Category: Trans
Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’, originally K-3, now through Grade 12?
High school teachers in Florida can’t say it. First it was K-3. Now it’s through Grade 12. Teachers can’t mention LGBTQ identity. Why is Ron DeSantis doing it? LGBTQ people did nothing to deserve it.
Supreme Court allows criminalizing trans kids’ healthcare in Idaho
The April 15, 2024 ruling denies injunctive relief. I don’t care about preliminary injunctions per se. I care about trans kids. We have to pay attention to what is happening.
Give trans kids privacy and affirmation
Doing so won’t hurt you. California Assembly passes two bills in 2023. One way not to be anxious about trans people is just to listen to us and respect what we say we need, because what we truly need isn’t scary.
How to reduce your anxiety over the ‘idea’ of trans kids
Look at that ‘idea’, and change your assumptions about it. Or, if you want to spend years feeling anxious that you don’t know how to respond to the existence of trans kids, start by making these bad assumptions.
When I, a trans person, spoke to a bioethicist about consequences
We did not agree, and I was wrong. But I wouldn’t have wanted the state to send me to a mandated mental health counselor nor hand up six months of counseling notes to a bioethicist.
10 problems with the ‘sex assigned at birth’ essay
They’re in what’s said — and not said. This isn’t a cost-benefit calculation. If we really looked at the term ‘sex assigned at birth,’ we might find that the benefits outweigh the costs.
When trans people are cut out of sports in Nassau County, New York
Republican organizes militia. Democratic Party chair retorts: ‘Does he think we’re going to be invaded by Suffolk County?’ Your neighbors are ‘trained’ to serve someone who marks everyone’s sex as a site of surveillance and regulation. This violence affects everyone.
Oh, it’s about sports, is it?
Nope, it’s not. It’s about constraining transgender lives. I don’t judge sports. I don’t pretend to. But I can detect when someone alleges injury and proposes a false remedy to delegitimize a group of people.
Three books that tell us to smash our categories
Recommended nonfiction by Miller, Fox, and Waters. Nonfiction recommendations: A 2020 book about David Starr Jordan, a 2023 book about William Beebe, and a 2024 book about Avery Brundage.
The indispensable history of ‘sex testing’ in sports
Waters keeps the book focused on the 1930s, with the history told in such a way that it’s crystal clear how it’s relevant today. The moral panic over trans people in sports continues not to be about sports.
As Berlin held the 1936 Olympics, these athletes changed their sex
Assigned female at birth, some went on to live as men. Eugenicists, sexists, racists, and fascists held power. Possibilities were disrupted when the Nazis rose. And the 1936 Olympics belonged to Hitler.
What transphobia sounded like in 2010
‘How Evil Works’ (2010) by the editor of WorldNetDaily. In discussing racism, antisemitism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia, the author of course purports not to perpetuate them, but he very much does.