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

Progressive calendars of events and actions in the QCA - What You Can Do Now

3/26/2025

Progressive calendars in the QCA

A Message from the Board

Want to explore more ways you can get involved in progressive actions and events in the QCA? We are collecting calendars for our Community Events page! They are posted at the top of the website page, so if you are looking for information about a particular event, you will have to do some scrolling.

Here's the link for the PACG events calendar.

Our friends at One Human Family-QCA started the QC Activism calendar in 2024 and we have put it on our Community Events page. You may add events to this calendar here.

Activist Leslie DuPree, President of Quad Cities National Organization for Women (QC NOW) is single-handedly managing the Action Calendar as a Google Document.

Clock, Inc is dedicated to creating a safe and supportive community center, offering vital resources, mental health programs, empowerment, and advocacy for the LGBT+ community to thrive without fear of discrimination. The Clock, Inc Events calendar is here.

MainStream, formerly known as The Real Mainstream, is a progressive, intersectional, LGBTQ+ affirming publication serving Illinois and Iowa, and available online and in print. They have a number of calendars for eastern Iowa and northwest Illinois, including a filter for adults-only and spiritual Sunday gatherings. The MainStream calendar for Quad Cities Events is here.

If you know of other groups in our area who are compiling calendar events and actions, please contact us at [email protected].

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.

Bishop Budde stands against hate - No Hate in Our States

1/29/2025

Bishop Budde stands up to Trump where she laid Matthew Shepard to rest

from Them.us
Amid the launch of the second Trump administration on Monday, one thing marred the new U.S. President’s week: a sermon of compassion from Bishop Mariann Budde, held in the same place she once laid Matthew Shepard to rest.

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

Erasing Trans people via Executive Order - No Hate in Our States

1/29/2025

What you should know about the recent Executive Order erasing trans people

from Them.us

...Trump’s anti-trans order, which was widely anticipated in the early hours of his second presidency, marks a dramatic shift from the previous administration. Among its many provisions, the document seeks to redefine gender at the federal level, erase recognition of trans people in government communications, cease the issuance of gender-corrected U.S. passports, bar incarcerated trans women from being housed in women’s prisons, deny gender-affirming medical care to trans inmates, embolden transphobia in the workplace, and block federal dollars from being used to “promote gender ideology.” It’s unclear how far the administration intends to push these policies, as many of the specifics are left undefined.

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

LGBTQ+ couples rushing to wed - No Hate in Our States

1/24/2025

LGBTQ+ Couples Are Rushing to Get Married as Trump's Inauguration Looms

from Them.us

While legal experts say that marriage equality is likely safe for now, for many LGBTQ+ Americans — particularly in the South — nothing feels certain.

...LGBTQ+ couples all over the country are trying to shore up their relationships any way they can, including through marriage. Legal experts have said that Obergefell is safe, at least for the foreseeable future, but for many queer people..., who are also low-income and living in the South, nothing feels certain. After all, Justices Thomas and Alito have indicated they want to revisit Obergefell. And Republicans in Idaho’s legislature are currently trying to pass a resolution formally asking the Supreme Court to do just that.

Read more here about this issue that is of grave concern. And consider signing up for the Them newsletter here.

Nonviolent Resistance and Civil Disobedience Training - What You Can Do Now

1/24/2025

Nonviolent Resistance and Civil Disobedience Training
Wednesday, February 12th at 7:00 pm

Metropolitan Community Church QC
2930 W Locust St
Davenport, IA (map)

One Human Family

NOTE: If the schools are closed tomorrow due to weather, this event will move online instead of being canceled. Check the Facebook page in the link below.

PACG encourages any of its activists interested in protest during the upcoming year to take this training from Rev. Rich Hendricks, hosted by One Human Family QC. PACG members at our events need to commit to nonviolence. Learn how to keep yourself safe while participating in the resistance.

Sign up for the training on Facebook here, if possible, or contact me and I'll put you in touch with One Human Family.

Alta Price