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A bearded man wears a button-down shirt with floral embroidery. He's playing a banjo and is wearing a large hat, so you can't tell if he's bald.

Baldness isn’t just physical

October 6, 2024

It’s also performative. Labels describe how we live. Even when they describe reality, they’re about perceptions and performances. How we live interprets who we are.

three women walk hand-in-hand down a path by a meadow

She had two moms, and she didn’t like the word ‘straight’. If we have a stake in a shared outcome, we might avoid declaring how we’re different and separate from others, especially to imply our superiority.

person in the darkness, looking up and to the side

People have been mad about ‘cisgender’ since at least 2007

October 6, 2024

If someone wants a world where no one is marked as cis, they must simultaneously fight for a world where no one is marked as trans.

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What will the U.S. Supreme Court decide about our genders?

January 15, 2026

Yesterday’s SCOTUS hearing on trans belonging (and sports). Will they let us keep autonomy and privacy to live in our genders, or will they transfer more power to institutions and laws to verify and enforce our sex?

bottom half of a bearded face, a selfie shared on WhatsApp. The recipient left a laughing emoji on the selfie.

Arkansas lawmakers want you to sue over your childhood haircut

December 24, 2025

Behold! I espouse my gender identity with scissors and comb. Or lack thereof. Will the people who all this time had only ‘reasonable concerns’ please speak up? Surely they wish to allow girls to roughhouse and boys to play with dolls.

Screenshot of a photo embedded on a webpage. The photo caption in small print says Sylvia Rivera at Age 18 in New York City, 1969 laying back and posing on the edge of a water fountain. At a young age Sylvia began fighting for gay and transgender rights while also helping homeless young drag queens, like herself, gay youth, and trans people. She was a co-founder of Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) with Marsha P. Johnson. Photo by Kay Tobin / New York Public Library

Sylvia began fighting for gay and rights

November 22, 2025

No, it’s not a typo. It’s 🏳️‍⚧️ erasure. Sylvia Rivera began fighting for gay and transgender rights. Hold the flickering candle of that sentence. We know what the Stonewall National Monument said.

cartoon sketch of a woman appearing surprised. many people would perceive her as white. she has curly or wavy hair, cut short. she has plucked eyebrows, a tiny nose, and is wearing earrings.

Why is anti-trans talk on the rise? A new history book analyzes roots

November 19, 2025

‘Enemy Feminisms’ by Sophie Lewis. The sex binary, which is furthermore a sex hierarchy (men on top), is part of capitalism. It has been a central theme of bourgeois feminism.

simple sketch of a saltshaker floating on a psychedelic colored background

My gay and trans identity isn’t a little magic saltshaker

November 19, 2025

But it is nonetheless a favorite TV show, so keep tuning in! You can’t have someone else’s identity because you can’t be them. Even if you could have it, sprinkling their identity on your work wouldn’t guarantee cash.