The Reading List for May 8, 2014

Video games, music festivals and pornstars. It’s all here on The Reading List.

– With Mother’s Day coming up, here’s a nice little piece about how much our moms mean to us. Especially when we’re coming out to them — as a pornstar (via Huffington Post).

– The Michigan’s Womyn’s Music Festival has gotten a lot of flak over the past few years for not allowing trans women to attend. The festival is known for having a “womyn born womyn” only policy, and various musicians — including festival favourites the Indigo Girls — have said they would not return to perform until organizers changed their policy. Comedian and singer Lea DeLaria, most recently seen on Orange Is the New Black, was slated to appear at Michigan. DeLaria was asked on social media why she would perform at a festival where trans women are not permitted.

The next day, The Advocate reported that DeLaria would not be performing at the festival. Her response to the surrounding controversy reads, in part, “After over 30 years of gay activism and as an out, proud member of the LGBTQ Community, I do not wish to be a party to infighting . . . I truly look forward to the time when all LGBTQ stand as one. Perhaps then we can collectively laugh at how fucked up it is when I’M the voice of reason.

Although the province of Nova Scotia is paying for sex reassignment surgeries, trans people in this province are waiting to hear where those surgeries will be performed. In the case of trans men, The Chronicle Herald reports that, for now, those surgeries will take place in Montreal.

And Nintendo’s Tomodachi Life game doesn’t allow romantic relationships between same-sex avatars, or Miis. According to a report on the CBC, certain gamers (and gaymers) aren’t too happy with that.

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