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.
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.