Blog
Why there’s still an argument about NYT coverage of trans people
The New York Times is digging in its heels on institutional transphobia. The NYT open letter has been signed by ‘over 1,200 New York Times contributors and over 34,000 media workers, Times readers, and subscribers.’
A trans person is trans everywhere we go
We belong to the world. If he agrees with the ACLU statement that trans people belong everywhere, why is he arguing with it? What are ‘those heights’ that trans people cannot hit?
On trans kids, ask people who know
Try looking where the answers are. How does the New York Times know what it thinks it knows? Is it influenced by its peers? Is it what it says it is? Is it ever going to change?
The feeling of knowing
Steven Connor’s 2019 book ‘The Madness of Knowledge’. ‘Epistemopathy’ means the feeling of knowing. We have pleasant and unpleasant feelings associated with knowing. That’s part of why knowledge matters to us.
Turtles all the way down
Finding truth in emptiness. When we acknowledge there is no final turtle, we open ourselves to discover and live more. The turtle on which we are standing is never the last one.
We can’t prepare for this moment
‘Opening to Darkness’ by Zenju Earthlyn Manuel. What to make of this political and ecological moment, this chaos that arrives with no instructions? We can “see, collectively, in the dark.”
‘Do I want it? Life, that is.’
‘On Not Knowing‘ by Emily Ogden. What is there to hope for? Should we hope? We can work in the field, making bales of hay, but the work of the soul “never will be cut and dried.”
‘Agnotology’: The study of ignorance
Our ways of knowing can be corrupted. “We’re going to have to rethink our metaphors,” Proctor said, on persuading people away from science-denial. “We’ve got to think much more creatively.”
We knew it before we were quizzed
That truth remains valuable. We existed. We went to school and forgot ourselves for a while. Then we remembered who we are. We had this knowledge with us the whole time.