Blog
Transphobia since the 1970s
Janice Raymond’s ‘The Transsexual Empire’. It’s a transphobia classic. We can look at its irrationality and spot its repetition in today’s transphobia. Today’s transphobia isn’t new.
On ‘A + E’ by Ryszard Merey
Book #6 in my Trans Rights Readathon week. Drama club, drawing, dance parties — Ash and Eu are pulled together and apart and together as in an oceanic tide. As queer as you wanted high school to be.
On ‘This Kid Can Fly’ by Aaron Rose Philip
Book #5 in my Trans Rights Readathon week. When she was 14, Aaron Rose Philip published the memoir This Kid Can Fly about herself, her family, and growing up with cerebral palsy. Today she’s a model.
I am not taking complaints about my face
Why the term ‘womanface’ is wrong. How is having a womanface or a manface different from having a face? What must I stop doing? I am trans and I woke up with my face. This is my manface?
The freedom to be left alone
We should have the choice, but we don’t always have it. In the past, when prompted to think about whether I’m ‘out’ or ‘queer,’ I’ve thought about the transgressive sense and about the meaning of visibility.
The system always leaves someone out
It doesn’t mean the person is strange. Any time we make a system of classification, someone won’t fit. This exclusion might say more about our need to classify people than about them.
Baldness isn’t just physical
It’s also performative. Labels describe how we live. Even when they describe reality, they’re about perceptions and performances. How we live interprets who we are.
When labels don’t feel right
She had two moms, and she didn’t like the word ‘straight’. If we have a stake in a shared outcome, we might avoid declaring how we’re different and separate from others, especially to imply our superiority.
People have been mad about ‘cisgender’ since at least 2007
If someone wants a world where no one is marked as cis, they must simultaneously fight for a world where no one is marked as trans.