Category: Trans

dark wooden judge's gavel resting on a base

I can’t write the anti-gay argument for him

No one wants to be called a ‘bigot’ or a ‘fascist’. But it’s not my job to give him alternate explanations for his reasons or feelings. If I say something is bigoted, I may not be judging someone’s character, at least not primarily; instead I may be asserting why I’m not jumping on board.

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slot machines in a gambling room

A Texas bounty on trans people

Big prizes! Win $10,000 and up for reporting a trans person! Two updates from Texas and Pennsylvania, plus a roundup of five essays on anti-trans bathroom bills. Stop trying to take our money. Stop looking.

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cartoon of a jack-in-the-box with a frazzled character popping up. dollar bills fall chaotically from the sky. the background is a red brick wall, the color of MAGA

The $120 million anti-trans joke

We used to call it ‘the one joke,’ but now they’ve gone and spent money on it. Two-thirds of voters want politicians to stop attacking trans people and just talk about the economy. Republicans are most likely to say they want this.

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Jessie Gender speaking with a glowing green honeycomb background

Trans people need to ‘exist on our own terms’

Jessie Gender talks to us about acknowledging our stories, setting the terms, and framing our success. In this YouTube video, Jessie Gender acknowledges that ‘we constantly fight under the terms set by systems that were never built to enable us.’

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holding a paperback of Mars and Her Children by Marge Piercy

New dogs, now, in my own poems

Rereading ‘Mars and Her Children’ by Marge Piercy. Marge Piercy’s poems in ‘Mars and Her Children’, I decided early on, are what I want to sound like when I wrote a poem. I’ve found my voice.

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Detail of book cover: Summer Fun

Darned if I can tell you how magic works

But this award-winning novel can: Summer Fun by Jeanne Thornton. How do we create our realities? How are you magic? If you haven’t yet read trans literature, I am giving you sage advice: Trans people’s books are magic.

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parent snuggling with baby

Making an effort toward equal parenting

Written by a gay man, ‘The Equal Parent’ is about gender-inclusive parenting attitudes. Both men are active parents. The nursery has both of their phone numbers, and ‘if they cannot get hold of the dad they called first, they try the other one.’

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A person stands at a train window, holding their face in their hands

The ‘undecidability’ of life

Freedom and despair in Will Eaves’ ‘Murmur’, about Alan Turing. The novelist directs our moral scrutiny not at the innocent man but at the state that victimizes him. The state destroys him, politically and existentially.

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