Blog

When we don’t have Twitter, we’ll enjoy books again
Reading ‘Melancholic Parables’ as a parable of Twitter. Flash fiction by Dale Stromberg. One way to read it: who we are when we’re tweeting, who we think we are when we’re tweeting, and why we keep tweeting.

Gilbert Highet on censorship, 1954
A collage of his words. Cave man painting a running stag? Standards of good and evil? Transmuted into living flames? I’m in. Then I realize it’s an argument for censorship.

When you claim that experts don’t know their stuff
Jordan Peterson says climate scientists don’t define their terms. When a troll accuses someone else of bad-faith rhetoric, they’re usually only describing how they themselves operate. It’s spin. And it’s pure projection.

Choosing what you won’t regret
Ask ‘Will I regret not taking this step?’ and feel confident you’re making the best choice for yourself.

The false narrative of regrettable transness
One function of ‘regret’ in anti-trans narrative. It’s the ‘good queer’/’bad queer’ distinction. The scapegoater projects; do they accept their own queerness? The idea of trans people is a scapegoat.

Why transphobia teaches us to be terrified of regret
What if you start to change your gender and regret it? Modern transphobia is a fascist cult. It is related to the destruction of the planet. Both kinds of oppression are related to the concept of Regret.

In myth, the extra-binary thing explains everything
‘Fabulous monsters’ are boundary-crossers that reconcile opposites. Trans people right now are the bridge fascists stomp on with their boots. Fascists need the bridge and also like to complain about it while stomping.

Everything is subjective and contains its opposite
This is not a reason to reject trans people and their language. They’re using shared language in an off-center way because the shared language doesn’t center them . Not their fault. Should they reinvent language?

Transphobia speaks in the voice of surveillance capitalism
It believes it knows, and can shape, who we are and what we’ll do. Surveillance capitalists believe in determinism, not free will. Transphobes, taking their cue, reject the gender freedom by which some of us are trans.