By Chris Talbot-Heindl, communications professional and educomics creator
Content warning: this piece is a reaction to the Club Q mass shooting. Please proceed with caution. If you are a member of the LGBTIQA2+ community and need some extra help processing this horrific attack, here is a list of licensed therapists who are either queer-identified or allies who are offering support services, lots of them free.
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Chris Talbot-Heindl
Chris Talbot-Heindl (they/them) is a queer, trans nonbinary, triracial artist and nonprofit employee. When they aren’t working the day job, they spend their free time editing art and literature magazines, writing and illustrating educomics to help folks affirm their nonbinary pals, creating a graphic novel to describe what it’s like to be nonbinary in a gender binary world, cuddling their cat, and quad skating in the park. You can find Chris at talbot-heindl.com, on LinkedIn, and Twitter — and tip them on Venmo or PayPal or join as a patron on their Patreon.
Thanks for sharing your experiences–it’s not easy being vulnerable. And thank you for providing actionable steps for accomplices in the future to combat transphobia on multiple fronts.
Thanks so much for the support, Jordan! I really appreciate it.
I wanted to follow up with an interesting outcome of that misleading New York Times article mentioned in the educomic. WPATH (World Professional Association for Transgender Health), which is a nonprofit organization that sets the standards for trans and gender variant healthcare, completely debunked the whole article! This is entirely unexpected since WPATH tends to act as a gatekeeper rather than an advocacy organization (one of the cis women who helped create the new adolescent rules regarding gender-affirming care was outed as a transphobe and followed a veritable who’s who of TERFs on Twitter — where she indicated she got a lot of her information). Anyway, here’s the response from WPATH, completely decimating the shoddy and misleading article that appeared on the front page of the New York Times during Transgender Awareness Week: https://www.wpath.org/media/cms/Documents/Public%20Policies/2022/USPATHWPATH%20Statement%20re%20Nov%2014%202022%20NYT%20Article%20Nov%2022%202022.pdf
Thank you for reminding me that my silence as a cis white woman speaks volumes. I tend to think that my non-binary friends know I love them – but your educomic reminded me that I need to check on them and support them with my presence. Transphobia – like racism and misogyny – is accumulative injury, trauma, and erasure. When I take the time to express care for nonbinary friends when another hateful law or communication happens I am taking action and not being silent. And I love your drawings! They are true and also humorous!