Prologue — Prophet Samantha Tano added a post for members!

I've decided to launch a Ko-Fi where I'm gonna post chapter previews, short stories, and definitely behind-the-scenes stuff about upcoming books!

To start things, I've posted the PROLOGUE to Book 3! You can go into it cold (heh), but spoilers for In the Valley, A Shadow!

ko-fi.com/post/Prologu...

Awww thank you 😭🫶

Hello, if you aren't transgender I do not care about your opinion on whether Newsom was transphobic or not on that podcast.

You don't get to define transphobia for those of us who are intimately aware of its forms and experience it on a near daily basis.

Thanks bye.

I guess those little ping pong paddles did cost a few dollars

The pink outfit "protest" last night has me incensed. It's a hollow gesture. And if that's all they're willing to do in the face of fascism, then they might as well rip those pink outfits up and sew them into pink triangles and hand them out to my and my community

THE GALL OF THIS MAN, THIS PARTY

How many trans people has cable news had on the air to humanize us in the face of our extermination? Cause they sure are eager to platform and sympathize with the white people who voted for trump that are now getting their comeuppance

When cis ppl outlaw transition healthcare for everyone, what do these traitorous Tgirls think they gonna do? They won't need Breanna or Blaire anymore and they're gonna find out

🚨 Call to action: S.9 does more than just ban trans women from sports—it sets a dangerous precedent for legally defining trans people by their assigned sex at birth.

We can’t afford to lose any dems on this one. Please contact your senators

The trans agenda is survival.

The trans agenda is actually wanting to look at yourself in the mirror.

The trans agenda is self-determination.

Everybody at WaPo should walk off the job.

Text that reads: FOR FIRST PERSON ESSAYS: The Eye is dedicated to reflecting Providence in all of its diversity. To that end, we welcome first-person essays about Providence life. We seek a variety of styles and formats: an argument about a policy issue affecting the city, a personal story about life in the city, a message to share with your fellow Providence residents, an essay about some aspect of the city’s past. The possibilities are wide open. We envision this – much like a daily newspaper’s Opinion page – as a place for the city’s residents to speak to each other, share ideas, and describe their unique experience of life in this city. We accept both fully written essays or ideas for essays you would like to discuss with an editor before writing.

Semi-regular reminder that I'm the Readers' Voices editor at @thepvdeye.bsky.social, and we're looking for essays from Providence residents about their lives in, and thoughts about, the city. 👋

More info here: pvdeye.org/voices-guide...

Email voices@pvdeye.org or get in touch with me directly.

Image of an e-reader showing a book cover. The cover is a purple sky and landscape with a woman staring up at two moons, one eclipsing the other. The book is titled "In the Valley, A Shadow" by Samantha Tano. There is a banner across the top left corner that reads $0.99!

Guess what! The ebook of In the Valley, A Shadow, is discounted today to $0.99 as part of a sapphic stuff your kindle event hosted by Year of Queer Lit! Also, there are over 150 other books discounted or even free from hundreds of sapphic authors!! #booksky

yearofqueerlit.com/2025/02/23/s...

Twitter post from @rifflexielian: "Terfs need to shut up about womanhood, my mom was raised to believe all women were less valuable than men and cried when she learned about trans women because the idea that someone would fight that hard to be a woman was radical for her and meant it was something worth being

There's a transmasculine version of this. If someone assigned female can become a man, it means there's nothing so special or powerful about men.

Each of us has the biological truth of equality between the sexes within us, as demonstrated by the ability of some to pass from one to the other.

WHAAAAT this is sick!!!!

The United States of Grift

Commentary: “I am tired of my community, my family, being spoken for but not listened to,” says @samanthatano.bsky.social who is transgender. “The time to platform trans voices is now.”

This is an excellent piece. Huzzah for @samanthatano.bsky.social! And good for @globeri.bsky.social for publishing it.

And until then, they should keep us out of their damn mouths

just posted pics with alt-text below!

As a transgender woman, I am tired. Nationwide, cisgender, white, male politicians attempt to erase us from legal existence. There are state-level bills preventing us from using bathrooms, competing in sports, living on campus, and most recently, an executive order from the President making it impossible for us to obtain legal documents that include our true identities. And instead of seeing our thoughts on these issues reflected in the news, the national media seems to think we need more opinions from cisgender people. I am tired of my community, my family, being spoken for but not listened to. The time to platform trans voices is now. The attack on transgender people in the United States has reached a level that some consider to be genocidal. The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security issued a statement on Election Day, warning that they “are particularly alarmed by ongoing hate speech from the Republican candidate for President, Donald Trump, who has consistently demonized immigrants and trans people in the USA, blaming them for the myriad struggles faced by Americans that are very real but that have absolutely nothing to do with immigrants and trans people.” In January, they issued a red flag alert for genocide noting that “Elon Musk, an unelected figure close to the president, [felt] free to flash the Nazi salute on inauguration day.”

The Nazis’ first book-burning campaign started on May 6, 1933, at the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft. Magnus Hirschfield’s Institute for Sexual Science was the world’s leading library of knowledge and research into LGBTQIA — especially transgender — people from 1919, until that day in 1933. The right wing’s claims that the “transgender debate” is a recent phenomenon gain traction only because one of the largest repositories of our history was deliberately erased. And now, the Trump administration is again trying to remove all mention of transgender (as well as queer, and gender-expansive) people from government websites and records, and deny us legal recognition.

In 2024, at least 32 transgender and gender-expansive people were murdered in the United States according to the Human Rights Campaign. The Trevor Project’s 2024 National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ+ Young People reported that 14 percent of trans men, 18 percent of trans women, and 13 percent of non-binary people attempted suicide last year. I say “at least” because when a minority group is erased from legal recognition, crimes against that community, including cases of suicide, cannot be accurately recorded. Propaganda has manufactured consent for our eradication, not only in the United States, but in other countries as well. Every legitimate media outlet has a moral responsibility to stop presenting the rights and humanity of transgender people as up for debate.

In order to combat the overwhelming campaign against transgender people, the national media must allow us to speak for ourselves. The media must hire more trans journalists, writers, and artists, and. They must, at the bare minimum, stop platforming transphobic ideology and seek out trans voices beyond celebrities to reflect our true material needs. We are disproportionately unhoused, out of work, and living in poverty, especially Black trans women, our most vulnerable community members. Our voices must be heard, before our silence becomes deafening. Samantha Tano is a novelist and former journalist who lives in Rhode Island.

Okay sorry, I had to break it up awkwardly to get the alt-text character limit to fit!

Substack discourse again so I am moved to reiterate:
getting off Substack is one of THE most straightforward and effective ways to get fascist stink off your work. If you choose not to do it because it seems too hard, then I do not trust you to do literally anything in the face of fascism.

we...hate Italians??? lol

Commentary: The media must let transgender people speak for themselves - The Boston Globe “I am tired of my community, my family, being spoken for but not listened to,” says a Rhode Island writer who is transgender. “The time to platform trans voices is now.”

They put ya girl in the @bostonglobe.com

LET US SPEAK FOR OURSELVES.

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/02/25/m...

Their power is fragile. Remember that.

"...she stepped confidently, her head high, and eyed each man she passed, silently marking them for death. The men around her stood confident in what they perceived as the ultimate power: they held weapons and surrounded someone unable to fight back."

RFK Jr. is not a doctor. But he will play one at HHS. • Rhode Island Current The new secretary leading the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has said things statements about antidepressants. Things that leave commentary writer Philip Eil very worried.

New this morning for the @rhodeislandcurrent.com:

I have benefitted from SSRIs for years. To hear RFK Jr. falsely malign them in the name of making me and others "healthy again" was infuriating.

I wrote about this -- and the broader dark implications of his confirmation at HHS.

Give trans people your money.

(Especially Black trans people.)

🥰🥰🥰