Category: Gender - PACG - Progressive Action for the Common Good

Medicaid cuts to gender-affirming care-No Hate in Our States

6/10/2025

Proposed Medicaid cuts to gender-affirming care

Gender Equity Forum

The Big Bucks for Billionaires Bill (aka the One Big Beautiful Bill) makes drastic cuts to Medicaid. A late night amendment before the bill passed the House also bans gender-affirming care for anyone on Medicaid or in the Affordable Care Marketplace. This affects an estimated 185,000 trans people on Medicaid.

The Gender Equity Forum joins the Healthcare Reform Forum in opposition to these Medicaid cuts. Read more about the specific cuts to gender-affirming care in this article from them.

Alta Price (she/her)

The Bathroom that Ends the World-No Hate in Our States

6/10/2025

The Bathroom That Ends the World

Rev. Sean substack.com/@civicgrace

How a Single Gender-Neutral Bathroom Revealed the Gentleness Hidden Behind All Their Fear
Our new church building has a gender-neutral washroom, and before we opened the doors, we held our breath. Would people accept it? Would they understand?

In many ways, this single room represents everything certain politicians claim to fear most: gender boundaries dissolving, children exposed to "confusion," traditional values under siege. Here, in one modest space with sinks and stalls, we've apparently built the apocalypse they've been warning about—a place where the rigid categories that once seemed natural and eternal simply... don't matter.

And you know what? They're right to be afraid. Not because our bathroom poses any actual danger, but because it reveals how unnecessary their fortress walls really are.

Read the rest of this article on Substack.

Kat Fitzgerald (she/her)

Pride Month 2025 - What You Can Do Now

5/23/2025

Pride Month 2025 in the Quad Cities

Gender Equity Forum

As usual, our friends at Clock, Inc are doing great work listing various Pride events in the Quad Cities. This link to their website will continue to be updated. As of now they begin on May 28th with the acceptance of the City of Davenport's Pride Proclamation.

There are also a lot of Community Calendars that PACG links to on our website. Check those for other activities.

Clock, Inc was one of the recipients of the Dick Fallow Endowment for Social Justice that we presented at our Annual Holiday Party in December of 2025. Their work is important for our LGBTQ+ community.

Visit their website here and sign up for their newsletter at the bottom of the page.

Alta Price (she/her)

The Reality of Project 2025-Of Interest to Our Community

4/29/2025

The Reality of Project 2025

Red Wine and Blue

A grassroots organization Red Wine & Blue has been keeping track of the implementation of 2025 projects. They also provide recommendations on how we can fight back. For more information go here,

You can contact them or subscribe to their email update here,

Red Wine & Blue

Watch "Talkin' Union" online - What You Can Do Now

3/26/2025

Women's History Month - Texas Labor Organizers
online

Gender Equity Forum

In honor of Women's History month in March, the Gender Equity forum brings you Talkin Union, a 4-part documentary about four women who organized labor unions in Texas in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. This film is available for viewing online here. Each part is about 15 minutes long and features footage of the women. Fascinating!

There is also a book, Talkin' Union: Texas Women Workers, about these pioneering labor organizers that you can buy at this link.

Alta Price (she/her)

Celebrate Transgender Day of Visibility - No Hate in Our States

3/10/2025

Transgender Day of Visibility
Monday, March 31st

Gender Equity Forum

From GLAAD

Each year on March 31, the world observes Transgender Day of Visibility (TDOV) to raise awareness about transgender people. It is a day to celebrate the lives and contributions of trans people, while also drawing attention to the poverty, discrimination, and violence the community faces.

International TDOV was created in 2010 by trans advocate Rachel Crandall. Crandall, the head of Transgender Michigan, created TDOV in response to the overwhelming majority of media stories about transgender people being focused on violence. She hoped to create a day where people could celebrate the lives of transgender people, while still acknowledging that due to discrimination, not every trans person can or wants to be visible. Read more here.

"Respect our existence or expect our resistance" - No Hate in Our States

3/6/2025

"Trouble" or This Fight Isn't Over.

from Lily Jayne (a trans woman) on Substack:

Respect our existence, or expect our resistance.
This past week, Iowa went full fascist with their poorly conceived and sloppily troublesome bill narrowly defining “man” and “woman” in a way that completely flies in the face of known science, biology, sociology and neurology understandings of the trans and intersex experience. In the case of intersex people, they’ll have to choose one of the two arbitrary boxes up to six months after birth via sex testing.

This is troublesome for a multitude of reasons and I will not elaborate on some of them because I don’t have enough understanding. But as far as the intersex community goes, that will put them in one of those boxes before they even understand who they are. As I’ve put in posts before, we know our true gender identity by age 3.

Read more here and please consider subscribing to Becoming Lily.

Hands off my pronouns - Action Alert!

2/19/2025

Hands off my pronouns! Action Alert

Gender Equity Forum

from ABC News.com (January 31, 2025)
Federal employees told to remove pronouns from email signatures by end of day
Employees at multiple federal agencies were ordered to remove pronouns from their email signatures by Friday afternoon, according to internal memos obtained by ABC News that cited two executive orders signed by President Donald Trump on his first day in office seeking to curb diversity and equity programs in the federal government. "Pronouns and any other information not permitted in the policy must be removed from CDC/ATSDR employee signatures by 5.p.m. ET on Friday," according to one such message sent Friday morning to CDC staff.

from Very Well Mind:
Why Are Pronouns Important?
Pronoun usage may feel important or unimportant to you personally, but on the whole, they are an important matter. That's because by using someone's correct pronouns, you validate their identity, whereas by using the wrong pronouns for someone, you may invalidate it. Using incorrect pronouns for a person can feel harmful to them.

Let's push back on the current administration's policy and show our support for the nonbinary community. Effective immediately, you will be given the opportunity to include your pronouns in your submissions to the Progressive Action Update (see my example below).

Another easy thing to do is to update your own email account signature to include your pronouns. You can search your email platform online to find directions to do this. And remember that you can include your pronouns in your Zoom name when you are at a meeting!

Alta Price (she/her)

Chilling trans military order - No Hate in Our States

2/7/2025

The Chilling Line Trump Just Crossed On Transgender People

With the latest trans military executive order, the administration has given up all pretense of "evidence-based care," and has moved to the kind of dehumanization meant to justify atrocity.

From Erin in the Morning

President Trump, in justifying his transgender military ban, leaned on a new argument for why such an action restricting the rights of transgender people was necessary: that transgender people are lesser human beings, dishonorable liars, and worse.

See from the executive order:

Consistent with the military mission and longstanding DoD policy, expressing a false “gender identity” divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service. Beyond the hormonal and surgical medical interventions involved, adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life. A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.

This marks a chilling and undeniable shift. The attacks on transgender people are no longer cloaked in the faux respectability of “evidence,” “science,” or “protecting kids.” They never truly were, but now even the pretense has been abandoned. The thin veneer provided by New York Times op-eds, SEGM’s pseudo-scientific “reviews,” and the disingenuous claims of debate is no longer required. Instead, the justification is laid bare in black and white: transgender people are “dishonorable,” “liars,” “false.” The language is stark, deliberate, and unmistakable—it dehumanizes us. This is the very rhetoric historically used to justify atrocity.

Read the article from Erin Reed's Erin in the Morning substack

Please consider signing up for Erin's Substack. She is a trans woman and a journalist covering trans rights.

Passport Gender Marker suspensions - No Hate in Our States

2/7/2025

Marco Rubio Orders Suspension of Passport Applications From Anyone Seeking to Change Gender Marker

from Them.us

Newly minted Secretary of State Marco Rubio has reportedly directed his agency to freeze passport applications that contain a request for an X gender marker or a change of gender.

According to an internal State Department document obtained on Thursday by The Guardian, Rubio told staff that “sex, and not gender, shall be used” on documents like passports and overseas birth certificates. The document instructs workers to “suspend any application requesting an X sex marker,” as well as “any application where the applicant is seeking to change their sex marker,” citing President Trump’s anti-trans executive order this week: “The policy of the United States is that an individual’s sex is not changeable.”

Read the article from Them.us here and consider signing up for their terrific newsletter here.