Category: Trans

Plastic six-sided die for board game

Right wing lies about trans suicide

Steven Crowder makes up numbers and unfortunately is on Twitter. A former coworker actively fantasizes that my 21st-century transgender life is more miserable than if I were in a concentration camp.

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bicycle parked on a colorfully painted staircase on the sidewalk in the rain

I’m a gender autonomist

The term ‘gender activist’ is used to point at trans people living with dignity and solidarity, capable of saying ‘no thank you’ and daring to shrug at and disagree with someone who doesn’t like them just because they’re trans. ‘Activist’ is used as an insult for someone who believes in autonomy.

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cute pointer puppy wearing a light blue and pink rope collar

Cricket’s Still Alive (a poem)

Out of the gravel pit, up into the light. A poem after Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’. About Kristi Noem and the young dog she brags of shooting. Beautiful trans child, goddamn untrainable dog.

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pencil sketch of two gentle hands, resting with palms up, against a muted psychedelic rainbow background

Assume humanity, then ask about happiness

Trans people‘s say-so is evidence of our happiness. But no one should ask for evidence that trans people are people. Previously, I used Lydia Polgreen’s opinion as an example, and I identified and extracted these writing tips for you. Please note this key distinction.

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old-style building seen through a large ornate archway

Can an identity be true and not true?

On ‘constitutive tension’ in our concepts. Picking apart someone else’s identity? First ask: Why do you want to? What would be gained? And lost? What happens to your own identity in the process?

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Crystal ball balancing on a rock near a bridge with an upside-down reflection of the bridge

How do we know who we are?

Do we learn it from a crystal ball—or from our guts? How do others state with certainty that they know who they are? Do they have a crystal ball? Of course, we’re jealous. How can we know ourselves, too?

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Monarch caterpillar clings to a leaf

Do we choose to be who we are?

And what, by the way, is choice? If you can’t snap your fingers to change, how do you change? What do we ask people to do when we ask them to change? Why should anyone change?

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