Luke A.B.'s Blogging

  The Welsh Church 2- Electric Boogaloo (Hunting the oldest queer terms in Welsh) (or, 453 years is too long to keep calling us this) (Consider supporting me on my ko-fi here or my etsy here if you are able)  (CW: homophobic slurs in Welsh and English)  In my last essay about the homophobia and transphobia embedded in the Welsh Church (or Church in Wales) I wrote about the homophobic lines in Leviticus 18:22 and how there has been no edition of the Welsh Bible that does not have the homophobic implications of those lines. It got me thinking, what about the other, more dubious lines in the Bible that contain homophobia or even transphobia? And did this get extended into Welsh?  I began by gathering together all of the lines in the Bible known to be homophobic or justify homophobia. They are: Leviticus (Lefiticus) 18:22, Leviticus (Lefiticus) 20:13, 1 Corinthians (Corinthiaid) 6:9-10, 1 Kings (Brenhinoedd) 14:24, 1 Kings (Brenhinoedd) 15:12. In the King James Bible (in order as above)

  Dictionaries in Welsh and English: Discrepancy of common Gender and Sexuality terms? Data volunteered by other Welsh speakers who own bilingual English-Welsh Dictionaries Current data up until the 11th of October 2021  (w)= Welsh Side of the Dictionary (e)= English Side of the Dictionary [if these are known] The Hippocrene Dictionary (1993) has anrhywiol for asexual Geiriadur Newydd notes these terms are unacceptable

  Trans in Wales- introduction There's something rather odd about being trans in Wales. It's a converging of nationality (sometimes adoptive) and marginalisation. But in all my time spent living in England (18 years), I've encountered so many more institutional problems there than in Wales. Right off the bat in my gender journey navigating England's finest trans-unfriendly healthcare networks, I experienced institutional transphobia. My first referral to a GIC in Manchester fell through after my attempt to seek mental health support for reasons unrelated to my transness were revealed to the professionals I had encountered. I never got that referral. That was back when I was in college, in England. Having gone through the mentally stressful ordeal of disguising my lateness returning to where my parents lived as studying late and the bus arriving  later than usual, I struck out alone to a busy hospital, where I'd carefully organised my appointment with a medical profe

The Welsh Church (Church in Wales) is still homophobic and transphobic: An Essay (Consider supporting me on my ko-fi here or my etsy here if you are able)  The Welsh church has a long history of homophobia and transphobia that is often overlooked when critically examining its power and status in Wales. If we are going to build a fair and free Wales for all, we need to be addressing the latent homophobia and transphobia within what would otherwise be, a fairly decent institution of Welsh culture.  Homophobia and transphobia has permeated much of society ever since strict ecclesiastical gender norms and gender roles came in and were enforced by the populace against anyone who appeared outside of these norms- either by way of their love of the same gender, or by their transgressing of the lines of gender itself and identifying with a gender that they were not assigned at birth.  Famously, the Bible is cited to justify church-based homophobia in Leviticus 18:22, which reads in various mo

Bǣddel Bygones: An article on origins, usage and proper contextual analysis of the term Many people, by now, have written on bǣddel as a slur and have gone over how it may relate to trans women and various reclamation groups that arose in the late twenty-teens. But nobody, so far, seems to have given any credence at all for the context of its use or its origin and continued usage in British English today. Aside from apparently being the root of the word bad, it is a pejorative in Old English for gender nonconforming or effeminate cis men, intersex people and people who we would now refer to as trans women.  But this is where many non-linguists go off the rails. Old English is super old. Like, older than the Middle Ages (where people spoke Middle English). Old English is largely incomprehensible to modern English speakers and I’m willing to bet that most people involved in bǣddel debates are not able to read Old English. There’s also the issue of etymology, since again, most people invo

  Essay on TERFism: The Forgotten (almost) Terrorism  (Consider supporting me on my ko-fi here or my etsy here ) Cw: Nazis, Fascism, TERFS, Rape, Forced Pregnancy TERFS (or trans exclusionary radical feminists) are terrorist-like. They are, however, state sanctioned, which is a big problem for those of us who are trans and living in countries which promote TERFism as a convenient way to ‘support the feminists’ while beating down trans people.   How are these TERFS terrorist-like? The answer to that question lies in what terrorism is and how right-wing white terrorism in particular is overlooked.  Terrorism, broadly speaking, is any act, movement or ideology that seeks to achieve its goals through the use of violence and fear. But the narrow definition is increasingly hard to pin down. In Root Causes of Terrorism (2004) terrorism is defined as “a set of methods or strategies of combat rather than an identifiable ideology or movement, and that terrorism involves premeditated use of viol

  Essay on Transmasculine Suicides: Faces and Names Began on the 14th of September 2021 Cw: Suicide I’m a transgender man who has struggled with both mental health and suicidality in my past. I’m several years free of life-ending thoughts, but I know for a lot of my trans brothers, things aren’t quite so easy to escape.  I’m lucky enough to have survived. I’m lucky enough to have not gone through with it. But there are thousands of u out there (or were out there) who aren’t. This essay is for them. Dually to remember their lives and to ensure that more people know, so this epidemic of suicidality can become a thing of the past. Equal measure and dignity is not being afforded to the transmasculine community and our dead who have passed away as a result of suicide.  I recognise my own story in the lives of some of these men listed in this essay. I recognise their struggles with substances, their struggles in education, their struggles in work and in housing. In them I recognise myself a