Category: Trans
Jewish and trans: Conspiracy theories won’t leave us alone
On ‘Jewish Space Lasers’ by Mike Rothschild, with my own reflections on transphobia. No one can prove anything to anyone who isn’t open to real evidence and logic, as conspiracy theorists are not. Still, pay attention to their antisemitism.
How do you know the legislation is anti-LGBTQ without reading it?
2023 was gruesomely challenging. 2024 is something else. You could try to read 20 anti-LGBTQ bills per business day. Or you could just recognize that this massive legislative campaign is anti-LGBTQ and harmful.
How many anti-trans laws were proposed last week?
They‘ve been counted, but let’s also reflect on what they mean. We all need to be amplifying the news and the message. Support the trans people and cis allies who are doing the work.
Yet 10 *more* ways trans people are told we shouldn’t exist
Now my list is up to 30. More than one transphobe engages with these ideas. If you read them, you’ll feel the force of the repetition. The message: Trans people shouldn’t exist.
10 *more* ways trans people are told we shouldn’t exist
Truly, there are a lot of ways. Here are items 11–20. Trans people have a relevant perspective here. When we hear anti-transgender statements, we know that the true meaning is ‘trans people shouldn’t exist’.
10 ways trans people are told we shouldn’t exist
Here’s why transphobia sounds like an eradication campaign. If someone were denying your gender, would you understand them as literally telling you to stop having your gender? Comply, and everything will be OK?
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.’
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.
Liberation projects, art appreciation, and perceptions of the past
From my June 2024 reading list. The bird has flown, but the stone has not yet been thrown. Perhaps in the future it will come to mean something.
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?
‘Overawed by the marvel’ of trans
A new miniprayerbook. When we sanctify something, it changes. I think Heschel would understand and would like to continue to live and change and cast and reflect light.
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.