Blog
Hate-crimers and their pronouns
Ignore the Club Q shooter’s statement of gender identity. A homophobic, transphobic murderer says they’re what? Let’s differentiate good-faith and bad-faith declarations, as well as reality and fiction.
On ‘The Nonwedding of Stewart and Mike’
Dearly beloved, we are nongathered here today… Real-life Stewart is straight but not narrow, and regarding Smith’s Supreme Court Case, he told the journalist: ‘I couldn’t disagree with her stance more.’
The people who use LGB-minus-T are homophobes
Brendan O’Neill does not support gay marriage and is impressed with the LGB Alliance. Yes, everyone may speak their mind. What’s on mine: Gay organizations that are trans-exclusive are homophobic too in complicated ways. Homophobes love this.
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.