Blog

Jen the Gelfling plays the flute while Kira the Gelfling rows their river boat

The Gelflings are trans

And trans people are Gelflings. ‘Now, we leave you the Crystal of Truth,’ the Beings tell the Gelflings who are no longer Gelflings — because they are finally being left alone.

Read more >
An impressionistic photo collage of a person who appears to be stuck inside a large soap bubble.

Empathy for cis people

Trans people have it because we don’t live in a trans bubble. My jaw hit the floor. I picked it up and put it back in. It fell out again. It rolled under the sofa and I have spent the last two weeks looking for it.

Read more >
Book cover: Histories of the Transgender Child

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.’

Read more >
18th-century illustration: pirate Mary Reed stabs an enemy with a sword

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.

Read more >
Two indistinct bodies, one more feminine and one more masculine, floating underwater, holding hands

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?

Read more >