Blog

You’ve been trying. I see it.
What’s happening now isn’t because of who you are, dear readers. Let’s continue to try. So you consumed too much ice cream, got wicked creative, were fascinated by death, made decisions with your gut, wrote inappropriate film dialogue. And?

Am I the right kind of gay and trans for you?
Why our identities matter so much to us, why we bring them up, and why we use our favorite labels. My identity isn’t a bargaining chip. It’s an intangible. Try to touch it. It’ll vanish. The label denotes the space through which breath and fire passes.

Republicans to change Title IX to deny trans kids’ genders
It hurts everyone. If they abolish the Dept. of Education, no one will have sex discrimination protections. If the Education Dept. disappears, no student can make any discrimination claim. Girls won’t have sex discrimination protections. Who will hear them?

What transphobia sounded like in 2010
‘How Evil Works’ (2010) by the editor of WorldNetDaily. In discussing racism, antisemitism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia, the author of course purports not to perpetuate them, but he very much does.

Classic transphobia — since 1981
Classic anti-trans arguments in ‘The Spiral Path’ by David Fernbach. Trans people have genders, but we don’t uphold, benefit from, or depend on the gender system any more than cis people do. That’s transphobic disinformation.

Ironic fiction doesn’t tell you who trans people really are
It’s rough entering Grace and Rubie’s restaurant. Good thing it’s fiction. Janice Raymond brought up this fictional story in her 1979 book to describe what trans women are really like. That’s not analysis. It’s disinformation.

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.