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. 

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.

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.

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.   

​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. 

​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. 

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).​

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.  

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.

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.  

​And that....is freeing.  

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! 

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

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.

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.

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! 

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. ​

The idea is:

1. They will first get your attention,
2. Then offer a way to stay in contact in exchange for an email or subscription.
3. They’ll provide a low-ball offer to get you on board and excited,
4. And hen they’ll provide some information on what they sell.
   
5. 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.  ​

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.
​

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.

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:

Net-Safety 101: 

• 5 easy steps to protect yourself  [Infographic]
• Use Incognito/private mode and clear your history.**
• ​Beware out-links to platforms that don't respect your data as much.**
• Use a second e-mail (or disposable e-mail) that people don’t know and you don’t regularly use
• Always log out and delete any files you generate or download**
• ​Use an un-monitored network

Net-Safety 201: 

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

**= new!

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! 

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.

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.  

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:

• Firefox default download directory
• Opera default download directory
• IE default download directory
• Edge default download directory
• Chrome default download directory

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

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.

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.

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

Net-Safety 101: 

• 5 easy steps to protect yourself  [Infographic]
• Use Incognito/private mode and clear your history.**
• ​Beware out-links to platforms that don't respect your data as much.**
• Use a second e-mail (or disposable e-mail) that people don’t know and you don’t regularly use
• Always log out and delete any files you generate or download**
• ​Use an un-monitored network

Net-Safety 201: 

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

​​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.

Identity is complicated.  Many identities are difficult to describe such as gender, some are worked at for years like in occupational identities, and others are provided to you by the world around you as is the case for race..  

During our #IdentityTourism week we would like to provide an easier way to explain identity for friends, family, and others in a simple and easy Info-graphic! 

If you're in the Colorado or Wyoming area join us for our #IdentityTourism Event on the 14th at Lair of abraxas!Learn more or register here! 

Click image to view larger on Imgur

Guest post by Benjamin Brage
Visit his Blog!  

Identity tourism, a term coined by Lisa Nakamura, refers to the practice of pretending to be a member of a marginalized group to which you do not openly identify as yourself on the internet.

The reasons behind identity tourism are as varied as the people who participate in identity tourism. Lisa's articles generally focus on the nastier Rachel Dolezal elements of identity tourism – for example, the case of “Aminah Abdallah Arraf,” a supposed young lesbian Syrian woman who was really Tom McMaster, a white 40 year old American graduate student. The practice of appropriating a race or a gender that is not your own for the purposes of self-gain at the detriment of members of that group is unquestionably unethical.

​However, I would like to argue that there are in fact certain aspects of identity tourism which can contribute positively to the discourse surrounding marginalized groups as well.

I propose that there are two branches of analysis by which we can examine identity tourism. First, the reasoning behind why players may participate in identity tourism can be used as evidence of that particular group’s marginalization or privilege. A cis-gender woman who plays League of Legends as a cis-gender man, and who does so based on the fact that she is harassed when she participates fully as herself, is evidence of the fact that cis-gender men are privileged within that community.

Also consider, A cis-gender white man who blogs as a lesbian Syrian woman because he believes that the identity of a queer woman would draw greater attention to his writing – as in the case of Aminah Abdallah – supports the conclusion that both the identities of “queer” and “woman” are “othered” within the blogging community and are considered extraordinary. In this case, “what” the person chooses to identify as is less important than “why” they choose to identity as such.

Secondly, there is another branch of analysis through which we can examine identity tourism; the alleviation of Dysphoria. Dysphoria here includes both gender Dysphoria and other types of physical dysphoria and discomfort not classified within the realm of Body Dysmorphia.

With the prevalence of games such as EA Games', The Sims and Bethesda’s Fallout and Elder Scrolls series, a player can create an in-game avatar to the exact specifications of his or her liking. This includes elements such as race (whether an approximation of reality or entirely mythical) or gender.  If a transgender man creates an approximation of himself in a Bethesda-esque character creator, can we draw an inference on how he views himself and his sense of masculinity and male body identity based on the elements that he chooses to include (or not include) in the development of his character?

An even more important question would be to what extent identity tourism (in which the individual isn’t so much a tourist of an identity as they are a tourist of passing privilege) alleviates dysphoria. As virtual reality becomes increasingly pervasive and increasingly realistic, the option of “opting-out” of our physical forms becomes more and more of a reality. If this form of identity tourism can relieve dysphoria then there is a chance that dysphoria could eventually be cured in this way. If not, then we are faced with the question as to where dysphoria originates from and how one even develops a sense of self in the first place if a second, “virtual” mirror stage is not possible.