Category: Trans
The freedom to be left alone
We should have the choice, but we don’t always have it. In the past, when prompted to think about whether I’m ‘out’ or ‘queer,’ I’ve thought about the transgressive sense and about the meaning of visibility.
The system always leaves someone out
It doesn’t mean the person is strange. Any time we make a system of classification, someone won’t fit. This exclusion might say more about our need to classify people than about them.
Baldness isn’t just physical
It’s also performative. Labels describe how we live. Even when they describe reality, they’re about perceptions and performances. How we live interprets who we are.
When labels don’t feel right
She had two moms, and she didn’t like the word ‘straight’. If we have a stake in a shared outcome, we might avoid declaring how we’re different and separate from others, especially to imply our superiority.
People have been mad about ‘cisgender’ since at least 2007
If someone wants a world where no one is marked as cis, they must simultaneously fight for a world where no one is marked as trans.
‘Cis’ or ‘biological’?
They’re both adjectives, but we have preferences. No, ‘cis’ doesn’t imply that trans people are better. ‘Cis’ implies that trans people are equal. People who object to this equalization are transphobes.
On ‘Hall of Waters’ by Camellia-Berry Grass
Book #3 in my Trans Rights Readathon week. The book about Excelsior Springs, Missouri is grounded in “collective experiences” and narratives about water. Grass aspires to help other trans writers.
Here is how we do the 2023 ‘Trans Rights Readathon’
Read trans books and support trans people. Read trans books, donate to trans orgs, and support trans people. If you do it the week of March 20, 2023, you get to say you participated in a readathon.
Geena Rocero’s TED talk reveal
‘Our spirits will always expand to fill whatever space we are given,’ she says. She found her own face in the mirror, her own presence, emerging from nothingness.
Shaneel Lal’s fight against conversion therapy
In 2022, powered by young activist Shaneel Lal, Aotearoa New Zealand banned conversion therapy. ‘Stop congratulating me for being brave,’ Lal says. Instead, ‘annihilate the systems that force me to be brave.’
A queer horror fan, as a boy, craved ‘just one moment like that’
Richard Scott Larson’s memoir ‘The Long Hallway’. At 12, Larson has a recurring dream about a long hallway, ‘as if part of me was always making the interminable walk toward whatever fate awaited me.’
Colombia: 40 years of LGBTQ Pride
Fundraising for a trans community organizing space in Bogotá. Besides seeking a comprehensive trans law, La Red Comunitaria Trans plans to build a trans house for organizing and support. Fundraising goal: US $100,000.