Blog
The biggest conspiracy theories are all-consuming
This week’s antisemitism and transphobia—Trump, West, Rowling—is all connected. Donald Trump, Kanye West, J. K. Rowling are billionaires who validate their followers’ hateful conspiracy theories. Antisemitism and transphobia are linked.
Jewish and trans: Conspiracy theories won’t leave us alone
On ‘Jewish Space Lasers’ by Mike Rothschild, with my own reflections on transphobia. No one can prove anything to anyone who isn’t open to real evidence and logic, as conspiracy theorists are not. Still, pay attention to their antisemitism.
How do you know the legislation is anti-LGBTQ without reading it?
2023 was gruesomely challenging. 2024 is something else. You could try to read 20 anti-LGBTQ bills per business day. Or you could just recognize that this massive legislative campaign is anti-LGBTQ and harmful.
A surgeon for WWI and WWII vets also helped a trans man
The Facemaker by Lindsey Fitzharris. Harold Gillies “never shied away from a surgical challenge ,” Fitzharris writes. Gillies agreed to perform phalloplasty for a trans man in the late 1940s.
Trans kids are found in history, too
Histories of the Transgender Child by Jules Gill-Peterson. Adults should acknowledge that ‘trans childhood is a happy and desired form .’ It’s not a new phenomenon. It’s ‘richly, beautifully historical.’
Did lady pirates button their shirts?
Yes. Art you may have seen to the contrary wasn’t realistic. Just because you’ve seen a naked image of a trans person doesn’t mean trans people walk around naked. Pirates too were motivated to button their shirts.
Liberation projects, art appreciation, and perceptions of the past
From my June 2024 reading list. The bird has flown, but the stone has not yet been thrown. Perhaps in the future it will come to mean something.
Is it about time, bodies, or both?
‘Trans Talmud’ by Max K. Strassfeld. Is this a question about time —what we think we know about the past and future? Or is it about bodies —how we sexually classify them? Or both?
‘Overawed by the marvel’ of trans
A new miniprayerbook. When we sanctify something, it changes. I think Heschel would understand and would like to continue to live and change and cast and reflect light.