Same Shit, Different Year

Now that I’ve emerged from my post-holiday fog—in which I slept in every morning, ate Christmas cookies throughout the day, and sat in my home office with the door closed for hours on end just so I wouldn’t have to interact with humans—I wanted to send you the newsletter I owe you from last week.

I was actually going to throw something together this past Friday, but I didn’t want to depress everyone so soon after New Year’s Eve.

Then the U.S. attacked Venezuela and I realized it was always going to be one thing or another. (P.S. If you want a good explainer on what’s going on with that particular clusterfuck, Nicole Cardoza of Reimagined has a great write-up.)

ANYWAY. Here we are. January 6. Some folks are setting goals, intentions, resolutions. Others are holding on for dear life.

And I just wanted to remind you that the state of sex education in schools continues to be fraught AF.

Over at EdSurge, Claire Woodcock gives a glimpse of the balancing act educators are still forced to perform in their school districts as they push for more inclusive curricula while also grappling with legislation that attacks those who could most benefit from those lessons.

And at Them, Arman Khan dives even deeper into the repercussions when we don’t provide space for trans-inclusive education.

At least we have us. At least we have you. Folks who are motivated to educate their kids at home when their kids’ school districts don’t deliver.

I know that things are… a lot.

God, I’m exhausted.

But any bit of support we can provide for our kids in order to prepare them for the world that awaits can be life-changing.

Because book banning attempts never fracking die, a whole-ass library board was dissolved because they refused to take a picture book about a transgender boy off library shelves.

I hate everything about this.

So in the spirit of uplifting books that show the full breadth of humanity, could everyone share one or two of their favorite books with queer representation? The first two that come to mind for me are Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe and Snapdragon by Kat Leyh.

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Brookings, a think tank in D.C., has put together this page where you can track the status of litigation against the Trump administration’s K-12 education agenda. I dunno. I find it sort of… reassuring?

The holidays are behind us, but it’s not too late to participate in the Transanta initiative, which allows folks to give gifts to trans youth in need. Just last week, over on Instagram, the folks behind Transanta exhorted folks to peruse their table of registries to ensure that everyone receives at least $100 worth of gifts this season.

This initiative continues to give me all the warm fuzzies.