Tucker Lieberman
1 min readSep 5, 2022

--

Ah, but what do "strong," "scared," and "curious" mean? What may appear, on the surface, like an obvious or agreed-upon definition will immediately dissolve upon inquiry. It happens for "man" and "woman." It will happen for "strong," "scared," and "curious." Someone might well deconstruct those words.

My question is why you are picking on gendered words rather than picking on all words. Why is it the existence of trans people who raise this philosophical question for you?

You have a link at the bottom to an article by Sophie Allen. She tweets anti-transgender things and has co-authored with at least one prominent anti-transgender writer. The link to the article is currently broken because her Medium account has been suspended. (I wonder about the severity of the behavior that got her suspended, since this platform does tolerate a certain degree of anti-transgender statements.) For readers who really want to learn about what it means to be transgender, I'd direct them to transgender writers—many of whom have relevant degrees and career experience, so they have "objective" knowledge, if that matters, as well as "subjective" lived experience. You are not going to find accurate information about what it means to be transgender by linking to someone who is so anti-transgender that her online existence has combusted.

--

--

Tucker Lieberman
Tucker Lieberman

Written by Tucker Lieberman

Cult classic. Author of the novel "Most Famous Short Film of All Time." Editor for Prism & Pen and Identity Current. tuckerlieberman.com

Responses (1)