Blog

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.

I can’t write the anti-gay argument for him
No one wants to be called a ‘bigot’ or a ‘fascist’. But it’s not my job to give him alternate explanations for his reasons or feelings. If I say something is bigoted, I may not be judging someone’s character, at least not primarily; instead I may be asserting why I’m not jumping on board.

Why fascists target gender transition
It messes with their imagined ‘pure’ origin story for their compatriots. Just by existing, we overturn the alleged ‘mythic past.’ We expose its fictions. Fascists don’t want us to exist because we are outside their time.

He says your academic evidence is ‘laundered’
If you believe oppression is real, Peter Boghossian doesn’t think your academic work is real. Conservatives ask for their feelings to be validated and for “Western Civilization” to be saved through intellectual debate. Can we meta-debate that?

Being transgender is homophobic? That’s trope, not truth
Breakdown of ‘A Heretic’s Manifesto’ (2023) by Brendan O’Neill. They publish screeds without speaking to a single one of us, which goes beyond paternalism and shows an intent to control us in ways that are harmful to us.

15 common features of anti-trans troll comments
They really pack ’em in. They didn’t read my article and don’t care about my perspective. They act as though I’m the one who didn’t do the required reading.

30 terrible ways to express ‘skepticism’ of transgender people
I will tell you how I generated this list. It’s not random. For people who have been bothered by these arguments, who want to see them unpacked, and who will gladly avoid repeating or amplifying them in the future.

Skeptical of trans people above all
They could have been skeptical of science denialism and supernaturalism instead. Some theories, beliefs, and agendas are false, and their falseness merits skepticism. But trans people are real. We shouldn’t be the object of skepticism.