Blog

What will the U.S. Supreme Court decide about our genders?
Yesterday’s SCOTUS hearing on trans belonging (and sports). Will they let us keep autonomy and privacy to live in our genders, or will they transfer more power to institutions and laws to verify and enforce our sex?

Arkansas lawmakers want you to sue over your childhood haircut
Behold! I espouse my gender identity with scissors and comb. Or lack thereof. Will the people who all this time had only ‘reasonable concerns’ please speak up? Surely they wish to allow girls to roughhouse and boys to play with dolls.

Sylvia began fighting for gay and rights
No, it’s not a typo. It’s 🏳️⚧️ erasure. Sylvia Rivera began fighting for gay and transgender rights. Hold the flickering candle of that sentence. We know what the Stonewall National Monument said.

Trans volta
I didn’t choose the word ‘trans’ to describe my unique life path, nor would I have chosen it, but these days, this word happens to be the umbrella that works in the rain. A word you can use alongside ‘trans’ is ‘volta’.

Assume humanity, then ask about happiness
Trans people‘s say-so is evidence of our happiness. But no one should ask for evidence that trans people are people. Previously, I used Lydia Polgreen’s opinion as an example, and I identified and extracted these writing tips for you. Please note this key distinction.

No one needs ‘evidence’ that transition improves trans people’s humanity
Let’s distinguish scientific uncertainty from value judgment. Anti-trans prejudice doesn’t justify demanding evidence about trans people’s humanity. When we let go of prejudice, some common ‘questions’ dissolve.

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?