Blog

‘Black Hole Science’ experiments to stay warm after snow
My second entry for the 2026 Trans Rights Readathon. A college course that excited me was on religious themes in literature. My favorite part of ‘Black Hole Science’ is called ‘Lives of the Saints.’

Thank you for the strange fiction of ‘Rainbear!!!!!!!!!’
My first entry for the 2026 Trans Rights Readathon. Living past hope, everything matters and nothing matters. This doesn’t make sense, so it’s tough to resolve it. But this book drills into it.

Avoid amplifying lies, using the ‘fact-warn-explain-fact’ pattern
Dream and achieve. Not ‘dreams and lasagna’! Dream and achieve. The sign says sueña y logra: “dream and achieve”. Not “dreams and lasagna”. Speak the truth, then explain the misunderstanding. It’ll stick better.

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.