Blog
Have you heard their pronoun names?
Skeletor can never beat He-Man or She-Ra. If anyone’s genuinely startled that He-Man is he/him, boy howdy, let me double-startle ye and introduce ye to his sister, She-Ra. Not so important, really.
Pull, slowly. Discouraging authoritarians, opening the door
Exiting the long-term Groundhog Day trap. If you tend to move slowly, that might be OK. There is a role for you. A counterintuitive movement may open the door. Breathe. Hold. Pull.
Preparing for the bumpy journey: Bringing my tools into the time trap
It’s the day before Groundhog Day. What if we’re trapped inside a time that has been stolen, but we don’t need to move, because time will change around us? How do we thaw the ice?
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.