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Three books that tell us to smash our categories
Recommended nonfiction by Miller, Fox, and Waters. Nonfiction recommendations: A 2020 book about David Starr Jordan, a 2023 book about William Beebe, and a 2024 book about Avery Brundage.
The indispensable history of ‘sex testing’ in sports
Waters keeps the book focused on the 1930s, with the history told in such a way that it’s crystal clear how it’s relevant today. The moral panic over trans people in sports continues not to be about sports.
As Berlin held the 1936 Olympics, these athletes changed their sex
Assigned female at birth, some went on to live as men. Eugenicists, sexists, racists, and fascists held power. Possibilities were disrupted when the Nazis rose. And the 1936 Olympics belonged to Hitler.
If a trans person hid stolen classified documents in a bathroom in Florida
National security secrets between the toilet and the chandelier. You are all invited to my chandelier bathroom, where there are no boxes, as I have no chandelier either. I keep my newspaper clippings in my laundry room.
My last time in a swimming pool in Florida
Florida has made so many laws against me, I don’t suppose I can go there anymore. Anti-transgender laws are meant to say that our existence is a logical impossibility. These laws are false, unworkable, bad-intentioned, and wrong.
How the bathroom verification cards would work
I think they want magnetic locks on public bathrooms. Don’t put me on a registry of ‘safe’ trans people. No one stands to gain anything from it. Everyone would be harassed in search of the Mythical Bad Trans.
Transphobia, the Interrupting Cow
Prejudice obstructs continuous and coherent thought. Transphobia upholds gender-conformist and authoritarian aspects of culture. It tries to link itself to important feelings, but it isn’t sincere.
Bathroom bills are intended to suppress trans life
They will require little or no proof. If the intent behind the law is to take you away, they don’t care about proof. They don’t care how you’re trans. They don’t care that you’re harming no one.
WDI co-author doesn’t support dressing however you like
In which Sheila Jeffreys says you can’t really wear what you like & there might be nothing wrong with being a transphobe. Jeffreys doesn’t believe people have the right to be trans. She thinks the reason to avoid a self-descriptor like “transphobic” is that it’s a naughty word.