I listened to ‘Free to Be … You and Me’

Maxell UR 90 cassette tape, A side, unlabeled

I turned out trans anyway. Pamela Paul is indeed aware of the existence of trans people, or she wouldn’t have written three anti-transgender articles this year. It’s on purpose.

Pamela Paul’s latest transphobia

elderly white man facepalming in exhaustion

‘Let’s Say Gay’ isn’t about the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law. A transphobe has done a public transphobia. Pamela Paul doesn’t want lesbian, gay, and bisexual people to work together with transgender people.

One kind of transphobia: Imagining cis-phobia

two pencils and an eraser in the trans-flag colors (pink, blue, white)

A cis person discusses sex/gender, yet it’s not OK when a trans person does it? Today’s NYT op-ed shows us, yet again, what transphobic discourse sounds like. Within hours, the rhetoric was tweeted by everyone and their ham sandwich.

‘Hate’ isn’t an element in H2O

illustration of a puffball with narrow cat eyes and pointy teeth

Hate isn’t part of the water. We can see it. Transphobia and racism are harmful and wrong, even if they’re technically legal where we are. We can recognize them and know why they are wrong.

It’s easy for this guy to challenge transphobia

Jon Stewart, seated in a living room, moving his hands animatedly, talking

Listen to Jon Stewart do it. Stewart’s comedic approach regarding Leslie Rutledge, the Arkansas attorney general, was straightforward. He learned to see through organized transphobia. Reporters can learn to do this too. Ask real questions.

Transphobia is a form of denialism

person lifts hand as if to refuse something or ask someone to stop

We have to counter Holocaust denial, and also transphobia. Transphobia is an ideological lie. Certain arguments can identify and deconstruct it. (Transgender atheist Jews, by the way, also have humanities degrees.)

Hate-crimers and their pronouns

person in a formal gray suit, crossing their fingers behind their back

Ignore the Club Q shooter’s statement of gender identity. A homophobic, transphobic murderer says they’re what? Let’s differentiate good-faith and bad-faith declarations, as well as reality and fiction.

Trans people need to ‘exist on our own terms’

Jessie Gender speaking with a glowing green honeycomb background

Jessie Gender talks to us about acknowledging our stories, setting the terms, and framing our success. In this YouTube video, Jessie Gender acknowledges that ‘we constantly fight under the terms set by systems that were never built to enable us.’

There were gay Nazis

detail of the book cover for BAD GAYS, focus on the word BAD

‘Bad Gays’ by Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller. Weimar-era Germany had LGBTQ society and culture and an early movement for LGBTQ legal rights. Of course, that was lost. And some of the Nazis were gay.

Yet another pro-discrimination argument

Pencil erasers, not used

Always follow the typos. They reveal what editors aren’t researching. Why does a national newspaper pay a columnist for a 2,800-word anti-transgender opinion essay? More mysteriously: If there’s a typo, what does it imply?