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?
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.