Hello friends!
I spend most of my working hours online, and in this work, often the line between work and wasting time can be thin. The feed is built to keep us anxious and engaged, but doomscrolling isn’t the same thing as staying informed. Some days the most useful thing I can do for my own wellbeing is close the laptop and go sit with other people.
That’s harder than it sounds. Plenty of community spaces and social groups expect us to leave “politics” at the door. For many people, that’s a request to skip an argument. For trans people and other marginalized folks, it’s more often a demand to leave ourselves at the door. Bigots who would rather we were dead, or at best invisible, have turned our bodies, our healthcare, our IDs, and our bathrooms into political questions. There is no apolitical version of us to bring inside.
So we build our own spaces: a potluck, a trans book club, a well-moderated group chat, a standing coffee date, a peer support circle. We all need places where nobody asks you to shrink. If you work with queer and trans patients or clients, it’s worth knowing what those spaces look like in your area. A referral to community can matter as much as a referral to a specialist.
And if you can’t find one, start one. That’s how most of them began.
One more thing before the news: the payment for my stay in Mexico City during the WPATH Symposium posts on October 1. It’s $9,150 MXN, around $500 USD. If you’ve been meaning to chip in, now is the time. Your support gets me into sessions like:
Beyond the Binary: Muxe Identity, Indigenous Knowledge, and the Future of Gender-Affirming Care, centering the Muxe community of Oaxaca
Care Under Crossfire: A WPATH Ethics Session
The Impact of Colonization on the Trans Community
Why Is Trans Healthcare Illegal in the U.S.
Methodological Drift in Youth Gender Care Policy
Indigenous, Aboriginal, and Decolonial Approaches to Trans Health
I’ll bring what I learn straight to your inbox!
United States
Days after NYU Langone settled with Trump’s DOJ, hundreds of New Yorkers picketed the hospital Tuesday over the $8.5 million deal that keeps its youth care closed, urging its clinicians to “honor your oath”. Families who moved for trans care are watching blue-state hospitals fold one after another. Hospitals have handed over $24.3 million in DOJ deals this year. STAT’s legal landscape rundown counts at least six settling institutions, none admitting wrongdoing, and dozens more that stopped care without ever being targeted.
In Massachusetts, a Reagan-appointed federal judge appeared open to blocking HHS rules that bar Ryan White–funded HIV providers from acknowledging trans patients’ identities, down to using their correct pronouns. Texas prisons will let adults keep hormones under a revised policy, but incarcerated minors must be tapered off, a withdrawal doctors warn carries mood, cardiovascular, and bone health risks. In a ruling from three Democratic appointees, the 1st Circuit upheld Puerto Rico’s refusal to issue X markers by framing erasure as a privacy protection, and the territory then quietly pulled all its gender-change forms offline.
On the protective side, Gov. Newsom signed six LGBTQ+ bills Saturday. They require providers to notify the attorney general about subpoenas targeting protected care, limit sharing of SOGI data, and expand HIV prevention access. Denver’s city council will hear an ordinance to protect trans residents’ data, building on the data firewall I flagged last week. As some Democrats wobble, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer says she’s never wavered on trans rights, and she has kept winning elections while saying it.
International
In Wales, NHS commissioners apologized for pausing care for hundreds of trans adults but admitted the promised “urgent review” still hasn’t begun nearly a month later. Tasmanian Liberals will get a conscience vote on banning conversion practices, even as two of their MPs misrepresent a Greens bill that explicitly protects good-faith clinical care. The Council of Europe adopted its first LGBTI strategy alongside a report finding that only 18 member states cover gender identity in hate-speech law, and just three cover every SOGIESC ground. Turkey’s crackdown has now reached LGBTQ+ sports clubs, widening the arrests that began with this month’s raids on advocacy and HIV organizations.
Show up in Columbus — Ohio’s first HIV decriminalization Advocacy Day hits the Statehouse on November 17 to push lawmakers to modernize six laws that punish people living with HIV regardless of transmission risk, with free virtual legislator training on October 26. Clinicians who can speak to transmission science are exactly who legislators need to hear from.
HPV and Anal Cancer: What LGBTQ+ Ohioans need to know about risks, screening and prevention — The Buckeye Flame — A plain-language guide to a screening many patients don’t know exists and many providers never bring up.
For Lesbian Victims of Domestic Violence, Competent Care Is Scarce — Uncloseted Media — How heteronormative assumptions about intimate partner violence and research funding cuts leave queer women survivors without support.
The Subtraction Game — Assigned Media — On how quickly the media is losing prominent trans writers, and how slowly they’re being replaced.
What our oceans can teach us about natural gender and sex variations — QueerAF — Nicola Anne Beck reads marine life’s sex and gender fluidity as evidence that adaptability is strength.
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That’s it for this week — reply anytime, and I’ll see you next Monday.
BJ Ferguson
Founder, Well Beings News
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