Blog

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.

You’ve been trying. I see it.
What’s happening now isn’t because of who you are, dear readers. Let’s continue to try. So you consumed too much ice cream, got wicked creative, were fascinated by death, made decisions with your gut, wrote inappropriate film dialogue. And?

Am I the right kind of gay and trans for you?
Why our identities matter so much to us, why we bring them up, and why we use our favorite labels. My identity isn’t a bargaining chip. It’s an intangible. Try to touch it. It’ll vanish. The label denotes the space through which breath and fire passes.

LGBTQ+ people are not going back: No sham elections
Getting real with ourselves and with our leaders. We need autonomy. We need livable outcomes. If a candidate supports who we are and how we live, we may be able to support them. If they don’t, we can’t.

I’m not reading this type of U.S. election postmortem
Trans people shouldn’t be blamed. Yes, Republicans spent lots of money on ads. On the level of the horse race, I don’t care why Trump won the election. I care that trans people will survive.

‘Compensation is zero’ in the DOGE working group
It isn’t a real federal department anyway. You’d be the unpaid assistant and loyalist of the richest man in the world, who in turn is a loyalist of Donald Trump, who acts as though he’s the richest.

I want to see every word that celebrates our city’s sexual health hotline
I’ll repaint the mural myself if I have to. As a gay and trans adult, I have to show responsibility toward other queer people in this city. If we don’t stand up for each other, who will?

My identity is a ‘luxury belief’, and other reasons Trump won
NYT columnist David Brooks says Trump voters just wanted ‘respect’ - and that’s somehow at odds with me being gay. He asked us to shut up so that Republicans voters wouldn’t go on to elect Trump to forcibly shut us up. He’s got some ‘paradox of tolerance’ going on here.

The US has an election result. What will we do now?
The way forward is muddy. A few words I’ve collected from others. Words of wisdom from people who’ve spent a lot of time raging, grieving, hoping, organizing. Let’s reflect on how we’re affected and how we can make change.