Look at that ‘idea’, and change your assumptions about it — While a kid is small, the parent ensures that the kid wears clothes and socializes with other kids. Gradually, the parent backs off and gives the child more autonomy as the child decides what to wear and whom to befriend. The parent may even stop making comments on these matters. …

How Trump will oppress trans people if reelected in 2024 — On January 31, 2023, Donald Trump posted a video to Truth Social about how, if reelected president in 2024, he intends to make it broadly illegal or impossible for trans people to have our genders. I believe in refraining from casually sharing transphobic messages in the hopes that I can…

Thirteen frames in ‘Most Famous Short Film of All Time’ — Happy February 1 to all. This is an important day in my novel, Most Famous Short Film of All Time. The events occur eight years ago in the fiction. The first 261 frames of the Zapruder film bring the narrator, Lev Ockenshaw, to Saturday, January 31, 2015. The next passage…

Arturo Serrano discusses ethics, political theory, and why he kills off Descartes in his novel — Arturo Serrano’s first novel in English imagines that the Mayflower was lost at sea in 1620, the English Separatists were disheartened, and the United States were never born. In this alternate history, rival empires split up the world, and those caught in the middle fight to bring an end to…

And being trans is how some of us live — A note hovering on the iliac crest of this essay: If you don’t want to see an X-ray of a pelvis, you are gently counseled to read something else. About My Hips First, a passage from a novel I recently enjoyed: “Later I could not remember her face. I remembered, instead, the name…

Depends on what ‘basically’ means — The English qualifier “basically,” attached to “good,” used to refer to humanity, might mean any of a few things. Here are some possibilities. Goodness Is Intrinsic Whatever we are “intrinsically,” we are that way because: We were created so (per religious worldviews). We evolved so, biologically (per scientific theories). We arrange ourselves so…

Feel relieved? Good. But it was never about your feelings — On January 22, the New York Times published an article on trans kids that was heavy on the Just asking questions! …

Try looking where the answers are — The New York Times published an article yesterday with a pronounced slant against trans kids. (There’s the unpaywalled gift link.) The author interviewed a teenager who said: “When you’re trans, you feel like you are in danger all the time.” I would have led with that, but that’s why I’m…