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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?

‘And you know what that means’

Closeup of a Nandu ostrich head

Is it a dogwhistle? I don’t know what it means. Transphobic essays are fiction. Not the harmless entertainment kind, either. These are lies about brutalizing the elderly and medically intervening on kids.

A bigoted premise sparks an ideology

One hand holds an open matchbox, the other holds a struck match. The matchbox brand label is "transfóboros."

For some, transphobia and homophobia are first principles. Transphobia is an ideology for many, a lens through which they see the world. There are other ways to think without first striking the match of transphobia.

15 transphobias in ‘Trans Totalitarianism’

carved spooky jack-o-lantern with fog coming out its eyes and mouth

Rod Dreher’s August 2022 article in The American Conservative. Low on facts, high on transphobia. Here’s how we recognize that the perspective is transphobic. And here are 15 specific pieces of nonsense.

What we can learn about Helen Joyce in two sentences

A young white woman making an "ewww" face and throwing both hands up.

That second paragraph on the book jacket of ‘Trans’. Whose feelings matter? It’s a premise of Helen Joyce’s book ‘Trans’ that cisgender people’s feelings matter the most. It’s right there on the book jacket.

The misrepresentation of compassion and solidarity

A woman writing the word Don't in red lipstick on a window

No, J. K. Rowling’s 2020 blog post wasn’t compassionate to trans people. ‘Gender critical’ ideology typically promotes hostility and ignorance. GC, of course, claims to be kind to trans people. But that’s disinformation.

‘Radical gender theory’ is itself a social construct

Christopher Rufo's website has a section called "A Parent's Guide to Radical Gender Theory," offering a pamphlet for download.

The people who’re making it up do not have good intentions. This isn’t a serious intellectual project. There’s no scholarly substance. Chris Rufo just wants to organize the right-wing to make noise and hurt LGBTQ people.