Blog
I’m disappointed in the ‘Witch Trials’
J.K. Rowling’s image-polishing podcast doesn’t grapple with the real problem. When someone accuses Rowling of transphobia, her team’s refrain is: When has she ever been transphobic? At this point, I hear it as a running joke.
The misrepresentation of compassion and solidarity
No, J. K. Rowling’s 2020 blog post wasn’t compassionate to trans people. ‘Gender critical’ ideology typically promotes hostility and ignorance. GC, of course, claims to be kind to trans people. But that’s disinformation.
QAnon fights imaginary cabals
Explained in Will Sommer’s ‘Trust the Plan’. To its followers, QAnon seems to explain the world. It’s also their community. Normal policy can wait until the vampires are vanquished.
Moral analysis of what is ‘at stake in this story’
Naomi Kanakia on discussing novels. How to discuss a book itself and also let our learning transcend the book? To see the book as art, and to see it as a tool for our growth?
We are the book we’re talking about
And we are what’s at stake in truth-telling. If the interlocutor opposes me because of who I am, will they be impressed that I read a book? No. Even if it is a book they have heard of? No.
Humility: A needed balance
On early modern philosophers and online trolls. In Lewis Carroll’s ‘You Are Old, Father William,’ a young person asks: ‘You balanced an eel on the end of your nose - / What made you so awfully clever?’
What is human dignity?
Where does it come from? How do we know it exists? Does dignity need to be pinned to God, or can it have secular grounding? Is it about humility, pride, or both? What does interdependence have to do with it?
When we disagree on politics and I lose a friend
I have to be a good person, and even then, it’s up to someone else if they want to be my friend. They don’t owe me what I gave as a gift, and certainly they don’t owe me what I never gave at all.
Does ‘woke’ mean saying — or not saying — certain words?
In any case, careful speech—including refraining from speaking — can build trust. When the right wing refers to “woke,” they may want to prevent others from saying certain words—or to reserve certain words for themselves.