My opinions and positions on queer life and LGBTQ+ issues, argued in good faith. This is my corner of the Internet — I am thinking out loud, not hosting a debate.
A lot of energy right now goes into legislating against queer and trans kids, always in the language of protection. Protecting children is a good instinct aimed, in this case, at exactly the wrong target. The thing harming these kids is not their identity. It is the adults building a world that treats their identity […]
Every June the logos turn rainbow and the word Pride gets used like it has always meant a parade with corporate floats. It is worth remembering that it started as a riot. Stonewall was not a celebration; it was people who were tired of being raided and beaten fighting back against the police, led by […]
Some of us were lucky with the families we were born into. Some of us were not. And a lot of queer people learned early that family is not only a thing you inherit — it is also a thing you build, on purpose, out of the people who show up. Chosen family is the […]
Using someone’s pronouns is not an ideological position. It is the same basic courtesy as learning how to say a colleague’s name correctly, or remembering that someone goes by Kate and not Katherine. We do this for each other all the time without calling it a philosophy. It only gets reframed as a debate when […]
People talk about coming out like it is one door you walk through once. It is not. It is a door you find again at every new job, every new doctor, every new group chat, every form that only offers two boxes. You do not come out. You keep coming out, for the rest of […]
Mr. President, I’ll skip the “Dear.” We both know it wouldn’t be sincere, and you of all people should appreciate not wasting words on a pleasantry nobody believes. I want to talk about your homework. On day one of your second act, you signed an order with one of the great titles in the history […]
For trans readers, and the people lucky enough to love them. They’ve told you the wrong story about your own life. If you only learned about trans people from the people currently legislating against them, you would think a trans life was made entirely of three things: suffering, danger, and regret. You’d think it was […]
A field guide for anyone who landed here feeling alone. Start anywhere. Start small. If you’re reading this because the family you were born into didn’t come through — or did, but couldn’t hold all of who you are — I want to say two things before anything else. First: that’s a grief, and it’s […]
A short list, offered without apology, of things they can’t take. I want to talk about the little stuff. Not the marches, not the milestones, not the big sweeping arc-of-history business — that’s important, and it gets its column inches. But some days the arc of history is too heavy to hold, and what actually […]
A queer history of the people who built the thing you’re reading this on. There’s a comforting story certain people like to tell, the one where queerness is a recent software update — some glitch that got introduced around the time everyone started carrying computers in their pockets. It’s nonsense, and there is no group […]