Blog

A surgeon for WWI and WWII vets also helped a trans man
The Facemaker by Lindsey Fitzharris. Harold Gillies “never shied away from a surgical challenge ,” Fitzharris writes. Gillies agreed to perform phalloplasty for a trans man in the late 1940s.

Trans kids are found in history, too
Histories of the Transgender Child by Jules Gill-Peterson. Adults should acknowledge that ‘trans childhood is a happy and desired form .’ It’s not a new phenomenon. It’s ‘richly, beautifully historical.’

Did lady pirates button their shirts?
Yes. Art you may have seen to the contrary wasn’t realistic. Just because you’ve seen a naked image of a trans person doesn’t mean trans people walk around naked. Pirates too were motivated to button their shirts.

5 quick ideas about why and how to resist
The rich already run everything, and they’re grabbing more power. Build your power with others and find new ways to resist. We have ways to make things, communicate, and live that don’t depend on corporations. Maybe we forgot. But we can do things on our own.

Anti-trans feminism since the 1960s
After a couple of recent essays by Sophie Lewis chronicling this movement. Particularly because the anti-trans movement is fond of suggesting that trans people sprang into existence yesterday, I’m fascinated with timelines.

Would you work with the ‘Alliance Defending Freedom’?
A 2022 Bindel–Joyce debate in which Joyce calls my gender ‘an attack on the whole institution of civilization’. She thinks she’s preserving ‘the Enlightenment,’ ‘evidence,’ ‘stable meanings,’ ‘how you do science’, ‘the whole institution of civilization.’

Republicans are planning their 2025 crackdown on immigrants
They’ll deport as many people as they can. Enforcers identify people, judges order removal, police find and detain them, & their country cooperates. Republicans want to do this for 11 million people.

Talk about values, but not with everyone—and choose when to say no
3 small, healthy tips for today. Contribute to the discourse if you think you can sway it. Sometimes, you just have to walk away. And sometimes you should push back and refuse to comply.

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.