Essays
Transmedicalism and the Refusal of Victimhood The Harry Benjamin Syndrome (HBS) and transmedicalist [1] trap is perfectly designed because it works in two directions at once. It reaches inward and outward simultaneously, and both movements depend on the same broken premise: that victimhood is the price of legitimacy. Inward, it
Essays
A Manifesto for Liberation Now The Fact of Our Binding James Baldwin wrote: "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced." But there is something else Baldwin understood, something that sits beneath every essay he wrote, every warning he
Essays
The Quiet We Refuse There is a trap built into the floorboards of being trans. You feel it every time you smile at a stranger who stares too long, every time you soften your voice to keep the peace, every time you say "it's fine" when
Essays
The Cruelest Arithmetic The world is not our only oppressor. Watch what happens when oppression does its work long enough, effectively enough: you begin doing it to yourself. Not because you're weak, but because you've learned the lesson too well. You absorb the cisheteronormative logic so
Essays
How Gatekeeping Becomes the Wound We Inflict on Ourselves. There exists a particular kind of cruelty that wears the face of care. It speaks in careful tones about being thoughtful and deliberate, about protecting those it is actually abandoning. It sounds nothing like oppression.
Essays
The Cruelest Cut: How We Become Enforcers of Our Own Oppression In my previous essays, I traced the architecture of our oppression: how history shows us casting off boots only to face new ones, how our oppressors project their fragility onto us, how this projection manifests across every arena of
Essays
In my previous essay,"The Mirror of Offense," I explored how accusations of fragility reveal more about the accuser than the accused, how the mirror of offense reflects back the brittleness of those who cannot bear to share a world where their comfort isn't centered. That
Essays
On Fragility, Projection, and the Demand for Dignity There exists a peculiar inversion in our discourse, a sleight of hand so deft that even those performing it seem unaware of the trick. "Why are you so easily offended?" they demand, their faces flushed with indignation, their keyboards hammering
Essays
On Bodies and Power It does seem to be an odd fixation, doesn't it? I do not understand why this has to be the defining feature of a person, wherein all other attributes become secondary, or so it seems when in discussion or debate. How curious that these