Blog
3 out of 525,600 minutes: U.S. military budget for gender transition
We can collectively afford gender-affirming healthcare. We know what a world with less military spending would look like. Trans people aren’t what plagues our shared existence. We aren’t what needs to be cut out.
English only, two sexes: A mashup of two executive orders
Interlace the lines to read things like: A designated language attacks women in society by depriving them of dignity. When I read Trump’s instruction ‘to designate one — and only one — official language,’ I remembered his prior instruction ‘to recognize two sexes.’
Pausing in the darkness
Trump’s latest anti-trans executive order calls us ‘anti-Christian’. Trump has labeled as ‘anti-Christian’: trans inclusion, trans visibility, supporting queer kids, and even holding Christians accountable to the law.
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.