Blog
FBI flew to Cuba to save a girl from trans healthcare…
…where was this energy for Jeffrey Epstein’s victims? When a Boeing 757 comes for a trans parent and their child, the plane, not anyone’s gender, concerns me. Plus, no one sent a plane for Epstein’s victims.
‘Other people didn’t have to like it.’ Nope! But raise a glass to respect!
Kathleen Stock on her limited understanding of whether gay rights are about being ‘liked’. When Kathleen Stock says undecided people should publicly go for drinks with anti-trans people, she’s imagining a cis audience seeking cis solidarity.
Who you are (is someone who will not give up)
Learnings from being a person. We are here to be here together. To accept each other’s identities, to listen, to build. What survives is made of our knowledge, intention, and hope.
We are the book we’re talking about
And we are what’s at stake in truth-telling. If the interlocutor opposes me because of who I am, will they be impressed that I read a book? No. Even if it is a book they have heard of? No.
Humility: A needed balance
On early modern philosophers and online trolls. In Lewis Carroll’s ‘You Are Old, Father William,’ a young person asks: ‘You balanced an eel on the end of your nose - / What made you so awfully clever?’
What is human dignity?
Where does it come from? How do we know it exists? Does dignity need to be pinned to God, or can it have secular grounding? Is it about humility, pride, or both? What does interdependence have to do with it?
When we disagree on politics and I lose a friend
I have to be a good person, and even then, it’s up to someone else if they want to be my friend. They don’t owe me what I gave as a gift, and certainly they don’t owe me what I never gave at all.
Does ‘woke’ mean saying — or not saying — certain words?
In any case, careful speech—including refraining from speaking — can build trust. When the right wing refers to “woke,” they may want to prevent others from saying certain words—or to reserve certain words for themselves.
It’s not ‘free speech,’ it’s bigotry
If they really believe in free speech, this is how we’ll know. There are many reasons why people have prejudices and why they devote their speech to expressing bigotry. Not high on the list: commitment to free speech.