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- Julio Torres’ Cursed Amulet: A Halloween Party Gay Freaks Are the VIPs

- Inside Lauren Chan and Hayley Kosan’s Chic Chinatown Pre-Wedding Dinner

CULTURE | OCT 31, 2025, 5:11 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

At Julio Torres’ Annual Costume Contest, the Freaks Come Out to Play

The coveted Cursed Amulet prize can only go to one lucky freak.

Santiago Felipe/Getty Images

Now in its second year, Thursday night’s Halloween costume party Cursed Amulet has firmly secured writer and comedian Julio Torres’ reputation as the Heidi Klum of Bushwick freaks.

The annual event manages to straddle a range of criteria in order to qualify as a certified Good Party™ during a competitive nightlife season: celebrities and it girls co-mingling without bottle service, shows and gags, DJs and dance offerings, and attendees with a genuine desire to enjoy the party, not just take photos for the Getty clout.

Among its best qualities as a standout Halloween event, Cursed Amulet worships at the altar of the costume. This is not some untz-untz vibe where you can stick a bunny tail on lingerie and call it a day (though low-effort sluts are warmly welcome). Most come in full looks and dress to rank in the costume contest — perhaps even the coveted prize/hex of the Cursed Amulet, this year bestowed by Bronwyn Newport of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City fame.

In front of other panel judges and hosts — like comedian Sydnee Washington, Interview fashion director Dara Allen, queen of freaks Julia Fox, and artist Martine Gutierrez — the runway showcase ranges from drag, goth, macabre, glam, disgusting, camp, couture, to “I hate gay Halloween” realness.

This year’s Cursed Amulet theme was “Mommy’s Moods” and the mommies were abundant. In accordance with the party’s ethos, costume-wearers are the VIPS, many of which were captured by the Yerba Madre x Them portrait station.

See more costume photos, courtesy of Smilebooth, below.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/julio-torres-cursed-amulet-2025-costumes-photo-gallery on Oct 31, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

CULTURE | OCT 27, 2025, 4:47 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Inside Lauren Chan and Hayley Kosan’s Chic Chinatown Pre-Wedding Dinner

The lesbian “it” couple open up exclusively about their “healing” pre-nuptials celebration at a Chinatown institution.

Philip Tran

Lauren Chan’s whole career has been about breaking the mold — so of course her wedding had to do that, too. On October 20, Chan and her newlywed wife, the director Hayley Kosan, held a chic-as-hell wedding ceremony at No Bar in Manhattan’s East Village, complete with drag performances from such luminaries as West Dakota, Cherry Veronica Jaymes, and more.

But before that storied affair, there was the welcome dinner, held at the Chinatown institution Wo Hop. In and of itself, the famously subterranean restaurant is a landmark, but it also held a personal resonance for Chan, whose grandparents owned two Chinese restaurants where she spent a lot of time as a child. Though it was somewhat of a last-minute (as in two weeks prior) decision to hold a welcoming dinner at all, the setting, as Chan and Kosan tell me over Zoom, immediately felt right.

“Now that I’m a grown up and I’ve come into myself and I love myself so radically as an ode to my family, there’s nothing that I’m prouder of,” Chan said of her Chinese heritage. “And to share that with all of our friends and family and to blend our families over shrimp and lobster sauce was really special. It truly was healing.”

Read on for some gorgeous photos from the ceremony, courtesy of photographer Philip Tran, and for the couple’s reflections on the venue and their stunning suited looks for the evening.

Philip Tran

Could you tell me a little bit about why you chose Wo Hop as the venue for your welcome dinner?

Lauren Chan: This is both of our second weddings, and when we went to plan it, we didn’t want it to feel stressful. There were certain events we had to make sure we threw, and so we were debating not doing some things like a welcome dinner. We didn’t know if we needed to do it, we didn’t know if all of our guests would be in town. I knew that my family was not going to be in town until the next day. We didn’t know if we had a budget and nothing was really speaking to us in terms of wanting to throw a Friday night event. Nevertheless, about two weeks out, we started reaching out to venues. We just couldn’t find one that, a) meant something to us, [and] b) was the right size.

Hayley had the really brilliant idea to reach out to my friends at Welcome to Chinatown. Vic Lee is one of their founders and I worked super closely with them on all of their work to support the AAPI community in New York City’s Chinatown. We asked Vic if she had any thoughts, connections or suggestions about where we could look for a venue. And she, within minutes, put us in touch with a few Chinatown establishments. We went by them all to have a chat, and as soon as we walked into Wo Hop Next Door, specifically into the basement party room, I immediately felt transported back to my grandparents’ Chinese restaurants in small town Brantford, Ontario. Everything from the decor to the smell, to the way that the staff was so kind and enthusiastic.

Hayley Kosan: They were so sweet. They had so much fun, too. And the wedding itself was in the East Village, so the location itself in Chinatown was great for people who are local and people who came from out of town. Also, it was a really fun way to have people who don’t live in New York City experience our Chinatown because it is vibrant, it is beautiful, it is delicious, it is fun.

Philip Tran

Philip Tran

Wait, so you booked this two weeks in advance?

L.C.: Yeah, probably. We were cutting it close.

H.K.: It was pretty fast.

I mean, I never would've been able to tell from the photos. But I feel like Chinese restaurants are the best for large last-minute gatherings anyway.

L.C.: It’s just so easy, the folks are so accommodating. It just feels so comfortable immediately. And I think that is something that’s really beautiful about Chinese American, and in my experience, Chinese Canadian restaurants, is you walk in and you’re like family.

As a fellow queer Asian, I love seeing all the different ways that queer Asians find ways to incorporate our cultural lineages into queer celebrations. Why was that particularly important to you here?

L.C.: It’s a huge part of my identity, and I really try to move in a way that reflects myself and celebrates my vulnerability and allows me to connect with people who feel the same way. So for you to say, “I’m queer and Asian too,” and it struck you in some way, that is what makes so many moments in my life so special.

I pulled up this comment Wo Hop Next Door left on the post that just is so sweet. They said, “Lauren, we’re so happy that you found us to be so fitting for your celebration. We were the ones to be lucky to have hosted your event. Sharing in your memories is our pleasure. We couldn’t have played host to a nicer couple and their friends and family. Congratulations are in order for a beautiful beginning and everlasting partnership. Thank you, again.” And just for somebody in the AAPI community, specifically the Chinese immigrant community to say that, it is deeply moving to me. It almost feels like something I never got to hear from my late grandparents.

H.K.: And for the record, Lauren’s parents and family were able to come. At first, they weren’t going to get in until late.

L.C.: Yeah, but once I showed them pictures of Wo Hop Next Door and said, “They have Cantonese chow mein on the menu like grandma used to serve,” they called out of work early and changed their flights.

H.K.: Also, wasn’t there one waiter or something that was speaking Taishan?

L.C.: Oh yeah, my dad speaks this specific dialect called Taishanese, and one of the waiters spoke it. It was really a sweet moment to watch them realize that they could speak the same dialect.

And then they brought cut fruit out without ordering it, because we had to order specifically what we wanted on the tables. They brought out cut fruit and fortune cookies as a gift. I thought that was so specifically Chinese and special.

That is so sweet. To rewind a little bit, you mentioned your grandparents owned a Chinese restaurant when you were growing up?

L.C.: Yeah, two. One was called Shanghai and one was called Nanking. We spent a lot of time there, whether it was stopping into the restaurant for a meal when we were young and our parents had finished work, we went by the restaurant to eat. But we would also do Christmas family dinners there, or we would stop by the restaurant, grab a bag of takeout, take it home. And then because the community is so tight-knit, after my grandparents retired and were no longer working at the restaurants, if we ever order food from or go to a Chinese restaurant in the city, they know that we’re Robert and Linda Chan’s family, and so they’ll give us so much extra stuff. We’ll order three items on the menu and we’ll leave with three huge bags of food. That same kindness was shown when they brought out the cut fruit and the fortune cookies.

Philip Tran

Philip Tran

Philip Tran

Do you have any favorite memories from the dinner?

L.C.: I think our families meeting. Our parents hadn’t met.

H.K.: Yeah, that was great.

L.C.: We’re watching them sit at a table and break bread, or rather break spare ribs, was really fun and special and memorable.

H.K.: Yeah. I mean, seeing people that I haven’t seen in a long time sit and all just immediately start talking to each other and be so comfortable — it was really lovely and awesome. And your family seeing friends of yours that you haven’t seen in a long time.

L.C.: Yeah, my parents love my friends because they feel like my friends took care of me when I moved to New York away from home. My dad hadn’t seen a few of my close friends, Precious Lee and Noah Silverstein, in a while. There’s pictures of them hugging that are really sweet.

H.K.: It was really nice to have that in such a casual, warm, loving setting where we could just all gorge and have fun.

That’s what’s really interesting about weddings; it’s like, “Oh, it’s a crossover episode.”

L.C.: Yes, yes.

H.K.: Which, it can be a lot of stress, right? And anxiety. But it was nice because by night two, everybody knew each other. It was like, “Hey, how’s it going? How was your day?” It was a big family dinner. It was great.

Philip Tran

Philip Tran

Can you tell me about the looks you wore to the welcome dinner?

L.C.: It was cool that we both wanted to wear suits one of the nights because I tend to dress in a more femme way than Hayley. And on Saturday, I wore a wedding dress and a lace catsuit and jeans and a T-shirt as my looks, but I didn’t have a suit moment. So on Friday, I wore Margiela. I turned the suit around to make it a little bit camp. And in Chinese tradition, you can also wear red in those moments. My mom walked in in a red dress and I thought that was really meaningful.

Why was it important to you to have that suit moment?

L.C.: I feel like fashion is such a beautiful and accessible form of expression and art. Especially as I’ve come into my queer identity, I have used it to feel more like myself, express myself and get better at that, and also connect with people who feel the same way. As I’ve deconstructed what it means to get dressed, I’ve also had more fun. I wanted to express all the notes of myself with all of my wedding looks. The backward suit was probably my favorite of the weekend.

H.K.: You brought two big parts of your identity together that evening, your Chinese heritage and your new queer sense of self.

Philip Tran

Philip Tran

Philip Tran

Hayley, what about your look for the evening?

H.K.: I wore a white suit by Nanushka and it was just casual and cool. And I always like to wear a little bralette and show little skin. I was just like a little bride that night.

But my dad made a really funny toast for me. He was like, “I’m the father of the groom.” I was like, “Good one.”

L.C.: But also, I feel like that really speaks to how you can be a bride however you want to be a bride. You can be a groom however you want to be a groom. You can be whatever word you want to call a person getting married, however you feel like expressing yourself. It felt important to us to bring our queer sense of style into this space because weddings in general are so heteronormative and they’re so strict in their codes, whether spoken or unspoken. It felt really satisfying to express ourselves the way that we did with our looks.

H.K.: Yeah, and we very much did it on our terms, we’ve said that through this whole process. We were very happy with how everything went.

Philip Tran

Philip Tran

Philip Tran

Philip Tran

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/lauren-chan-hayley-kosan-wedding-welcome-dinner-wo-hop-photos on Oct 31, 2025 at 7:27 PM EDT.

Community

- Yes, The Internet Still Is Doing "I Hate Gay Halloween" Meme Costumes

- Holocaust Researcher Says Up to 1/3 of Imprisoned LGBTQ+ People Reported by Friends and Family

- Mx International Rubber 2025 Elliott Eve on Their Onstage Gender Reveal

COMMUNITY | OCT 31, 2025, 1:38 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Yes, The Internet Still Is Doing "I Hate Gay Halloween" Meme Costumes

From "Holding Space" to a Jamaican Adele, here are the obscure pop culture moments that turned costume.

To paraphrase an often-memed Star Wars quote, somehow, gay Halloween returned.

Sure, queers have always had a well-documented affinity for monsters and horror. But in recent years, gay Halloween celebrations have become dominated by a new sort of terror: the pressure to dress as the nichest, most online reference possible. Thus, the “I hate gay Halloween” meme was born. Last year gave us a bevy of options from a “cunty Monstro Elizasue” to “the Olympic Paul vaulter that bumped the pole with his bulge,” but the gays have come back with a vengeance.

Once again, hoards of queers are swarming to X and TikTok to post their costumes, with the caption, “I hate gay Halloween. What do you mean you’re [insert impossibly obscure pop culture reference].” We as a community contain (often brain-wormed) multitudes, as evidenced by this year’s plethora gay Halloween costumes.

Naturally, plenty of this year’s entries were inspired by recent memorable moments in pop culture, from “holding space” interviewer Tracy E. Gilchrist to Dan and Phil finally announcing their relationship to Weapons’ seven hot dog platter to that time someone left a Labubu on Karl Marx’s grave.

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Others decided to take cues from iconic, very online gay internet moments of years past, whether they be Frankie Grande singing “Breathe” in his car, the Lisa Rinna M&M, Adele at the Notting Hill Jamaican Carnival, or Wendy Williams competing on The Masked Singer.

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And, of course, it wouldn’t be gay Halloween without as many intricate meme references as humanly possible. Where would we be as a culture without the influence of the Natalie Portman “I feel like shit” post, or the alpha wolf ripping his shirt reaction image, or Lily Rose Depp wearing her trench coat buttoned to the top? Thankfully, we’ll never know.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/2025-i-hate-gay-halloween-meme-costumes-outfits-best on Oct 31, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

HISTORY | KATE SOSIN, THE 19TH | OCT 31, 2025, 10:36 AM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Holocaust Researcher Says Up to 1/3 of Imprisoned LGBTQ+ People Reported by Friends and Family

A new exhibit at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center aims to shed light on the diversity of LGBTQ+ Holocaust stories.

David Clapp

This post originally appeared on The 19th.

It is unknown just how many LGBTQ+ people were detained or died in concentration camps during World War II. But contrary to often dominant perceptions, many were women and nonbinary.

It’s a history even many queer people don’t know or only know peripherally. More than that, historians and experts say, there are misconceptions, chief among them that only gay men were impacted.

In time for LGBTQ+ History Month, a new exhibit at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center aims to shed light on the diversity of LGBTQ+ Holocaust stories. The exhibit is running now through next year in the Museum’s Karkomi Family Foundation Gallery: Holocaust & World War II, focusing on events between 1933 and 1945. It features historical images and personal photographs, reflections and testimony from both survivors and victims.

“I think oftentimes when people talk about this history, they usually focus on cis gay men,” said Leah Rauch, the museum’s education director. “But there is a really exciting new, newish field of study, of scholars who are uncovering stories of people who were lesbians, bisexual, transgender and those really untold stories.”

Queer women were detained in camps, often branded with a black triangle. Others were marked with different symbols or letters depending on the crime for which they were imprisoned.

Fritz Kitzing, a nonbinary person from northwest of Berlin, was 27 when the Nazis came to power. Born to a so-called “Aryan” family and assigned male at birth, Kitzing was unapologetically themself, according to museum records. They were arrested multiple times, for both wearing “women’s” clothing and having sexual contact with a man. They were confined to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin.

Photos taken of Kitzing at the time of their arrest in 1936 show them in feminine dress, with long hair pulled back, wearing a fur coat and a hat.

Kitzing’s brother wrote to them throughout their incarceration, according to historical records.

“With the love and support of their family, Kitzing navigated the web of laws and policies and insisted on living life on their own terms,” reads a remembrance on the Pink Triangle Legacies Project, an organization that honors the LGBTQ+ victims and survivors of the Nazi regime. The Nazis used pink triangle badges to brand gay men in concentration camps.

Kitzing survived the war and became an antiques dealer, dying in 1987.

Approximately 100,000 queer men were arrested under Germany’s anti-gay law between 1933 and 1945. Of those, 53,000 were convicted and served prison sentences, said Jake Newsome, founder of the Pink Legacies Triangle Project. It is believed that between 7,000 and 10,000 were detained in concentration camps. Those numbers include transgender women and nonbinary people who were not seen as their lived genders by the Nazis.

Perhaps most significantly, researchers have learned that queer people were largely reported by people in their own communities. As many as a third of LGBTQ+ people who were arrested were denounced, that is reported to the Nazis, by their friends and family.

”That really changes the understanding of the Nazi period, because it’s easier to think that this was just a top-down hard line or dictatorial regime implementing all these policies, and they’re the ones doing the hunting down and finding of the so-called enemies of the state,” said Newsome. “But what we’re actually seeing is that most Germans just did nothing to protect LGBTQ folks.”

Holocaust history is full of non-Jews risking their lives to help Jews under Nazi rule. Newsome feels the same cannot be said of most straight people for their LGBTQ+ neighbors.

“I have not found one single instance of a straight person risking, helping, protecting a queer and trans person during this history,” Newsome said. “Not a single one. And that’s a hard pill to swallow.”

Newsome and Rauch find lessons in this history for today, and Rauch said the museum’s mission is to connect Holocaust history to the present day.

“There is a through-line right from the discrimination, the persecution, everything that was happening to the LGBTQ community then, many of those same things are still happening today,” Rauch said.

Another lesson is that democracy is fragile and history can repeat itself easily. Progress for queer people is often followed by violent backlash.

According to Newsome, prior to the Nazi takeover of Germany, Berlin had a thriving LGBTQ+ community.

“At the time, there were hundreds of queer clubs and cafes and nightclubs and stores, organizations,” Newsome said. “Queer and trans folks had built that for themselves over about 15 years of democracy in Germany, and once the Nazis came to power, all of that was able to be destroyed within just a matter of weeks.”

In one memoir from that time, “I Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual: A Memoir of Nazi Terror,” a gay Frenchman writes about how he unwittingly gave himself up to the Nazis by reporting his watch stolen to French authorities years before the war. Seel notes that because his watch was stolen in an area known for gay cruising, French authorities put him on a list of likely homosexuals, which later fell into the hands of Nazis when they took control of France.

Seel endured starvation, humiliation, beatings and forced physical labor, but he too survived the war and maintained his sense of self, going on to advocate for other LGBTQ+ Holocaust survivors until his 2005 death of cancer in Toulouse, France.

Newsome finds odd hope in the history of Seel and others.

“This history is full of queer and trans resistance,” said Newsome. “From everything from continuing to go out and just be true to yourself, to taking up armed resistance and bombing buildings to take a blow against the Nazis, there are all these examples that queer people have been active agents and actors in their own history.”

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/lgbtq-holocaust-history-facts-illinois-museum-concentration-camps on Oct 31, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

COMMUNITY | OCT 27, 2025, 5:07 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Meet Your Leader in Latex: Mx International Rubber 2025 Elliott Eve

How an onstage gender reveal got them the biggest title in latex.

Courtesy of Elliott Eve

Earlier this month, the annual MIR international latex competition made the history books. The contest, which is held in Chicago, bestowed its 29th title on Elliott Eve, formerly Mx. Melbourne Rubber 2024, marking the contest’s “first trans, AFAB, and Australian winner,” as they wrote to Instagram.

“My head is still spinning,” they posted in images from the event. “The past few days have been an incredible journey I’ll cherish forever.”

Launched in 1997 and originally named Mr. International Rubber, MIR is a fetish and kink convention and contest, modeled similarly to International Mr. Leather and International Ms. Leather but themed around rubber and latex. In 2023, the contest renamed itself to the gender-neutral MIR to allow all genders to compete. Winners are allowed to select Mr. International Rubber, Ms. International Rubber, Mx. International Rubber, or MIR International Rubber Ambassador as their title.

After their precedent-setting victory, Eve caught up with Them to talk about their gender reveal performance at MIR, telltale signs you might be into latex as a fetish, and how (exactly) one might define a gimp.

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Congratulations on your title win at MIR! Unlike at the International Mr. Leather contest, I read that MIR has a “fantasy scene” portion. Can you talk to me about your scene?

Thank you so much! MIR was a really beautiful experience. But yes, for the “talent” portion it’s labeled as a “fantasy scene.” You can reenact your fantasy if you like. What I decided to do was tell a story of my transition from being a woman to nonbinary. What that stems from is shaving my head a few years ago after the Melbourne lockdowns lifted from COVID. I did my performance to Portishead’s “Glory Box” which is essentially a love song, but I kind of changed the narrative of that song to be more [about] self-love. I shaved my head on stage and I tore off a latex cat suit off my body to reveal a latex binder that had my pronouns “they/them” on top. So that was kind of like a really big reveal at the end of the performance. It was s a special story that I really wanted to share. It really resonated with people

I know you had previously done this performance at Melbourne Rubber but how was the response in the room at MIR?

It was massive, to be honest. I kind of wish I could do it again because, you know, as soon as the music started, there was a response to that. I think it was just the song — ”Glory Box” just evokes this emotional response. Then there was a response to the head shaving: we carry so much identity with our hair so when you strip that back, it kind of forces us to look inwards and reflect on who we are in such a vulnerable state. When I pulled the clippers out, people were like, “Oh my gosh, are they gonna do it?” And then I started shaving my head and the crowd just shot out of their chairs which was such a beautiful response. Then there’s another twist of tearing a latex catsuit off my body, which is something that’s quite sacrilegious in the community.

Yeah, taboo.

Yeah! It was such a raw, emotional performance. A lot of people came up to me afterwards and said they were in tears because it was so vulnerable. I’m really glad that it did resonate with the community. I was really hoping it would because a lot of our community is gay or trans people and people that have gone through that journey of coming into themselves.

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For you, is rubber a fetish or is it more like fashion or a tool as a performance artist?

Oh my gosh, I wouldn’t consider myself a performance artist. When I was a kid, I performed for 10 years but before Melbourne Rubber I actually hadn’t performed in 15 years. Rubber is definitely a fetish for me but it is also a tool for self-expression as well. I actually started out as just a basic OnlyFans sex worker back in COVID times but got bored of the general sexualization of my body and wanted to do something more expressive. Rubber helped with that. It blended fetish and art together to create these really visually striking pieces on social media but it’s also really helped me express who I am and my interest as a person. It’s become an important aspect of my life.

In leather, there’s this sort of this divide of leathermen who wear leather to signal something about themselves and leathermen who want to keep the leather and boots on during sex. Does that exist in latex also?

I would say those both but definitely 90 to 95% of people that wear rubber moreso utilize it in the bedroom. It’s a bit of a new thing that people are wearing it outside — because of all these celebrities, now it’s becoming a part of mainstream fashion. I haven't really jumped into wearing too much latex in public, unfortunately.

Is there a telltale sign that someone might be into rubber who hasn’t realized it? I know people into bondage often point to cartoons where characters get tied up to the train tracks as an early interest.

I think for me the gateway was enjoying sci-fi movies when I was younger. You’ve got like The Matrix or Underworld where the protagonists are in tightly-fitted shiny black outfits and you're just like “Oh my gosh, these people look so powerful and strong.” Like so, so sexy as well. So when I found latex, I was like “Oh my gosh, I can look exactly like those people that I loved when I was younger.” So yeah, if you were into sci-fi, you’re definitely into latex.

How do you find the latex community in terms of barriers to entry and acceptance?

I would say we’re pretty welcome to meeting newcomers. That’s for sure. There is definitely a big push as of late for gender diverse people to be coming into our spaces. I think last year was the first year MIR made the competition open to all genders. But even though all genders were welcome to attend the competition, it was only cis gay men who could actually compete in the competition.

I do have this weird question: Are gimps a part of the latex community or is it a different fetish?

Definitely! A gimp is someone who is fully in a latex suit. So gloves, shoes, and the hood as well. But not everyone who is into latex is into gimps. I have some friends who will wear the full, you know, catsuit and gloves and what others would categorize as a gimp suit, but they don’t like to be referred to as that. They think it has a negative connotation. So it has different meanings for different people.

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Yeah, I’ve always thought of gimps as sort of this idea of like a himbo or a mindless sort of sex toy, where the point of being covered in latex is that it turns you into an object.

100%! With my friends that don't like using the term, it’s really about what you’ve just said: the idea you’re just an object and you’re just a toy for use. But just because you're in a full latex suit, you don’t have to necessarily be treated like that. You can be however you want it to be. You can use it as a form of self-expression.

If someone wants to get into latex, where should they start? Buying a piece? Going to an event?

I would suggest starting with a smaller piece. Definitely grab a piece or two and explore with yourself before going to a meetup. Of course, you could do as you’ve just suggested and go to a meet up even if you don’t have a piece. In my mind, it makes a little more sense to buy a piece and see if you’re into it, though. I would start off with something like some wrist-length gloves, maybe a hood as well and those two things will still give you a really good experience of what latex is and what it’s about.

Looking back, is there something that you have learned about latex and rubber over your journey that you would have warned yourself of before you started?

Oh my gosh, so many things come to mind. It’s expensive! It’s high-maintenance! But the reward is so worth it. I think my journey with latex has really helped me to discover another layer of who I am as a person. This journey of being a title holder within this rubber community has made me learn so much about myself and about other people as well and I think it’s all about the journey at the end of the day and where it takes you. Never in one million years would I have thought that my love for latex and rubber would’ve taken me all around the world which it currently is. It’s so crazy to think about.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/mx-international-rubber-elliott-eve-gender-reveal on Oct 31, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

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NEWS | MIKELLE STREET | OCT 31, 2025, 9:52 AM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Trans Teen Awarded 5-Figure Settlement From Washington School District Over Assault

Video of Ian Ring being assaulted had circulated in 2021.

Thomas Barwick

Sign up for The Agenda, Them’s news and politics newsletter, delivered Thursdays.

The family of a transgender student in Washington State is set to be paid five figures from Spokane School Districts after reaching a settlement over a 2021 assault.

When Ian Ring was 13 years old, he said that he was the subject of bullying by classmates. According to Ring and his family, other students called the teen names and anti-trans slurs. At one point, the seventh-grader was assaulted, leaving bruises. The assault, which happened at Dr. Jonas E. Salk Middle School, was captured in a Snapchat video. In the footage, others stand around watching, recording, and laughing as the assault occurs.

“Earlier that day, they had said something about after school I didn’t really hear because I wasn’t paying attention to them,” Ring told local station KXLY. “And then I was walking towards my area where my bus picks up. [...] He pushed me and then he started getting close to me, so I tried pushing him back and then he hit me..”

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The incident was investigated by the Spokane Police department, resulting in a charge of fourth degree assault. The status of that charge is unclear. In the aftermath of the investigation, Ring’s family filed suit, alleging that the school had not done enough to protect the child.

In the lawsuit, Ring’s family alleged that the middle school knew that the teen was being bullied for being trans, and wasn’t providing a safe environment, per KREM. The suit also alleged that no one from the school contacted law enforcement after the assault.

This month, a $60,000 settlement was approved by the judge; Ring will receive $36,000, his parents will receive $2,000 each, and $20,000 will go to attorneys fees according to KREM.

In 2019, Washington State Senate Bill 5689 was passed into law to prevent “harassment, intimidation, bullying and discrimination in public schools” of all students including trans kids. The legislation required various policies and procedures to be put in place at all public schools to protect students.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/ian-ring-assault-lawsuit-trans-youth-settlement-spokane-washington on Oct 31, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

NEWS | OCT 30, 2025, 4:28 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

A Comprehensive Timeline of J.K. Rowling's Descent Into Transphobia

From beloved children’s author to funding the legal battle to codify transphobia into law, we charted how Rowling became “queen TERF.”

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Once widely beloved, author J.K. Rowling has become more or less synonymous with the UK’s growing movement of trans-exclusionary feminists, more commonly known as TERFs. Whether likening transition to conversion therapy or calling trans women men, Rowling’s outlandish anti-trans rants have been making headlines for years.

For many queer and trans fans of the Harry Potter series, Rowling’s writing was once a magical source of hope for marginalized people fighting against a dark force. Now, fans and members of the Harry Potter cast have spoken out against the author's dangerous stances on trans existence. The European Region of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association even put out a report connecting Rowling's years of anti-trans vitriol to the steady rise of transphobic violence in the United Kingdom.

Her transformation from cherished YA author who once said she would march for trans rights to virulently anti-trans pundit funding the legal battle to codify transphobia into U.K. law has been an incredibly public affair over the last six years. It can still, however, be hard to keep up with every one of Rowling’s anti-trans tirades. For those who want a more complete sense of the timeline, here’s a comprehensive account of the author’s public anti-trans takes, from her earliest offense onward.

March 22, 2018: Rowling likes a post that refers to trans women as “men in dresses”

The author’s PR team later chalked it up to a “middle-aged moment,” but trans people took note when Rowling, on March 22, 2018, liked a post on X referring to trans women as “men in dresses.” Though she had never publicly said anything anti-trans at the time, her liked tweets raised suspicion among those who were paying attention.

December 2019: Rowling supports anti-trans researcher Maya Forstater and says “men cannot turn into women”

In December 2019, Rowling seemed to go beyond a “middle-aged moment” and made her support for known TERF Maya Forstater public. Forstater was a fellow at the Center for Global Development, a think tank, but was fired after management found evidence of her long history of anti-trans rhetoric online. Specifically, the former researcher was dismissed after tweeting that trans women could not change their biological sex, over which she sued her former employer and won.

TERFs across the internet, including Rowling, began using the hashtag #IStandWithMaya to spout hateful anti-trans rhetoric. The author posted:

“Dress however you please.

Call yourself whatever you like.

Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you.

Live your best life in peace and security.

But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?

#IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill”

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May 2020: Rowling accidentally includes “fuck up some TERFs” in response to a child’s drawing

In May 2020, Rowling, seemingly by mistake, replied to a post on X (then known as Twitter, RIP) about a nine-year-old’s drawing of a monster, the Ickabog, from the author’s children’s book of the same name, with the following:

“I love this truly fabulous Ickabog, with its bat ears, mismatched eyes, and terrifying bloodstained teeth! In court, Wolf claimed the Facebook post in which he’d said he wanted to ‘f*** up some TERFs’ was just ‘bravado’. #TheIckabog.”

But the second half of the original post is more than a whoopsie. Internet sleuths quickly found the quote had come from a post referencing when Tara Wolf, a trans woman (misgendered by Rowling in her reply), was accused of assaulting Maria MacLachlan who was at an anti-trans protest in 2017. People quickly expressed their suspicion that Rowling’s copy-and-paste error further exposed her as someone who misgenders trans women.

“[...] I'm mortified! This is what happens when you're not paying attention and accidentally cut and paste from an ENTIRELY different kind of message,” the author wrote in reply to someone who pointed out the error.

June 6, 2020: Rowling can’t comprehend “people who menstruate”

While there had long been talk of Rowling possibly being a TERF, the broader public had yet to label her as such. But the author’s alleged anti-trans biases became impossible to ignore on June 6, 2020, when she mocked an article for using trans-inclusive language by referring to “people who menstruate.”

“‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?,” the author wrote.

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As we know, people of all genders menstruate, and not all women menstruate. But the push against inclusive language is a common “gender-critical” talking point that is often weaponized by TERFs to mock trans people.

June 8, 2020: Daniel Radcliffe released a letter against Rowling’s transphobia in partnership with the Trevor Project

In response to Rowling’s increasingly anti-trans tweets coming to a public head in early June, Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe published a letter in partnership with LGBTQ+ mental health organization the Trevor Project to address the controversy. In the letter, Radcliffe spoke out against Rowling’s comments and apologized to any Harry Potter fans who have since felt the novel and magical universe has been tainted by the author’s transphobic statements. He also stressed that despite how media outlets might portray it, the problem at hand extends beyond interpersonal conflict between himself and Rowling.

“Transgender women are women,” Radcliffe wrote. “Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all advice given by professional health care associations who have far more expertise on this subject matter than either Jo or I.”

In a November 2022 interview with IndieWire, the actor explained why he felt compelled to pen a letter with The Trevor Project in response to Rowling’s first major outburst of public transphobia, in June 2020. “The reason I felt very, very much as though I needed to say something when I did was because, particularly since finishing Potter, I’ve met so many queer and trans kids and young people who had a huge amount of identification with Potter on that,” Radcliffe told the publication. “And so seeing them hurt on that day I was like, I wanted them to know that not everybody in the franchise felt that way. And that was really important.”

June 10, 2020: Rowling unleashes a 3,800-word anti-trans rant at the start of Pride month

Two days after Radcliffe’s letter, Rowling published a 3,800-word essay to her website on June 10, 2020, which has since been dubbed by many as her “TERF manifesto.” The essay elaborated on the transphobic breadcrumbs she’d been dropping on social media for about two years.

Posted to X with the simple caption “TERF wars,” Rowling’s essay delved into the pits of “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” thought: “Trans activism” is harming women; being labeled a TERF is akin to being called a slur; and there is an “explosion” of young women transitioning, in part, due to “the allure of escaping womanhood” and social contagion. (The “explosion” Rowling refers to is much more likely just an increase in kids coming out as trans because they have access to language describing their experiences. As studies have shown, more people regret having kids than transitioning.)

As trans people pointed out at the time of Rowling's anti-trans manifesto, it was published just days after Iyanna Dior, a Black trans woman in Minneapolis, was senselessly beaten in what appeared to have been a transphobic attack, and the killings of Tony McDade, a Black trans man, and Nina Pop, a Black trans woman, in May 2020.

“In response to JK Rowling’s recent bout of transmisogyny, some are saying that she should have ‘read the room’ & realized that this moment of global uprising is not the time,” wrote the activist and poet Alok Vaid-Menon on Instagram. “Actually — she did. This is her response: white backlash. Policing & fortifying gender/sex boundaries has always been a tactic of white supremacy.”

June 10, 2020: Emma Watson says trans people “deserve to live their lives without being constantly questioned”

The same day that Rowling released her transphobic diatribe on her website, Harry Potter star Emma Watson took to X to voice her opposition, reaffirming trans people’s humanity. She also made donations to U.K. trans organizations Mermaids and international feminist fund Mama Cash, encouraging her followers to do as well.

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“Trans people are who they say they are and deserve to live their lives without being constantly questioned or told they aren’t who they say they are,” Watson said in the thread. “I want my trans followers to know that I and so many other people around the world see you, respect you and love you for who you are.”

June 12, 2020: Rupert Grint says he “firmly stand[s] with the trans community”

In a statement to The Sunday Times, Harry Potter star Rupert Grint echoed the statements made by Watson and Radcliffe in response to Rowling’s transphobia.

“I firmly stand with the trans community and echo the sentiments expressed by many of my peers,” he said. “Trans women are women. Trans men are men. We should all be entitled to live with love and without judgment”

Much like their characters in the Harry Potter franchise, the trio consisting of Radcliffe, Watson, and Grint led the public charge to condemn Rowling’s transphobic vitriol; however, they weren’t the only cast members to speak about the controversy. In fact, there’s a long list of Harry Potter cast members who criticized or sided with Rowling in the ensuing months and years.

June 14, 2020: Staff at Rowling’s publisher refuse to work on her latest book

Tensions came to a fever pitch at Rowling’s publisher Hachette U.K. when staff refused to work on the author’s then-forthcoming children’s book, The Ickabog, after the author’s incredibly public display of anti-trans sentiment.

The Daily Mail reported that on June 14, 2020, several Hachette employees expressed during a meeting with management that they were “no longer prepared to work on the book” after Rowling made her anti-trans beliefs public. An employee told the publication that the group was “opposed to her comments and wanted to show support for the trans lobby.”

Staff at J.K. Rowling’s Publisher Refuse To Work on Transphobic Author’s New Book

Citing Rowling's history of transphobia, employees at Hachette told management they were “no longer prepared to work on the book.”

In response to the backlash, Hachette U.K. issued the following statement: “We fundamentally believe that everyone has the right to express their own thoughts and beliefs. We will never make our employees work on a book whose content they find upsetting for personal reasons, but we draw a distinction between that and refusing to work on a book because they disagree with an author’s views outside their writing, which runs contrary to our belief in free speech.”

June 22, 2020: Four authors quit Rowling’s literary agency

In the fallout from Rowling’s TERF manifesto, several authors represented by her literary agency took a stand against the writer by quitting.

On June 22, 2020, writers Drew Davies, Fox Fisher, and Ugla Stefanía Kristjönudóttir Jónsdóttir, as well as a fourth author who remained anonymous, announced they were no longer working with the Blair Partnership, the literary agency that represents Rowling. They attributed their departure to the agency’s lack of action after Rowling posted her “TERF wars” essay on her website and to social media detailing her views on trans youth transitioning.

The writers told The Guardian that when they reached out to Blair Partnership management to issue a statement that would “reaffirm their commitment to transgender rights and equality,” they were met with pushback and discontent. When leadership didn’t condemn Rowling, the writers determined their only choice was to part ways with the agency.

“We felt that they were unable to commit to any action that we thought was appropriate and meaningful,” the authors said. “[We felt] strongly about having an agency that supports our rights at all avenues and does not endorse views that go against our values and principles.”

The agency did not deny the claims, simply stating to the press that it would not infringe on the “rights of all of [its] clients to express their thoughts and beliefs.”

July 5, 2020: Rowling compares transitioning to conversion therapy

Less than a week after Pride month ended, Rowling was at it again. In a social media exchange, the author compared transitioning to anti-LGBTQ+ conversion therapy, adding this to the litany of anti-trans pseudoscience she had shared on social media just a month before.

User @TrinerScot pointed out that Rowling “liked” a post derogatorily comparing puberty blockers to antidepressants. “Yes they are sometimes necessary and lifesaving, but they should be a last resort — not the first option,” the original post read. “Pure laziness for those who would rather medicate than put in the time and effort to heal people's minds.”

In the now-deleted thread, @TrinerScot wrote that Rowling endorsing the post by liking it was “actively harmful to millions.” Rowling said the original post misrepresented what she thought about mental health medications, before posting a thread of her own that ended in more anti-trans misinformation.

“I've ignored fake tweets attributed to me and RTed widely,” she wrote on July 5, 2020. “I've ignored porn tweeted at children on a thread about their art. I've ignored death and rape threats. I'm not going to ignore this. When you lie about what I believe about mental health medication and when you misrepresent the views of a trans woman for whom I feel nothing but admiration and solidarity, you cross a line.”

In clarifying where she actually stands, Rowling went on to say that young people seeking mental health care are being “shunted” toward gender-affirming care: “Many, myself included, believe we are watching a new kind of conversion therapy for young gay people, who are being set on a lifelong path of medicalisation that may result in the loss of their fertility and/or full sexual function,” she continued.

The statement is factually incorrect. Gender-affirming health care is proven to save lives, and more people regret having children than transitioning. Conversion therapy, however, has traumatized and suppressed LGBTQ+ people for decades.

September 15, 2020: Rowling says her latest villain is based on Buffalo Bill, the cross-dressing killer from Silence of the Lambs. Then she took it back

On June 5, 2020, Rowling’s novel Troubled Blood was published under the pen name Robert Galbraith. Trans-related content of the book aside (we’ll get into more detail on that shortly), people have long speculated that Rowling’s nom de plume has anti-queer roots and was inspired by the infamous LGBTQ+ conversion therapist, Robert Galbraith Heath.

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Despite the nearly identical nature of her pen name and the name of the conversion therapist, the author said similarities between the two were purely coincidental. “Any assertion that there is a connection is unfounded and untrue,” a Rowling spokesperson told Newsweek.

When her novel Troubled Blood, under her nom de plume Robert Galbraith, was released on September 15, 2020, she received significant criticism for featuring a villain based on dangerous transphobic tropes. The first major review of the book laid out the plot: Detective Cormoran Strike investigates a series of murders committed by a cisgender man who hunts his female victims by dressing up as a woman.

After receiving a wave of backlash, the now-notorious TERF said her villain — a cross-dressing cis murderer — was based on a real-life pair of killers, Jerry Brudos and Russell Williams. While the cases are technically real, it is also widely known that Brudos’ murders were the basis for actor Ted Levine’s portrayal of the cross-dressing killer Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs. That film has been widely attributed with popularizing one of the most dangerous and transmisogynistic myths in cinematic history: that trans women are actually murderous men aiming to kill women.

Rowling has repeatedly said that trans women are men pretending to be women to invade “biological woman” spaces. For instance, in her 3,800-word essay expressing these beliefs, she wrote: “When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he's a woman ... then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside.” A statement like this, some argue, makes Rowling’s claim that her villain is simply a work of historical fiction a dubious one.

Taking all of this into account, people flooded X to criticize Troubled Blood, connecting the myths the novel perpetuates to the very real and increasing threat of violence against trans women.

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September 17, 2020: Rowling’s books get pulled from bookshelves at some stores due to her transphobia

In light of Rowling’s exponentially more toxic spurts of transphobia during the summer of 2020, creatives and booksellers alike wanted to send a clear message that they did not stand with the once-beloved children’s book author.

Rabble Books and Games, an Australian bookstore, announced it would pull the Harry Potter series and any other Rowling titles from its shelves, including books written under her pen name, Robert Galbraith. The decision was made after it came to light that Troubled Blood featured a villain who is a cross-dressing serial killer, a well-known transphobic trope.

On September 16, 2020, Rabble Books and Games owner Nat Latter posted the following on the store’s Facebook account: “Whilst stocking a book isn't an endorsement (good grief, that would be a minefield), and we will always take orders for books that aren't in stock, there are more worthy books to put on the shelf, books that don't harm communities and won't make us sad to unpack them.”

September 30, 2020: 1,500 authors denounce Rowling’s anti-trans comments

After Rowling’s summer of flagrant transphobia, some U.K. authors decided they’d had enough of her potentially tarnishing the reputation of England-based writers. In September 2020, over 1,500 U.K. creatives spoke out against the Harry Potter author’s dangerous views on trans people and signed an open letter in support of trans rights.

“Culture is, and should always be, at the forefront of societal change, and as writers, editors, agents, journalists, and publishing professionals, we recognize the vital role our industry has in advancing and supporting the wellbeing and rights of trans and non-binary people,” the September 30 letter reads. “We stand with you, we hear you, we see you, we accept you, we love you. The world is better for having you in it. Non-binary lives are valid, trans women are women, trans men are men, trans rights are human rights.”

March 2, 2021: Makers of the Harry Potter video game announce trans character options. LGBTQ+ fans say it isn’t enough

On March 2, 2021, Bloomberg reported that players of Hogwarts Legacy, a then-upcoming Harry Potter video game, would be able to choose from trans character options.

Some celebrated this seemingly progressive addition to the Potter universe, but others were quick to note that the move felt hollow considering the anti-trans vitriol that Rowling has shared online.

The development team in charge of the game at Avalanche Software emphasized that they truly wanted the game to feel as inclusive as possible, but many fans felt it wasn’t enough if Rowling benefits in any way from the project.

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October 5, 2021: Dave Chappelle defends Rowling in his Netflix comedy special and says he’s “Team TERF”

Comedian Dave Chappelle told audiences he was “Team TERF” in his standup special The Closer, which premiered on Netflix on October 5, 2021, and sparked massive backlash.

Throughout the 72-minute Netflix special, Chappelle praised Rowling’s history of transphobia by repeating many of her transmisogynistic beliefs and calling them facts. “I’m Team TERF… Gender is a fact,” he said.

“They canceled JK Rowling — my God,” the comedian said in the special. “Effectively, she said gender was a fact, the trans community got mad as fuck, they started calling her a TERF.” (To say Rowling has been “canceled” feels like a stretch when she still has many millions of dollars and followers after being virulently transphobic for years.)

Chappelle had previously faced backlash for making dehumanizing jokes about trans people, many of which regurgitate harmful stereotypes that frame trans women as predators, the kind of rhetoric that contributes to violence toward trans femmes of color. After the comedian’s special dropped, LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations, activists, and trans employees at Netflix spoke out against how it put an even larger target on the backs of trans people.

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People were quick to point out the hypocrisy of Netflix, a platform that claims to be LGBTQ+ friendly, paying roughly $24 million for Chappelle’s special and repeatedly canceling new queer media ventures after one season. The streamer went on to suspend then reinstate multiple trans employees who spoke out against the special, as well as fire the leader of the trans-employee resource group.

In the wake of the controversial special, trans employees at the streaming service planned a walkout on October 20 and protested en masse outside of Netflix’s Los Angeles offices. Two trans employees filed complaints with the National Labor Relations Board against Netflix, but later voluntarily withdrew their charges after negotiating with the company. The fallout became a major flashpoint in both Rowling’s development as a prominent TERF figure as well as Chappelle’s public alignment with transphobia.

November 2021: Despite Rowling’s mansion being identified on Wikipedia, the author claims she was “doxxed”

Rowling owns a historically significant, and therefore very publicly known, mansion that has been the subject of press coverage and controversy for over a decade. This means her address has been readily available to the public for years.

Despite the notoriety of her home, though, Rowling expressed shock and horror on X in saying she was “doxxed” when three trans activists took a picture in front of her famous estate and posted it online. In November 2021, the trio held a mini protest outside the author’s residence, holding signs that said “Trans Liberation Now,” “Don’t Be a Cissy,” and “Trans Rights Are Human Rights.”

Rowling's concern, she wrote on X, was that the street number of her house was included in the photo — a home and location that has, again, been frequently featured in press coverage because of the author’s battle against local government to have hedges thick enough to impede sidewalk traffic.

“They should have reflected on the fact that I’ve now received so many death threats I could paper the house with them, and I haven’t stopped speaking out,” Rowling wrote. “Perhaps — and I’m just throwing this out there — the best way to prove your movement isn’t a threat to women, is to stop stalking, harassing and threatening us.”

Months after Rowling accused trans activists of “doxxing” her, the Scottish authorities announced their findings: In January 2022, Police Scotland determined there was s “no criminality” involved in the alleged doxxing.

January 2022: Trans artist resells Harry Potter books with covers that omit Rowling’s name

In January 2022, an artist’s TikTok went viral after they stripped Rowling’s name from the covers of Harry Potter books and resold them. The user @sensitivequeer is a trans bookbinder and artist, and posted a video of themself rebinding a Potter book with a new cover, sans the author’s name.

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Their goal was to “engage critically and give an option to people who do still want to enjoy Harry Potter without supporting JK Rowling,” they said in a February 2022 TikTok.

If you were attached to the dog-eared copy you’d had since middle school but didn’t want to look at Rowling’s name, in addition to reselling new books with refurbished covers, the artist was also offering to rebind older copies. And, according to Business Insider, no, it was not copyright infringement. The service was discontinued in 2023, but certainly made an impact while it existed.

March 14, 2022: Emma Watson says she’s “here for all witches” at the BAFTAs, which some interpreted took as a dig at Rowling

During her acceptance speech for her award for outstanding actress at the 2022 BAFTA Awards for her role in Belfast, Watson took it as an opportunity to cheer on “all witches.”

“I'm here for all of the witches,” she said during her speech.

The statement, while supportive in nature, was taken as a dig at Rowling for her history of transphobia, particularly her statement made in June 2020. While Watson never said the “here for all witches” comment was directed at Rowling, the author took it as such, as confirmed on X years later.

April 10, 2022: Rowling has brunch with an anti-trans lobbying group while thousands march for trans rights

On April 10, 2022, thousands of protesters flooded the streets of London to demand trans people be protected under a proposed ban on conversion therapy in the U.K. Meanwhile, Pink News reported that Rowling was having a boozy brunch with members of the anti-trans lobbying group Get The L Out UK, a group that, according to its own website, stands against “transgenderism.”

“There was a lunch and I'm not saying I've only just sobered up enough to type this tweet but at the same time, I'm not not saying that,” Rowling posted the next day, accompanied by pictures of herself with members of Get The L Out.

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Get The L Out UK is a so-called gender-critical group that asserts a number of common trans-exclusionary talking points like “lesbians are same-sex attracted,” “lesbians do not have penises,” and “lesbians do not want to have sex with men who identify as trans-women.” The non-hierarchical organization’s goal is to “get the L out of the GBT community,” which falls in line with a long legacy of TERF separatism that originally came about in the 1970s and frames trans women as predators.

July 20, 2022: Quidditch rebrands to distance itself from Rowling

Like many of the fan-generated extensions of the Potter universe, quidditch is an incredibly trans-inclusive and queer-inclusive sport, so Rowling’s years of transphobia did not sit well with participants. On July 19, 2022, the International Quidditch Association (IQA) announced that the game was officially rebranded as “quadball” to distance itself from Rowling.

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The IQA and two other quidditch organizations will be “changing the name of our sport and supporting this change across our members worldwide,” said Chris Lau, chair of the IQA Board of Trustees, in a press statement. “This is an important moment in our sport’s history, and I personally am thrilled to be a part of it.”

August 29, 2022: Rowling writes a character, seemingly based on herself, who gets canceled for transphobia and racism

On August 29, 2022, Rolling Stone published a review of Rowling’s latest work under the pen name Robert Galbraith, The Ink Black Heart, which features a creator who gets harassed and doxxed for transphobia and racism. Edie Ledwell, the character in question, gets trolled online by the anonymous “Anomie,” who, according to Rolling Stone, doxxes Ledwell “with photos of her home plastered on the internet” and subjects her “to death and rape threats for having an opinion.”

Despite the striking similarities between Ledwell and Rowling’s own claims that she’s been doxxed and unfairly villainized for her transphobia, the author has denied that the book and character are autobiographical. “I should make it really clear after some of the things that have happened the last year that this is not depicting [that],” Rowling said on The Graham Norton Radio Show. “I had written the book before certain things happened to me online. I said to my husband, ‘I think everyone is going to see this as a response to what happened to me,’ but it genuinely wasn’t. The first draft of the book was finished at the point certain things happened.”

September 2022: Rowling gets mad about binders, of all things

In September 2022, Rowling posted a thread to X promoting a “hit piece” by conservative publication The Telegraph against U.K. trans-advocacy organization Mermaids for providing information on binding and puberty blockers.

The Telegraph article was filled with medical misinformation and right-wing talking points, claiming that both binding and puberty blockers are forms of self-harm, despite overwhelming evidence that puberty blockers make trans teens feel happier and healthier, and that binding can reduce misgendering and dysphoria for trans folks as well as increase life satisfaction.

Again, despite the science, Rowling proceeded to misgender trans children on X and promote the falsity-ridden article.

“Chair of Trustees recently gave evidence under oath that Mermaids is ‘not a medical organisation,’” the post read. “Now an investigation reveals they're advising kids on puberty blockers and providing binders to underage girls without parental consent.”

October 2022: Actor Tom Felton claims Rowling wasn’t deeply involved in making the Harry Potter movies

Not everyone who played a Death Eater in the Potter franchise explicitly sides with She Who Should Probably Stop Posting — though that doesn’t mean they’ve outright condemned Rowling. In an October 2022 interview, Tom Felton, who played Draco Malfoy, told The Independent that Rowling wasn’t deeply involved in the making of the HP movies. “As much as Jo is the founder of [these] stories, she wasn’t part of the filmmaking process as much as some people might think,” Felton told the publication.

In terms of where he stands on Rowling’s views, Felton didn’t condemn nor overtly support her, opting for centrism over defending trans people. He said he didn’t “know enough about the specifics of what anyone said” to comment. He added, “Honestly, with my friends, we all have differing opinions on various matters, and we celebrate our own choices,” and that they “certainly don’t take any pleasure in putting crosshairs on people that may have said things that we disagree with.”

February 16, 2023: The New York Times publishes an op-ed in support of Rowling, one day after being protested for anti-trans coverage

Just a day after The New York Times was publicly condemned for its anti-trans bias, the publication published a piece in support of Rowling. On February 16, 2023, the Times ran an op-ed by writer Pamela Paul titled “In Defense of J.K. Rowling,” asserting that nothing the author has said over the years is transphobic.

Beloved community leader, organizer, author, and artist Cecilia Gentili called the article “a slap in the face.”

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Advocates pointed out the sad reality that running a piece in defense of perhaps one of the world’s most notable TERFs is in line with the paper of record’s past coverage of trans people. As an open letter signed by over 200 Times contributors states, New York Times’ coverage of trans issues has been used to support anti-trans legislation limiting access to life-saving care, including Paul’s previous writing.

March 29, 2023: Radcliffe hosts a roundtable for queer and trans youth. Fans say his allyship is making Rowling shatter her wine glasses

Radcliffe continued his work to support LGBTQ+ youth in collaboration with The Trevor Project on March 29, 2023, by hosting a roundtable discussion with trans young people for Trans Day of Visibility.

“It was an absolute privilege to get to meet and listen to this incredible group of young people,” Radcliffe said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. “At the end of the day, if you’re going to talk about trans kids, it might be useful to actually listen to trans kids.”

One could say that a certain YA-fiction author should be listening closely and taking Radcliffe’s advice to heart. Unfortunately, Rowling’s track record doesn’t exactly scream “listening to trans kids talk about their own experiences.” That’s why people quickly rushed to social media to praise Radcliffe, while also poking fun at Rowling.

February 2023: Bari Weiss’ The Free Press releases podcast titled The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling

J.K. Rowling’s reputation as an anti-trans thought leader has grown exponentially over the years, as has public horror and fascination with her journey. Megan Phelps-Roper, a writer and activist known for rebelling against and leaving the notoriously, virulently anti-LGBTQ+ Westboro Baptist Church, launched a podcast series titled The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling in January 2023 to explore the author’s fall from grace. The podcast is a project of conservative journalist Bari Weiss’s The Free Press, which Weiss later sold to Paramount Skydance for $150 million before becoming the editor-in-chief of CBS News.

The tone of the podcast was, in Phelps-Roper’s words, a “good faith” conversation with Rowling in which she was painted as a sympathetic and misunderstood character that was turned into a public villain. Of course, by focusing on Rowling’s feelings as opposed to incorporating the tangible harm the author has had on trans people in the U.K. — including funding literal legal battles to codify transphobia into law — many people criticized the podcast for not properly contextualizing the gravity of her words.

April 3, 2023: Rowling announces she may be developing a Harry Potter TV series with HBO Max. Then she mocked people who would boycott it

On April 3, 2023, Deadline reported that Rowling was in conversation with HBO Max to develop a TV series based on her wizard-school books, which would include the author as an executive producer on the project. People pointed out the hypocrisy of the decision by HBO Max, another supposedly LGBTQ+ friendly platform, and across social media they expressed their discontent with the streamer for supporting the notable TERF.

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As more people online committed to boycotting the new series, Rowling responded by mocking them on X, rather than taking their fair criticism into account. “Activists in my mentions are trying to organize yet another boycott of my work, this time of the ‘Harry Potter’ TV show,” the author wrote. “As forewarned is forearmed, I’ve taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.”

April 1, 2024: Rowling says she would rather spend time in prison than correctly gender a trans person, mocking several prominent trans women including Munroe Bergdorf

On April 1, the author decided to share her 3 cents on Scotland’s new Hate Crime Act — by daring the Scottish police to come and arrest her. The BBC initially misreported that the law would target people for making “derogatory comments,” but in actuality, the new law targets “stirring up hatred,” defined as communicating in a threatening or abusive manner, against a protected group (trans people included), which is considered illegal and is punishable by imprisonment.

Rowling took to X (which had been renamed the year prior) to express her discontent, posting a long thread in which she mocked the identity of several prominent trans women including Munroe Bergdorf and Mridual Wadhwa. Throughout the thread, she made digs at trans organizers and implied that the movement is protecting child predators.

“Mridul Wadhwa, head of a Scottish rape crisis centre, says, ‘sexual violence happens to bigoted people as well.’ She has no gender recognition certificate, but was still appointed to a job advertised for women only. Time to be ‘challenged on your prejudices’, rape victims!”

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To finish off her April Fool’s rant, Rowling said, “I’m currently out of the country, but if what I’ve written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment.”

April 10, 2024: Rowling says she will not forgive Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson

Latching onto one of the anti-trans movement’s most relied-on strategies — using junk science to “prove” they are correct — Rowling posted a thread to X on April 10, 2024, in response to the Cass Review, a 398-page document commissioned by the National Health Services (NHS) to inform gender-affirming care guidelines for trans youth. The report has been widely criticized by trans advocates and health care experts across the U.K. because it asserts that existing research on puberty blockers and hormone therapy is unreliable without the use of double-blind studies, calling for even further restrictions on gender-affirming care.

Medical professionals have pushed back against the Cass Review’s findings, as “randomized control studies” with double-blind participants are often impossible to conduct for studies on life-saving care, including chemotherapy.

Unsurprising to no one, Rowling and her ilk felt vindicated by the report, expressing their content across social media. The author called the report the “most robust review” of children and gender-affirming care ever conducted and framed trans advocates as cheerleaders for “what now looks like severe medical malpractice,” despite a mountain of medical evidence and expert consensus stating the contrary.

When another X user responded to her post by saying, “Just waiting for Dan and Emma to give you a very public apology ... safe in the knowledge that you will forgive them …,” Rowling let her fans know that she would not be doing any forgiving.

“Not safe, I'm afraid,” she wrote. “Celebs who cosied up to a movement intent on eroding women's hard-won rights and who used their platforms to cheer on the transitioning of minors can save their apologies for traumatized detransitioners and vulnerable women reliant on single sex spaces.”

Radcliffe and Watson have yet to publicly express a desire to apologize to her.

April 2024: Radcliffe says Rowling’s transphobia makes him “really sad”

Radcliffe has been an adamant defender of LGBTQ+ rights and has spoken out against Rowling’s transphobia for years. In an April interview with The Atlantic, the actor said he and other cast members have spoken out about the author’s continual attack on trans people to help adversely affected fans and send the message that not everyone in the Harry Potter universe shares the author’s opinions.

He told the publication, “It makes me really sad, ultimately, because I do look at the person that I met, the times that we met, and the books that she wrote, and the world that she created, and all of that is to me so deeply empathic.”

Daniel Radcliffe Says That J.K. Rowling’s Anti-Trans Rhetoric Makes Him “Really Sad"

In a lengthy interview with The Atlantic, Radcliffe talked about his relationship — or lack thereof — with the Harry Potter author.

Radcliffe added that his work with The Trevor Project helped contextualize how important his character’s journey was for so many LGBTQ+ people finding self-acceptance and love: “A lot of people found some solace in those books and films who were dealing with feeling closeted or rejected by their family or living with a secret,” he said.

May 5, 2024: Rowling bullies another trans woman online

On May 5, anti-trans writer Hazel Appleyard posted a screenshot of a picture that a woman named Perl took of herself on X. Appleyard mocked her for the selfie because Perl referred to her “bra strap-length” hair in it, which really seemed to activate TERFs across the internet, including Rowling.

Instead of enjoying her castle and piles of money, Rowling added her opinion of Perl’s selfie, saying, “You really didn't know the basic lengths are: glittery plastic earrings length, bra strap length, suspender belt length and thong length? That's how all proper women talk to their hairdressers.”

Probably unbeknownst to Rowling, “bra strap-length” is actually a common way to refer to hair length, as pointed out by X user Naomi A. Further, Naomi A. outlined the sad trajectory Rowling has taken into trans-exclusionary radical feminism: In 2020, the author said she would march for trans people “if they were being discriminated against on the basis of being trans,” but just four years later, Rowling is continuing to engage in escalating degrees of harassment of trans people online.

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May 11, 2024: Rowling attacks trans advocate and attorney Chase Strangio

On May 11, 2024, Rowling decided to put trans advocate and ACLU attorney Chase Strangio in the line of fire for her 14.2 million followers. She screenshotted and reshared a post of Strangio’s from 2020 that said, “If you are angry or think it’s unfair for a trans girl to beat a cis girl in a sporting event, then fundamentally you don’t think trans girls are ‘real’ girls. It’s that simple.” Rowling added her own commentary to the post: “Astounding how often militant trans activists tell the rest of us, ‘so what you’re saying is, trans girls aren’t real girls.’ Yes, that's exactly what we’re saying,” she wrote. “Girls are being robbed of honours and opportunities by mediocre, uber-privileged, establishment-enabled boys.”

“This morning I woke up to an unusually high volume of hate messages on my IG,” Strangio wrote in an Instagram post that shared an image of Rowling’s post. “I couldn’t figure it out until I realized that JK Rowling had screenshot and Tweeted a 4.5 year old Tweet from me. I don’t use Twitter anymore so I only know when these things happen when they veer into IG. A few things are striking about this, though.”

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Aside from it being unhinged that a billionaire would take the time to tweet about a nearly five-year-old tweet of Strangio’s, he pointed out just how out of touch with reality Rowling's point is. “The discourse and legal landscape have devolved so much. In February 2020 when I Tweeted this, no state had passed a single explicitly anti-trans law since HB2 in 2016,” Strangio wrote in the caption. “The rhetoric around sports was just beginning to escalate and no state came close to passing a medical care ban. Now half the country has banned trans girls from sports and banned gender-affirming medical care for minors.”

Strangio continued, “And this has emboldened people to state loudly that they do not believe in the existence of trans people. Not just in sports. Just in general. The transmisogyny and the misogyny of it all continue to astound me.”

June 24, 2024: Rowling says actor David Tennant is part of the “gender taliban” for defending trans rights

Doctor Who actor David Tennant faced Rowling’s wrath after calling out conservative right politician Kemi Badenoch in an acceptance speech for the Celebrity Ally Award at the British LGBT Awards on June 24, 2024. As the U.K. Minister for Women and Equalities, Badenoch has pushed anti-trans efforts like encouraging the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority to drop trans-inclusive workplace protections, and promising to rewrite the country’s Equality Act to allow organizations to ban trans women from “single-sex” spaces. In the spirit of the award he was accepting, Tennant said he felt it was his duty to speak out and tell Badenoch to “shut up.”

“Everyone has the right to be who they wanna be and live their life how they wanna live it, as long as they’re not hurting anyone else,” he told the crowd. “That’s just common sense, isn’t it? It’s human decency. We shouldn’t live in a world where that is worth remarking on.”

After Badenoch responded to Tennant on X the next day, saying “I will not be silenced by men who prioritise applause from Stonewall [the U.K.’s largest LGBTQ+ organization] over the safety of women and girls,” the online conservative backlash against the actor ensued.

Rowling wrote on X, “This man is talking about rape survivors who want female-only care, the nurses currently suing their health trust for making them change in front of a man, girls and women losing sporting opportunities to males and female prisoners incarcerated with convicted sex offenders.”

August 2, 2024: Rowling and Elon Musk falsely accuse Olympic boxer Imane Khelif of being “male”

At the 2024 Olympics, Italian welterweight boxer Angela Carini forfeited her match with Algerian boxer Imane Khelif 46 seconds after it began. Carini said it was because she could not endure Khelif’s punches, which prompted a litany of unwarranted backlash against the Algerian boxer.

The subsequent transvestigation — an anti-trans witch hunt, in this case to determine Khelif’s “biological sex” through racist phrenology and pseudoscience — was helmed by prominent TERFs like Rowling and right-wing conservative pundits such as Elon Musk and J.D. Vance.

As queen TERF, Rowling inserted herself into the middle of the attack, calling Khelif “a male who knows he’s protected by a misogynist sporting establishment enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head, and whose life’s ambition he’s just shattered.”

Khelif is cisgender, but the boxer found herself in the midst of a familiar firestorm that many cis athletes have endured as anti-trans, gender-policing sentiments have grown globally. Fortunately, as an Olympic gold medalist, Khelif knows how to punch back: The boxer filed a lawsuit against Rowling and other prominent figures for launching a massive cyberbullying campaign against her.

August 3, 2024: J.K. Rowling posts a picture of her house and people turn her alleged black mold into a meme

In the midst of attacking Khelif after her Olympic win, Rowling chose a new profile photo which featured her walls in the background. People across X were quick to point out that, much like Rowling’s views, her walls looked as though they were covered in black mold. (Others, as NBC News reported, suggested that it was in fact wallpaper.) The speculation quickly turned into a well-circulated meme that has haunted the internet since. It’s safe to say that Rowling has since changed her profile photo to one no longer including the walls of her mansion.

October 11, 2024: Youth activists release thousands of live crickets at an anti-trans conference with Rowling in attendance

During the annual conference for the LGB Alliance — a trans-exclusionary alternative to Stonewall, the U.K.’s largest LGBTQ+ organization — Rowling gave her opening remarks about the supposed dangers that trans identity pose to cisgender queer people, at one point saying “Lesbians don’t have penises.”

Rowling further stated, “As I’ve said many times before, it must be right that lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals are able to live and love freely and define themselves accurately because, as has been said before, if sex isn't real, there is no same-sex attraction.”

In what Rowling called a “homophobic” disruption, youth organizers Trans Kids Deserve Better released a box of crickets during the conference, causing mass chaos in the midst of anti-trans speakers spewing misinformation about the alleged harms of gender-affirming care, which have been disproven by years of longitudinal research.

“Who are they helping?” said a member of the youth organization, dressed in a cricket costume for a satirical video summarizing the action. “With these crickets deciding to fight transphobia, many bugs are standing up for trans kids right now, antennae held up high.”

November 27, 2024: Rowling transvestigates Barbra Banda, yet another cis athlete, after she won BBC Footballer of the Year

If there’s one thing Rowling is going to do, it’s accuse cis athletes of being trans under the guise of protecting women’s sports. Less than five months after the Imane Khelif debacle, Rowling joined the transvestigation of Zambian soccer player Barbra Banda after she was crowned 2024 Women’s Footballer of the Year.

After a public anti-trans, anti-intersex witch hunt based on pure speculation about Banda’s assigned sex, Rowling weighed in on the BBC’s decision to award her the title. “[The BBC] decided this was more time efficient than going door to door to spit directly in women’s faces,” Rowling wrote.

April 6, 2025: Rowling slams International Asexuality Awareness Day, calling it “International Fake Oppression Day”

It turns out that Rowling’s beef extends beyond trans and intersex people, extending to even more identities under the LGBTQ+ umbrella that she simply doesn’t understand. In response to a post from the LGBTQ+ hotline Switchboard that celebrated International Asexuality Awareness Day, the author called it “International Fake Oppression Day.”

Rather than listening to people who explained in the comments to her that asexuality is very much a real thing, Rowling doubled down (as she’s apt to do), referring to asexual people as “straight people who don’t fancy a quickie.”

April 30, 2025: Hundreds of U.K. actors sign letter condemning transphobia, including future Harry Potter star Paapa Essiedu

The U.K. Supreme Court ruled that trans women are not legally considered women and trans men are not legally considered men, the culmination of a years-long transphobic cultural campaign that has undoubtedly been driven forward, in part, by Rowling.

The decision banned trans women, men, and nonbinary people from using the bathroom and locker room that is most comfortable for them, putting gender-variant people in a vulnerable position, as pointed out by the letter. Aside from driving forward the normalization of transphobia in the U.K., Rowling donated more than £70,000 to For Women Scotland, an anti-trans organization responsible for bringing the lawsuit that resulted in the decision to the Supreme Court.

In response, hundreds of actors signed an open letter condemning the decision, including Paapa Essiedu, who is slated to play Severus Snape in the upcoming HBO Max television adaptation of Harry Potter. “We believe the ruling undermines the lived reality and threatens the safety of trans, non-binary, and intersex people living in the UK,” the letter states. “We believe this guidance exposes trans people to embarrassment and harassment, and excludes them from participation in public life.”

May 27, 2025: Rowling creates a legal fund for cis woman trying to ban trans women from public life

Beyond pushing transphobia into the U.K.’s cultural mainstream, Rowling is literally funding the fight against trans rights. The author established the J.K. Rowling Women’s Fund (JKRWF) as a means of funding lawsuits by cis women in legal battles regarding what she calls “women’s sex-based rights.”

J.K. Rowling’s New Org Will Fund Cis Women Fighting to Exclude Trans Women From Public Life

The author turned anti-trans activist announced the fund on Elon Musk’s X on May 24.

According to the JKRWF website, it “offers legal funding support to individuals and organisations fighting to retain women’s sex-based rights in the workplace, in public life, and in protected female spaces.”

Rowling has gone on to say that she is considering opening the fund to “single-sex” prison cases, after a cis woman claimed she “suffered” after being incarcerated with a trans woman. Rowling repeatedly misgendered the trans woman in question when speaking about the case. Research shows that incarcerated trans women face disproportionate levels of harassment and violence.

August 21, 2025: Bluesky suspends multiple trans authors after wishing “ill” on Rowling

Spreading dangerous misinformation, funding the cultural shift toward violent transphobia, and literally encouraging state violence against trans people hasn’t gotten the Harry Potter author banned from any social media platforms — but her critics have been.

In August, multiple trans authors were suspended from Bluesky for comments against Rowling, including Manhunt writer Gretchen Felker-Martin, writer Jessie Earle, and The World Within author Dani Finn. After Earle posted “I wish ill on J.K. Rowling,” Finn echoed the sentiment. Felker-Martin posted, “I hope someone splits her skull.” They were all suspended from the platform, but Earle and Finn were both reinstated.

“So that’s the state of things on Bluesky nowadays,” Earle wrote. “It’s ok though, JK Rowling can still actively use her money to harm trans people and also get a multibillion dollar tv series, don’t worry!”

September 25, 2025: Emma Watson says she supports trans rights while still cherishing her memories of Rowling. The author responds by saying Watson “poured more petrol on the flames”

In a graceful show of nuance, actress Emma Watson broke her silence about her ongoing conflict with Rowling over the author’s anti-trans views during an episode of podcast On Purpose with Jay Shetty. During the conversation, Shetty brought up statements by Rowling in 2024 about Watson, Radcliffe, and Rupert Grint (who played Ronald Weasley) in which she said the trio of actors had “cosied up to a movement intent on eroding women’s hard-won rights and who used their platforms to cheer on the transitioning of minors” for speaking out against the author’s takes.

Reflecting on Rowling’s views following the end of Harry Potter, Watson said she’s had to hold two truths: she stands behind trans people and she could never “cancel” the good memories she had with the author.

“I really don’t believe that by having had that experience and holding the love and support and views that I have, mean that I can’t and don’t treasure Jo and the person that I had personal experiences with,” she said. “I will never believe that one negates the other and that my experience of that person, I don’t get to keep and cherish.”

In response to Watson’s comments, Rowling took to X, as she’s long been apt to do, to weigh in.

“Adults can't expect to cosy up to an activist movement that regularly calls for a friend's assassination, then assert their right to the former friend's love, as though the friend was in fact their mother,” Rowling wrote in the new post. “Emma is rightly free to disagree with me and indeed to discuss her feelings about me in public - but I have the same right, and I've finally decided to exercise it.”

October 30, 2025: Rowling calls “the dolls” men after a group of trans women was awarded Glamour UK Woman of the Year

Glamour UK released its yearly Women of the Year awards and corresponding covers, in which they honored a group of trans women affectionately dubbed “The Dolls.” The long-spaning Q&A included Munroe Bergdorf, Maxine Heron, Taira, Munya, Dani St. James, Ceval Omar, Mya Mehmi, and Bel Priestley, all wearing Conner Ives’ “Protect The Dolls” t-shirts, with words by Shon Faye. Despite the positive reception — and what feels like a crowning achievement in the year of the doll — Rowling of course had to share her opinion.

“I grew up in an era when mainstream women’s magazines told girls they needed to be thinner and prettier,” she wrote in a post referencing the cover. “Now mainstream women’s magazines tell girls that men are better women than they are.”

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While it’s unclear whether Rowling is implying she wishes we would go back to an era when women’s magazines told girls to be thinner and prettier, it’s abundantly evident that she is calling a group of accomplished trans women men. This isn’t the first time Rowling has referred to a group of trans women as men, but it is emblematic of her progression to the public TERF spokesperson she’s become.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/timeline-jk-rowlings-descent-into-transphobia on Oct 31, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

POLITICS | SAMANTHA RIEDEL | OCT 30, 2025, 3:35 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Report: Trump Admin to Propose Blocking Hospitals From Offering Trans Youth Care

Medicaid and Medicare programs are he subject of the drafts.

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The Trump administration has drafted proposals for new two rules that would prohibit Medicaid and Medicare programs from funding gender-affirming medical care for people under 19 years old, the latest escalation of conservatives’ fight to outlaw such care nationwide.

The proposals have not yet been made public, but NPR obtained draft text of both rules from an anonymous employee at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the public broadcast network first reported on Thursday. One rule would reportedly ban Medicaid reimbursement for gender-affirming care provided to trans youth under 18 years old, as well as reimbursement under the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for trans patients under 19. The other would withhold all federal Medicare and Medicaid funding to hospitals that offer “pediatric gender-affirming care.”

The full text of both rules is expected to be filed in November, the anonymous CMS worker told NPR, at which time they will be subject to a period of public comment. Neither rule reportedly mentions a report commissioned by Utah Republicans that was published in May, which concluded that treatments like hormone therapy and gender-affirming surgeries are “effective” and “safe,” and that bans on such care “cannot be justified.”

If the rules were to be adopted — and assuming they survive challenges in the court system — they could effectively block hospitals across the U.S. from offering gender-affirming care to trans youth and 18-year-olds. (There are roughly 724,000 trans youth between the ages of 13 and 17 alone currently living in the U.S., per an estimate by the Williams Institute in August, making up about one quarter of the country’s total trans population.)

“Because Medicare is such a significant portion of many hospitals' revenue,” hospitals would be forced to deny that care even to patients with private insurance, Georgetown University health policy expert Katie Keith told NPR, calling the administration’s use of executive power to ban medical care “unprecedented.”

CMS is a division of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), currently headed by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., under whose leadership the agency has rejected the concept of trans identity wholesale while advocating for conversion therapy, shut down the 988 LGBTQ+ Youth Specialized Services program, and sought to eliminate hundreds of funding streams for HIV/AIDS research. HHS reportedly did not respond to NPR’s request for comment on the proposed rules this week.

Notably, the administration claims neither of the proposed rules are “economically significant” — a term for any proposed rules that would “have an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more,” or would “adversely affect in a material way [...] public health or safety.”

Trump has claimed that funding such care is a major economic burden while attempting to outlaw it throughout the country. Since January, the administration has pressured hospitals to cut trans health programs by threatening to withhold funds unilaterally and sought to remove that care from “essential health benefits” insurance plans are required to cover under the Affordable Care Act. The Department of Justice subpoenaed “nearly 20” hospitals that offer gender-affirming care earlier this year, demanding extensive lists of information including patient records and personal information, billing codes, training materials, and personnel files. One of those subpoenas was blocked by a Massachusetts judge in September.

The federal government is currently shut down amid a budget standoff between Democrats and Republicans over the GOP’s demands for fiscal year 2026, which Trump himself has blamed on Democrats for “hold[ing] American Citizens hostage” over healthcare for trans people and immigrants (whose care the administration has also heavily targeted this year).

“It really has been an obsessive focus that's been deployed across the administration,” Rutgers University law professor Katie Eyer told NPR, adding that the proposals will likely be challenged when they are released on the grounds that their restrictions are “arbitrary and capricious” — a common standard by which administrative rules are judged. “That is actually preferable to what we've had up until now, which is coercion without law,” Eyer said.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/trump-medicare-medicaid-ban-block-trans-youth-care-gender-affirming on Oct 31, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

POLITICS | OCT 30, 2025, 2:59 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

How Queer People Are Weathering the National Guard’s “Federal Occupation” of American Cities

From queer bars to mutual aid organizations, LGBTQ+ people across the country are coming together amidst the hostile climate.

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In the early days of fall, they began to appear. Clusters of young men in fatigues, rifles slung across their shoulders, posted on the corner near As You Are, a queer bar tucked on a quiet, tree-lined street in Washington, D.C. Over the course of weeks, they’d moved closer and closer, until they were stationed directly outside the bar’s entrance. When co-owner Rach “Coach” Pike asked members of the National Guard to leave, citing a sudden drop in business, the men refused.

In the months since, community members say that troops have stood outside the bar or patrolled the surrounding Capitol Hill neighborhood nearly every day. Business has been excruciatingly slow, a situation made worse by the government shutdown as workers reliant on steady paychecks grow increasingly uncertain about their future. To survive, As You Are has launched a fundraiser to help the bar "weather the federal occupation."

Across the country, queer and trans communities are confronting the growing presence of the National Guard in their cities. While troops remain a fixture in Washington D.C., the Trump administration has also deployed the Guard to Memphis and Chicago. Earlier this week, a panel on the 9th Circuit court of appeals overturned one temporary restraining order by a federal judge in Portland, siding with the Trump administration to allow the deployment there, but for now, another temporary restraining order on the deployment remains in place. Trump sent the National Guard to Los Angeles in June and has signaled that he hopes to expand deployments to New York City, Baltimore, San Francisco, Oakland, New Orleans, and St. Louis. Some of these cities he has described as “killing fields” overrun by “antifa thugs.”

He has long derided “blue” cities that have resisted his policies, whether by forming sanctuary cities to protect immigrant communities, defending abortion access, or safeguarding gender-affirming care. In a recent address to top military officials, he declared that the newly renamed Department of War should focus on “enemies from within,” describing American cities as potential “training grounds.”

For many residents, the sense of occupation is intensified by the fact that the soldiers sent to “protect” them are not from the communities where they’ve been deployed. Trump has ordered deployments over the objections of mayors and community members. To do so, he has invoked Section 12406 of Title 10, an obscure clause of federal law that allows the president to mobilize the National Guard in response to a supposed “rebellion” against the government. Governors can volunteer their troops to other states, producing surreal scenes like Texas Guardsmen in combat gear arriving at Chicago’s Midway Airport.

Members of the National Guard patrol the 14 Street restaurant and nightlife area on August 22, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Andrew Leyden/Getty Images

Jo McDaniel, co-owner of As You Are, feels that members of the National Guard clearly aren’t properly equipped with how to be present in predominantly queer spaces. "These people don't know how to do this job in cities they don't know anything about." When McDaniel and Pike asked a retired military veteran friend to appeal to the soldiers to move aside, their pleas were met with refusal, the soldiers insisting they’d been ordered to remain. Pike wasn’t surprised; the Guard’s defiance seemingly had everything to do with the bar's proudly queer nature.

Advocates worry that as the National Guard presence increases, so will violations against LGBTQ+ people. "We firmly believe that militarized presence in our cities escalates rather than reduces the risk for queer and trans folks, especially for BIPOC people," says Channyn Lynne Parker, the outgoing CEO of the Brave Space Alliance, a Black and trans-focussed community center in Chicago. These warnings don’t come out of nowhere. Federal troops patrolling American cities, have shown how they can silence protestors and dissent, sometimes even violently. In early October, for instance, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials shot and wounded a woman who attended a protest on the city's Southwest Side.

But the National Guard's presence does not only symbolically quell protest. It has worked hand in hand with agents from a wide variety of federal agencies — including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) — to support targeting and arresting undocumented people.

McDaniel and Pike say ICE activity is widespread throughout Washington D.C. alongside the National Guard, and they've witnessed more than a dozen traffic stops in their small neighborhood. In August, during one of those stops, ICE agents arrested Alice Correia Barbosa, a trans woman from Brazil, violently pulling her from her car while repeatedly misgendering her.

Additionally, other night clubs across Washington D.C. have reportedly said business has been slow. "People are scared, right? They see what’s happening in the media, in the news. They see these police checkpoints going up, literally beside or adjacent to our venues. And they see increased police presence all along the corridor. That’s frightening," Zach Renovátes, the owner of multiple LGBTQ+ bars in Washington D.C., told Metro Weekly. Other owners said they've lost thousands of dollars.

WASHINGTON, DC - AUGUST 22: Members of the National Guard patrol the 14 Street restaurant and nightlife area on August 22, 2025 in Washington, DC. An increased presence of law enforcement has been seen throughout the nation's capital since U.S. President Donald Trump announced plans to deploy federal officers and the U.S. National Guard. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

In Los Angeles, PJ Brescia, the founder of BabyGay, said that ICE and the National Guard's deployment in June felt like a targeted effort to "dim the light of queer joy" that normally occurs during Pride month. They told Them that event attendance was down as people attended protests or stayed home.

For Joe Hollendoner, the CEO of the Los Angeles LGBT Center, President Trump is utilizing the National Guard for an obvious reason. In a statement, he said he believes the administration is looking to advance "an authoritarian vision of this country that leaves no room for those who are undocumented, queer, trans, or other that do not fit his administration’s vision of our country."

All of this comes in the midst of President Trump saying he will launch "domestic terrorism" task forces to investigate "anti-facist" groups across the country. The conservative Heritage Foundation, the architects of Project 2025, have encouraged the President to focus on transgender people and their families, designating them as domestic terrorists. There is currently no stand-alone crime for "domestic terrorism," but the term is part of the escalating violence and stigma against trans people.

But communities are fighting back. In Memphis, Molly Rose Quinn, executive director of OUTMemphis, the city’s largest LGBTQ+ organization, helped create a comprehensive guide called "No Kings, Only Queens," outlining concrete steps queer and trans people can take to protect themselves from law enforcement. The organization has also adapted its services to ensure community members feel safe accessing them despite increased militarization.

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“We’ve had to change how we work,” Quinn says. “Our agency now has a completely new safety and scheduling protocol, and I know that’s true for many others.” The administration’s goal, she believes, is to foster retreat. “They want people to say, ‘I’m going to go home and lock the doors,’ rather than protest and organize.”

In Memphis, though, the opposite has happened. Over the weekend, OUTMemphis joined millions nationwide in a No Kings rally “to stand against the ongoing occupation of Memphis, TN.” The Free the 901 Campaign also emerged to provide rapid response to queer and trans people, Black residents, and immigrants targeted by the occupation. The impulse to gather, protect, and educate one another has only grown stronger.

Queer leaders point out that this authoritarian playbook is not new. Queer and trans people have long had to resist state violence like raids on gay bars, the criminalization of HIV, and most recently, bans on gender-affirming care. And the way they’ve fought back has always been through organizing.

That same collective power, advocates say, is what this moment demands. "If we do not lock arms and defend the most marginalized among us, whether that is immigrants or trans people, then we're not doing our jobs. It's as simple as that," says Parker in Chicago. Back in DC, As You Are is continuing its crowdfunding efforts, and says they are committed to staying and serving their neighborhood, no matter what the President does.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/lgbtq-national-guard-trump-deployment-federal-occupation-gay-bars on Oct 31, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

POLITICS | SAMANTHA RIEDEL | OCT 30, 2025, 12:18 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Nancy Mace Claimed for Years to Be Pro-Gay. Now She Says It's "Not Adam and Steve"

The politician previously voted for same-sex marriage rights twice.

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South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace placed yet another order for attention on Tuesday, posting a nearly 50-year-old slogan on Elon Musk’s X platform expressing religious opposition to gay marriage — just in time for her 2026 gubernatorial bid.

“Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” Mace wrote on X on Tuesday afternoon, apparently unprompted.

The post was soon appended with a Community Note from users, pointing out that Mace had, in fact, cast two votes in favor of the Respect for Marriage Act (RFMA) in 2022, legislation which overturned the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act and required cross-state recognition of same-sex marriages.

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In replies to Mace’s post, several users also shared screenshots of an exchange between Mace and a trans poster who called her out last November, shortly after Mace introduced a resolution to ban transgender women from women’s restrooms in the Capitol. The user, Boots, wrote to the Congresswoman on November 24, “you’re going to be against gay rights as soon as it becomes socially advantageous,” replying to Mace’s statement that “[g]ay rights have nothing to do with men invading women’s private spaces.” Mace replied minutes later, “Votes for gay marriage twice in fact” — likely referencing her votes for the RFMA. (A month after that back-and-forth, Mace again propped up her RFMA votes, writing that she “voted for gay marriage twice [...] Ppl can dress and modify their bodies however they want, just don’t do it to kids and don’t make the govt pay for it.”)

“‘votes’ lmao,” Boots wrote in a post of their own on Wednesday, alongside a screenshot of the exchange.

First spotted on a sign at an anti-LGBTQ+ rally in 1977, the slogan Mace used was popularized in mainstream discourse during the 1980s by Jerry Falwell, the notoriously homophobic televangelist who cofounded the Moral Majority with Paul Weyrich, who also founded the Heritage Foundation. Nearly five decades later, it’s such a political cliche that hearing someone say it unironically is almost nostalgic; when was the last time you heard someone say “Adam and Steve” outside of a meme (or maybe a reference to Craig Chester’s 2005 gay rom-com)?

Earlier in her legislative career, Mace sought to cast herself as a gay and lesbian rights advocate who also wanted to preserve religious liberties. In 2021, she co-sponsored the “Fairness for All Act,” a Republican counter to the Equality Act which would have added sexuality and gender identity to the Civil Rights Act’s protections while carving out exceptions for religious leaders and institutions.

“I strongly support LGBTQ rights. No one should be discriminated against,” Mace told the conservative Washington Examiner at the time. “I do believe that religious liberty, the First Amendment, gay rights, and transgender equality can all coexist [....] Having been around gay, lesbian, and transgender people has informed my opinion over my lifetime.” In an X (then Twitter) post the same year, she wrote, “the pandemic kept all of us from fully celebrating Pride here in the Lowcountry in 2020. But hopefully, as we finally begin to open back up, we can all come together to celebrate the challenges our LGBTQ+ has overcome, and the bright future ahead.”

That legislation would have left significant room for harm for LGBTQ+ people, especially children, as the ACLU observed at the time — but it also attracted little favor on the right, with the Heritage Foundation itself saying the bill constituted a “sword to punish citizens who dissent from the reigning sexual orthodoxy,” largely because of its inclusion of trans people.

Over the past year, Mace has exponentially increased her transphobia, repeatedly using slurs in Congress and online, posting selfies outside of public bathrooms, and calling for trans people as a class to be institutionalized following the assassination of far-right agitator Charlie Kirk in September. Now, as the GOP and anti-LGBTQ+ activists increase efforts to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges (the Supreme Court case that legalized same-sex marriage in 2015), Mace is following suit. Don’t fret — we’re sure this time she’s telling the truth about her sincerely held principles.

“This is a deeply sad woman just looking for attention,” former GOP analyst Tim Miller said of Mace on his podcast The Bulwark on Wednesday.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/nancy-mace-anti-gay-lgbtq-rights-adam-eve-not-steve on Oct 31, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

NEWS | SAMANTHA RIEDEL | OCT 29, 2025, 1:33 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

What Is the Queer Bible, the Holy Text That's Been Stolen Twice (Yes, Really)

The thefts come amid a rash of anti-LGBTQ+ vandalism and thefts.

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Leaders of a Catholic church in Luzern, Switzerland say they “will not be intimidated” after thieves stole the church’s “Queer Bible” from their chapel, amid a rash of anti-LGBTQ+ vandalism and thefts this year.

The Queer Bible is a project of the Allianz Gleichwürdig Katholisch (Equal Catholic Alliance), launched in 2023 to offer LGBTQ+-affirming interpretations of biblical texts and bring their “potentially liberating aspects” to a wider audience. The physical bible itself, housed at the Catholic Church of the City of Lucerne, consists of a copy of the Zurich Bible with 20 transparent inserts by modern theological writers, placed alongside passages which are often used to condemn LGBTQ+ people.

Some of the inserts challenge passages like Leviticus 18:22 and 19:20, which religious conservatives often cite to denounce homosexuality; the Queer Bible reinterprets those passages as broader rules for sexual morality, urging believers that “[n]o one belongs to you” and to only “sleep with people who want that too” and whom “you have good intentions towards.”

Other inserts offer alternative readings of stories like Joseph’s “coat of many colors,” describing the garment instead as a “gown” comparable to dresses worn by princesses in the time of King David. Another, by queer Protestant pastor Kerstin Söderblom, examines verses from the book of Genesis as a blessing for personal transformation: “I have fought and wrestled with [God],” Söderblom wrote, “and He has blessed me for my inner and outer transformation.”

Now, for the second time in as many years, the church’s physical copy of the publication has been stolen, leaders of the Luzern church wrote in a press release earlier this month, vowing that “we will not be intimidated.”

“Around the time of Pride Central Switzerland at the end of August, there was an increase in anti-queer actions,” the release stated (translated from German): “torn flyers, stolen posters, damage — and now the theft of the Queer Bible.” Leaders reported the theft to local police, but wrote that there had been no developments in the case thus far.

“The Catholic Church of the City of Lucerne deeply regrets and condemns this incident,” the statement continued. “We stand for a church that traditionally advocates for all people, fostering unity and solidarity — regardless of origin, faith, religion, or sexual orientation. Our mission is to create spaces where dialogue, diversity, and respect are practiced. We will not allow this act to shake our conviction.” The church’s second physical copy may be missing from the premises, but the Alliance’s digital version is still available for queer Catholics and allies online.

“For a long time, the Bible was used as an argument to discredit queer life — people and lifestyles that do not conform to the norm,” leaders of the Luzern church wrote in the press release. “Yet the Bible contains many stories that can be interpreted in relation to a queer identity.”

Catholic leaders continue to debate the place of LGBTQ+ people in the modern Church. The late Pope Francis established some incremental reforms for same-sex unions prior to his death, but was more ambivalent about transgender people, infamously comparing “gender theory” to nuclear weaponry in 2015. His successor, Pope Leo XIV — the Church’s first U.S.-born leader — has said that marriage is “between a man and a woman,” but indicated that non-marriage blessings for same-sex couples would continue under his authority and promised to continue Francis’ message of “openness and welcome” in a meeting with LGBTQ+ advocate Fr. James Martin last month.

Other Christian denominations are undergoing similar reckonings. Some bishops in the Church of England said last week that they will defy a decision by the House of Bishops to effectively block blessings for same-sex couples, which are performed in lieu of marriage rites. On October 16, the Church of Norway’s presiding bishop Olav Fykse Tveit formally apologized for the church’s historic “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” of LGBTQ+ people, which he said “should never have happened.”

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/what-is-queer-bible-thefts-stolen-equal-catholic-alliance on Oct 31, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

POLITICS | SAMANTHA RIEDEL | OCT 29, 2025, 1:11 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

New Texas Rule Allows Judges to Stop Marrying Same-Sex Couples

The move is the latest in an assault against marriage equality.

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Judges in Texas may refuse to marry same-sex couples if doing so would violate their “sincerely held religious beliefs,” according to a new judicial rule quietly enacted by the Texas Supreme Court last week.

On October 24, the high court issued an order modifying the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct, which lays out rules for judges in the state. The Code states that a judge’s “extra-judicial activities” should not “cast reasonable doubt on the judge's capacity to act impartially as a judge.” But the Court’s newly adopted comment creates an exception to that rule specifically for marriage rights, stating that “[i]t is not a violation of these canons for a judge to publicly refrain from performing a wedding ceremony based upon a sincerely held religious belief.” The comment effectively protects Texas judges from official sanctions if they say their religion prohibits them from marrying a same-sex couple.

The new rule could apply to any marriage, but comes in the context of a series of challenges to same-sex marriage in Texas over the past decade, as KERA reported this week. The change was made as a result of a lawsuit filed by Jack County judge Brian Umphress, who is challenging the State Commission on Judicial Conduct’s decision to sanction another judge, Dianne Hensley, in 2019 for her refusal to marry same-sex couples. That same year, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott withdrew two nominees to the Commission, allegedly because they voted to issue the warning against Hensley; the Commission withdrew Hensley’s sanction last year, after she sued the body alleging they had violated her freedom of religion.

Umphress argued that he could face similar sanctions for campaigning against same-sex marriage, eventually convincing the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to ask the state Supreme Court to weigh in on the issue, according to Chron. The high court is currently led by Justice Jimmy Blacklock, who has been highly sympathetic to Hensley, writing in an opinion last year that same-sex couples could simply find a different judge to marry them while Hensley herself “went back to work, her Christian conscience clean, her knees bent only to her God. Sounds like a win-win.”

The First Liberty Institute, an anti-LGBTQ+ “religious liberty” group that represented Hensley, declared victory as a result of the high court’s rules change. “Now going forward, every judge in Texas will enjoy the freedom Judge Hensley has fought so hard for in her case,” the organization’s executive general counsel Hiram Sasser told KERA.

Others, however, say this legal battle is still not over. “I wouldn't prejudge what the Supreme Court says,” said Douglas Lang, an attorney representing the Commission against Umphress, in comments to KERA. “We've suggested in our briefs what we think they oughta say, but that's what makes an appeal.”

University of Illinois law professor Jason Mazzone also told the station that judges who refuse to marry same-sex couples could still be sued for violating the Constitution’s equal protections clause. “One of the claims that I think will be made in response to litigation that is likely is that, ‘well, there are other people who can perform the wedding ceremony, so you can't insist that a particular judge do it,’” Mazzone said. "But that, of course, is not how equal protection works, and it's not how we expect government officials to operate.”

Hensley and Umphress’ arguments bear some similarities to those made by Kim Davis, the former Kentucky county clerk who was ordered to pay $100,000 in damages in 2023 for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in the wake of the landmark 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges judgement. Davis is one prong of the right wing push to overturn Obergefell, and is currently asking the Supreme Court to revisit that decision, though Justices Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett have seemingly expressed some reluctance to do so. The Court is scheduled to decide whether it will hear Davis’ case on November 7.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/texas-same-sex-marriage-equality-deny-religious-beliefs on Oct 31, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

NEWS | MATHEW RODRIGUEZ | OCT 29, 2025, 11:25 AM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Adult Film Star Brent Corrigan Opens Up About “Massive Seizure” and 3-Year Absence

The performer said he had a long recovery from being on life support.

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After a three-year social media break, adult film actor Brent Corrigan shared that a medical emergency led to his time away from public life.

On Saturday, Corrigan shared that he experienced a “massive seizure” in February 2023 and was hospitalized. The performer had gone quiet on social media the year prior. He added that he was placed on life support, though medical professionals were unable to “register any brain activity” at first.

“By some strange miracle, the incredible staff where I was being treated was able to save my life, and thus began a long period of recovery where I had to re-learn how to do things like walking, eating, and other things that we all take for granted every day,” Corrigan wrote.

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After first experiencing the seizure in February 2023, Corrigan said that he was finally released in July 2023. “Ever since, life’s been a lot different, but I’ve been very blessed to be surrounded by my amazing family and friends who have all helped me to ease back into a daily routine,” he said. He added, “Believe it or not, I even started riding horses And if you know where to look, you can still find me out having a good time on weekends.”

Prior to Corrigan’s series of tweets on Saturday, the adult film star had only posted two videos this year. Prior to that, he hadn’t posted on X since June 2022.

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“Wow. Life is a gift and everything can change in a minute,” one commenter wrote. “Keep fighting, living and thriving. Love you.”

Corrigan, whose real name is Sean Paul Lockhart, began filming adult films in 2004, when he was underage, for Cobra Productions, per Out. Corrigan had altered his license and birth certificate to appear to be 18. Corrigan has also appeared in independent non-adult films such as Chillerama and appeared in Gus Van Sant’s Harvey Milk biopic Milk.

The beginnings of Corrigan’s career was dramatized in the 2016 film King Cobra, which starred Garrett Clayton as Corrigan, as well as Christian Slater and James Franco. Corrigan was critical of the film, saying it was “Hollywood's attempt at bastardizing my early years in porn,” at the time in a social media post. The film also chronicled the murder of Cobra Productions’ founder Bryan Kocis.

Corrigan said in 2022 that he was not likely to return to studio work and had walked off a project with Falcon Studios.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/brent-corrigan-massive-seizure-life-support on Oct 31, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

NEWS | ABBY MONTEIL | OCT 28, 2025, 1:31 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Trump Admin Blames Halt of SNAP Benefits on “Gender Mutilation”

Food stamps could be paused as a result of the ongoing shut down.

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The Trump administration is blaming the expiration of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits on transgender people and other marginalized communities, despite refusing to use emergency funds to send federal food aid.

Amid the ongoing government shutdown, millions of Americans could lose access to SNAP, a federal safety net program also known as food stamps. Roughly one in eight U.S. residents currently receive an average of $187 per month in SNAP food aid, amounting to about $8 billion per month. In an official notice posted to the USDA website on October 27, the Trump administration announced that it will not use emergency funds to cover SNAP recipients’ benefits.

The notice began by blaming Democrats for the SNAP pause.

“Senate Democrats have now voted 12 times to not fund the food stamp program, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP),” it reads. “Bottom line, the well has run dry.”

The U.S. government shut down on October 1 after both Republican and Democratic government funding proposals for the 2026 fiscal year failed to pass the Senate.

The USDA’s notice goes on to state that Senate Democrats “can continue to hold out for healthcare for illegal aliens and gender mutilation procedures or reopen the government so mothers, babies, and the most vulnerable among us can receive critical nutrition assistance.”

This isn’t the first time that President Donald Trump has blamed trans Americans for the government shutdown. After refusing to meet with Democratic minority leaders Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries ahead of the government shutdown deadline, Trump made a September post to his social media platform Truth Social in which he claimed that Democrats were attempting to “hold American Citizens hostage” to force through “Radical Left Policies” that nobody voted for (mainly referencing immigrant and trans rights).

“[Democrats] are threatening to shut down the Government of the United States unless they can have over $1 Trillion Dollars in new spending to continue free healthcare for Illegal Aliens (A monumental cost!), force Taxpayers to fund Transgender surgery for minors [...] allow men to play in women’s sports, and essentially create Transgender operations for everybody,” he wrote.

Politico reports that agencies across the federal government have explicitly blamed Democrats for the government shutdown this month in everything from suggested out-of-office messages to public website pop-ups. Richard Painter — a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School who studies government ethics — told the outlet that these anti-Democratic missives “push the boundaries” on the Hatch Act, which limits the political activities of federal employees working on federally funded programs.

In reality, Democrats have maintained that any government-funding deal must extend Affordable Care Act subsidies set to expire at the end of 2025, without which Americans’ health insurance costs could rise significantly for 2026, per The Washington Post. However, the appropriations bills at the center of the shutdown battle do contain anti-LGBTQ+ riders that Trump and his fellow Republicans could double down on as they continue to target trans Americans.

The proposed Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education appropriations bill would prevent any federal funds from being used for “a social, psychological, behavioral, or medical intervention performed for the purpose of intentionally changing the body of an individual [...] to no longer correspond to the individual’s biological sex.” The bill would also cut HIV and AIDS prevention and treatment programs by an estimated $1.7 billion.

Meanwhile, the proposed Financial Services and General Government appropriations bill would prohibit the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) insurance program from covering “surgical procedures or puberty blockers or hormone therapy for the process of gender-affirming care.” Likewise, the proposed Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations bill would bar the Federal Bureau of Prisons from housing trans people in facilities that don’t “correspond to such [an] individual’s biological sex” and block federal funding for “any sex-altering surgical procedures” in a federal facility or a facility leased by the U.S. government.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/usda-snap-benefits-food-stamps-end-trans-people-gender-mutilation on Oct 31, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

NEWS | ABBY MONTEIL | OCT 28, 2025, 11:53 AM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

AOC Tells Anti-Trans Riley Gaines to Channel Her Hate Into "Swimming Faster" to Win

Gaines had built herself as a face of conservative attacks on the NCAA.

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New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had some choice words for right-wing, anti-trans activist Riley Gaines’ attempts to smear her name in a social media post.

On October 26, Gaines shared a photo of Ocasio-Cortez standing onstage before a crowd alongside New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders on X, with the caption, “We’re being destroyed from within.”

In response, Ocasio Cortez quoted Gaines’ post the next day, writing, “Maybe if you channeled all this anger into swimming faster you wouldn’t have come in fifth.”

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Gaines grew a following on the right through targeting trans athletes, particularly former swimmer Lia Thomas, with whom Gaines tied for fifth place during the 2022 NCAA championships. In the years since that race, Gaines has established herself as an unofficial face of conservative attacks on the NCAA, joining a March 2024 lawsuit accusing the association of violating Title IX by allowing trans athletes to compete. During an August New York Times profile, Gaines said that she wants to use trans athletes to make the trans rights movement as a whole “crumble.”

Following Ocasio-Cortez’s response to her X post, the right-wing influencer went on — where else? — Fox News to challenge the Congresswoman to a debate.

“She can defend socialism, I will defend capitalism,” Gaines said. “She can defend removing God, I will defend embracing a biblical worldview. She can defend child sacrifice, I will defend the sanctity of life. Any of the radical, insane Democratic policies and platform that they stand for, I will debate the opposite. I’m challenging AOC to it here.”

In response, Ocasio-Cortez quoted a clip of Gaines challenging her to a debate, adding, “And I would like to challenge this person to get a real job.”

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Gaines — whose mother recently told the Times that she “hated losing more than she loved to win” from an early age — attempted once more to have the last word with Ocasio-Cortez, playing the “as the mother of a daughter” card.

“I have a real job. I’m a mom. It’s the most important & rewarding job in the world,” she wrote in an October 27 X post. “I think if you had a baby girl like I do, you’d understand my positions a little better.”

Ocasio-Cortez certainly has her own positions when it comes to taking on conservative anti-LGBTQ+ efforts. In January, after an anti-trans sports bill narrowly passed through the House of Representatives, she said that her fellow Democrats can win on LGBTQ+ issues if they’re willing to prove that the party has a backbone.

“I think that when we tell the truth about what Republicans are doing, and when we’re unafraid to do that, it generates momentum,” Ocasio-Cortez said at the time. “When we lean into the momentum that we generate, and when Democrats aren’t afraid to throw a damn punch, then we see that we can yield results.”

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/aoc-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-riley-gaines-swim-faster on Oct 31, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

POLITICS | SAMANTHA RIEDEL | OCT 27, 2025, 2:21 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Gavin Newsom Cites Trans Godson While Taking Anti-Trans Position

The California governor said that the states trans-inclusive laws around sports should change.

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California Gov. Gavin Newsom doubled down on his comments about transgender athletes in an interview last week, saying that a state law protecting trans student athletes should be changed while still casting himself as a trans rights advocate.

Speaking to California public broadcast station KQED, Newsom defended remarks he made to the late right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk on the first episode of his podcast earlier this year. Newsom said, at the time, that policies which allow trans women and girls to play in women’s sports leagues — including K-12 student-athletes — are “deeply unfair” and that conservatives’ “concerns” about such policies are “completely legit.”

“[W]hen it comes to sports, that’s impacting other people’s rights. It’s different,” Newsom told KQED, adding, “I agree on the issue of fairness in that respect, that it is unfair in these circumstances, and I haven't been able to reconcile it.” Newsom went on to say that there should be “nuance and grace” in policies impacting trans athletes’ participation, drawing a distinction between competitive and recreational events while denying he had “roll[ed] people under the bus.” At one point, Newsom stressed that he had “only one godson, who is trans” in defending his conversation about trans rights with Kirk, adding that he “hope[s] people actually listen to the episode.”

When cohost Marisa Lagos asked whether California law — which specifically allows trans students to compete on sports teams consistent with their gender identity — should be changed, Newsom said it should, but did not specify how, saying only “we have to figure this out.”

“I can't tell you how many people have a similar point of view but don't say it publicly, and I think that's even more shameful in many respects than being held to account for your points of view,” Newsom said.

Newsom also defended his political record on trans rights in California, telling KQED that “there's not one person you've ever had on air that has a better record on trans rights” than himself. The governor said that he “attack[ed] HRC [the Human Rights Campaign] because they weren't including trans rights” when he was mayor of San Francisco in the mid-2000s; Newsom did not provide specifics, though he may have been referring to HRC’s infamous involvement with the unsuccessful Employment Non-Discrimination Act. At another point in the interview, Newsom also pushed back against criticism for having right-wing propagandists like Kirk and Steve Bannon on his podcast, decrying what he referred to as political “litmus tests” and saying “[y]ou don't have to listen to it.”

Newsom and other Democrats, including former Vice President Kamala Harris and presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg, have said they share broad “concerns” about trans athletes this year. The admissions follow the Trump campaign spending millions on anti-trans campaign ads during the 2024 election. (State Republicans used Newsom’s comments to support their own legislation against trans athletes in April, although those bills were unsuccessful.) Actual research on the topic is still uneven, however, and a study published last year indicated trans women who take hormone therapy may face significant disadvantages compared to their cis peers in metrics like vertical leap and oxygen consumption.

Newsom signed several LGBTQ+ rights bills into law earlier this month, including a new law that bans health care providers from disclosing gender-affirming care records in response to an out-of-state subpoena. But he also faced stiff criticism from LGBTQ+ advocates for vetoing two other bills: one that would have allowed doctors to prescribe up to 12 months of hormones at once, and another which would have required most health plans to cover HIV prevention medications like PrEP without a doctor’s prior authorization. Newsom claimed in veto statements this month that those bills could have increased health care costs — an explanation Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, said was “not plausible” and “deeply disappointing.”

“I understand [Newsom]’s trying to respond to this political moment, and I wish he would respond to it by modeling language and policies that can genuinely bring people along,” Minter told KFF Health News in a statement last week.

Newsom told CBS News Sunday Morning that he would give “serious thought” to running for president after the 2026 midterm elections.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/gavin-newsom-trans-godson-athletes-california on Oct 31, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

POLITICS | SAMANTHA RIEDEL | OCT 27, 2025, 12:38 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

King Charles III Honors Persecuted LGBTQ+ Veterans at Monument Dedication

His Royal Highness laid flowers and shook hands with those who had been ousted via institutional homophobia.

Samir Hussein

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King Charles III attended the unveiling of the U.K.’s first national monument to LGBTQ+ veterans on Monday, 25 years after the country lifted its ban on homosexuality in the military.

The monument, located at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, was designed by the artist collective Abraxas Academy and is named “An Opened Letter,” the BBC reported. It resembles a crumpled sheet of paper comprised of various words and phrases including “inclusion,” “respect,” and “a battle for love,” which were taken from evidence collected against LGBTQ+ former members of the military, Reuters noted.

King Charles attended the monument’s dedication ceremony on Monday, where he was photographed laying a bouquet of flowers. The king also met and shook hands with LGBTQ+ veterans during the ceremony.

The monument was one of 49 recommendations outlined in The Etherton Review, a 2023 report on the mistreatment of LGBTQ+ people in the U.K. military between 1967 and 2000. During that time, policy dictated that “no person subject to service law who was gay, lesbian, transgender or transitioning due to gender dysphoria, or who was perceived to be such, even if they were not in fact, could be or remain a member of the armed forces,” per the report, which detailed widespread abuse and sexual assault of anyone found or suspected to be LGBTQ+. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has faced criticism for his government’s current stances on transgender rights, told the BBC the monument “stands as a lasting tribute to the bravery and service of these veterans.”

That policy was lifted in January 2000, following a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights, which declared that it violated servicemembers’ right to privacy. In 2023, then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak formally apologized for the ban alongside the Etherton Review’s publication.

Pádraigín Ní Rághillíg, a lesbian and former member of the Women's Royal Air Force, told the BBC on Monday that she was expelled from service after she was caught kissing another woman, and that one male colleague sexually assaulted her in an effort to “‘sort [her] out.’”

“Given another 20 or 30 years, none of us will be left, but the memorial will be there and that's really important,” Rághillíg said.

LGBTQ+ people who were members of the U.K. military during the ban are now eligible for financial restitution under the government’s LGBT Financial Recognition Scheme, which was announced last year, though payments were reportedly slow in coming. Eligible veterans who were dismissed under the policy may receive a payment of £50,000, with “impact payments” up to £20,000 for those who were bullied, assaulted, forced to undergo unnecessary medical exams, or who experienced other forms of mistreatment.

“It’s a deeply emotional moment, expressing in physical form that what happened to them should never have taken place — and equally, but crucially — must never be allowed to happen again,” said Peter Gibson, whose nonprofit Fighting With Pride oversaw the memorial’s construction, in a statement to The Independent. “The devastation and destruction caused by people expressing their love cut short successful careers and, in some cases, ended lives [...] Today is a klaxon call that signals shame can be cast aside and everyone who wants it is welcomed back into their military family.”

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/king-charles-iii-lgbtq-monument-open-letter-military-homophobia on Oct 31, 2025 at 7:27 PM EDT.

Entertainment

- Horror Fiction’s It Girl Gretchen Felker-Martin Doesn’t Care if You Like Her

- Róisín Murphy Dropped From Music Festival, Slammed by Musicians After Anti-Trans Comments

BOOKS | SAMANTHA RIEDEL | OCT 29, 2025, 4:42 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Horror Fiction’s It Girl Gretchen Felker-Martin Doesn’t Care if You Like Her

The Black Flame author talks to Them about queer horror, getting dropped by DC Comics, and the perils of being hyperonline.

Christopher Postlewaite

Gretchen Felker-Martin is a collector. The coffee table in the author’s modest Massachusetts apartment is covered end to end with stacks of Magic: The Gathering cards and gray plastic Warhammer 40K miniatures, silently anticipating their next battle. Books saturate the shelves on each of the room’s four walls, partially obscured by yet more minis and at least one 3D-printed triceratops. But of all the curios and mementos in her home, the most important one is stored in her mind: a childhood memory with the late Polish resistance photographer Halina Mantell, her “grandmother in name if not by blood,” to whom her new novel Black Flame is dedicated.

Mantell, Felker-Martin tells me, was a Polish resistance photographer who was captured by Nazi soldiers while documenting their atrocities and imprisoned in Auschwitz for a year. None of Mantell’s photos survived, but she did, escaping to the U.S. in 1944. Felker-Martin’s parents later met Mantell and adopted her into their family — a bond that deepened with the birth of baby Gretchen, whom Mantell helped look after.

Felker-Martin was five years old, she recalls, when she asked her honorary grandmother the meaning of the tattoo on her arm. “She wasn’t ghoulish about it, but she wasn’t restrained. She didn’t lie to me,” she says. “It blew my mind. I was so horrified and scared, and could not really get my head around it. I had nightmares about it.” Mantell died a year later, leaving behind the seeds that would eventually bloom into Black Flame and Felker-Martin’s lifelong obsession with horror.

Christopher Postlewaite

Though Felker-Martin is quick to clarify she isn’t Jewish herself, her love for Mantell gave her a lifelong personal connection to the butchery of the Shoah. “That really shaped a lot of who I was, as a little person, being given this knowledge that something so nightmarish had happened in the world,” she reflects, her face bisected by the afternoon sunlight that streams through a nearby window. (As we talk, Lenny, a nearly jet-black cat — somewhat on the nose for the horror writer — settles atop the hem of her green floral robe, purring gently.) “I have a lot of memories of being hand in hand with her in my hometown, eating ice cream down by the beach, and she was a really sweet part of my childhood. She’s also connected to the end of my innocence.”

There are few writers today who can render the gruesome more erotic, or vice versa, than Felker-Martin. Black Flame is a potent blend of agony, terror, and lust, equal parts condemnation of fascism and celebration of queer debauchery — in short, a book so timely it’s, well, horrifying.

The novel evokes the work of Carta Monir, whose sadomasochistic porn films like Sideshave explore themes of disability, trauma, and radical reclamation of pain. When I mention the similarities to Felker-Martin, she beams and informs me that she and Monir have, in fact, been dating for the last four years.

“I see it as part of a tradition for something that connects back to Bob Flanagan's work,” Felker-Martin tells me, referencing the celebrated “supermasochist” whose erotic performance art was informed by his own cystic fibrosis. “I think that those are beautiful, important ways to live, that can help us all recontextualize what pain is and what it means, and what disgust is and what it means. A lot of Black Flame is about what disgusts various people, and what that actually says about what their bodies are reacting to and feeling.”

Unlike Felker-Martin’s previous novels Manhunt and Cuckoo, Black Flame limits itself to only one protagonist: Ellen Kramer, a Jewish film restorationist living in New York City in 1985 who is so deeply closeted Felker-Martin describes her as “emotionally cauterized.” Ellen’s head is a manifestly miserable place to spend time even before she’s injured while working on The Baroness, a macabre occult film made by a gay Jewish man in the twilight of the Weimar Republic and rescued from the secret collection of a dead Nazi. Possessed by the film’s hunger for blood and vengeance, Ellen finds herself increasingly unable to deny her own desires, long tamped down by conversion therapy and the relentless judgment of her conservative family.

Ellen’s desire, stoked even hotter after accidentally eavesdropping on two women cruising in a theater bathroom, finds a target in Rachel, a lesbian Jewish film critic who relishes life’s creature comforts and confidently embraces her own fat body — which Ellen, waifish and miserable, is repulsed by yet yearns to taste. (Their first meeting at Katz’s Deli features such a sensual description of a pastrami sandwich, Felker-Martin recounts with a laugh, that readers have already asked why she made deli meat horny. “That's just how I am.”) That dynamic is, in essence, a confrontation between her own pre- and post-transition selves: “a repressed and self-denying, eating disordered, disturbed little weirdo who has been raised in this siloed-off homophobic world, encountering this reflection of herself who is totally uninhibited and who knows what she wants, what gets her off, and what she thinks [...] It was about mushing those two things together and kind of putting my own progress through my life on the page.”

Felker-Martin considers Black Flame her best work to date. Several years after Manhunt catapulted her to “it girl” status in the queer horror niche, she challenged herself to write a tightly compressed, first-person-only novel with a chapter structure that mirrors the film restoration process itself. There’s plenty of other strands of genre DNA at play, of course; a major influence was The Ring, a modern classic of “haunted film” films Felker-Martin remembers as her first “real, grown-up horror movie” (and which she saw when she was far too young).

But there’s an even deeper undercurrent to Black Flame: a grim dissection of the Holocaust, the scars that genocide left on the Jewish diaspora and LGBTQ+ people alike, and the threat of reactionary fascist mindsets within already traumatized communities — all of which came to a head in Felker-Martin’s own professional life earlier this year.

In June, as Felker-Martin was gearing up for the launch of Black Flame, she also made headlines by signing on to write Red Hood with artist Jeff Spokes for DC Comics. The mature-readers series would have followed Batman’s gun-toting, briefly deceased sidekick Jason Todd and crossbow enthusiast Huntress — two fan-favorite characters many readers were excited to see written in Felker-Martin’s no-holds-barred style.

Some fans, however, were surprised DC would solicit Felker-Martin given, say, the now-famous Manhunt page describing J.K. Rowling’s ignominious death (burning alive in her Scottish castle surrounded by fellow TERFs) during the book’s testosterone-zombie apocalypse; DC’s parent company Warner Bros. produced the original Harry Potter films. In August, a month before Red Hood was to premiere, pro-Israel advocacy group StandWithUs began a campaign to have Felker-Martin removed from the series, accusing her of antisemitism over previous social media posts such as one that declared “Zionism is full-fledged Naziism.”

Red Hood #1 hit shelves on September 10 — in a twist of fate, the same day far-right political agitator Charlie Kirk was shot and killed in Utah. Felker-Martin made no attempt to disguise her lack of grief at the news. “Thoughts and prayers you Nazi bitch,” Felker-Martin wrote on Bluesky, shortly after news of the shooting broke. “I hope that bullet is okay after touching Charlie Kirk.” In another post about an hour before Kirk’s death was confirmed, she wrote, “The job market is grim, but there’s a silver lining: Gavin Newsom needs a new co-host for his podcast” — a reference to a March episode of the California governor’s podcast on which Kirk guested.

That night, around 9:30 p.m., Felker-Martin says she received a call from DC editor-in-chief Marie Javins, who told her that Red Hood would be canceled immediately. “The story of the issue's release had gone from being celebratory to something that DC and Warner Brothers couldn't stand behind or defend,” Javins allegedly informed her, per Felker-Martin’s description of the call to The Comics Journal in September; “any kind of promotion of violence or harm is unacceptable to them.” (The company said in response to requests for comment at the time that “[p]osts or public comments that can be viewed as promoting hostility or violence are inconsistent with DC’s standards of conduct,” and a DC spokesperson told TCJ days later that Felker-Martin had been informed of the company’s social media guidelines for creators.)

DC recalled unsold copies of Red Hood #1 the same day they went on sale, promising in a statement to retailers to credit them for copies already sold, and cancelling all preorders for the series’ second and third issues. The company has since purged mentions of the series, including the original announcement, from its website.

“I have a real life, a real community, and a vibrant world that I get to be part of, and I don't want to share that with people who hover around online, never leaving their homes, waiting for someone else to commit some social sin so that they can attempt to drive them to suicide.”

Several hours prior to Javins’ call, Felker-Martin was also temporarily banned from Bluesky; she had been banned, also temporarily, less than a month prior for wishing violence on Rowling in a post that said “I hope someone splits her skull.” Bluesky eventually reinstated her account, but her first two posts about Kirk are now deleted.

Despite only being “on sale” for a calendar day, Red Hood #1 ranked 15th on the month’s list of top-selling comics, Felker-Martin informs me with some satisfaction. Superhero or “cape” comics were never her genre growing up, she says, and though she loves the comic book medium, she saw writing Red Hood as a work-for-hire gig to pay the bills. (Her plans for the book’s first arc, she reveals, involved Hood and Huntress killing a host of white supremacist cops and KKK members.) Her biggest regret is how the controversy negatively impacted her collaborators, Spokes and letterer Becca Carey. But she remains incredulous that the situation escalated the way it did, and calls DC’s response “grotesque.”

“It’s hall monitor behavior,” Felker-Martin says of Javins’ evening telephone call. “I found it revolting. The whole tone of the conversation was just as though I should be ashamed for having spoken out about this man who longed to see mass killing — who worked every day of his life to make people hate each other, who brought nothing of value into the world, and much that is hideous and repugnant.”

In the wake of it all, Felker-Martin says she’s intentionally cutting down on her social media presence. Doting on her newborn nephew brings far more joy than posting on platforms like Bluesky or X, which she derides generally as “a huge expanse of drama and clout sharks.” More than that, she’s fed up with what she sees as a tendency for online queers to scold and police other people's behavior.

“I have a real life, a real community, and a vibrant world that I get to be part of, and I don't want to share that with people who hover around online, never leaving their homes, waiting for someone else to commit some social sin so that they can attempt to drive them to suicide,” Felker-Martin says. “That is such an outrageously evil, antisocial way to exist, and I see people who become trapped in this for years of their lives, and it’s sick. It makes me sad, and I don’t want anything to do with it, even peripherally.”

Felker-Martin sees that desire for control as misplaced libido, a voyeuristic desire to see someone else’s downfall — one that can make strange bedfellows of the sadistic anti-LGBTQ+ right and some on the queer left who may fall into a similar censoriousness for different motivations. “So much of how we take shape, as adults, is these brief flashes of shame when our belief clashes with someone else's,” she explains, “and for the first time, we have to really pull out the entirety of it by the roots and look at it and see, ‘Do I want to keep this? Do I believe this is me?’”

For Ellen, facing that shame — that horror — is like pulling her own teeth out, and her avoidance of self-reflection leads her into patterns that damage both herself and those around her. (If Ellen lived in 2025, she would be “an unimaginably rancid tenderqueer scold,” Felker-Martin imagines.) “Even if it doesn’t take you to an overtly scary place, you’re impoverishing yourself and contributing to a world that is quiet and scared and siloed off. The horror gives you an opportunity to open up, even if it has to smash through you first.”

That pipeline, from scold to quisling to fascist, is a core aspect of Black Flame’s thesis — one Felker-Martin explicitly connects to collaborationists in Nazi Germany, and to the Judenräte councils who were required to enforce Nazi authority over fellow Jews, which she calls “both a terrifying, impossible situation to be placed in, and a profound, sickening moral failure.” Over the course of the book, Ellen, forced to truly reckon with her own trauma for the first time, slowly realizes that she’s gouged out all the inconvenient parts of herself just to fit in with a crowd of arch-conservative antisemites and her own cruel, hollowed-out family, all of them desperate for control.

The Baroness, in contrast, becomes a blood-soaked vision of personal freedom — vengeful and hungry, sure, but a truer expression of need than Ellen has ever let herself feel. It’s no accident that Ellen’s walls begin tumbling down after she overhears the movie theater cruisers; public sex is perhaps more hotly debated than ever among queer communities today, for reasons Felker-Martin thinks are understandable, if misguided. Modern queer people, she says, have “been isolated, atomized, raised in a panopticon, and that they have not had chances to develop their own relationships to sex in any kind of healthy isolation or community. But I do think they need to get over it, because for the vast majority of people, I don’t think you can really be an integrated, functional human being who’s good to be around other different types of people if you don’t have an integrated relationship to your own sexuality.

“You need to understand where those feelings are coming from and what they’re doing in you,” she goes on, “or you could wind up being this kind of scold who’s reflexively terrified of other people’s sexualities. And that’s the kind of person who could put a lot of other queer people in danger at this moment in history, and have.”

That’s not to say Felker-Martin isn’t empathetic towards people with that mindset; after all, Ellen is partly a shadow of her younger, more fearful self. “Coming from poverty and having been through these kinds of violence, I see that as instrumental in the formation of who I am,” she says, but things could have led her down a very different path. “I do pity people like Ellen, and I might push them away if they become dangerous or agitated, but what I want for them is joy and liberation. I want them to have everything that they need. I want them to have what I have. I feel that every time I see someone going through pain like that.”

All these issues are, for Felker-Martin, tied up in the brutal tragedy of the nakba — referenced briefly but poignantly in Black Flame — and the “unimaginable wave of malicious death and destruction” the Israeli military has unleashed on Palestine over the past two years. Black Flame’s acknowledgments end with a blunt declaration: “From the river to the sea, Palestine can, will, and must be free.” Hours after I leave Felker-Martin’s home, news breaks that Israeli forces have killed 11 people, all reportedly members of a single family, including seven children, one week after the start of an ostensible ceasefire. For her, advocating against that violence is a way to honor her grandmother Halina’s memory.

“She risked her life so that people would know what was happening in Nazi Germany,” Felker-Martin says. “I may not be able to do that in this current moment, but I can take this stand and I can use what platform I have to say what I know to be true — which is that Palestine is being torn apart, for no reason, by people who have become slaves to violence.”

As for her next project, Felker-Martin says she’s taking her time. Writing three books in four years was a breakneck pace, she admits, and she wants to give some space to her fourth one: a story about shapeshifters who can transform into anything they eat. (“Like many dykes, I have an oral fixation,” she grins.) Although she’s recently run into trouble selling the planned TV adaptation of Manhunt — which she suspects is another product of the political moment — readers can still look forward to a future comics project, Cicada, which she cryptically pitches as “the worst iteration of ‘Bring Your Daughter to Work Day’ that I could imagine.”

Felker-Martin is fine with her work continuing to be divisive. What she can’t abide is the idea that other trans creators and artists are holding themselves back, carving off parts of themselves for fear of offending another trans person or giving ammunition to fascists who will hate them regardless. “For whatever reason or fault in my brain chemistry, I don’t care about that shit.” For now, it’s enough to know that her messages have found their way to the freaks who need her the most.

“Every time that I hear from another queer person, ‘this helped me come out,’ or ‘this helped me understand my own desires and helped me to be some kind of freak’ — that's more than I could ever reasonably expect to get in from writing fiction about scary ghosts, feral men, and creepy freaks from beyond the stars,” Felker-Martin says. “If I can be there for these people, even in this small and distant way during this really horrible moment in history, then that's enough for me, professionally. That's enough for me to leave behind.”

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/gretchen-felker-martin-manhunt-author-dc-comics-red-hood-horror-fiction on Oct 31, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

MUSIC | MATHEW RODRIGUEZ | OCT 27, 2025, 11:17 AM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Róisín Murphy Dropped From Music Festival, Slammed by Musicians After Anti-Trans Comments

“We would never be comfortable including her in such a festival set-up.”

Sergione Infuso - Corbis/Getty Images

Istanbul-based music festival Back In Town removed singer Róisín Murphy as the program’s headliner following her headline-making comments about transgender people on social media.

“We added Róisín Murphy to our line-up as a headliner, believing that she represents the energy we missed and touched many of you in a sincere place,” the festival wrote in a statement to Stereogum. “However, the statements she shared in recent days completely eliminated these feelings.”

The statement continued, “Because we would never be comfortable including her in such a festival set-up, we would like to state that we cannot include her in our program, keeping the values we try to introduce to you above all things — and knowing that this stance cannot have any financial equivalent.”

Back in Town replaced Murphy with Turkish singer Kalben.

Murphy’s being booted from Back in Town comes shortly after the disco singer shared a graph on social media which purported to show that the percentage of 18-to-22-year-olds identifying as trans or nonbinary fell precipitously between 2021 and 2024. Experts who have analyzed the data have said that it could likely reflect a change in attitude towards trans people, rather than an actual shift in how people identify.

“It was never real. Terribly sad though,” she wrote in a caption accompanying the post. “Absolute havoc wreaked on children, families and society.”

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Following backlash to that post, Murphy doubled down and, two days later, posted a lengthy diatribe pushing back against people’s criticisms of her.

“The mob is out in force,” the singer wrote on social meia. “The more I see of this cruel “activism,” the more convinced I am that I do not want them anywhere near me or my music, however that may affect my career.

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Murphy went on to characterize her critics as “spoiled” and said she is “not interested in being their ‘mother’ or ‘queen’; these babies need to grow up and allow artists like myself the dignity of opinion and the space and freedom to create.”

The posts have led to condemnation from several musical artists, including The Blessed Madonna, who posted a video calling Murphy out.

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“Go fuck yourself, Róisín,” they said in the almost seven-minute clip. “You had me fooled once. You were never a queer icon. You’re another dusty TERF that knows how to count queer money and serve a look.”

Irish singer CMAT also spoke out against Murphy on Instagram stories.

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“I sincerely hope that A Certain Other Irish Pop Star gets the help that she needs, but right now she is very publicly acting like a bully and is absolutely not a voice to be listened to or trusted when it comes to trans lives,” CMAT wrote. The post was captured in a screenshot that made its way to social media. CMAT continued, “Let’s work harder to protect our trans family during these crazy crazy times.”

The scandal comes after a similar incident in 2023. As a result of backlash at the time, Murphy wrote that she would “completely bow out of this conversation in the public domain.”

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/roisin-murphy-trans-comments-back-in-town-festival on Oct 31, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

Table of Contents

Them.: 2025 Oct 31

Culture

Julio Torres’ Cursed Amulet: A Halloween Party Gay Freaks Are the VIPs

Inside Lauren Chan and Hayley Kosan’s Chic Chinatown Pre-Wedding Dinner

Community

Yes, The Internet Still Is Doing "I Hate Gay Halloween" Meme Costumes

Holocaust Researcher Says Up to 1/3 of Imprisoned LGBTQ+ People Reported by Friends and Family

Mx International Rubber 2025 Elliott Eve on Their Onstage Gender Reveal

News

Trans Teen Awarded 5-Figure Settlement From Washington School District Over Assault

A Comprehensive Timeline of J.K. Rowling's Descent Into Transphobia

Report: Trump Admin to Propose Blocking Hospitals From Offering Trans Youth Care

How Gay Bars Have Been Affected By Trump's Deployment of the National Guard

Nancy Mace Claimed for Years to Be Pro-Gay. Now She Says It's "Not Adam and Steve"

What Is the Queer Bible, the Holy Text That's Been Stolen Twice

New Texas Rule Allows Judges to Stop Marrying Same-Sex Couples

Adult Film Star Brent Corrigan Opens Up About “Massive Seizure” and 3-Year Absence

Trump Admin Blames Halt of SNAP Benefits on "Gender Mutilation"

AOC Tells Anti-Trans Riley Gaines to Channel Her Hate Into "Swimming Faster" to Win

Gavin Newsom Cites Trans Godson While Taking Anti-Trans Position

King Charles III Honors Persecuted LGBTQ+ Veterans at Monument Dedication

Entertainment

Horror Fiction’s It Girl Gretchen Felker-Martin Doesn’t Care if You Like Her

Róisín Murphy Dropped From Music Festival, Slammed by Musicians After Anti-Trans Comments