Blog

‘Don’t Say Gay’ could go national
USAmericans should vote on November 8, 2022. We could end up with a Republican-controlled Congress and a President DeSantis. If we do, the USA could have a national “Don’t Say Gay” law.

Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’, originally K-3, now through Grade 12?
High school teachers in Florida can’t say it. First it was K-3. Now it’s through Grade 12. Teachers can’t mention LGBTQ identity. Why is Ron DeSantis doing it? LGBTQ people did nothing to deserve it.

Supreme Court allows criminalizing trans kids’ healthcare in Idaho
The April 15, 2024 ruling denies injunctive relief. I don’t care about preliminary injunctions per se. I care about trans kids. We have to pay attention to what is happening.

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.