Oh, it's her! I remember seeing her video of the incident in the cheesecake factory. I'm so happy that she's continuing. Not only that I love that she's using her platform to push some education about trans people, though certainly it's not her responsibility to do so. :)

No worries, and no need to apologize!

I'll admit coming off of other social media spaces (looking at you, Reddit), I'm consistently (and pleasantly) surprised at the kind of interaction here. I'm so used to having to defend myself that I sometimes read hostility where there's really no hint of it at all.

And yeah, I'm happy that we're starting to see some representation out there. As a kid I pretty much just had Jerry Springer or Ace Ventura as far as representation of what trans people are, and let me say that was not at all helpful to a young kid trying to figure out what these feelings were.

We stopped punishing left-handedness. As an example: children used to be taught only how to write with their right hand, and using the left hand would result in punishment -- such as the hand being hit with yardsticks or the child being verbally abused -- until the child forced themselves to write with their right hand.

It's not that this instance is meant to be an echo chamber, it's that it's meant to be welcoming, inclusive, and queer friendly. Saying that we're over-represented, ackshually, isn't really contributing to the discussion other than to tell us that our lived experiences of being under-represented are wrong. It implies that a statistical/percentage-based over-representation of a minority group is a somehow a bad thing. Less charitably, it sounds awfully similar to being told to sit down, shut up, and be happy with what we've got.

Oh, I by no means think that other minority groups are more well off when it comes to representation.

I'm just coming at this from my own personal lens, being well aware that any representation of trans folk as normal would have gone a long way for me as a child. So that's what I advocate for, but by no means do I feel we need to tear others down to get where we need to be.

Whether or not that stat is true, I don't think that minority representation should be accurately reflected based on the percentage of the population the minority represents. Just as an example, if we're talking about television shows, and let's just throw out a number that there are 100 major characters across all of the major networks/most watched shows. That would mean all LGBTQ+ representation is contained to 5 characters.. The chance of any one non-invested viewer seeing those characters becomes minimal -- which means that both cishet folks aren't getting exposed to minority representation (something that helps normalize us), and LGBTQ+ folks aren't getting exposed to minority representation (something that helps our own confidence and mental health).

Yeah, these replies are not at all what I expected to see coming into this thread. When did we decide that this is enough representation, and why did no one ask me?

What the everloving fuck was that ad, holy shit. Seriously, that's a political ad? Supposed to make us like the guy?

Well, no, I suppose it's supposed to make people like me afraid. And I suppose on some level, yes, I'm very afraid for myself and for the country in general if Desantis somehow gets his way and wins the presidency.

Oh thank god my home state of MN is on that list!

Honestly, Minnesota (at least in the cities) is super queer-friendly from my experience. The latest legislative session has put some pretty positive things in the books and have enshrined the state as a trans refuge.

In the last year I've been in the process of transitioning and my coming out couldn't have gone smoother. No one's given me anything more than a passing glance as, I assume, they try to figure out my gender. But even that's been kept to themselves and I've heard nothing but respect for my name and pronouns when I've been out and about.

Yeah, it's both an overarching label for the LGBTQIA+ community at large and also a label that some people do identify personally with, as they may feel that no others really fit but they still are part of the community.

My wife, for example. I'm a trans girl, we married when I was still deeply buried in the closet. She's ostensibly cishet - she's more attracted to masculinity, she wouldn't consider herself a lesbian or even bi, but nonetheless she's happy married to another woman.

She's doesn't like saying she's straight anymore - she says it doesn't capture our relationship. She sees me for the woman I am, this isn't a situation of her denying my gender, and she says it doesn't feel like a straight relationship anymore. So if she has to pick a label she just calls herself queer and that's good enough.

As someone diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, my first response is "wait, did we not already know this?"

Seriously, reliance on a lot of caffeine is such a typical way for ADHD folks to self-medicate, especially prior to being diagnosed.