Toronto's own Sophie at We Have Always Existed: Transgender History is warning against trans people participating in an Adolescent and Young Adult Gender Dysphoria Outcomes Study (AYAGDOS) that is being advertised in social media, particularly Reddit.

This study is being conducted by Kenneth Zucker, former psychologist-in-chief at CAMH and head of its Gender Identity Service. The operating environment of the GIS under Zucker has been compared to conversion therapy.

As we have seen with the Cass Report, disingenuous studies are being used by legislators to enact transphobic laws. It's probably wise not to participate in this study, the motivations for it are questionable. It's also something we will want to keep an eye on.

This issue was in the local news recently. Ontario and Quebec (and possibly other provinces) house inmates based on their sex. Trans inmates are categorized based on whether they've undergone bottom surgery, which is already a somewhat arbitrary line. Recently there's a woman who's met that criteria and Ontario corrections have been challenging her transfer request.

I know the history of segregated women's prisons are intertwined with asylums, which were often used to imprison women for all manner of things I don't know if women's prisons were introduced before the closure of most asylums, but I think they were.

I'm glad your friend got out. I hope life on the outside is kind to him ️‍🩹

Thanks to our lovely Technical Services members, we now have a forum to call home.

We acknowledge that Toronto is the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. We acknowledge that Toronto is covered by Treaty 13 signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the Williams Treaties signed with multiple Mississaugas and Chippewa bands.

One of our first tasks will be to establish some community guidelines for posting here. While we work on formal guidelines I would like to ask members to be mindful of the following when posting here:

• Posts here are publicly visible and indexable by search engines. Additionally, while we do not sanction this activity posts here will also be visible to scrapers seeking to collect data, without due authorization, for LLM training.
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• Respect people's pronouns, and help others to respect your pronouns. Your profile name, bio, and signature are some places where you can disclose your pronouns, according to your comfort level.
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With that in mind, please be welcome and we look forward to collaborating to advance trans rights.

Cait Glasson in KW has taken on the cause of helping Zara X stay in Canada. She's managed to get coverage in the Tyee about Zara's case. Zara could especially use community in BC, so if you know queer folk, and especially queer BIPOC folks in BC that are open to meeting Zara, I expect they'd be warmly received.

This is also part of a campaign to help set necessary precedence that the USA is no longer a safe country for trans people. There is some recent, unfortunate news in this campaign, but the fight is ongoing.

There's also an ongoing fundraising campaign to help Zara with the costs of resettlement.

Any signal boosts you can give to this would be very much appreciated

Welcome, friends of all shapes, sizes, and presentations