Bisexual Beirut, Berlin History, Transsexual Animals, and Queer Canada
Prism & Pen Weekly Digest, 27 April 2025
by James Finn
This week in Prism & Pen, meet a transgender zoologist who studies transsexual animals. A pair of lovers in Beirut brought back to reality by a bomb. A trans woman kicked out of the men’s and women’s rooms in a club flying a rainbow flag. Ask yourself why toxic men are so threatened by a confident queer. And explore a queer history of Canada that might just shatter your preconceptions. Learn about an author who documented the pre-Nazi “queer underbelly” of Berlin, but who was NOT Christopher Isherwood.
And that’s just the bare beginnings of this week’s queer storytelling! 👇
In this weekly edition, you can read all P&P stories for free. If you join Medium, you’ll financially support P&P when you read.
Follow us on Medium, Facebook, Tumblr, Mastodon, and Bluesky!
* P&P Highlights *
377 Years of Queer History in Canada — 1648 to 2025
From the editor: Esther’s monumental story is a timeline of the queer history of Canada that both enlightened and astounded me. I lived in Montreal for years and worked mostly with LGBTQ organizations. My business partner was was a gay activist who rattled off queer history to me all the time. I thought I knew a thing or two. Esther’s work showed me I did not. Do you think YOU know about the struggles for LGBTQ liberation in Canada? Dive into this timeline, and I bet you learn a lot!
No-Woman’s Land: “No Restroom for You” Happened to Me, a Trans Woman
It was supposed to be a regular night out — just a chance to catch my breath, feel safe, even feel seen in a place that flew a rainbow flag and promised inclusion…
Three minutes.
That’s how long it took for me to be kicked out of both the women’s and men’s restrooms — in the same establishment that marketed itself as LGBT-friendly.
Beirut, Blasts, and the Bisexual
Fear is survival and subjugation. Fear is serving drinks to Netanyahu in Trump Gaza. Our sadness is fatigued. But we are not guilty for this apathy — it becomes survival when so used to demise and the Tiktok reels of pleading faces, of men carrying limbless children, charred. When apathy fades we realize how powerless we are, and it is bitter, but you must let it sink in maturely, like knowing you will die one day. We have no votes in Wisconsin or Michigan or Tel Aviv. We only have these bodies.
Hedonism is as much for the wealthy as it is for the doomed.
This Disturbing Conversation Shows Why I’m Not Out as Bisexual to Family
Me: “What if I told you I was gay?”
Sis: “Well, you’re not. You’re married.”
Me: “Okay, what if I told you I am bisexual?”
Sis: “That’s gross, bubby. Why would you say that? Does your wife know?”
Me: “I didn’t say I was, I said what would you say if I told you I am?”
Sis: “I would say you’re fucking gay and your wife is just covering for you. But you’re my brother and I would know and you’re not gay, stop playing.”
Why Do You Think Calling a Catholic a Homophobe is a Form of Bigotry?
I didn’t understand how these views could co-exist. How could she think I was sinful if she also thought I was awesome? She told me plainly she was echoing what her parents taught her — which their faith had taught them.
I was raised without religion, but I knew that gay kids all over the country endured a homophobic screed from a pulpit every Sunday, with this same brand of passive-aggressive rhetoric — Hate the sin, love the sinner.
So throughout high school, I was always on my guard around that girl, and any religious person who told me, with a smile, that I should be ashamed.
…And then my best friend in college was a devout Catholic.
On a Forgotten Author and How Nazis Burned Berlin’s Queer Underbelly
Set a decade before Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories (1945), which would become the musical Cabaret (1966), Robert McAlmon’s Distinguished Air: Grim Fairy Tales (1925) documents the lives of such “awful rats who have come to Berlin because of the low exchange” in 1921. The stories, which focus on queer characters and particularly on gay men (hence, “fairy tales”), offer an unsanitized look at a city on the verge of total collapse. McAlmon’s stories contain some of the frankest accounts of “under-world life in Berlin”, replete with homosexual sex, prostitution, cross-dressing, drag balls, violence, police corruption, and an astonishing amount of drug use, even to a contemporary audience.
Nashville’s Music Row Has Come A Long Way Regarding LGBTQ Acceptance
It must have been around 2008 when an old friend and collaborator came to my house in Nashville for a chat. Ten years earlier — back when Shane MacAnally, a gifted singer/songwriter, was a recording artist on Curb Records — he and I had co-written a number of songs.
I was still married to my wife on that afternoon in 2008 and had yet to come out publicly. Still, for some reason he didn’t explain, Shane intuited it was safe to confide in me and ask my advice. “I’m gay,” he told me.
Interview With a Transgender Zoologist and Biologist
My goal is to highlight diversity, raise awareness, and educate society about transgender people. I’ll be sharing text versions of these interviews on Medium.
This is the first part of my interview with Kira Hartley, a transgender woman from the UK, a marine zoologist and biologist.
Kira Ry: Hello! Today we have a special guest, Kira Hartley. She is a single parent of two kids, a biologist, and a zoologist. Welcome, Kira.
Why Are Toxic Men So Threatened by a Confident Queer?
I recently published an article about one young man I met on the subway, who at first I thought was handsome, until halfway through our pleasant chat, when he suddenly unloaded a lot of casual homophobia.
It was so astonishing how many men in the comments leapt to the young man’s defense, claiming that I was “predatory,” when literally all we were doing was talking about books. The conversation was never flirtatious.
Their implication was that a gay man simply feeling desire and daring to speak to someone he finds attractive is inherently creepy, and that being flirted with by a gay person somehow justifies a homophobic diatribe.
* From the Editors *
Calling All Writers! Big (Special) Queer History Prompt!
The federal government under the leadership of Donald Trump has been very busy in recent weeks actively scrubbing queer history from official web sites, plus threatening educational institutions with loss of funding if they don’t do the same.
But the federal government can’t silence all of us! Join us raising your voice! Click below for details.
* This Week’s Essays & Creative Non Fiction *
Externalize Masculinity | Internalize Homophobia
Because that’s what boys do.
How many times was I confronted with that notion — the divine edict of boyhood? My whole childhood. It wasn’t until recently that I was able to conceptualize my journey into one catchy motto: externalize masculinity, internalize homophobia.
UK Supreme Court Rules Against Trans Women
As many of you will no doubt be aware from the news in the last couple of days, the UK Supreme Court has ruled that under the Equality Act, “woman” refers to biological sex at birth and that trans women are excluded from this definition.
Over the last couple of years, since Nicola Sturgeon of the SNP tried to make it easier for trans people to obtain a gender recognition certificate in Scotland, For Women Scotland and others have been calling for this in order to exclude trans people from the definitions of woman and man.
My Queerography: Transforming From Gay Man to a Queer Man
Two years ago, I launched a Substack newsletter, introducing myself with My Gayography, subtitled My Cliff Notes on my book of life as a gay man. It was a glimpse into my identity as a gay man that challenged my comfort zone as a private, non-confrontational Midwesterner.
Recently challenged to share queer history, I first doubted any historical significance of my own life. Revisiting my gayography, I realized my perspective of self and life as a gay man evolved into something broader over my seventy years.
Ten Reasons Late-In-Life Transgender Females Make Great Partners
As a repressed baby boomer, my transition started late in my life. I was 60 when I was diagnosed and 62 before I accepted the diagnosis. I fought it as hard as I could, and even now, I have moments of doubt, usually fueled by articles or reports that attack being transgender and even the existence of being transgender.
It rattles my cage, but never reverses the fact that I am transgender.
Where Desire Meets Body: Disability, Asexuality, & ‘Margarita with a Straw’
It’s quiet. Intimate. Honest. A moment of raw self-discovery that feels less like a scene in a film and more like something achingly real. Laila, a young woman with cerebral palsy in Margarita with a Straw (2014), is simply exploring her body. But it’s radical because for once, a disabled character isn’t denied her desire or reduced to inspiration porn. She’s just a woman. A woman who wants. A woman who feels.
And that, in itself, is rare.
The Joke Was on Them: How Cis Filmmakers Exposed Their Own Ignorance
I didn’t just watch these films — I absorbed them. I laughed when I was supposed to, winced when the crowd did, and never realized I was being taught to hate myself.
I didn’t see myself in Lois Einhorn or Buffalo Bill — but I did see what the world might think if I ever came out. These characters taught me to flinch at my own reflection, to join in the mockery before it could be turned on me. That’s how deep the damage went. It wasn’t just bad storytelling — it was indoctrination disguised as entertainment.
The Most Gifted Gay Rock Star You’ve Never Heard Of
Months after being conscripted into the U.S. Army, he went AWOL and escaped west to Hollywood. There, in 1968, he joined the Los Angeles cast of the musical Hair, adopting the stage name, Jobriath Salisbury.
Due to his undeniable vocal and acting talent and extraordinary charisma, Jobriath’s Aquarius Theater performances drew considerable attention and then his inevitable capture and arrest by the military police. He immediately proceeded to use his prodigious theatrical talents to feign schizophrenia and served out the remainder of his military obligation in a mental institution.
What the UK’s Narrowing of Womanhood Means for All of Us
I woke one morning last week to headlines that didn’t feel like news — just confirmation. Something foundational is being undone.
In a decision delivered by the UK’s highest court, the legal definition of “woman” was narrowed — not from compassion or complexity, but cold jurisprudence. Another door closes. Another echo of dignity silenced by gavels.
Trans Women Are Not a Threat to Feminism — They Are Central to It
Last week the UK Supreme Court (UKSC) ruled that the definition of “woman” in the Equality Act 2010 refers exclusively to individuals with XX chromosomes. This ruling excludes transgender women from ‘women-only’ spaces they were previously able to access…
Let’s be clear, this is not a legal footnote, this is rights stripping, and this has serious implications.
Controlling women: the tradition that never dies
They told us it was to protect us. Then, it was for morality. Later, to keep safe spaces. Now, they say it’s about biology.
But the story is always the same: if you are a woman, you are under suspicion.
The excuses change. The control doesn’t.
Now they talk about safety, truth, authenticity. About legally defining who can be considered a woman. About deciding who has the right to enter a bathroom, a shelter, a changing room.
Donald Trump, Purple Ribbons and Lesbian Visibility Week
The girl grabbed my hand and pulled me into a corner of the schoolyard. She was a social leader, popular, powerful. She explained that she didn’t want to hurt my feelings, but she couldn’t invite me to her birthday party, because then her cool friends would realize she liked me, which could never happen, because I was uncool.
I told her I understood (true) and it was okay (false) and I hoped she had a great party (flagrant lie). As we spoke, I stared at her plaid dress, her shiny patent leather shoes, her two perfect hair ribbons —
The Myth of Grassroots Transphobia
Since (and even before) the recent UK Supreme Court ruling regarding trans women, I’ve seen a lot of talk from transphobes in which they portray themselves as a sort of grassroots movement.
This isn’t exactly anything new when it comes to reactionary political movements, they always like to portray themselves as the underdogs.
Nigel Farage also does this by constantly making appeals to the working class, but as soon as you dig even a little bit below the surface, you realise that this is nothing but a facade.
We’ve Lost the Thread: From Trans Rights to Trigger Warnings
When Gavin Newsom decided to betray trans kids in order to win over potential Conservative constituents, I was appalled. But when Obama, in a recent talk to a University crowd, railed against trigger warnings and chastised the progressive left for losing touch with working class voters by insisting on social justice issues…
Well, Mr. President, I can now declare that we have officially lost the thread.
A Review: Nuns, Dildos, the Inquisition, & a Trans-Femme Saint
Should a gender-nonconforming shepherdess be burnt at the stake for having a torrid, yet romantic affair with an ungroomed gent in her village?
“You’re darn tootin’!” you can hear Marjorie Taylor Greene bellowing. “Oh, those poor, frightened lambs! They might grow up queer! I better go shoot them.”
“I’ll join you,” pipes in Kristi Noem, who’s standing beside her. “I bet that that shepherdess stole my pocketbook between her evil acts of sodomy.”
Yes, this premise is so timely, you can readily imagine the viewers of Hannity lighting up their torches in glee and jaunting to the pyre with bags of Kraft Jet-Puffed Marshmallows. “Who brought the graham crackers?”
She Conquered Transgender Loneliness
Liz thought back on the last year and started to cry. She felt the guilt of knowing she was the reason they had to divorce. She knew it was all her fault. She had finally revealed the secret that she had tried too hard to suppress for the last three months.
She was diagnosed as transgender, technically a transgender female.
Liz was not the man that Maureen had married, and Maureen was not a lesbian, as she had said so many times that Liz had lost count.
Adult Bookstores, Lingerie, and HIV: My Trans Terror in the 1970s and 80s
She was 15 when her bookstore adventures started.
The transgender girl’s bookstore visits continued through adolescence and into the late 80s. She hated going there. It was dark with many strange men staring at her. Sometimes, she would get with a man. As he started to take of her clothes and discovered her feminine under clothes, he would just leave. This was a lonely life. Many times, this secret girl would contemplate suicide, and several times attempted this self-destructive act.
* Poetry Picks *
Books, Roses, and Resistance: A Sant Jordi Poem from Catalonia
At the doors of stone, where time stops,
where the past still speaks,
a place stands strong —
like a voice that never broke,
like a heart that still remembers.There are no sleeping towers here,
no quiet bells.
A Transgender Woman Eating Eggs — a poem
The beautiful older Transgender Woman,
sat at her kitchen table in the morning.
She was eating scrambled eggs and
drinking orange juice from frozen concentrate while,
watching the morning news.She could not sleep well at night.
She worried a lot, not unfounded…
That’s it for this week!
Courage to all of you! Keep resisting, reading, shining your love, and sending your stories to Prism & Pen.
We need you all!
