Blog
An exploding rocket is a success, but trans people can’t get hormones?
The existence of trans people is a danger only to fragile egos. A trans person is ‘dangerous’ only to people who believe that a trans person existing and having dignity threatens their own existence and dignity.
It’s easy for this guy to challenge transphobia
Listen to Jon Stewart do it. Stewart’s comedic approach regarding Leslie Rutledge, the Arkansas attorney general, was straightforward. He learned to see through organized transphobia. Reporters can learn to do this too. Ask real questions.
Transphobia is a form of denialism
We have to counter Holocaust denial, and also transphobia. Transphobia is an ideological lie. Certain arguments can identify and deconstruct it. (Transgender atheist Jews, by the way, also have humanities degrees.)
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.