Category: Invisible Community

Fine. We're Proud of You Zuck - Wary, but Proud

3/12/2019

Zuckerberg emoting. Credit to NBC.

We are VERY hard on facebook.

And for good reason.

This organization started because of the Facebook Real Names Policy in early 2013 and to this day we harp on Facebook’s refusal to protect LGBTQ+ people by providing alias names, securing data and information better, not catering to peoples’ privacy, and generally sucking at community anonymity when we ask them to.

But something changed recently in Mark Zuckerberg’s little scrooge heart (possibly robotic?).

A week ago Zuckerberg published a near 3,200-word blog about a shift from public information social networks to private networks. And that’s VERY good for all of you.

In this blog, Zuckerberg admitted to the security problems with his platform and announced he will be pivoting to a security-based social platform that we feel holds a lot of promise for your safety, security, and anonymity on the web.

So in this blog, we’re going to go over his letter to let you know what may or may not be “troubling”.

A quick summary of his Blog

Now fortunately for you, there is no need to read all 3,200 hundred words of the CEO’s admission of guilt because it’s all pretty technical.

Zuckerberg starts out by suggesting a few ideas about what the future of the internet will entail and we are VERY proud of him here. He is championing from here on out:

Private interactions between people without any “eyes” on your conversation,
Encrypted Data so no “eyes” are watching the mail process in the first place,
Temporary & Secure Data Storage so they’re not holding info longer than needed,
Safety for everyone involved as they interact on the platform and,
Platform Inter-operability that rolls these changes out to every platform they own.

As for why he has changed his views on the future of social media,
We’ve super-cut all the parts that are important to you in a way that makes sense*:
(also check the P.S for more below!)

“I believe a privacy-focused communications platform will become even more important than today's open platforms. Privacy gives people the freedom to be themselves and connect more naturally, which is why we build social networks. [...] But people should be comfortable being themselves, and should not have to worry about what they share coming back to hurt them later. ” [...] Now, with all the ways people also want to interact privately, there's also an opportunity to build a simpler platform that's focused on privacy first.

[...] Frankly, we [Facebook] don’t currently have a strong reputation for building protective privacy services, and we've historically focused on tools for more open sharing. [...] There is also a growing concern among some that technology may be centralizing power in the hands of governments and companies like ours.

[...] But in WhatsApp, for example, our team is obsessed with creating an intimate environment in every aspect of the product. [...] I believe we should be working towards a world where people can speak privately and live freely knowing that their information will only be seen by who they want to see it and won't all stick around forever."
~ Mark Zuckerberg; Wed. March 6th

So can we trust him?

Read the full infographic at: http://onlineprivacydata.com/

That sounds all well and good but how is he going to make the current Facebook Juggernaut of platforms (that run on modern marketing companies abusing customer metadata in surveillance marketing) into a safe privacy first, encrypted network that we feel safe using?

Right now, according to the Online Data Privacy survey, a whopping 83% of Americans believe that too much of their personal information is being made public without their consent and virtually all of them are worried about that information being stolen or abused.

So in my opinion...

It’s too soon to tell when these features will be rolled out, if they’ll be useful, and whether they are going to be made in your interest. Plenty of politicians submit well-meaning population focused bills to Congress that turn into money-grubbing industry-focused laws and that’s no different for technology.

So we suggest

Take your safety security and anonymity into your own hands. Follow our 5-steps to your anonymity and join our already implemented social communities on known safe platforms:

Picture: 5 easy ways to stay safe on the internet Link: https://www.rescqu.net/blog/5-easy-steps-to-stay-safe-anonymous-on-the-internet

Protect yourself Online

Get our Anonymous Weekly Digest

Join our Whisper Group

Samantha V Logan

Samantha is the Executive Director of RESCQU.NET as well as a full-stack digital marketer. She struggles with both of these roles as her primary job asks her to collect as much information as the internet will allow, while she also actively fights that surveillance marketing for you here at RESCQU.NET.

Samantha's Bio

*P.S: We C/P'd some interesting quotes from his blog below:

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Announcing This Year's Unsung Internet Hero Award | Shh, she has no idea!

3/6/2019

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Picture: Samantha V Logan with Suzanne Dibble at Traffic & Conversion Summit 2019

Suzanne Dibble (left) and me (fangirling) at Traffic & Conversion Summit 2019 in San Diego.

For today’s blog, I want to introduce you to a person who has no idea they’ve made a massive impact on the closeted LGBTQ+ community.

She is a very prominent lawyer who has worked for one of the richest men in the world. She’s an online small business lawyer, and as far as I am aware, she has nothing to do with the queer community.

This woman’s name is Suzanne Dibble.

Before I can tell you about Suzanne, we need to go back to a specific event in LGBTQ+ history: The Facebook Real Names Policy.

Some Back Story:

See, way back in 2013 Facebook had been collecting all of our data on an epic scale.

Everyone was. This was the same for Google, YouTube, Twitter, and every other website because your data was insanely useful for advertising. It got so bad that a small little-known site called Ello.Co was started to change the way we view ads as a public.

Then Facebook made a major mistake.

To prevent fake accounts, and to ensure that their data always included “real” and “reliable” information on each person with an account (to sell ads more easily), Facebook took a step to ensure that no "fake names" could be used on the platform.

To implement this policy, Facebook made an algorithm that decided what a name looked like, and made a new rule that stated you could report accounts that had “fake names” or names that were not attached to a real person. Once flagged the algorithm would either shut down the account, throw the doors wide open on its privacy, or worse - ask for legal documents to prove the name.

The real names policy effectively crowd-sourced account deletion to the masses, and the masses then unfairly targeted people with “odd” (ethnic) names and LGBTQ+ people who they just simply didn’t like.

Needless to say, it It affected minorities heavily.

Entire swathes of the LGBTQ+ community were dead-named, accounts trans people were previously using as other identities were deleted, people ended up homeless, and Trans Lifeline, The Trevor Project, and other emergency LGBTQ+ organizations reported record suicide calls.

"The masses unfairly targeted people with “odd” names and LGBTQ+ people who they just simply didn’t like. It affected minorities heavily. "

Entire families and lives were ruined because Facebook wanted to stalk more accurately.

This Policy created 2 things:

First:
It created a mass exodus of LGBTQ+ people from Facebook's platform and they flocked to "anti-social networks" like Whisper and the previously aforementioned Ello.Co.
(We have communities on both BTW!)

Join our Whisper group!

And Second:
It created a massive rift of trust between Facebook’s use of data, their moral integrity, and whether its public could trust them which ultimately lead to the Cambridge Analytica Scandal and scrutiny for all other platforms.

Fast forward several years and we can see that a vast majority of the distrust against Facebook and literally every other data-mining business including Google and YouTube largely began in these early years of social media between 2010-2014.

Today we live in a world where it's legal for any company to pigeonhole users into disclosing every aspect of themselves for "marketing based on surveillance" which we call "analytics".

These are marketing tactics based on stalking every user every second of their life. I discussed how this works in my previous blog, "Why the Web is Built to Out You, and How You can Avoid it."

Enter Suzanne Dibble...

Suzanne actively teaches businesses the danger of surveillance marketing.

Since the Facebook real names policy and Cambridge Analytica scandals, the small businesses and the marketing industry as a whole has been in the spotlight for abusing surveillance marketing tactics.

And in this world Suzanne Dibble has made her career navigating small businesses ethically and properly through this gigantic mess of big data farming for marketing purposes.

When a broad-sweeping set of regulations and laws called the General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR passed in the European Union in 2017, marketing companies FLIPPED.

GDPR severely restricts how the internet uses your user data. This is the reason every company HAS to inform you cookies are a thing and why. If you don't know what cookies are we made a blog here.

Here's your Trophy! wait....Well, we'll make one when we have money!

But Suzanne went a step further.

Suzanne made a businesses that not only allowed businesses to navigate GDPR, but she discussed the future of data protection and the END OF SURVEILLANCE MARKETING!!!

For her, this era of mass data abuse will end. There is no stopping it. Instead of waiting for hard-fought laws to change businesses, she's making businesses change culturally BEFORE the laws even change at all!

Every client who takes her advice, will naturally, without knowing it, become a little more closet-friendly.

And for that, Suzanne Dibble, Lawyer extraordinaire, is helping to end a dangerous era for LGBTQ+ people, People of Color, and virtually every other net-citizen.

So I would like to nominate right now, Suzanne Dibble for the just now invented, totally should be real, “RESCQU.NET Unsung Internet Improvement Hero Award".

From the bottom of my heart, thank you. It was amazing to meet you. And I hope you read this. Keep doing your work in amazing and fantastic ways.

~ Samantha

Samantha V Logan

Samantha is a full-stack marketer and the Executive Director of RESCQU.NET. Her experiences in marketing allow her to keep closeted and stealth LGBTQ+ people safe by working to combat the more nefarious aspects of marketing in her communities and on RESCQU.NET's site.

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Op-Ed: This West Virginian Lawmaker plainly implied he would commit a hate crime if his children were gay. HOW?!?

2/20/2019

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Eric Porterfield is a name that many of you have probably heard by now.

He’s the Republican lawmaker who recently made headlines with his commentary on the LGBTQ+ community being a “modern-day version of the Ku Klux Klan.”

Given President's day yesterday was celebrating a rather horrifying symbol for most minorities, I'd like to take the time to discuss this "lawmaker's" comments in depth.

I've linked the section on LGBTQ+ identities here, and the full interview is provided below.

Prepare to throw your device out the window...

TW warning: Implied LGBTQ+ hate violence

Angry Yet?

This made my stomach drop.

His outward hatred of gays and lesbians is also accompanied with the symbol of trumps presidency crowned upon his head.

His comments are an active reminder of how many other people share his dangerous beliefs. This hatred is becoming common. There is a growing group of individuals who have been emboldened by the current administration to encourage hatred and violence towards minority groups.

Picture: Eric Porterfield comments to the WVVA reporter that he would drown his kids if he discovered they were gay. link: https://wvva.com/news/top-stories/2019/02/10/delegate-porterfield-stands-by-his-statements-regarding-the-lgbtq-community/

Porterfield even went as far as to imply that he would drown his own children should they come out as gay or lesbian and did so with a grin on his face (pictured right).

It's particularly troubling though that so many of them, Eric Porterfield included, think of themselves as victims rather than recognizing their accountability in the oppression of others.

They see the movements towards equal rights as taking away from their piece of the pie, instead of seeing the reality of people simply trying to improve their quality of life and come out from under the fear and discrimination they have faced.

It’s absurd for those who have been on the receiving end of discrimination for our identities to hear from those in positions of privilege that our fight for equality is somehow threatening.

Porterfield's extremist supporters are harmful to the progress of our community because they attempt to silence and devalue our struggles.

Porterfield has since been asked to resign, but is showing of no signs of doing so. He continues to stand by his statements.

We must keep in mind that he still has a strong backing in the very conservative 27th district of West Virginia.

So why would he feel the pressure to back down? His supporters feel safe vocalizing and acting upon their own dangerous philosophies and they no-doubt feel empowered by the lack of consequences they see him facing.

So what can we do?

We can use this as fuel to empower ourselves too.

It’s moments like these that we must work harder to bring each other up and realize how important our support is to one another. It’s easy to become discouraged, exhausted, and distant during times of strife, but at the end of the day we have to stand together if we have any hope of achieving our goals of a more equal and loving society.

So, if you're out and able, or you're an ally, we strongly recommend you share this blog, and our resource database to others so they can have the tools they need to combat "parents" like Mr. Porterfield.

If you are a child with a Porterfield parent - we're here for you.

Share our Resources Page!

If you're curious for some horrible reason, the full interview is here

This Op-Ed was written by Lane Lunsford

Lane is our support group facilitator for the support group Bitter/Sweet. She is also an advocate for bisexual people and a body piercer for her local tattoo shop. She adores sloths, and her husband.

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Why Knowing How to Find Resources is More Vital Than Ever

11/20/2018

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Picture: 4 in 10 lgbt youth (42%) say that community in which they live is not accepting of LGBT people ~human rights watch (https://www.hrc.org/youth-report/view-and-share-statistics)

Credible resources are important. This is always the case. Believe me, I’m an English teacher.

Unfortunately, credible resources are not exactly simple.

Some topics have a wealth of resources which create a variety of conflicting opinions you have to tease through. Other issues have a small pool of resources to pick from causing you to lose out on valuable, silenced perspectives.

Especially where the LGBT+ minority is concerned.

So why does this matter?

When it comes to your identity, having a variety of resources, opinions, and people to learn from is vital, but can give you more misinformation. And on the other hand, you cannot, or at least should not, tailor yourself to fit a smaller pool of resources that could be incorrect.

So in this blog, we’re going to teach you how to identify credible information, and deal with the regrettably low amount of information out there for LGBTQ+ people.

Now, there are three types of resources for information.

1. Primary sources are fist-hand accounts of individual stories. are necessary because they are the easiest to empathize with.

They’re people telling you stories about who they are. They can come from friends, family, or even some random blogger, but their stories are raw and authentic to themselves.

2. Secondary sources like articles, reviews, and academic papers, break down the stories, identify trends among similar stories, and provide validation to a single person’s or group’s experience.

3. Tertiary resources like Wikipedia pages, textbooks and encyclopedias zoom out and compile all of the first-person data, and reviews to present it in a bigger format. Conflicting stories can be put together to establish the pros and cons. They can more reliably illustrate the complexity of situations. They make it easier to access and to trust.

How this works in LGBTQ+ Communities

The problem that LGBTQ+ folks face is a blatant lack of resources about identity.

There are medical, social, and legal questions, among others that people can’t find answers to in a simple google search. There isn’t really a good way to “google” a feeling.

Attempting to do so can also be dangerous. Our blog on safe internet browsing practices explains how dangerous it can be to find high-quality resources if you are stealth/closeted and share a computer with not-so-friendly people.

While this problem affects everyone, LGBTQ+ youth are at an extreme disadvantage. So let’s talk about resources in the context of youth.

Example: Youth Access to LGBTQ+ Resources

They are out in the world, discovering themselves for the first time, and want help but they're not getting it.

The map below lists all of the states with “no promo homo” laws. While the name sounds hilarious, the intentions are more nefarious.

These “no promo homo” laws silence students and teachers from talking about LGBTQ+ issues.

Picture: Anti-LGBT: States that have laws restricting teachers and staff from talking about LGBT issues at school: Caption: Sources: Human Rights Watch | Lambda Legal

Sources: Human Rights Watch | Lambda Legal

They prevent critical information from being taught to LGBTQ youth.

And sadly, This only records policy. Not Culture. This information is not being taught in tons of grey states either.

These laws directly impact students’ health and well-being. The red states showed actively suppress LGBTQ sex education. If you, a student or a parent of an LGBT+ student, find yourself in want or need of better sex education, you’ll have to find better resources.

As an immediate resource, might we suggest the Queer Sex Ed podcast?!"

Without proper curriculum in place for youth to learn about different identities that may apply to them, we end up in one of several places. The darkest of these places is self-harm and suicide.

Take these resources which offer rare but insightful data on how a lack of resources affect youth:

“The prevalence of having attempted suicide was higher among gay, lesbian, and bisexual students (29.4%) than heterosexual students (6.4%) and not sure students (13.7%) and higher among not sure students (13.7%) than heterosexual students (6.4%)." ~ CDC.GOV [link]

“30 percent of transgender youth report a history of at least one suicide attempt, and nearly 42 percent report a history of self-injury, such as cutting."
~cincinattichildrens.org [link]

Why finding Quality Resources is VITAL

Despite these studies being crucial resources necessary for schools to provide to suicidal youth, they were, unfortunately, tricky to find.

And it’s not going to get any easier.

The Census Bureau, our nation’s primary source for data, announced in March of 2017, that it would not include LGBTQ questions on the 2020 census.

After reading the Planned 2020 census, the only whisper of sexuality I found was in the “relationship to housemates section,” So LGBTQ+ people would have to be married to and/or living with a same-sex partner to count as LGBTQ if they even report their marriage, to begin with. There is no mention of gender identity.

This may be looking pretty grim for you if you are an LGBTQ-identified person searching for resources. But we at RESCQU NET are working on it.

Check out our impressive LGBTQ resource database which has vetted primary and secondary sources for your needs. And if you’d need some 1-on-1 support finding resources, check out our online support groups!

About the Author: Erin Tschudi

Erin is the volunteer with the largest tenure here at RESCQU.NET because it allows her to keep connected with the LGBT+ community. As a bi woman who is soon to be getting married to her future husband she feels deeply for the community and wants to keep that connection. So she works to train our volunteers, welcome our new community members, and keep the wheels turning.

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Why Halloween is Just the Best for Invisible LGBTQ+ People

10/30/2018

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Ghosts and Goblins and Ghouls and Gender Bending Gays all around!

Tomorrow kids will be knocking on your door, and most of the adults will be out to their own parties, dressed in a variety of different costumes from the sexy nurse, to Lumber-Jack Skellington (I'm disappointed the internet doesn't have a picture for that one).â€‹

Halloween is upon us and conveniently, today is also the last day of LGBT+ history month, so in this blog, we'd like to take the time to reflect on the history of Halloween in the LGBT+ community and why this holiday's continued keeping is so important!
â€‹
First, it should be noted:
â€‹Halloween started out as a religious holiday and make no bones about it, it's still sacred for many. Samhain (pronounced Sowwin) was the ancient Celtic religious holiday Halloween is currently known for. Before it's "transition" and absorption within Christian and eventually corporate-culture, it was joined with a variety of other holidays around the fall by mostly northern-European people.

The Italian people still celebrate Borgo a Mozzano throughout the month of October which looks more like Halloween than Samhain did and is the very likely "usurper."

This religious origin to Halloween does need to be respected, as do those who consider tomorrow night holy. But this holiday is nothing like its previous form. It's now considered "#GayChristmas."

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Thair (@forboyslikeme) on Oct 30, 2018 at 7:01am PDT

Halloween's Drag History

It should come as no surprise that a holiday about dressing up resulted in a few "drag" parties. Cross-dressing is an irreverent, but accepted act on this most sacred of days for the LGBT+ community.

In the 1950s-70s when being gay was outlawed, this allowed a kind of "acceptance" to bloom in gay bars and counter-cultural gathering places for the evening.

Starting on the major coasts of the United States, many venues featured dress-up parties for the adults. For the closeted, invisible, gay clubs throughout the cities of San-Francisco, the out-and-proud, bold-and-beautiful drag scene which was often viewed as "a vaudeville stage show" got to shine proudly.

This provided people a space. A space to "negotiate" with the world around them and have a day where they could play with their genders and sexuality and have no recourse.

This grew only more important in the 80's as the AIDS epidemic swept through.

Halloween shifted at that time, from a holiday to play with your identity without stress, to a mardi-gras of sorts. A day to cut loose, to be free, and to experience one's LGBT+ identity but also a day to remember the people who had been lost. The people "who aren't at this party."

From that point forward, Halloween became synonymous with permission to be unabashedly gay. Permission to be trans. Permission to break the hard-and-fast societal rule loud and clear.

Halloween's Global Popularization

Parties, Gay or straight, are fun. Really fun. And they look fun. So they caught on.

Moving into the late 80's and early 90s, American cultural festivities swept the nation and ran across seas. According to CNN, the British grocery store chain, Tesco's sales of pumpkins in 2005, was tripled by 2010, almost entirely because of British people picking up what was mostly a forgotten holiday until families saw Hocus Pocus and Nightmare Before Christmas.

Popular culture - originally gay culture - created a holiday that adults could give their children. It was fun, and most of all - it was consumable. It could sell. Now the holiday is celebrated worldwide in Japan, the UK, the middle east, Africa, everywhere.

LGBTQ+ people the world over now "reap" the same benefits San Francisco did - identity negotiation.

What Halloween Means for Minorities

On any ordinary day, the idea of a man in a dress, or a gender-swapped Dean Winchester is not well regarded at the local grocery store.

Going to a party at a conservative friend's home "looking like a Dyke" is dangerous. For teenagers, cross-dressing or using makeup is reserved for females, and assuming identities beyond that of traditional society is so frowned upon that we require organizations to provide support under the radar, half-way houses and homeless shelters when it goes wrong, and suicide-lifelines specifically for those people who do not conform.

But on Halloween, you're most conservative of the conservative friends are okay with it all. You can go out in public "in drag" you can go out with barely any clothes on at all, you can party and grind on anyone you want, and you have somewhat of a "pass." It's Halloween and therefore expected that you'll assume the identity of someone they believe you're not.

To the LGBTQ+ community, Halloween is a sacred holiday because it observes the hidden identities we want to "try on" alongside our silly costume. We want to be the sexy ass-less chaps cowboy or the naughty nurse - we're allowed.

â€‹And that....is freeing.

But if you can't participate

Participating in this idea of changing who you are to "try on" an identity is called Identity Tourism and it's not reserved for Halloween.

You can also do it online, safely, without your parents knowing.

Come visit our peer support group, "bittersweet" tonight (10/30/18) to discuss how!

If you don't qualify or were late to the party, no worries!

Learn more about identity negotiation here

Or get ready to vote on november 6th with our voting toolkit! Why you may not vote and how to!

Author: Samantha V. Logan

Samantha is the Executive Director of RESCQU.NET, an online Community Manager, and full-stack marketer. She launched Trans* Youth Channel in 2013 to record her transition and help other transgender people online transition safely. She saw a need to protect people who weren't out yet, and transitioned the organization to make the site you see today.

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How many conversations does it take to convince people you’re bisexual?

9/15/2018

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4.1% of the US population (minimum) consider
the following questions every day:

When did you know that you're [insert gender here]?
When did you know that you liked [insert gender(s)
you're attracted to]?

If you feel you may be one of those 4.1% I want you to know, up front, I am here for you. This blog is intended to provide you
support, friendship, and the resources you need. You’re not alone.

For the other 95.9% of the population, I’d like to ask:

Have you ever considered having to defend your
sexual preferences before now?
How much thought did you really have to put into it?
Have you ever had to carefully word your answers in fear
of someone responding negatively to them?

“When did you come out?”
...is a frustrating question for a lot of people, including myself and contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t just happen once. As a bisexual woman engaged to a man, this question is never-ending. I usually answer via memorized script:

“I guess I technically came out in the eighth grade to my best friends, I came out in the ninth grade to all non-family, and to my parents my junior year of high school, when I got my first serious girlfriend."

After being “out” for eight years, this is still the best response that I plan to come up with.

I am exhausted from having to think about it so much. It’s like being in one class and having a teacher call on you ten times in a row to answer the same question. Then the teacher is disturbed by your anger the tenth time around when you snap.

I am comfortable with my sexuality, but you need to be comfortable believing that.
Everyone else seems to need more information before I am allowed to call myself “bisexual.” I’m in a relationship with a woman? Clearly, I’ve just chosen a side. I’m in a relationship with a man? Welp, I’m clearly not LGBTQ anymore.

I am not a book to be analyzed or a film to be critiqued, yet everyone seems to have their own opinion based on my actions, rather than just believing how I feel.

This constant parade of questions is mentally exhausting, and emotionally deteriorating.

Blogger McKenna Ferguson explains the effects of this constant doubt best in her piece, “If You’re Going to Mislabel My Bisexuality, Just Don’t Call Me Straight.” She goes through, in excrutiating detail, her problems gaining access to LGBTQ spaces because of being mislabeled.

So, to be clear: I am the B in LGBTQ+, and I need these spaces, too.

It is embarrassing and disheartening to go to a support group and have to defend my right to be there. It’s a place I go for safety and comfort, but it’s almost worse than explaining my sexuality to straight people because there is this sense that I’m trying to invade and even steal away people’s “safe space.”

This problem tends to arise because of people’s understanding (or lack thereof) of bisexuality.
You see, there’s this new phrase floating around: “practicing bisexual.”

It was probably made most famous in an interview between Larry King and Anna Paquin. [the bisexuality comment happens around -11 min]. If you’d rather not watch the clip, here’s the short version:

King insists that Paquin cannot be a practicing bisexual because she’s married. She is clearly uncomfortable with this definition and sticks to her guns that she can be married and bisexual. I am totally with her.I would say that I am a “practicing bisexual” because I am actively alive and bisexual.

I’m not saying that Larry King invented this idea that bisexuals are irrelevant once they're in a monogamous relationship, but he did give it a word and made it more real for people who already were in that mindset. So now, we as bisexual people, have to deal with it.

All of this has added up to one ongoing hurdle bi/pan people deal with: the “out” questions.

To a lot of people, after answering the questions, I am too straight to be gay and too gay to be straight or confused or lying for attention. I am certain that I am not alone in this hurdle.

So if you’re...
questioning your sexuality, if you experience bi-erasure, feel you have no support because people think you don’t belong in the community, or you or someone you know has struggled with this, I have a resource for you:

Consider joining the online support group: Bittersweet. We started it specifically to solve this problem. I sooo wish I had this group when I was discovering my identity and I’m glad you have it now.

You can sign up here. The next meeting is LITERALLY TONIGHT! I'll likely see you there <3

About Erin Tschudi

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Why I Started Bitter/Sweet & How Our First Group Went

9/10/2018

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Hello, my name is Lane....

And despite my constantly busy life, I've never stopped trying to find ways to give a little bit more of my time to under-privileged communities.

I’ve worked as a counselor for troubled youth, I’ve participated in local LGBTQ+ support groups, and in college I ran a queer identified women's' support group called QWEEN (it's still running actually).

And as a married bisexual woman I've experienced more bi-erasure than I could wish on anyone - from both straight and queer communities. Even during my time running QWEEN at college, I can recall more than one instance of being questioned for allowing bi/pan individuals as regular members.

Much of why I feel tension exists within the community about bisexuality is because we do honestly have the privilege of living under the radar. At the time same time, however, that means our identity is usually not acknowledged or given a safe space to exist. It’s a Bitter / Sweet experience.

So about a month ago, Samantha, RESCQU NET's Executive Director, contacted me about a new support group program we're now officially launching next week (18th)!

Based on my previous support group experience, facilitating seemed like a role I could easily step into and a great opportunity to help support the community. I was happy to join the newly formed team.

During our initial talks, we tried to narrow down what direction this group would take and the one that stood out to me personally was leading a group for bisexual individuals who feel their identity is more often than not swept under the rug.

With this group, Bitter / Sweet, I can support Bi and queer people like me, and help the straight individuals in their lives who don’t understand.

As a married bisexual woman I've experienced more Bi-erasure than I could wish on anyone - from both straight and queer communities. ~ Lane Ramsay

As the day of the first meeting grew nearer, my anxiety was building up. I wanted to make sure that this group was successful and that those who reached out would feel secure and safe coming back to each meeting. The hour before the group I was pacing across my living room. My husband had to calm me down and force me to take a few deep breaths.

The group officially began and after some nervous introductions, we jumped right into members detailing stories about their experiences.

There was point about halfway through the meeting when things started to flow more naturally and members felt more comfortable with one another. Questions were asked, advice was given, and thoughts and personal experiences were shared between the group members.

Each person seemed more than willing to open up and I started to see the members form bonds out of their shared experiences. I felt relieved, and happy to see the potential of Bitter / Sweet.

So, can you do us a quick favor?
In an effort to make sure Bitter / Sweet continues we are doing all we can to reach out to the larger community. We need your help to spread the word to those who could also benefit from this space.

The resources shared between members will benefit each person who attends and serve as a reminder that they are not alone, they do exist, and they need resources just like everyone else.

Help us out by Sharing this article, and if you believe in this group like I do, donate $10 dollars to fund our next group!

How to keep your identity hidden online

Why the web is built to out you

Author: Lane Ramsay

Lane is the Facilitator of the newly formed Bisexual / Pansexual group Bitter / Sweet. She's spent most of her life counseling troubled youth and the LGBT+ community. She's recently married her husband and experiences the same Bi-erasure she is counseling for with us now. Join her group!

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Why the Web is Built to “Out” you, and How You Can Avoid It

9/6/2018

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Since the internet discovered how to monetize social media, websites have become increasingly focused on you - the consumer - and your data as the product.

This has put capturing your data front-and-center for business and the ways it captures that data is rarely clear.

Still, the Facebook real-names policy and the Cambridge Analytica scandal have proven that blindly providing data without consent, is extremely dangerous if you’re an LGBTQ+ person who hasn’t come out yet.

In this blog we’ll explain why the internet is so hungry for your data and at what point capturing your data becomes intrusive. And of course, we wouldn’t be responsible if we didn’t offer some ways for you to handle it at the end.

Before we start, I’d like to say we are not focusing on the technical aspects of your safety.
We have an entire blog dedicated to keeping you safe online.

Here, we’re gonna focus on the marketing tactics that convince you, to hand over your identity.

Most data is actually fine. It’s just used wrong.

To start off, let’s say it straight. Not all data collection is bad - far from it - but you need to know how and when your identity gets into the hands of people who can “out” you.

This starts with intent.

The first thing that pops into people's heads when they hear about others abusing their online data, is the hacker. Humped over their computer, looking at their screen in a dark room, with your bank account information in their “sites”. This is a stereotype, and it’s very wrong.

The notion of a hacker collecting and abusing your data is a stereotype.
In reality, it's really well-meaning companies trying to cater to your consumer needs.

Hackers serve a lot of different roles on the web. Their intent is defined by the "hat" they are wearing when they work. There are white hats, grey hats, and black hats (and yes, you can think of them like Jedi, Grey Jedi, and Sith Lords). Marketing is the same.

Virtually all online fields break down into these categories.

White hat marketers are people who are trying to market to you online with good intentions and ethics at the top of their mind. These people tend to prescribe to the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) who believe that ads done right, mean ads you care about and want to see, are all you see.

These marketers, and the programmers who build their sites, are geared toward helping you seamlessly attain what you need to go from point A - you need something - to point B - you have it.

To do that, marketers use a variety of “tactics” to get what they need from you without being annoying. Most of these involve the "collection" of “harmless data” called “behavioral tracking”.

To understand how this works, let’s consider the Marketing Funnel.

This is a strategy that suggests you need time to understand what you’re buying. You need to feel comfortable with who your purchasing it from, and make the decision to purchase it.

The idea is:

They will first get your attention,
Then offer a way to stay in contact in exchange for an email or subscription.
They’ll provide a low-ball offer to get you on board and excited,
And hen they’ll provide some information on what they sell.
If you want it, you’ll buy it. And then, hopefully, you'll talk about it.

Each step of the way you provide just a little more data and they'e getting consent to have your data every step of the way.

And this isn't bad.

Our Bisexual/Pansexual support group requires enough information to ensure security for others when you join the group. We have to prove you are who you are, but you are anonymous.

So instead we:

Get your attention to let you know you're traceable online, and show you how to hide,
Offer a weekly digest that provides you all of our resources in exchange for an email,
Publish blogs and deliver content to you with suggestions to join our support groups,
And eventually get you to come to one, enjoy it, and share it with others as a resource.

This works for us as a vetting process for us, and it gives you resources you need without feeling negative about it.

Much of the information websites collect involve this “white hat” level of marketing. A lot of it improves your user experience on the internet, but things get dicey as people begin to follow you around, either to personalize your ads or more devastatingly, sell information about you to ad agencies.

You don’t have control over data collected or it's use

Now let's back up a second.

There’s nothing inherently bad about a website installing a cookie on your computer.

But if that cookie is used by other agencies to identify you, it can be devastating.

A 2014 Time magazine article identified a pregnant woman whose ads discovered she was pregnant before she could tell the father. This is daily life for closeted LGBTQ+ people now, and even with the greatest of precautions...

The internet’s current architecture is built to out you.

In that same Time article, the author tried to remain anonymous on the web about her own pregnancy for all nine months. She didn’t succeed because companies who were tracking her data, were providing that data to companies who had nothing to do with her. She “opted-out” of data collection for one business, but the other businesses she had no idea were watching her, outed her anyway.

This woman was careful. She took greater precautions than we ever recommend, and still, the marketing practices attempting to sell her products she would need, over-zealously outed her as an expecting parent to her friends and family.

According to Andy Yen, “the business model of the Internet today really isn't compatible with privacy. Just take a look at some of the biggest names on the web, and you see that advertising plays a huge role. In fact, this year alone, advertising is $137 billion dollars, and to optimize the ads that are shown to us, companies have to know everything about us.”

So what can you do about it?

So what’s to be done about it?

The answer to what we can do about this is hard. RESCQU NET has been working since 2013 to keep you safe on the internet, but those efforts could only be found in “technology”.

It made sense because it was the only thing you as a closeted, stealth, questioning, or under-resourced LGBT+ person had control of - the device in your hands. You can keep yourself safe by following these rules on our blog about anonymity but we're quickly finding, that's not enough.

As with the reporter who failed to stay anonymous, even after making herself look like a criminal,
this is not everything we can, should, or even must do.

“The business model of the Internet today really isn't compatible with privacy. To optimize the ads that are shown to us, companies have to know everything about us.” ~ Andy Yen

If we are to ensure your safety

we need to be a website that helps you remove your presence from the internet,
by reducing your reliance on the internet.

We will help you move your interactions with LGBT+ resources away from websites, marketing funnels, and emails, and toward unrecorded private channels.

Our online support groups allow you to attain resources in an unrecorded environment. We just started our bisexual/pansexual group, bittersweet, availble September 18th, and it's working well.

We are also committing to changing the way people collect your data by working with our partner organizations to make them more closet-friendly and amenable to anonimity on our resources page.

If you feel lost, need a little extra help, or someone to talk to, consider joining one of our support groups at support.rescqu.net!

Our facilitator Lane created Bitter / Sweet because she was tired of Bi-erasure throwing her into the closet constantly, and she wants to support you too.

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Author: Samantha V Logan

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How to Keep your LGBTQ Identity Hidden Online

9/4/2018

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The Internet holds a wealth of information for people questioning all kinds of things about themselves.

In most cases the internet is extremely helpful - sometimes even lifesaving.

Unfortunately however, every click on a web page, every questionnaire you fill out, every time you give out personal identifying information, you risk “outing” yourself in potentially BIG ways.

To get the information and support we need to understand ourselves, we often have to trade our own identity as a sort of “ticket” to the show.

Your information is highly valuable to other people and you need to protect it.

The key to security, safety, and anonymity is minimizing how much information you provide for what you need. Minimize what leaks out of your own computer or other device, your local network, and the Internet, for others to collect.

This blog covers the basics you can do to cover your tracks on a purely technological level - ranging from the easiest ways, to advanced techniques. It’s not exhaustive and following this doesn’t guarantee 100% protection, but it will help in most circumstances.

I'm also planning to continually update this, so it’s going to get big. Every month we'll ask a new expert in online security to add their own take to this blog post. We'll also order this post from easiest to do, to hardest.

In preparation for that gradual expansion, I’m adding a quick table of contents here. You can check back every month to see the new parts, and I'll be in the comments below to answer questions:

What We'll Cover:

Net-Safety 101:

Net-Safety 201:

Protect your "Location" IP Address using Tor - the onion browser.

**= new!

Use Incognito/private mode and clear your history

Ironically, if you’re reading this and you haven’t done these things below, you’re already at risk. Every major browser has a private or incognito browsing session that you can start.

Before you start doing any searching, exploring, clicking…start a private/incognito session.

You can either click around to find it or use a hotkey to open an incognito or private browsing session
(Ctrl + P for Firefox and IE, Ctrl + N for Chrome, for example).

If you happen to forget to browse privately, you can alternatively clear your browser’s history. Realize, however, if you do have someone looking over your shoulder, seeing an empty history will raise suspicions – usually you can delete history back to a specific time: an hour, a day, etc.

When you clear the browser’s history, clear EVERYTHING. Cookies, and cache store way more information than you will be comfortable with anyone seeing, check every box you can.

Remember, private browsing and dumping your history aren’t silver bullets. Being in incognito mode and logged into those platforms does not protect you from people looking over your shoulder. I've provided some links to the five major browsers' private mode and clearing browser history information:

Firefox private session and clearing history
Chrome private session and clearing history
Edge private session and clearing history
Opera private session and clearing history
IE private session and clearing history

You can Learn more about the importance of private browsing to stop cookies here too!

Out-links are risky. Beware.

Some resources you use will take you out of the platform you're on and over to Facebook, YouTube, or some other platform. Each platform has ways to protect your information, but it’s tricky and they all handle it differently.

For example, if someone else has access to your account on those platforms (say you leave it on all the time on your mobile device and someone else looks through that device), they will still be able to see what you were doing, even with all the privacy settings in the world turned on.

Limit where you go and consider where you are browsing to all the time – I'd like to reiterate that private browsing and dumping your history aren’t silver bullets. There are tools you can use to track how sites use your information but we'll go into those in a later blog as they are a bit complicated.

For now, just remember that different platforms treat your information differently, so be careful when you click on a link that takes you to another site.

How do they do this? Well, they use Cookies so you should know how they work in this blog.

Email isn’t as secure as you think

Companies, schools, and parents all usually have access to official and personal e-mail accounts. If you have to correspond with someone or use an e-mail to gain access to resources or services, you may want to consider, in a private browsing session, creating a new e-mail account that you can use explicitly for research and contacting resources, that is less likely to be compromised.

Signing up for a new Gmail or Hotmail account can work well enough for most people, but these services request personal information, and usually request some way to get back to you, an alternative e-mail and/or phone number. There's also a lot ofother problems with privacy to beware of too.

If you choose to create a new e-mail account, don’t provide any alternative contact information and limit what information you do provide. Keep in mind though, if you forget your password, you will be locked out of that account with no way to recover.

There are alternatives to regular e-mail accounts that allow you to be even more anonymous. Guerrillamail.com, and Fastmail are good examples. Here you get a disposable, one-hour active e-mail account before all the information is GONE.

Get in the habit of logging out and deleting yourself.

On the surface these seem like no-brainers, but convenience is quite the enchantress. Look at how Facebook Messenger took over texting apps by asking you to provide it your whole contacts book.

Logging out:
When you are done accessing your e-mail, or any other resource, be sure to log out of each resource as you finish using it and before closing your browser. Clearing your history or using a private browsing session will help keep prying eyes out, but if your email session stays active, it can still be accessed without knowing your password…so, again, log out!

Deleting files:
If you download any files, including viewing PDF documents, for example, or take notes in a program like a notepad, be sure you delete these items if you think they could contain information that would give up what you’re trying to protect if someone saw it. Downloads are not protected by private/incognito sessions and the file itself is not cleared alongside your browser's download history.

If a document isn’t on a web page, like a Word-format document or a PDF, it has to be downloaded to be viewed. Here are the ways to view what you downloaded in each browser:

How do sites record documents? They use Cookies so you should know how they work in this blog.

Know what your network knows

This one takes some knowing of how the internet works but it could probably save you the most.

Most networks you access are vulnerable to monitoring. Any time you have to log in to a computer, your activity is subject to being recorded. At home, some people use different home network monitoring tools like Disney’s Circle, which will collect things like browsing history from each device in the home in addition to your device's recording. Schools and businesses also often track browsing history. Even more advanced anonymity techniques like using Tor, won’t prevent this kind of tracking.

If the monitoring is sophisticated enough, it’s safer not to use any devices on that network.

Coffee shops and libraries with hotspots or public computers will help protect you if you think your home or office network is being monitored. However, these open networks are often monitored themselves, by people that want your credit card or banking information.

Still, these people are very unlikely to be interested in your searches, so search for the information you need, and don’t buy anything, or access anything “secure” (like a bank account) in public.

Net-safety 201: Hide your net "location"
with Tor - The Onion Browser

Now we're getting to the more "complicated" part of this blog and the first "full-blog" addition. This is more complicated, but can save your parents or ISPs from seeing your activity.

If you'd like to read more on this, we have a full description here.

One of the more advanced ways to protect your identity on the internet is to hide your IP Address - basically the envelope that carries your data to and from so the internet knows your computer is asking for the data and can send what you requested back to you. It works just like snail mail. You send a request and your IP address includes a "from" address. They save that address to their address book and send what you requested back to you.

Tor, the onion browser puts several other senders between you, and the destination, which anonymizes your IP address under several layers of protection (hence the onion metaphor).

Read the full article on Tor to better understand Tor's benefit to keeping you safe

So Let's Recap:

Net-Safety 101:

Net-Safety 201:

Protect your "Location" IP Address using Tor - the onion browser.

To Conclude:

As it stands, these steps will usually be enough to keep you from outing yourself unintentionally. There are more advanced steps you can take to move your anonymity to the next level if you feel you need to do that, such as using Tor, Virtual Private Networks, GPG, etc.

A couple of checklists you can follow to utilize these more advanced techniques are here and here for further protecting your privacy, but require more technical prowess.

Stay safe. We're here for you but can only do so much. Let me know if you have any questions.

This Article is curated by Jerri P

Jerri joined RESCQU.NET to assist in attaining secure and safe technological systems. Jerry did their masters in computer technology on computer languages and enforcing SSL documentation. They now help us with the closet-friendly partner organization program, and inform you of the dangers of searching the internet unprotected.

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How does Identity work?

7/4/2016

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Identity is complicated.

Many identities are difficult to describe such as gender. So the LGBTQ+ community has taken to an unfortunately false concept called the #BornThisWay argument that holds our sexualities and genders are genetic.

Now, we've written a whole article on why the #BornThisWay argument doesn't work but we want to take some time today to discuss how it DOES work.

In this infographic we're providing an easier way to explain how your identity develops for friends, family, and others in a simple and easy Info-graphic!

Click image to view larger on Imgur

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So we suggest

Samantha V Logan

*​P.S: We C/P'd some interesting quotes from his blog below:

Some Back Story:

This Policy created 2 things:

Enter Suzanne Dibble...

Samantha V Logan

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Author: Samantha V. Logan

This constant parade of questions is mentally exhausting, and emotionally deteriorating.

About Erin Tschudi

Author: Lane Ramsay

Most data is actually fine. It’s just used wrong.

You don’t have control over data collected or it's use

So what’s to be done about it?

Author: Samantha V Logan

What We'll Cover:

Use Incognito/private mode and clear your history

Out-links are risky. Beware.

Email isn’t as secure as you think

Get in the habit of logging out and deleting yourself.

Know what your network knows

Net-safety 201: Hide your net "location" ​with Tor - The Onion Browser

So Let's Recap:

To Conclude:

This Article is curated by Jerri P

Community Voices

Categories

Archives

So can we trust him?

*P.S: We C/P'd some interesting quotes from his blog below:

Example: Youth Access to LGBTQ+ Resources

Net-safety 201: Hide your net "location"
with Tor - The Onion Browser