Blog
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?
Why there’s still an argument about NYT coverage of trans people
The New York Times is digging in its heels on institutional transphobia. The NYT open letter has been signed by ‘over 1,200 New York Times contributors and over 34,000 media workers, Times readers, and subscribers.’
A trans person is trans everywhere we go
We belong to the world. If he agrees with the ACLU statement that trans people belong everywhere, why is he arguing with it? What are ‘those heights’ that trans people cannot hit?
On trans kids, ask people who know
Try looking where the answers are. How does the New York Times know what it thinks it knows? Is it influenced by its peers? Is it what it says it is? Is it ever going to change?
‘Hate’ isn’t an element in H2O
Hate isn’t part of the water. We can see it. Transphobia and racism are harmful and wrong, even if they’re technically legal where we are. We can recognize them and know why they are wrong.
Jesse Singal detransitions
He’s packed up his comments, hooray. If your main gig is scaremongering about the idea that somewhere a hypothetical child is changing their sex, please detransition away from that activity.
Wanting to see and know: Positives and negatives of trans visibility
A tiny Chanukah reflection. Our terms, the formal definitions we’d give if asked, the way we informally use words: these are the detectors with which we make our way through the world.