Category: Trans

person lifts hand as if to refuse something or ask someone to stop

Transphobia is a form of denialism

We have to counter Holocaust denial, and also transphobia. Transphobia is an ideological lie. Certain arguments can identify and deconstruct it. (Transgender atheist Jews, by the way, also have humanities degrees.)

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person in a formal gray suit, crossing their fingers behind their back

Hate-crimers and their pronouns

Ignore the Club Q shooter’s statement of gender identity. A homophobic, transphobic murderer says they’re what? Let’s differentiate good-faith and bad-faith declarations, as well as reality and fiction.

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Letters LGB on a rainbow background. Letter T has been ripped off the paper.

The people who use LGB-minus-T are homophobes

Brendan O’Neill does not support gay marriage and is impressed with the LGB Alliance. Yes, everyone may speak their mind. What’s on mine: Gay organizations that are trans-exclusive are homophobic too in complicated ways. Homophobes love this.

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brick wall

MAGA’s ‘not conservative’?

Well, is Trumpism conservative, or isn’t it? It doesn’t feel like natural order. It feels like state power. Some parts will be dismantled, and yet more monstrous heads will regrow.

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Book cover: Histories of the Transgender Child

Trans kids are found in history, too

Histories of the Transgender Child by Jules Gill-Peterson. Adults should acknowledge that ‘trans childhood is a happy and desired form .’ It’s not a new phenomenon. It’s ‘richly, beautifully historical.’

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18th-century illustration: pirate Mary Reed stabs an enemy with a sword

Did lady pirates button their shirts?

Yes. Art you may have seen to the contrary wasn’t realistic. Just because you’ve seen a naked image of a trans person doesn’t mean trans people walk around naked. Pirates too were motivated to button their shirts.

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Two indistinct bodies, one more feminine and one more masculine, floating underwater, holding hands

Is it about time, bodies, or both?

‘Trans Talmud’ by Max K. Strassfeld. Is this a question about time —what we think we know about the past and future? Or is it about bodies —how we sexually classify them? Or both?

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Book cover: The Men with the Pink Triangle by Heinz Heger, showing a pink triangle behind barbed wire

When the Nazis criminalized gay men

A story of persecution in ‘The Men with the Pink Triangle’ by Heinz Heger. The Nazis viewed gay people as weakening the gender binary. Gay men could be punished for “lewdness,” including simply hugging each other: prison or death.

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