‘Fabulous monsters’ are boundary-crossers that reconcile opposites. Trans people right now are the bridge fascists stomp on with their boots. Fascists need the bridge and also like to complain about it while stomping.

This is not a reason to reject trans people and their language. They’re using shared language in an off-center way because the shared language doesn’t center them . Not their fault. Should they reinvent language?

It believes it knows, and can shape, who we are and what we’ll do. Surveillance capitalists believe in determinism, not free will. Transphobes, taking their cue, reject the gender freedom by which some of us are trans.

It messes with their imagined ‘pure’ origin story for their compatriots. Just by existing, we overturn the alleged ‘mythic past.’ We expose its fictions. Fascists don’t want us to exist because we are outside their time.

If you believe oppression is real, Peter Boghossian doesn’t think your academic work is real. Conservatives ask for their feelings to be validated and for “Western Civilization” to be saved through intellectual debate. Can we meta-debate that?

Breakdown of ‘A Heretic’s Manifesto’ (2023) by Brendan O’Neill. They publish screeds without speaking to a single one of us, which goes beyond paternalism and shows an intent to control us in ways that are harmful to us.