Blog
Yep, I read the ‘Atlantic’ opinion essay on trans kids
Where exactly is the kid’s ‘difference’? How hard are you looking for it? Assuming it’s possible for a boy to feel gender-conforming or gay, why should it be impossible for the same kid to feel trans or like a girl?
What does drive the boat? On truth
Miscellaneous reflections on truth, flowing through me. I like to think my own versions are truthful. And why not other versions too? That to which others testify is likely to bear truth.
Moses is trans
My trans teaching for Passover. In Exodus, the Egyptian king assumes that men are a threat and that everyone can tell which babies will grow up to be men. Just look at the baby, he says.
When the Nazis criminalized gay men
A story of persecution in ‘The Men with the Pink Triangle’ by Heinz Heger. The Nazis viewed gay people as weakening the gender binary. Gay men could be punished for “lewdness,” including simply hugging each other: prison or death.
100 years from now, transphobia will always have been wrong
A parallel between Wagner’s antisemitism and Rowling’s transphobia. 100 years from now, there could be a mass murder. But that’s not why Rowling’s transphobia is wrong. It doesn’t become wrong in the future. It’s wrong now.
This 1949 examination of fascist rhetoric shows us how we got here
More on the connection between transphobia and antisemitism. Max Horkheimer examined the social and psychological reasons why people become fascist agitators. This book analyzes antisemitic rhetoric in the US.
Transphobia, overt or underhanded
Either way, this behavior is proof of transphobia. Transphobes aren’t interested in trans people’s viewpoints. Instead, they turn trans people into a bad-faith debate. They see it as a publicity opportunity.
Posie Parker won’t tell us about the billionaires
On air, she alludes to a conspiracy theory — and then won’t explain it. In this March 2023 interview on Radio New Zealand, the anti-transgender activist Posie Parker says that billionaires promote the cause of being trans.
The worst transphobic words I’ve seen (this week)
…were also antisemitic. Modern antisemitism and transphobia are fundamentally linked, and the crush of anti-transgender legislation is an attempt to exterminate trans people.