Category: Trans
Assume humanity, then ask about happiness
Trans people‘s say-so is evidence of our happiness. But no one should ask for evidence that trans people are people. Previously, I used Lydia Polgreen’s opinion as an example, and I identified and extracted these writing tips for you. Please note this key distinction.
No one needs ‘evidence’ that transition improves trans people’s humanity
Let’s distinguish scientific uncertainty from value judgment. Anti-trans prejudice doesn’t justify demanding evidence about trans people’s humanity. When we let go of prejudice, some common ‘questions’ dissolve.
Can an identity be true and not true?
On ‘constitutive tension’ in our concepts. Picking apart someone else’s identity? First ask: Why do you want to? What would be gained? And lost? What happens to your own identity in the process?
Gödel is sure Bach, and trans people are sure their gender
Reflections on the Pulitzer-winning ‘Gödel, Escher, Bach’ (1979). Their objection is an infinite regress. They’re laying a trap. If we needed rules about rules about rules, none of us could ever use language at all.
How do we know who we are?
Do we learn it from a crystal ball—or from our guts? How do others state with certainty that they know who they are? Do they have a crystal ball? Of course, we’re jealous. How can we know ourselves, too?
Do we choose to be who we are?
And what, by the way, is choice? If you can’t snap your fingers to change, how do you change? What do we ask people to do when we ask them to change? Why should anyone change?
English only, two sexes: A mashup of two executive orders
Interlace the lines to read things like: A designated language attacks women in society by depriving them of dignity. When I read Trump’s instruction ‘to designate one — and only one — official language,’ I remembered his prior instruction ‘to recognize two sexes.’
Pausing in the darkness
Trump’s latest anti-trans executive order calls us ‘anti-Christian’. Trump has labeled as ‘anti-Christian’: trans inclusion, trans visibility, supporting queer kids, and even holding Christians accountable to the law.
It’s official: All trans people kicked out of U.S. military
February 26, 2025, effective immediately. If the military decides you’re trans, it must kick you out. If you’re trans and you know it, you can resign within the month or else wait to be fired.
Now, there’s a no-sports order
Let’s kick it open, bounce it against the wall, and dunk on it. The anti-trans movement has never been about sports. it enacts arbitrary exclusion to make trans people less safe. It’s a political assault.
In 10 days, four anti-trans exec orders & a bathroom ban for fed employees
Keep looking up. Trump 2025 has been in office for a bit over a week. These will affect trans people intersectionally or in unexpected ways. There’s a lot of material, so I’ve listed the executive orders with clickable images.
Tonight’s ban on adult gender transition (yes, 18-year-olds are adults)
By executive order, the federal government will not support transition. ‘Maiming’ is unspecific. ‘Sterilizing’ is generally untrue. ‘A growing number’ is fact-free; if the president had numbers, he’d provide them.