Blog
Telling LGBTQ people what to do
One part of what the #IStandWithJKRowling hashtag means. LGBTQ-phobia is identifiable when someone who’s wholly uninformed about and unsympathetic to our perspectives demands that we behave a certain way.
Binary gender isn’t ‘natural,’ but we’re conditioned to believe it is
Toward a new epistemology that recognizes sex and gender diversity, in ‘Yo soy el monstruo que os habla’ by Paul B. Preciado. The epistemology of sex and racial difference is patriarchal and colonial. We can exist on borders or reject categories.
On ‘Transexualidades’ by Miquel Missé
Book #2 in my Trans Rights Readathon week. Missé is interested in “transexualidad,” which operates along “various paradigms” and a “history full of conquests, paradoxes, myths and frustrations.”
10 problems with the ‘sex assigned at birth’ essay
They’re in what’s said — and not said. This isn’t a cost-benefit calculation. If we really looked at the term ‘sex assigned at birth,’ we might find that the benefits outweigh the costs.
When trans people are cut out of sports in Nassau County, New York
Republican organizes militia. Democratic Party chair retorts: ‘Does he think we’re going to be invaded by Suffolk County?’ Your neighbors are ‘trained’ to serve someone who marks everyone’s sex as a site of surveillance and regulation. This violence affects everyone.
Oh, it’s about sports, is it?
Nope, it’s not. It’s about constraining transgender lives. I don’t judge sports. I don’t pretend to. But I can detect when someone alleges injury and proposes a false remedy to delegitimize a group of people.
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.