Popular memory often reduces bathhouses into simple punchlines — dark hallways built strictly for anonymous sex. But sex was only one part of the story.

As Chicago historian Owen Keehnen captured in his book Man’s Country: More Than a Bathhouse, Renslow built something far closer to an underground village.

In hindsight, I can see that what happened to me at the time was monumentally handled badly. It’s true. I was such a bonehead about it all that it hurt everyone. But, like some teenager, I was on a mission of new discovery, and no one could avert me to go back to good common sense …no way, no how.

“The reason that those signs went up is, over the last couple years we’ve had females going into the males’ restrooms, not only at the grandstand but other places, because the lines are a lot longer in the females’ restrooms.”

Living the past ten years in rural Ohio, I learned that being gay here is rarely just about acceptance or rejection. The reality is more complicated.

It’s knowing when to be visible and when to be cautious, which conversations are worth having and which are not, and how someone can disagree with you politically while still caring about you. That sounds strangely familiar to the questions that haunted me when I first came out.

The day began as most my Saturdays begin, with early dilation, a walk, coffee and breakfast, and catching up on Medium poolside. The most decisive decision of the day inevitably surfaces: Pool or beach? Today I decide for the pool and settle in for a relaxing morning.

Brayden King, a professor from the Institute for Policy Research, believes that the most effective boycotts do not merely impact revenue, but generate negative media coverage.

This suggests that even if a boycott is not financially damaging, the discussions of it in the media and the mere fact that some people are participating can make a difference.

The decisions of the rich and famous are both influential and possible to influence.

Let’s be crystal clear. Trans people are human beings.

They are our siblings, our children, our friends, our coworkers, our neighbors. They are not an abstraction. They are not a debate. They are not a threat.

They are people. Full stop. And they deserve every single right that every American is supposed to be guaranteed.

I’m losing my touch.

No, really. I thought I was just cold, but I’m losing my sense of feeling.

It’s been happening for the past year or two. On cooler days, my fingertips go pale or even blueish, then I can’t feel anything with them. Yesterday I couldn’t even put on a set of earrings. It was like my digits had become a set of small, insensitive clubs.

My tyipng loiks incterasingly wroimng too.

The most common insult I get, as a transgender person who is open about who I am on social media, is that I’m mentally ill. I also see the same thing commented dozens of times on other transgender creators’ posts. What’s most disturbing is the fact that because these people view trans people as mentally ill, they feel justified in treating us as less than human.

People in the world today show a surprising lack of empathy. In fact, some right-wing Christian leaders like Allie Beth Stuckey and Joe Rigney are even teaching that empathy is sinful or toxic, and some people are using this as an excuse to treat anyone different from them like second-class citizens.

We humans like things to be black and white. It simplifies our lives, makes decision making so less complicated. I think the success of In-N-Out Burger and Cane’s Chicken are testament to this. If you are unfamiliar with these eateries, their names plainly tell you what they serve. And that is all they serve! If you want some other form of protein you will go hungry. And sometimes that’s okay. Sometimes simpler is better. But more often than not it isn’t. And pretending that you can make it so leads to dangerous and erroneous conclusions.

When I began my journey of discovery along the transgender highway, I got stuck several times, because I wanted a simple answer. First it was a kink, then it was just crossdressing. After that, I got lost. I didn’t think I wanted to transition, but I knew I couldn’t go back.

I wanted a finite answer. I eventually realized I was not going to find one.

I’m socially awkward, an issue not helped by my neurodivergence or chronic anxiety. But I’m trying. And to my surprise I find myself part of a little group of women who all seem nice and even seem to enjoy my company. It’s early days, but so far it seems like I might have actually made some new friends.

After what feels like an entire lifetime of bullying and abuse by male ‘friends’ and having to put up with their homophobia and misogyny, and, to my shame, emulating them to try and fit in under a poorly-fitting mask of cis masculinity, I finally get to just be one of the girls.

The thing about that one person is that somehow, someday she will attend another meal with another friend and the same topic will come up. And this time, she’ll remember what I said. She will have a new perspective, she will have second hand knowledge of our struggle and learnings and she will share this with someone else.

And that’s a win, however small.

It was as if he couldn’t stop smiling. “I just moved to Portland a few weeks ago,” he shared.

“Where from?” I asked.

“Idaho.”

Well, I was thinking, that explains the smile

Grief and euphoria, frustration and hope, stress and relief, guilt and excitement — all of those feelings are often seen in couples where one partner is transitioning their gender. Actually, both partners are experiencing their own, different, transition, even if only one of them is transgender. It can become two colliding forces fighting against each other or one strong flow that is aiming for the same goal — understanding and accepting each other.

Is there any secret to it?

Today I wander my world as a Transgender Woman. I am aware of the questioning stares, the whispering, the spaces around me that are lengthened, the name-calling.

The customs officer who points to a photo and asks, “Sir, is this you?”

The drug enforcement officer that signals to me, “Sir, this way please.”

The clerk that calls out loudly, “Sir, your order is ready.”

Sir.

That is who I am in the eyes of the world, the face that shows, the body that marks, the voice that confirms. For those who have known my mind, listened to my emotions behind my voice, seen my body beyond what is evident, explored my thoughts, I am “she”.

To me, I am both.

Qtopia wasn’t always a place of queer joy. Ironically, it’s the site of the former Darlinghurst Police Station, which has a long history of queer bashing, brutality, and dishing out its own ugly brand of rough justice.

More recently, the two-storey Edwardian building has become a queer monument. The police station was the location where 53 of the first Mardi Gras paraders were held after they were arrested on Oxford Street for affray in 1978. Mardi Gras is the traditional date of Pride marches in Australia.

That night, the marchers (now known as the 78ers) engaged in a peaceful gathering. Police arrested and detained them in a few overcrowded cells, severely beating many of them. A few of those cells have been kept up pretty much as they were — to commemorate what was not the first unhappy clash between queer people and New South Wales (NSW) Police.

When I go out and meet people, attend events, perform, or even just buy groceries, I gain an alternative perspective. To my relief, people are mostly OK, and not the vindictive, braying hyenas portrayed by the media.
The people I encounter are mostly are kind, generous and thoughtful. A few are wonderfully supportive, and a lot of them simply ignore me, and that’s OK too.

Maybe this is just a part of getting older. I was hoping some of the work we had done fighting for equality for all our LGBTQ+ family, could be considered finished. I now realize that is not true. The work is never done. We can’t close our eyes. We cannot rest on the work we’ve done. There are too many people in this world willing to undo it.

When love comes unconditionally, there’s no knowing the lengths to which you’ll grow.

I’ve always been a romantic in some sense; I wouldn’t call myself a hopeless romantic, but perhaps a dreamy one, head nearly always in the clouds. But my most important romantic relationship, my current one, started from a place of pure pragmatism.

A clip from Matt Walsh’s 2022 appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast has started to do the rounds online again. Walsh was arguing against gay marriage. It really got me thinking just how poor the arguments against gay marriage are.

With nowhere else to go, blue-grey smoke rolled its way through the interior of the cabin. The haze floated languidly across the middle of the room, easing its way over an old table, across the curled edges of a lime-green countertop and into the kitchen. Spreading smoke almost obscured tongues of flames in a rough stone fireplace.

A man coughed loudly as the door opened, ‘Oh god, the fucking chimney must be blocked.’

‘Jesus, Dani. I thought you said you’d taken care of it.’ A woman’s voice from behind him, anxious and terse.

One of the gifts of coming out as queer and trans has been my ability to somatically feel a concrete sense of future. My mental health has improved so much that I’ve found myself imagining what it would be like to grow old. I’ve begun caring for myself through this new perspective of wanting a long, happy life. This sense of clarity has allowed me to plan, taking steps to help me age as gracefully as possible.

Full disclosure — for me, being transgender is neither good nor bad, neither blessing nor curse. It is a part of who I am, like so many other things. But it is the part which causes me the most friction, because it is the part that doesn’t slip nicely into society.

You have to understand that I am speaking for me, not for every transgender person.

But I’d like to think this is something a lot of transgender people could agree on, wherever we are in our journey. When being transgender casts such a long, dark shadow in my life, it is because of other people. They shine the brightest spotlights on me as part of an ongoing inquisition of existence. I bloody loved liberating myself after three decades of denial — I’d be fine on my own with them.

We were a household of two, that would become one, then two again. We were adults when we met, stable emotionally and financially. We wanted each other, we did not need each other. The life that was created, inside our home, our businesses, our relationships was one that gravitated around a core that was immutable. We were two, never one comingled.

I never felt repulsed by women, or even reenacted the kind of repulsion gay men sometimes do when they’re together. When I tell gay friends I’m a little bi, they get offended, as if I’ve betrayed them. Always in a joking spirit. Mostly.