By Rob Salerno | HOLLYWOOD – Marvel Comics’ mutant superheroes the X-Men have always been a metaphor for the struggle against prejudice, boasting a diverse cast of characters that have represented a wide spectrum of characters of different races, sexual orientations, and even species. But until now, the X-Men have never had a trans member.

That may have just changed with the publication of X-Men Blue: Origins #1 by Si Spurrier, Wilton Santos, and Marcus To this week, a story that finally gives the full origin of the mysterious Nightcrawler, who had previously been established as the son of the shape-changing Mystique and a demon named Azazel – all three characters who have appeared in Fox’s X-Men films.

Be warned, spoilers follow from here.

In the new issue, Mystique finally confesses the truth of Nightcrawler’s birth. As Mystique now tells it, she didn’t actually give birth to Nightcrawler – her female partner and longtime lover Destiny did. And Nightcrawler’s father? Well, Nightcrawler’s biological father is actually Mystique, who explains that with her shape-changing powers, she has lived as both male and female.

Does that make Mystique trans? Well, the T-word is never actually uttered in the comic, but Mystique’s own words when Nightcrawler protests that she’s female are a firm rejection of the gender binary.

“Don’t be pathetic. I have lived for years as sapiens males. Years more as females. Do you know what I have observed? They’re all as awful as each other. The only true binary division lies not between the genders or sexes or sexualities. It lies between those who are allowed to be who they wish, and those denied that right,” she says.

The revelation isn’t entirely unprecedented. It has long been known in fan circles that Mystique’s creator and longtime X-Men writer Chris Claremont had intended to reveal that Mystique and Destiny were Nightcrawler’s parents, but that Marvel Comics wouldn’t permit queer characters in their books in the 1980s. 

Eventually Marvel reversed that policy, and Mystique and Destiny’s relationship is a main story in current X-Men comics, with Marvel even referring to them as “the greatest love story in mutant history” in a recent press release. Marvel has also published comics set in an alternate universe where Mystique is portrayed as male. 

While more openly trans characters have appeared in mainstream comics in recent years, these characters have mostly been relegated to guest-starring and supporting characters. For example, Marvel introduced the trainee member Escapade in the X-Men spinoff comic New Mutants last year, while Marvel’s TV shows Jessica Jones and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law gave both heroines trans assistants. 

Mystique is now arguably the highest-profile trans character in mainstream superhero comics, as a major character in comics’ biggest franchise, and having been portrayed by Jennifer Lawrence and Rebecca Romijn in seven X-Men films.

Early reaction to the story has been incredibly positive from X-Men’s queer fandom.

“The heart of the story is Mystique embodying the trans ideal of complete and total bodily autonomy, transcending sex and gender to create life with the woman she loves,” wrote @LokiFreyjasbur on Twitter.

Marvel Comics is wholly owned by Disney.

Marvel advancing a story about a gender-nonconforming character flies in the face of a disturbing recent trend in corporate America of being overly cautious about LGBT issues in the wake of far-right backlash after Bud Light partnered with a trans influencer and Target put up its annual Pride display.

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Rob Salerno is a writer and journalist based in Los Angeles, California, and Toronto, Canada.

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va, – Cody Conner, a father of three kids gave a passionate speech supporting LGBTQ+ kids during the Virginia Beach City Public Schools’ board meeting last month that was uploaded as a TikTok video that has since gone viral.

Conner excoriated the board for considering implementation of Republican Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin’s anti-trans school policies.

“You are never going to find a right way to do the wrong thing and Governor Youngkin’s policies are wrong,” Conner told the board.

“Never in history have the good guys been the segregationist group pushing to legislate identity,” he said. “Never in history have the good guys been closely connected with and supported by hate groups like the Proud Boys. And the good guys don’t put Hitler quotes for inspiration on the front of their newsletters. News flash: they’re the bad guys. They’re the bad guys supporting bad policy. And if you support the same bad policy, guess what? You’re one of the bad guys too.”

“When you look around and see only the wrong people supporting what you’re doing, you’re doing the wrong thing.“ Now you’ve heard some speakers come up here and say how they love these kids but won’t accept them. I’m here to tell you that if your love makes somebody not want to be alive, it’s not love. That’s not love.

“Some of you are going to get up here and say ‘it’s the law.’ Well, I remind you that slavery and segregation used to be the law here in Virginia.”

“I just knew I couldn’t standby and do nothing, just let it happen and hope everything worked out ok and I also wanted to make sure my kid knew that I would stand up for them,” Conner explains as he begins to tear up. “My big job as a parent is not to tell my children who they are, it’s not to make the decisions for them, it’s not to live their life or decide what their life is going to be, but to show them the best way I know how to walk through this world.”

According to PRIDE journalist Ariel Messman-Rucker, Conner moved his family to Virginia Beach right before Youngkin’s policies passed and he worries about the future of his 13-year-old trans daughter who is now in the 8th grade. The family moved from rural Virginia to Virginia Beach so that their kid, who came out as trans a year ago, would be in a school system that would be supportive, but that all changed because of Youngkin.

The 42-year-old father told PRIDE he’s a quiet person and might not have made the choice to speak up if not for his kids.

Virginia’s Department of Education at the direction of the Governor has set out “model policies” for public schools that require students to use the bathroom and sports team that matches their sex at birth.

The policies require written instruction from parents for a student to use names or gender pronouns that differ from the official record, meaning that teacher can deadname students—refer to them by their prior name—if paperwork isn’t filled out by the parents and it requires the school to inform parents if a student is questioning their identity, according to 13 News Now.

LGBTQ+ rights activists including Equality Virginia have stated these policies will be especially detrimental to LGBTQ+ students who come from conservative non-affirming homes.

The Virginia Beach School Board in a 9-1 vote approved an updated policy for transgender and nonbinary students.

The new policy will require teachers to use pronouns and names that are on official record with exceptions for nicknames commonly associated with the student’s legal name. If a student requests anything else, teachers will be required to report it to the parents. Students must also use bathrooms and participate in sports teams that correspond to their assigned sex. 

@beezay22 #CapCut #virginia #virginiabeach #schoolboard #schoolboardmeetings #lgbtqiaplus #transrightsarehumanrights #protecttranskids #stoptransgenocide #fyp ♬ original sound – BeezayDad

By Eric Tannehill | GHENT, Belgium – Baldur’s Gate 3 (BG3) is a fantasy role playing game (RPG) based on the Dungeons and Dragons 5^th Edition ruleset for game mechanics. It was released on August 3^rd, 2023 to widespread critical acclaim.

Unusually for a AAA game, it had spent six years in development, and almost three years of that in early access open beta testing. Larian Studios developed BG3 as a sequel to the first two games, which were released in 1998 and 1999 respectively. 

It’s hard to overstate how the game has outperformed expectations. Microsoft, which distributes the game through the Xbox platform, expected very little of it.  In a leaked document from the FTC v. Microsoft court case, Microsoft took a very dim view of the game’s prospects.

According to Microsoft internal documents, they called BG3 a “Second-run Stadia PC RPG”, predicted as little as $5 million in revenue from the game, and ranked it behind the “Let’s Sing ABBA” karaoke game in terms of expected sales. 

Instead, almost 10 million copies have been sold on Steam as of September 20th, with gross revenue surpassing a half-billion dollars. Larian expected perhaps 100,000 users online at any given time, and instead saw a peak of 870,000 simultaneously. 

The game itself has done well in great part due to the outstanding voice acting, motion captured cut-scenes, excellent dialogue scripting, immersive characters, strong story lines, attention to detail in the game, and a nearly infinite number of possible endings that are dependent on the player’s choices.

The game’s flexibility allows the player to solve challenges in a myriad of different ways. The game feels immersive, with the non-player characters (NPCs) you interact with being engaging and interesting enough for players to become emotionally invested in them (instead of treating them like disposable meat-shields, unless you’ve decided on a sociopath playthrough, which is absolutely a thing the game allows you to do).

However, none of this addresses just how queer-friendly this game is from start to finish, and how this hasn’t prevented its success. On the contrary, it’s likely been a selling point rather than a hindrance. 

During character creation, the game allows you to pick male or female voices with any body type. You can choose male, female, or non-binary pronouns, and even select the genitals your characters have. All of these choices are independent of one another. Then there’s the “paper doll” aspect to clothing. If you kill the evil high priestess of a cult and steal her magic dress, you can absolutely put your male NPCs in it.

There’s even a certain in-game logic to this: who has time for getting weird about gender norms, when you need every advantage you can get to save the world? Besides, it ends up with a bit of an Aqua-man vibe to it.

The queerness doesn’t stop there. There are romance options with many of the NPC companions you take with you on your adventures, and every one of them is canonically pansexual. They don’t care about your character’s genitals, pronouns, race, or class; it’s all about the choices you make as the player in dialogue, as well as how you pursue your in-game agenda. This would feel somewhat tacked on if the characters weren’t so well developed, and if it didn’t take 50+ hours of gameplay to explore these options.

This isn’t to say that the game forces it on you; they’re just options. If the player wants a completely gender and hetero-normative play-through, they can make that choice. If an NPC flirts with you in-game, you always have the option of picking the “not interested” dialogue option, and that’s the end of that.

Some of the darker corners of the internet have taken umbrage with all the options Larian provides in the game, but that obviously hasn’t stopped the game from selling a ridiculous number of copies. It has  exceeded all expectations, and been labelled a “masterpiece” by game reviewers. The character design is fantastic and has inspired legions of fans already.

The “go woke, go broke” mantra certainly didn’t hold  true here, and detractors haven’t gained real traction…perhaps because getting upset over imaginary video game characters in a fantasy world having imaginary queer identities seems sillier than playing a fantasy RPG in the first place.

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Eric Tannehill is a student & trans activist living in Montreal, Quebec, Canada

NEW YORK – Nearly two decades have gone by since journalist, editor, and blogger Joe Jervis created what is arguably the oldest LGBTQ+ politics, culture, lifestyle, and entertainment blog, all from his New York City apartment alongside a feline companion.

In his daily blog Friday, Jervis recounted:

“Today marks the nineteenth blogiversary of this here website thingy. Counting this one, we’re at 138,342 posts over 19 years, the last 15 of which have been without a full day off, although posting on weekends is usually at a slower rate. As I’ve said on this day every year, whether I am insanely committed or am insane and should be committed – that is entirely your call.”

The veteran writer is also very much an activist on issues that impact the LGBTQ+ community both at home in the United States and abroad. He has tirelessly campaigned to advance same-sex marriage, military service for the LGBTQ+ community, battling the far right attacks on the humanity of LGBTQ+ people, and most recently while defending the drag community against unfounded lies, smears, and labeling by the conservative family values politicos and leaders of the various anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups- has pointed out the utter hypocrisy of those very people maintaining a running scorecard of religious leaders being arrested for criminal sexual actions against children. Jervis points out in post after post that not a single drag performer has been arrested nor charged with those types of crimes.

As the attacks on the transgender community, drag community, and even LGBTQ+ allies worsen under the current political environment, Jervis maintains his ‘call-to-arms’ writing:

“On behalf of myself and our tireless tech support guy Jack, who deals with a lot of stupid nonsense at stupid hours, you have our eternal thanks for being part of the rollicking community of “homosexual buccaneers” and straight allies that fight the good fight. The ride will likely only get rougher from here, so hang on. We’ve got the kids and righteousness on our side.”

The politically astute Jervis has certainly gained his share of detractors, but over the past 19 years and with an aggregate total of over nearly 1.3M visitors a month to what he refers to as “this here website thingy,” there is little doubt his reach and his impact will continue to be felt by the LGBTQ+ community, its allies, and beyond.

By Ari Drennen | WASHINGTON – In a speech at the University of Iowa, self-described “theocratic fascist” and Daily Wire host Matt Walsh complained that his YouTube channel had been stripped of advertiser revenue, which he said was bringing in more than $100,000 per month.

An independent estimate suggests that Walsh’s YouTube revenue could have been as high as $1.6 million per year.

YouTube confirmed the demonetization, with a spokesperson writing, “We suspended monetization on Matt Walsh’s channel due to repeated violations of our YouTube Partner Program policies, which include our Advertiser-Friendly Guidelines. These policies apply equally to all creators, regardless of political viewpoint, and channels that repeatedly violate these policies are demonetized.”

Speaking at University of Iowa, Matt Walsh confirms that his YouTube channel was demonetized for repeatedly attacking Dylan Mulvaney, says that he was making over $100,000 a month — and that he can get it back if he stops misgendering Mulvaney. pic.twitter.com/TIJfVkI5V2

— Ari Drennen (@AriDrennen) April 20, 2023

The demonetization, which was announced before the speech in a Twitter thread by Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boering, reportedly comes in response to Walsh’s increasingly vitriolic campaign against Dylan Mulvaney, which escalated after the transgender TikTok star announced a collaboration with Bud Light. 

Speaking before an audience of college students, Walsh announced that rather than stop his tirades against Mulvaney, he would make his show free to all viewers on the Daily Wire+ app and would upload episodes to Twitter, suggesting some kind of deal with Twitter CEO Elon Musk. “I truly see the fight against gender ideology as the last stand for Western civilization,” Walsh said. “Because if the sane side loses this, it’s over. It’s over after this.”

Matt Walsh says that starting Monday, his show will be available for free on DailyWire+ — and that the entire show will be uploaded to Twitter every day. pic.twitter.com/vhZp6uIFrA

— Ari Drennen (@AriDrennen) April 20, 2023

Walsh has targeted Mulvaney in a series of increasingly vicious attacks over a period of several months, beginning with a rant in which Walsh told the trans influencer, “You are weird and artificial, you are manufactured and lifeless, you are unearthly and eerie.” The monologue led to backlash within right-wing media and was cited by one Daily Wire writer in her decision to leave the company. But Walsh doubled down, saying that he “would rather be dead” than have a trans child. And then, at the start of  April, Bud Light sent Mulvaney a can of beer with her face on it. 

Walsh, who previously made comments supportive of teenage pregnancy, has a history of spreading anti-trans vitriol. As documented by Media Matters, between mid-February and mid-March, Walsh also repeated his statement about preferring death to a trans child; misgendered and deadnamed a trans woman featured in a Hershey’s chocolate ad (in Canada); defended his colleague Michael Knowles’ call to eradicate “transgenderism … from public life entirely” by claiming to be “in a war against the most deranged ideology ever invented by the human race,” which he called a “parasite”; and called the trans community “a suicide cult.”

YouTube’s hate speech policy promises to “remove content promoting violence or hatred against individuals or groups” based on … “gender identity and expression” and/or “sexual orientation.” Social Blade indicates that two Walsh videos had already been demonetized in April when the Daily Wire host led a boycott against Bud Light for collaborating with Mulvaney. If Walsh’s contract contains provisions similar to those found in the contract offered to Louder with Crowder host Steven Crowder, which stated that being demonetized would lead to a 25% cut in his salary, the loss of YouTube revenue is a huge financial blow to Walsh. 

The Daily Wire+ app continues to be available in the Apple App Store and the Google Play store. The Apple App Store’s content guidelines lay out a prohibition on “defamatory, discriminatory, or mean-spirited content, including references or commentary” targeting gender or sexual orientation, especially if the app or content “is likely to humiliate, intimidate, harass, or harm individuals or groups.” The Google Play terms of service similarly forbid “apps that promote violence, or incite hatred against individuals or groups based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, age, nationality, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, caste, immigration status, or any other characteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization.” 

Walsh’s move to uploading his show to Twitter comes at a convenient time for the Daily Wire host. Twitter, which was acquired by Elon Musk in 2022, recently updated its terms of service to remove its previous prohibition on targeted misgendering and deadnaming of trans people. Musk recently launched an effort to reassure nervous Twitter advertisers and to convince those who previously abandoned the platform to return. In one recent interview, Musk claimed that Twitter was open to advertiser feedback but that “freedom of speech is paramount.”

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Ari Drennen is the LGBTQ program director for Media Matters, where she has worked since January 2022. She has a bachelors degree in political science and economics from Middlebury College. Previously she worked at the Center for American Progress and the League of Conservation Voters

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The preceding article was previously published by Media Matters for America and is republished by permission.

SAN FRANCISCO – Earlier this month, Twitter covertly removed the section of the “Hateful Conduct Policy” which the social media giant first enacted in combatting targeted misgendering and deadnaming of transgender people in 2018.

Prior to the policy change, Twitter’s Hateful Content Policy stated:
“We prohibit targeting others with repeated slurs, tropes or other content that intends to dehumanize, degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category. This includes targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.” 

The final sentence, specific to transgender users, has since been removed. According to the Wayback Machine, the sentence referring to targeted misgendering and deadnaming was present on April 7th, but was stricken from the policy on April 8th.

The previous version is here, the current version is here.

GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis responded to Twitter’s rollback on Tuesday:

“Twitter’s decision to covertly roll back its longtime policy is the latest example of just how unsafe the company is for users and advertisers alike. This decision to roll back LGBTQ safety pulls Twitter even more out of step with TikTok, Pinterest, and Meta, which all maintain similar policies to protect their transgender users at a time when anti-transgender rhetoric online is leading to real world discrimination and violence.

The practice of targeted misgendering and deadnaming has been identified by the ADL and other civil society groups as a form of hate speech. Social media companies committed to maintaining safe environments for LGBTQ people should be working to improve hate speech policies, not deleting long-standing ones.”

Currently, TikTok and Pinterest explicitly prohibit targeted misgendering and deadnaming in their hate and harassment policy, while for both Facebook and Instagram, Meta has publicly stated that they “prohibit violent or dehumanizing content directed against people who identify as LGBTQ+ and remove claims about someone’s gender identity upon their request.”

In 2021, GLAAD joined Media Matters for America and 18 other organizations in calling for YouTube to also align with this as a best practice in their hate speech policy.

You can read the tidal wave of extreme transphobic (& homophobic) replies to any of my tweets to know this headline is true.

Twitter has become a cesspool of hate against LGBTQ people & especially against trans people.

Twitter now houses a zombie apocalypse army of hate. pic.twitter.com/o81iutlcpf

— Senator Scott Wiener (@Scott_Wiener) April 18, 2023

CULVER CITY – As the battle over TikTok posing a threat to U.S. national security and Americans continues to escalate, Shou Zi Chew, the chief executive of the Los Angeles-based video-sharing app, will make his first appearance before Congress to testify next week.

In contention is that TikTok is wholly and privately owned by Chinese parent company, ByteDance, which has raised bipartisan fears in local and state governments as well as in Congress of the app being used to collect and manipulate users’ data by the Chinese government or related entities.

The controversy surrounding misinformation, addictive content, censorship, and kids’ data allegedly being accessed by the Chinese government in addition to adults has seen several state governments ban the app entirely from state-owned mobile phones, computers, and data pads.

Shou Zi Chew, a Singaporean entrepreneur, will be attempting to skeptical lawmakers on Capitol Hill that his company’s social networking company poses no dangers to Americans, especially children.

TikTok’s LGBTQ+ following has generally positive experiences although there have been widely reported instances of users, notably transgender users seemingly targeted by the platform’s algorithms and having their accounts banned or repeatedly suspended.

Of greater concern is the staggering rise in anti-LGBTQ+ violence and threats on the platform prompting LGBTQ+ advocacy group GLAAD, in its annual Social Media Safety Index, to give TikTok a failing score on LGBTQ+ safety.

Yotam Ophir, an assistant professor of communications at the University at Buffalo, who studies misinformation and extremism, told Scientific American journalist Helen Santoro in a December 2022 interview:

“It’s become pretty clear that the LGBTQ+ community is now at the heart of the new iteration of the culture wars that we have been unfortunately going through in recent years,” he says. This community has become “a staple of right-wing messaging and often propaganda.”

Scientific American reported the false claims and rhetoric used by right-wing extremists dehumanize and vilify the LGBTQ+ community and provoke stochastic terrorism, a phenomenon in which hate speech increases the likelihood that people will attack the targets of vicious claims.

Research has also shown that this type of rhetoric can motivate people to express and possibly act on their prejudiced views. 

According to GLAAD, Media Matters for America, and the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI social media plays a crucial role in the spread of this stochastic terrorism to include TikTok.

TikTok to divest from ByteDance if U.S. security deal fails- Report from Yahoo Finance:

Related:

PROVO, S.D. – 12 time Emmy award winner RuPaul Andre Charles, drag queen, television personality, actor, musician, and model called out the conservative Republicans and extremists who are engaged in legislative and media attacks on LGBTQ+ Americans Wednesday.

In a video posted to his Instagram account, the drag superstar labeled Republican lawmakers passing anti-trans and anti-drag performance bills bullies and said:

“Hey, look over there! A classic distraction technique, distracting us away from the real issues that they were voted into office to focus on: jobs, healthcare, keeping our children safe from harm at their own school.

“But we know that bullies are incompetent at solving real issues. They look for easy targets so they can give the impression of being effective. They think our love, our light, our laughter and our joy are signs of weakness.

“But they’re wrong because that is our strength. Drag queens are the Marines of the queer movement. Don’t get it twisted and don’t be distracted. Register to vote so we can get these stunt queens out of office and put some smart people with real solutions into government.

“And by the way, a social media post has never been as powerful as a registered vote.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by RuPaul (@rupaulofficial)

HOLLYWOOD – Christian Shearhod, who teaches math in Los Angeles County, took his three-year-old son to a West Hollywood nail salon after the toddler’s daycare teacher said “painting your nails is only for girls.”

“My son came home from school upset because his teacher told him that painting his nails is only for girls, so today I’m taking him to the nail shop!” Christian Shearhod said in a TikTok video posted last week.

Shearhod noted that the boy’s daycare teacher had scolded him for wanting to paint his nails, calling it a ‘girls only’ activity.

In an interview with NBC News Shearhod said his son first expressed interest in nail polish around the age of 2. 

“Since then, we started painting our nails together,” he said. 

Shearhod, in a relationship with his transgender girlfriend Eden, is a straight LGBTQ+ ally and uses his TikTok platform to bolster LGBTQ+ equality and visibility.

After the negativity from his son’s daycare teacher which upset his son, Shearhod told NBC News that he and his girlfriend hoped to cheer the boy up by taking him to the nail salon.

“I really just wanted to make sure that he didn’t have guilt or shame, because it is something that he enjoyed, and we had done together multiple times,” Shearhod said, adding that he wants his son to enjoy life to the fullest at his age, without “strict gender norms.”

The following school day, Shearhod said he spoke with Ashton’s day care teachers. 

“I just told them, ‘Hey, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t say that kind of thing to Ashton, kind of let him do his own thing,’” Shearhod told NBC he said to the daycare staff.

Watch:

@mr.shearhod

♬ Pretty Girls Walk – Big Boss Vette

LOS ANGELES – It’s a new year and Los Angeles Blade contributor StanChris is back with a new video where he and his Dad engage in questions around his sexuality and how his Dad views it.

Editor’s note: The following video is sponsored by SkillShare which is not endorsed by nor an advertising partner of the Los Angeles Blade.

ASKING MY DAD AWKWARD GAY QUESTIONS:

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