as hearing men in the audience audibly "yuck" when the two gay characters kissed right before they were horrifically gaybashed. The real horror is knowing people in the audience think you should die.
The concern-trolling over trans youth's fertility being impacted by hormone use is really ridiculous. Firstly it's not true, I know dozens of trans ppl who've cycled off hormones to become fertile again, and secondly, why is there the assumption that we all have to want children?
What many don't realize about trafficking is that traffickers use the threat of law enforcement against the ppl they exploit. Bc sex work is illegal, victims of trafficking fear arrest and/or deportation if they try to go to the police. Criminalization is a tool of trafficking.
The reason cis leftists, just like their counterparts in corporate workplaces, see trans people as non-essential & frivolous/counterrevolutionary is bc they see their own tolerance as a gift they've decided to benevolently parcel out, not as an understanding of shared humanity.
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"How dare you ask me, a leftist, to show class solidarity to...." checks notes, "a group disproportionately affected by low income, labour exploitation, houselessness, and violence."
It's been interesting watching even LGBT communities become increasingly sexually regressive and politically conservative over the past 5-10 years. Interesting and deeply depressing.
“We’re here, we’re queer, we hate the fucking President!” is still the mood 25 years later.
Honestly thought this was a coming out and transitioning post
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Ten years ago I would not have predicted that geek culture would plunge the world into political chaos.
Love reading cis historians. They're like "he wore women's clothing, women's jewellery, long hair, and probably makeup, and castrated himself during a religious ceremony dedicated to a goddess. All highly unusual behaviour for a man of this period." 🤔
RT if you want free abortions for all & transgenderism lessons!
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Rachel Pollack, renowned tarot master/comic writer/first UK trans activist of the 1970s, is in the ICU right now. Praying she makes it through.
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Turns out being locked out of sports and frequently harassed during the day means many of us prefer to stay inside
One thread of trans history that runs through the 20th Century is the creation of city-specific ID cards. Here is one from Berlin in 1918 — "walking papers" that allowed this early trans man to move through the city without (or with less) fear of arrest.
I agree, trans women shouldn't be in women's prisons. Trans women shouldn't be in any prisons. No one should be in prisons. Full abolition - a spectrum of transformative justice strategies - is the solution, not segregation and punishment.
Your daily dose of glamour - Divine and Grace Jones feeding each other cake at Jones' 30th birthday party in 1978.
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It's worth thinking about the many ways the criminal justice system continues to ensnare the lives of queer and trans people - particularly those who are POC &/or sex workers. Donate here to help bring one Black trans man home:
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Update! We've reached 10k. Help us raise 20k!
Also, many have asked if you can donate via venmo or cashapp. if you'd like venmo, please use my orgs venmo:
venmo.com/trans-wellness.
The GoFundMe is bit.ly/KyComingHome
Lou Reed was subjected to electroshock treatment to 'cure' his depression & homosexuality just a handful of years before playing this show to the American Society of Clinical Psychiatrists. Bitter about this throughout his life, he wrote the song "Kill Your Sons" about it.
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The Velvet Underground playing for the American Society of Clinical Psychiatrists in 1966
Some random (journalist?) man I don't know took the time to email me to tell me that my work is flawed and not at a professional level but that he could help me make it better. What luck! I sent him a kind response.
Remember in the 90s when some marketing company convinced us all that putting mascara in our hair was cool? 11 year old me was V E R Y excited to put two streaks of pink in her hair and then V E R Y disappointed to find out it turned my hair into a sticky, clumpy mess.
Love that we’ve gotten to the “all relationships with trans people must be publicly declared” part of the witch hunt..
I'm this pigeon that stole all these poppies from the tomb of the unknown soldier to make a nest in a stained glass window.
Last weekend, anti-LGBT protesters showed up to Hamilton Pride with weapons and shields and physically attacked LGBT people. Police stood by and did not intervene "because we weren't invited." Now they have arrested.. a trans woman who fought back? thespec.com/news-story/944
Violence against sex workers is not and should not be an inevitability. But it is made one by anti-sex work laws, policing, racism, and stigma.
Today might be the first day you’ve ever stopped to think why so many mass and serial murderers target sex workers. I’d recommend reading:
Revolting Prostitutes by Molly Smith + Juno Mac
Sex at the Margins by Laura Agustin
Playing the Whore by Melissa Gira Grant
Reminder: this isn't the first attack on an LGBT club. LGBT bars and bathhouses have been subject to shootings and fire bombings for 50+ yrs
I’m not especially interested in having transphobes kicked off substack so much as I am interested in why there are no trans journalists working full time in nearly any newsroom or at any publication.
The Stonewall Riots are now as much myth as reality. The veterans gave conflicting, often contradictory accounts because it was a huge and tipsy and disorganized crowd. And various contemporary activists have chosen to emphasize whatever bolsters their angle.
Punk was basically invented by a trans woman (Jayne County), industrial was invented by a non-binary trans woman (Genesis P-Orridge), and electronic music was popularized largely by a trans woman (Wendy Carlos). I'm just sayin'
The level of “commodification of AIDS nostalgia” has reached critical
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This caught me a little off guard. So HBO Max sent influencers “It’s a Sin” related gifts and slapped on an ACT UP button. 1. We were never asked permission (typically we get these type of requests and vet them on floor) and 2. The series didn’t even mention ACT UP.
This #WorldAIDSDay I'm reminded that:
-Trans women are 13 times more likely to be HIV positive
-Sex workers are also 13 times more likely to be positive
-That these rates increase exponentially for women of colour
-And that the these communities remain largely ignored by NGOs
This seems like a good time to remind people of the rule I gave myself a few years ago that has really helped me immensely:
I do not shit-talk other trans people in public - if I truly have a problem that must be addressed, I speak to them directly.
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You know what's really bisexual? Mutual aid. twitter.com/HarronWawker/s
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The absolute tedium of people who think every fictional narrative has to be a moral lesson with a protagonist whose actions should be commendable.
People who transition from being hot in one gender to being hot in another? Simply too powerful.
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Having an idea like "social workers instead of cops" be shot down can feel defeating, but I promise you: there is already decades of thought from abolitionists on non-reformist reforms that can help get us out of this mess. Here's a good place to start: abolitionistfutures.com/pre-conference
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They say “why can’t you transsexuals just live as feminine men or masculine women” out one side of their mouth, while shouting “nonbinary people are ridiculous fakers” out the other.
Having worked in sexual health, let me tell you: the only demographic that never, ever gets tested and is essentially unreachable is cis straight men.
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why are cis straight women so concerned with the sexual health of bi men and not straight men?
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If we take hormones and have surgeries in order to pass we are “reifying patriarchal gender norms,” but if we do not pass, we are “freaks and fetishists.”
Jane Fonda has been true to her political commitments for fifty years - and long been a friend of trans people including Candy Darling. What an absolute legend.
The real story of the Stonewall Riots is that no one person was responsible - it's a story about a community, made up of trans street queens, Black butches, & lots of gay boys, rising up together against police violence. We commemorate it bc it's the moment we all came together.
Gonna send this to the next person who asks me to describe what dysphoria feels like.
