Blog
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.
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?
Green birds are birds
I point this out because you asked. Look at these bird friends. Both are green. They’re both birds! Neither is confused. Neither is upset. And your mind will really be blown when you realize—