about

Making an effort toward equal parenting

parent snuggling with baby

Written by a gay man, ‘The Equal Parent’ is about gender-inclusive parenting attitudes. Both men are active parents. The nursery has both of their phone numbers, and ‘if they cannot get hold of the dad they called first, they try the other one.’

Butler on ‘imagining alternate futures’

Silhouette of a child wading in the ocean

Judith Butler’s 2021 interview in The Guardian. So-called gender-criticalism is ‘a regressive and spurious form of biological essentialism,’ Butler says. This interview is one I keep coming back to.

Little-known transgender memoir: ‘Reborn’ (1955)

digital colorization of book cover with the word REBORN

Reborn: A Factual Life Story of a Transition From Male to Female by Tamara Reese. After her 1954 transition, Tamara says she’s ‘serving society in a useful and worthwhile manner’ and is ‘one of the happiest persons alive today.’

Did lady pirates button their shirts?

18th-century illustration: pirate Mary Reed stabs an enemy with a sword

Yes. Art you may have seen to the contrary wasn’t realistic. Just because you’ve seen a naked image of a trans person doesn’t mean trans people walk around naked. Pirates too were motivated to button their shirts.

Is it about time, bodies, or both?

Two indistinct bodies, one more feminine and one more masculine, floating underwater, holding hands

‘Trans Talmud’ by Max K. Strassfeld. Is this a question about time —what we think we know about the past and future? Or is it about bodies —how we sexually classify them? Or both?

‘Overawed by the marvel’ of trans

aurora borealis, greenish and pink light on a starry night sky, mountains in foreground

A new miniprayerbook. When we sanctify something, it changes. I think Heschel would understand and would like to continue to live and change and cast and reflect light.