Blog

A hinge that opens the heavens
A small reflection on my daily reading. You’re at an apparent end due to a failure of wit. You can’t imagine what comes next. But you’ll recover wit, you’ll find horizon, and universe won’t end.

6 things mystified me in the trans film ‘I Saw the TV Glow’
This 2024 movie is tough to crack, but finally I think I get it. In art, opaque describes a substance you expect to see through but can’t: paint, glass, a thin layer. Metaphorically, it’s something you can’t understand.

Why are you trans?
Will they be mad that they were given a reason? If so, why did they ask? Trans people didn’t invent gender stereotypes. Collectively, we don’t reinforce them any more than anyone else. We navigate societies that stereotype us.

A concern troll’s cognitive dissonance: Helen Joyce on trans kids
If your mind is made up, why do you pretend to be open to more data? I used to wonder why people got so anxious over the idea of trans people, and now I realize it’s because they believe contradictory things about us.

Helen Joyce: All trans people break the world
It sounds metal, but actually, she just doesn’t like us. She compares gender transition to a contagious disease, lobotomy, and opioid abuse and calls us a disaster.

YouTube deleted the Peterson/Joyce ‘meat lego’ video
On ‘meat Legos’ and what’s older than trees. “That’s what people say about me,” Joyce says innocently, smiling, batting her eyes. “That I want to cause a genocide…When did I ever write such a thing?”

What we can learn about Helen Joyce in two sentences
That second paragraph on the book jacket of ‘Trans’. Whose feelings matter? It’s a premise of Helen Joyce’s book ‘Trans’ that cisgender people’s feelings matter the most. It’s right there on the book jacket.

On the 3rd anniversary of J.K. Rowling’s pledge for trans rights
She ‘would’ have marched with us, but when? Her supporters insist she can’t be transphobic, citing her tweet: ‘I’d march with you…’ Well, her tweet is three years old today. She hasn’t marched.

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.