Blog

Richard Dawkins had Helen Joyce on his show
I like to stay informed about what they’re saying about trans people. Richard Dawkins didn’t have a trans person on his show. To cast skepticism on trans people, he hosted Helen Joyce. She’s not trans. That was a choice.

How did Richard Dawkins undermine transgender people?
Once you read this long, in-depth exploration, you will know the answer. The prominent atheist made bad tweets about transgender people. If you learn to recognize why they are harmful, you can avoid committing similar offenses.

Why did Richard Dawkins tweet about Rachel Dolezal?
Some people did not recognize the reference. Here’s a quick refresher. An organization stripped Richard Dawkins of an award given to him 25 years previously because (in part) he trolled people about race and gender in a tweet.

The ‘undecidability’ of life
Freedom and despair in Will Eaves’ ‘Murmur’, about Alan Turing. The novelist directs our moral scrutiny not at the innocent man but at the state that victimizes him. The state destroys him, politically and existentially.

Trans and nonbinary kids talk about identity with Daniel Radcliffe
Sharing Space is a video series with the Trevor Project. Each of us has allyship and activism that we can do because of who we are. There’s something each of us can do especially well to make a real difference.

Butler on ‘imagining alternate futures’
Judith Butler’s 2021 interview in The Guardian. So-called gender-criticalism is ‘a regressive and spurious form of biological essentialism,’ Butler says. This interview is one I keep coming back to.

‘The story of my untangling’ through gender transition
‘Pageboy’ by Elliot Page. Page realized he was trans when he was about 30. He says it ‘seems like more people step forward to defend being unkind than…to support trans people.’

The definition of possibility was inadequate
Conundrum, a memoir by Jan Morris. Being a woman ‘is a passionate, lifelong, ineradicable conviction’ that ‘has never seemed ignoble or even unnatural to me,’ Jan Morris wrote.

Little-known transgender memoir: ‘Reborn’ (1955)
Reborn: A Factual Life Story of a Transition From Male to Female by Tamara Reese. After her 1954 transition, Tamara says she’s ‘serving society in a useful and worthwhile manner’ and is ‘one of the happiest persons alive today.’