Blog

Books like this cause ‘Irreversible Damage’
Even if you see through it, it wastes your time. What definition of “traditional gender dysphoria” is invoked here? It’s politicized misinformation about transgender identity, using kids as a punching bag.

On Kathleen Stock’s ‘Material Girls’
My reality matters too. She claimed to ‘enthusiastically support’ protecting ‘trans people against violence,’ yet she wants to funnel us into a transgender bathroom.

Helen Joyce’s anti-trans messaging is predictable
She was interviewed by Jay Fantom on ‘The Story Box’ podcast. Every Helen Joyce interview has this basic content. This one’s from 2023. She works from her principle that cis people’s feelings matter most.

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.