Glitter Bean Café

On Wednesday morning, our opener was greeted with a crude anti-trans scrawling made on the side of our building in Sharpie. Just because the message was quickly scrubbed away doesn't mean its sentiment is not alarming. Local queer business @venusenvyhfx has recently been the target of similar graffiti. We also had to cancel an event in November due to the potential of anti-trans protesters showing up. As much as we will persist and continue to be a space that offers safety and comfort for marginalized folks, this rise in aggressive bigoted behaviour towards queer life is absolutely concerning. 

What did the graffiti say? “This business supports child grooming.” This is a common and entirely incorrect talking point peddled by transphobes, typically in response to gender affirming care interventions for trans youth. The truth is that no clinician is endorsing permanent surgical changes to children's bodies. Most early gender affirming care involves social changes and changes in an adolescent's environment - things like respecting requests for pronoun and name changes. Medical interventions are equally innocuous. The effects of puberty blockers (something common in gender affirming care for adolescents) are entirely reversible and have been used to help cis children with precocious puberties far longer than they have been used for gender affirming care. Trans youth are some of the most vulnerable people - period. Providing them with gender affirming care is often life-saving.

Trans existence is not some elaborate plot to indoctrinate children - we’ve been around for millenia and simply want to exist without struggling against our bodies, our identities, and against a society that ostracizes us. 

If you are looking for ways to support the queer folks in your life, there are many:

Supporting queer owned businesses.

Doing something as simple as offering check in’s to queer loved ones.

Educating yourself on some of the myths that target our community (Venus Envy and The Youth Project are great places to start)

Being vocal against bigoted behaviour such as this.

Thank you again for your continued support. Without you, we would never make it.

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