Trans Men Quotes

From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia...could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.

When the majority of jokes made at the expense of trans people center on "men wearing dresses" or "men who want their penises cut off" that is not transphobia - it is trans-misogyny. When the majority of violence and sexual assaults omitted against trans people is directed at trans women, that is not transphobia - it is trans-misogyny.

If indeed all lives mattered, we would not need to emphatically proclaim that "Black Lives Matter." Or, as we discover on the BLM website: Black Women Matter, Black Girls Matter, Black Gay Lives Matter, Black Bi Lives Matter, Black Boys Matter, Black Queer Lives Matter, Black Men Matter, Black Lesbians Matter, Black Trans Lives Matter, Black Immigrants Matter, Black Incarcerated Lives Matter. Black Differently Abled Lives Matter. Yes, Black Lives Matter, Latino/Asian American/Native American/Muslim/Poor and Working-Class White Peoples Lives matter. There are many more specific instances we would have to nane before we can ethically and comfortably claim that All Lives Matter.

I’m afraid of men because it was men who taught me to fear. I’m afraid of men because it was men who taught me to fear the word girl by turning it into a weapon they used to hurt me. I’m afraid of men because it was men who taught me to hate and eventually destroy my femininity. I’m afraid of men because it was men who taught me to fear the extraordinary parts of myself

Little girls fear being a princess that was never rescued but little boys fear being a prince that was too late.

Falling in love with another human is terrifying. As our language insists, romantic love is always preceded by a fall, the necessity of losing control and potentially hurting yourself in the process of connecting with another

It really hasn't hit me that I am about to die. I see the grief around me, but inside I feel serene and a certain kind of peace. My whole life I've wanted to be a gay man and it's kind of an honor to die from the gay men's disease.

My opened shirt blew in the wind—The sun tanning my stomach—Feeling lean and alive and beautiful—Saying I am a man—Saying I love men.

I do not get to savor the masculine cut of my clothes, or the illusion of short hair, or the feeting joy of my skin feeling like mine. Instead, I have to worry if my boyhood is convincing enough to keep me safe. There is no joy in that. Only fear.

The alleged ‘science’ of autogynephilia is about making up categories to understand why J Michael Bailey wants to bone some trans women but not others. It’s about framing trans women as men in order to understand deviant male sexuality, without ever looking at female sexuality.

The ultimate aim of government is not to rule, or restrain, by fear, nor to exact obedience, but contrariwise, to free every man from fear, that he may live in all possible security; in other words, to strengthen his natural right to exist and work without injury to himself or to others. No, the object of government is not to change men from rational beings into beasts or puppets, but to enable them to develop their minds and bodies in security, and to employ their reason unshackled; neither showing hatred, anger, or deceit, nor watched with the eyes of jealousy and injustice. In fact, the true aim of government is liberty. Benedictus De Spinoza, "Tractates Theologico-Politicus" 1670, Amsterdam Trans RHM Elwes 1937

Gatsby and I may have been nothing to men like Tom Buchanan, but men like that did not know we were as divine as the heavens. We were boys who had created ourselves. We had formed our own bodies, our own lives, from the ribs of the girls we were once assumed to be.

Men's lives are short . The hard man and his cruelties will be Cursed behind his back and mocked in death. But one whose heart and ways are kind - of him strangers will bear report to the whole wide world, and distant men will praise him. - Penelope in Robert Fitzgerald trans. THE ODYSSEY (364)

Those names, Ari and Sol - what is it about Jewish trans men that we all have to reach back to our roots, as if they are the only source of nourishment we have left?

In a male-centered gender hierarchy, where it is assumed that men are better than women and that masculinity is superior to femininity, there is no greater perceived threat than the existence of trans women, who despite being born male and inheriting male privilege ‘choose’ to be female instead.

The next time I found myself behind a woman running alone, I thought, I would do what I wished men had done for me: I would announce myself. 'Passing on your right!' I'd call. I would be careful to give her a wide berth. I would be aware that my body was, for much of the world, a weapon until proven otherwise. People sometimes think that being trans means I live 'between' worlds, but that's not exactly true. If anything, it has just created within me a potential for empathy that I must work every day, like a muscle, to grow.

I fear that, although white feminism is palatable to those in power, when it has won, things will look very much the same. Injustice will thrive, but there will be more women in charge of it. Feminism is not about equality, and certainly not about silently slipping into a world of work created by and for men. Feminism, at its best, is a movement that works to liberate all people who have been economically, socially and culturally marginalized by an ideological system that has been deigned for them to fail. That means disabled people, black people, trans people, women and non-binary people, LGB people and working-class people. The idea of campaigning for equality must be complicated if we are to untangle the situation we're in. Feminism will have won when we have ended poverty. It will have won when women are no longer expected to work two jobs (the care and emotional labour for their families as well as their day jobs) by default.

Alligators might attack to defend their territory, but men attack to make their territory. Every body is a conquering ground.

They say "not all men", and I say they're right. I've never known a trans man who's fed off my fear. I've never known a gay man to leer at me as if I'm little more than a meal. Just these heterosexual cis men who this world was built for, who it was built by. They don't seem to need a reason to hate us.

There is sometimes a tendency, at least among the trans men I have known, to treat testosterone therapy at the outset as if one were the first to order french fries at the table: tentative, looking to others for guidance and support, a half-frantic desire not to be the only one. If I have some, will you have some? I know you'll have some—is it possible to get a half order? This is for the table, not just for me. What's the smallest actual amount of testosterone that you can medically offer me? I'll take that, but can you put half of it in a to-go box before you bring it out? I'm sharing with friends.

If there's one thing I know about women, it's that they have vaginas.

I've worn heavy clothes in hot weather long enough to know it doesn't stop men from teasing me or me blaming myself.

The postmodern patriarchy will be ruled by men identifying as trans women.

Some days he wishes that he could simply empty the chambers of the men, fill the halls instead with women: the short sharp shock of three thousand two hundred mothers. The ones who picked through the supermarket debris for pieces of their dead husbands. The ones who still laundered their gone son's bed sheets by hand. The ones who kept an extra teacup at the end of the table, in case of miracles. The elegant ones, the angry ones, the clever ones, the ones in hairnets, the ones exhausted by all the dying. They carried their sorrow--not with photos under their arms, or with public wailing, or by beating their chests, but with a weariness around the eyes.

Society often blurs the lines between drag queens and trans women. This is highly problematic, because many people believe that, like drag queens, trans women go home, take off their wigs and chest plates, and walk around as men. Trans womanhood is not a performance or costume. As Wendi likes to joke, “A drag queen is part-time for showtime, and a trans woman is all the time!

this is the conversation I’ve been having since the 2016 election ended and liberals and progressives have been scrambling to figure out what went wrong. What was missing from the left’s message that left so many people unenthusiastic about supporting a Democratic candidate, especially against Donald Trump? So far, a large group of people (mostly white men paid to pontificate on politics and current events) seem to have landed on this: we, the broad and varied group of Democrats, Socialists, and Independents known as ‘the left,’ focused on ‘identity politics’ too much. We focused on the needs of black people, trans people, women, Latinx people. All this specialized focus divided people and left out working-class white men. That is the argument, anyways.

Trans women of color end up primarily in male prisons—especially if they have not undergone gender reassignment surgery, and many of them don’t want to undergo that surgery. And sometimes even if they have undergone the surgery, they end up being placed in men’s prisons. After they are imprisoned they often receive more violent treatment by the guards than anyone else, and on top of that, they are marked by the institution as targets of male violence. This is so much the case that cops so easily joke about the sexual fate of trans women in the male prisons where they are usually sent.

History teaches us that when an economic crisis hits, the process of scapegoating becomes more intense and more violent. African-American, Latino, Asian, and Arab peoples, lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals, feminists, trans people - and others who have been in the forefront of progress - will increasingly find themselves in the crosshairs. And the gains we made will all be under siege, as well.

One of the first significant, substantial purchases I made after starting testosterone, was a Compact Colt .45 1991 A1 automatic pistol. It's just about the best penis substitute I've ever waved at a sex partner. I love my gun. Can I get an a-a-ay-men? You better fucking believe I lo-o-ove my gun. I love to take it apart and put it back together and admire...oh,you sexy little death-machine...I suppose I oughta feel guilty or something, loving and fetishizing to the point of anthropomorphizing it it. But I don't. I won't either-don't matter to me whether or not I'm supposed to keep this a dirty little secret. I got a dick and I can kill you with it. Yeah, baby, trip my trigger, why dontcha. Heh.

bugs me are the trans troublemakers, you should have seen the stick I got when I announced my festival was for women-born-women as opposed to women-born-men, I was accused of being transphobic, which I’m not, I’m absolutely not, I have trans friends, but there is a difference, a man raised as a man might not feel like one but he’s been treated as one by the world, so how can he be exactly the same as us?

He gestured toward the rice pudding. "I put cinnamon on it. Cancels out the cholesterol. Read about it on the Men's Health Web site." Her lips twitched. "That's bullshit." She eyed the banana cream pie. "What cheap pop-science justification have you got for that one?" He contemplated the pie. "Well, bananas are good for you. Lots of potassium, which helps you shed water weight, right? And there's no trans fats in the pie crust. I can promise you that." "Yeah?" Her lips pursed, suppressing a smile. "So what is in it?" He grinned wickedly. "Lard," he announced. "Artery clogging, cholesterol-laden pig fat. Hope you're not a vegetarian.

When Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling published the piece "TERF Wars" on her blog in the summer of 2020, she specifically mentioned her fear that many transgender men are actually Autistic girls who weren't conventionally feminine, and have been influenced by transactivists on the internet into identifying out of womanhood. In presenting herself as defending disabled "girls," she argued for restricting young trans Autistic people's ability to self-identity and access necessary services and health care. Rowling's perspective (which she shares with many gender critical folks) is deeply dehumanising to both the trans and Autistic communities.

The trans issue is repeatedly used as a pretext to stop discussing sex and power. Suddenly, it is 'sensitive' to speak about men and women. But is it a new thing, or is it the same old misogynist sentiment returning in a new guise.

At some point, sisters began to talk about how unseen they have felt. How the media has focused on men, but it has been them - the sisters - who were there. They were there, in overwhelming numbers, just as they were during the civil rights movement. Women - all women, trans women - are roughly 80% of the people who were staring down the terror of Ferguson, saying “we are the caretakers of this community”. Is it women who are out there, often with their children, calling for an end to police violence, saying “we have a right to raise our children without fear”. But it is not women’s courage that is showcased in the media. One sister says “when the police move in we do not run, we stay. And for this, we deserve recognition”. Their words will live with us, will live in us, as Ferguson begins to unfold and as the national attention begins to really focus on what Alicia, Opal and I have started. The first time there’s coverage of Black Lives Matter in a way that is positive is on the Melissa Harris-Perry show. She does not invite us - it isn’t intentional, I’m certain of that. And about a year later she does, but in this early moment, and despite the overwhelming knowledge of the people on the ground who are talking about what Alicia, Opal and I have done, and despite of it being part of the historical record, that it is always women who do the work even as men get the praise. It takes a long time for us to occur to most reporters and the mainstream. Living in patriarchy means that the default inclination is to center men and their voices, not women and their work. The fact seems ever more exacerbated in our day and age, when presence on twitter, when the number of followers one has, can supplant the everyday and heralded work of those who, by virtue of that work, may not have time to tweet constantly or sharpen and hone their personal brand so that it is an easily sellable commodity. Like the women who organized, strategized, marched, cooked, typed up and did the work to ensure the civil rights movement; women whose names go unspoken, unknown, so too that this dynamic unfolds as the nation began to realize that we were a movement. Opal, Alicia and I never wanted or needed to be the center of anything. We were purposeful about decentralizing our role in the work, but neither did we want, nor deserved, to be erased.

In my own experience, it is entirely possible for a person to know a woman is trans, insist they do not believe she is really a woman, and yet still treat her misogynistically. This may seem a paradox, - but, as Serano argues, it is because our popular culture and media has spent decades depicting trans women as extreme embodiments of very misogynistic tropes. First, we are represented as agents of vapid and regressive femininity - vain, obsessed with how we look, stupid, weak, childish, and entitled. We are simultaneously hypersexualized: either as grotesque sexual deviants, particularly if we are unconventionally feminine (or lesbians); or, as yielding, sexually passive and deceptive if we are more feminine in appearance and/or if we date men.

The author of The Female Eunuch had only dealt with trans issues in depth once in her career. In her 1999 book The Whole Woman Germaine Greer devoted a ten-page chapter (‘Pantomime Dames’) to her contention that people who were born men could not be classed as women.

The assumption that femininity is always structured by and performed for a male gaze fails to take seriously queer feminine desire. The radical feminist critiques of femininity also disregarded the fact that not all who are (seen as) feminine are women. Crucially, what is viewed as appropriately feminine is not only defined in relation to maleness or masculinity, but through numerous intersections of power including race, sexuality, ability, and social class. In other words, white, heterosexual, binary gender-conforming, able-bodied, and upper- or middle-class femininity is privileged in relation to other varieties. Any social system may contain multiple femininities that differ in status, and which relate to each other as well as to masculinity. As highlighted by “effeminate” gay men, trans women, femmes, drag queens, and “bad girls,” it is possible to be perceived as excessively, insufficiently, or wrongly feminine without for that sake being seen as masculine. Finally, the view of femininity as a restrictive yet disposable mask presupposes that emancipation entails departure into neutral (or masculine) modes of being. This is a tenuous assumption, as the construction of selfhood is entangled with gender, and conceptions of androgyny and gender neutrality similarly hinge on culturally specific ideas of masculinity and femininity.

When disclosure occurs for a trans woman, whether by choice or by another person, she is often accused of deception because, as the widely accepted misconception goes, trans women are not 'real' women (meaning cis women); therefore, the behavior (whether rejection, verbal abuse, or sever violence) is warranted. The violence that trans women face at the hands of heterosexual cis men can go unchecked and uncharted because society blames trans women for the brutality they face. Similar to arguments around rape, the argument goes that 'she brought it upon herself.

I often heard this melodious hymn again in days of hardship, and it always affected me painfully. Not as the reproachful warning clang of church bells ringing for service, when I pass a church door without going in, but because the men sang the hymn only when they were out of spirits and considered our position desperate. It seemed as though they would remind me that defeat awaited me, and that this time I had aimed too high.

The main reason why trans-woman-exclusion evokes such passion and frustration in me is precisely because it is both anti-trans and antifeminist. And as a feminist, it gravely disturbs me that other self-described feminists are so willing to overlook or purposefully ignore how inherently sexist trans-woman-exclusion policies and politics are: they favor trans men over trans women, they rampantly objectify trans female bodies, and they privilege trans women's appearances, socialization, and the sex others assigned to us at birth over our persons, our minds, and our identities.

So it's actually way easier just to humor these men who grew up watching movies where the girl doesn't like the hero until he's been persistent enough to make her like him. This is the grease that keeps the gears of the heteronormativity machine spinning, obviously, but it's just easier to slip out of an awkward situation with an awkward guy than it is to call out the misogyny inherent in what he's doing. It's a tough spot to be in, but also this is coming from an angry dyke who's also trans and who, at one point, had society try to use her as a vessel for that kinda of misogyny.

The two men could barely get their papers published. Nor could Kummerow raise funds for scientific meetings to discuss trans fats—though he certainly tried—for the obvious reason that the usual underwriters of such gatherings were members of industry, and they didn’t want to touch the topic with a ten-foot pole.

Often overlooked are the ways prison culture systematically maintains and nurtures rape culture, targeting women and men made to be women. Again, members of LGBT and trans communities suffer especially egregiously in prison,[111] since they directly challenge the heteronormativity maintained by hegemonic masculinism.

Honey, wake up. Gender and sexuality are different things. I can be bi and trans*!

She had formed a distrust of men who carried Bibles. It seemed to her that they believed their own voices were somehow embedded there.

The men all seemed to want mulligans with their lives.

Whether or not individual men pose harm, it benefits women if all males are excluded from some spaces.

For example, when we say that women give birth, we neglect that some women are not capable of giving birth while some trans men and nonbinary people are. The gender-neutral alternative “people who give birth” holds all of these realities just like the gender-neutral “siblings” includes brothers, sisters, and nonbinary siblings. Using gender-neutral language isn’t about being politically correct, it’s just about being correct.

Their anger results from ‘envy of women and resentment at not being accepted by women as one of them’, he has tweeted. ‘They direct their ire at women because it is women who frustrate their desires. Men are largely irrelevant.

It has been over forty years since the Gay Liberation Front first took trans seriously, but the gay men who wore those shirts with the polo players or alligator emblems didn't want trans people as the representation of their community. Their revisionist history has been accepted into popular culture because they were the ones with connections to publishers, the influence, as well as the money and time to sit back and write about what "really" happened.

At the first trans health conference I ever attended, a parent asked about long-term health risks for people taking hormones. The doctor gave a full assessment of issues that trans men face; many of them mimic the risks that would be inherited from father to son if they'd been born male, now that testosterone is a factor. "What about trans women?" another parent asked. The doctor took a deep breath. "Those outcomes are murkier. Because trans women are so discriminated against, they're at far greater risk for issues like alcoholism, poverty, homelessness, and lack of access to good healthcare. All of these issues impact their overall health so much that it's hard to gather data on what their health outcomes would be if these issues weren't present." This was stunning-a group of people is treated so badly by our culture that we can't clearly study their health. The burden of this abuse is that substantial and pervasive. Your generation will be healthier. The signs are already there.

It has always struck me as patronizing when intelligent people caution, in a discussion of transgender, that we must distinguish between trans extremists and the alleged majority of trans-identified persons and activists who do not participate in attacks on women. I think of the multiple times feminists have been reprimanded for speaking about misogyny and, predictably, someone would insist, “not all men are like that.” Or they might accuse us of hating men when the actual problem is woman-hating.

Middle-class gay white men argued that 'gay rights' should remain a legislative issue and that 'legally sanctioned gay marriage should be a primary concern for all of us.' Kunzel charts the ways that the forced forgetting of queer and trans prisoners was central to the coalescing of 'new gay norms,' 'gay respectability,' and homonormativity. This disciplining of the queer left was a racialized proect that coalesced around shoring up the privileges afforded by whiteness, gender normativity, and capital.

Why do you ask about my ancestry? The generations of men are like the growth and fall of leaves. The wind shakes some to earth. The forest sprouts new foliage, and springtime comes. So to, one human generation comes to be, another ends. (trans. Emily Wilson)

regarding transwomen’s safety in men’s spaces, they have none for female people who can no longer keep men out of theirs. Such a man is the most profound type of misogynist: the type that, perhaps unconsciously, sees women as supporting actresses in men’s lives.

And so, I’m also afraid of women. I’m afraid of women who’ve either emboldened or defended the men who have harmed me, or have watched in silence. I’m afraid of women who adopt masculine traits and then feel compelled to dominate or silence me at dinner parties. I’m afraid of women who see me as a predator and whose comfort I consequently put before my own by using male locker rooms. I’m afraid of women who have internalized their experiences of misogyny so deeply that they make me their punching bag. I’m afraid of the women who, like men, reject my pronouns and refuse to see my femininity, or who comment on or criticize my appearance, down to my chipped nail polish, to reiterate that I am not one of them. I’m afraid of women who, when I share my experiences of being trans, try to console me by announcing “welcome to being a woman,” refusing to recognize the ways in which our experiences fundamentally differ. But I’m especially afraid of women because my history has taught me that I can’t fully rely upon other women for sisterhood, or allyship, or protection from men.

According to the ancient 'one-sex model', men and women were essentially similar, except that women's reproductive anatomy was inverted and inferior. Women have 'exactly the same organs but in exactly the wrong places', wrote Galen, a Greek physician of the second century.

There’s a thing called passing, which is not only about transgender people but about everybody. It has to do with the way the bigotry and meanness of the world get parceled out, based on how you might, or might not, look or act like everybody else. The way there’s a particular kind of anti-Semitism that gets leveled at people who “look Jewish,” whatever that means. African Americans with darker skin sometimes are on the receiving end of more bigotry than people whose skin is lighter. Gay men who “act gay” get treated one way, those who pass as straight get treated another. It’s a whole pyramid of bigotry, with people who most resemble the dominant culture at the top, and people whose difference makes them stand out at the bottom. It’s inconceivable, if you think about it, the complex ways people have come up with for being horrible to one another. Inconceivable. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. As a trans girl, I pass without much effort, thanks in part to the random luck of genetics, and also thanks to my mother getting me on puberty-blocking hormones when I was twelve.

An oft-overlooked factor in the appeal of hate movements is that they feel good. The politics of male grievance has wide appeal to men who, faced with an increasingly hostile world that is unashamedly denying them the economic security their fathers enjoyed, turn to misogyny as an outlet. Sublimating impotence, despair, and rage into organized hate, directed at a target you can actually hurt, who is actually within reach—unlike the faraway, untouchable concept of ‘the ruling class’—provides an immediate psychic relief that “class-consciousness” simply cannot rival.

The Gender Sonnet Woman means not weakling, but wonder. Woman means not obstinate, but original. Woman means not man-slave, but mother. Woman means not amorous, but amiable. Woman means not neurotic, but nimble. Man mustn't mean medieval, but moral. Man mustn't mean abusive, but affable. Man mustn't mean nefarious, but noble. Trans doesn't mean titillating, but tenacious. Trans doesn't mean riff-raff, but radiant. It doesn't mean abhorrent, but affectionate. It ain't nasty and sick, but nerved and sentient. Gender has no role in society except in bed. Person is known by character, not dongs 'n peaches.

Throughout this book I will refer to both sex and gender. By 'sex', I mean the biological characteristics that determine whether an individual is male or female , XX and XY. By 'gender', I mean the social meanings we impose upon those biological facts. The way women are treated because they are perceived to be female. One is man-made, but both are real and both have significant consequences for women as they navigate this world constructed on male data. But although I talk about both sex and gender throughout, I use 'Gender Data Gap' as an overarching term. Because sex is not the reason women are excluded from data - gender is

As long as men's violence against women is present in society in anything like its current prevalence, we need specialist services for women, girls and children who have been subjected to that violence. To be effective and to offer the best benefit and hope of recovery for some of the most harmed, those services must be single sex.

Amy remembered how one of them patiently explained that the term "autogynephilia" only works if you don't think trans women are women. If you do, then you immediately see that the majority of women, cis or trans, are all autogynephiles, and that most men would be autoandrophiles – it's not something special about trans women. Of course women are turned on by being women and men turned on by being men! Watch any porn and the sexuality of everyone in it is actually about their own auto-andro/gyne-philia. Listen to them talk. It's about validating their own gender. [...] And alone on their laptops somewhere: the viewers, turned on to identify with people identifying with their gender.

Trans activists insist that these groups change references to women’s vaginas or breast-feeding and instead call women ‘front holes’ or ‘chest feeders’. Yet it’s OK for self-declared women to be preoccupied with natal women’s reproductive functions in their quest for womb transplants and ability to breast feed, in trans speak known as ‘chest feeding’. Others define natal women as ‘menstruators, egg producers, breeders, uterus owners, or non-men’, terms that degrade and dehumanize and reduce women to body parts. When feminists resist, we are decried as transphobes. We have come to a point where even those who ‘identify’ as feminists seem eager to cede the definition of woman to men.

This is not where I was meant to be. Born to the wrong house, by a stroke of misfortune. The girls here have it all. Men in whorehouses exist only to serve. We are their guards, tailors, cooks and their musicians. Forever in the shadows. If only I could be a woman. With soft hands, big breasts and long hair. To have men fawn all over me, to see them rise and fall. Alas, but all I have is small feet.

For example, in 1881, Chicago passed an ordinance that read, “Any person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object, or an improper person to be allowed in or on the streets, highways, thoroughfares, or public places in this city, shall not therein or thereon expose himself to public view, under the penalty of a fine of $1 for each offense.

Recently, many Western cultures have made progress accepting nonbinary and trans folks (with some obvious major setbacks). I’ve noticed that this acceptance often comes from a reinforcement of gender, which I find worrisome. You should be able to be a man who wears dresses and lipstick and still be a man. Clothing is genderless. Makeup is genderless. So, too, is painting one’s nails. While you can (and should) absolutely identify as nonbinary if the identity speaks to you, you can also be an “effeminate” man and still be just that, a man—and a straight man at that! Everything that falls outside the super narrow confines of “masculinity” isn’t automatically queer. I think if we allowed men to be more “effeminate” without quickly labeling them as queer, we’d have significantly less homophobia/ queerphobia.

Tis fascinating, this belief among you Men of Science,” remarks Dr. J., “that Time is ever more simply transcended, the further one is willing to journey away from London, to observe it.” “Why, Mason here’s done the very thing,” cries Boswell. “In America. Ask him.” Mason glowers, shaking his head. “I’ve ascended, descended, even condescended, and the List’s not ended,— but haven’t yet trans-cended a blessèd thing, thankee.

At first glance, professionalism tries to convince you it’s a neutral word, merely meant to signify a collection of behaviors, clothing, and norms “appropriate” for the workplace. We just ask that everyone be professional, the cis white men will say, smiles on their faces, as if they’re not asking for much. We try to maintain a professional office environment. But never has a word in the English language been so loaded with racism, sexism, heteronormativity, or trans exclusion. Whenever someone is telling you to “be professional,” they’re really saying, “be more like me.” If you’re black, “being professional” can often mean speaking differently, avoiding black cultural references, or not wearing natural hair. If you’re not American, “being professional” can mean abandoning your cultural dress for Western business clothes. If you’re not Christian, “being professional” can mean potentially removing your hijab to fit in, sitting by while your officemates ignore your need for kosher or halal food, sucking up the fact that your office puts up a giant Christmas tree every year. If you’re low-income or working class, “being professional” can mean spending money you don’t have on work clothes—“dressing nicely” for a job that may not pay enough for you to really afford to do so. If you’re a woman, “being professional” can mean navigating a veritable minefield of double standards. Show some skin, but don’t be a slut. Wear heels, but not too high, and not too low, either. Wear form-fitting clothes, but not too form-fitting. We offer maternity leave, but don’t “interrupt your career” by taking it. And if you’re trans like me, “being professional” can mean putting your identity away unless it conforms to dominant gender norms.

We live in a culture that teaches us that "men" are the sexual aggressors and pursuers. We also live in a world where most women, trans, and non-binary folks have had negative experiences with men who are hitting on them. These factors tend to lead to some big gender differences for those exploring non-monogamy. Cisgender men often struggle when they first enter the world of non-monogamy. Within consensual non-monogamy (CNM) communities, most folks who sleep with cis men choose their partners based on referrals and endorsements. As in the world of business, it truly is who you know. Cis men who have been in the communities longer have dated and interacted with more people, and, therefore, have more word of mouth. It is an unfortunate reality that many, especially cisgender women, will not date men they don't already know about through their friends and communities. So, if you're a cis man exploring CNM, expect that it may take a while before you start seeing the kind of attention that others get. Focus on being kind, respectful, and honest. Respect the needs and boundaries of everyone with whom you interact. Spend lots of time getting to know other people simply as people - especially of your preferred gender to date - and form genuine friendships and connections with them free from any pressure to become sexual.

Min bild av hur min kropp borde se ut var tydlig, men trots det skulle det dröja många år innan jag förstod att folk trodde att snoppar var en killgrej. Som barn förstod jag inte att några särskilda kroppsdelar kunde ha något att göra med indelningen i pojkar och flickor. Min längtan efter snopp och skägg hade inget samband med min känsla över att inte vara flicka. Däremot funderade jag en hel del över vad det betydde att vara flicka eller pojke.

How does ANY male-identified person know he is a man? And does my answer really diverge greatly from how many men, trans or cisgender, would answer? Transgender people are often said to have a 'narrative' to their lives; we’re encouraged to see our journey toward recognizing our gender as a story with an articulable pattern. The truth is, though, that everyone’s gender is a story; it’s just that trans folks are more likely to be — perhaps I could say “are given the gift of having to be” — aware of it. The story of becoming a man, a woman, or a person of any other gender often follows aspects of that most instinctual of story arcs: the hero’s journey. For instance, my personal narrative was one of effort in seeking a transformative goal (a quest), assistance (tools provided by medicine, law, and intangible emotional support), and mentorship by those who went before me (guides). And my manhood was ultimately achieved through what could be considered rites of passage — which is to say a similar structure to communal cultural tales of how one achieves cisgender manhood. It’s simply some details that vary. I do see one key difference in how all this plays out, however: Trans men make this invisible process disconcertingly visible by flipping the variables. While a cisgender man may be born with certain inherent potentials to physically embody a manhood that others will acknowledge socially, he’s not necessarily imbued with the demanding drive, the internal compass, the awareness of the systems and tropes he’s drawing on, and the deep gratitude concerning the specific man he’ll be. It’s quite possible to reach cisgender manhood externally (for instance, by reaching a certain age or displaying changes in voice, facial hair, etc.) long before one reaches an internal sense of his own unique self — and, further, before one reaches a sense of how hard he’ll fight to be that self, no matter the costs or resistance. For trans men it’s often much the opposite case." - from "'But How Do You Know You're a Man?': On Trans People, Narrative, and Trust

Rarely acknowledged in discussions about single-sex spaces is that, until recently, most were for men. The best schools and all universities; well-paid jobs; sporting competitions; political institutions: all were male-only. Some of women's anger at the recent pretence that it is impossible to distinguish between males and females stems from knowing that, when it was women who were excluded, there was no uncertainty. When you are of the sex barred from identifying into the other's privileges, you may not feel accommodating when self-identification in the other direction is cast as a human right.

In the modern era, teachers and scholarship have traditionally laid strenuous emphasis on the fact that Briseis, the woman taken from Achilles in Book One, was his géras, his war prize, the implication being that her loss for Achilles meant only loss of honor, an emphasis that may be a legacy of the homoerotic culture in which the classics and the Iliad were so strenuously taught—namely, the British public-school system: handsome and glamorous Achilles didn’t really like women, he was only upset because he’d lost his prize! Homer’s Achilles, however, above all else, is spectacularly adept at articulating his own feelings, and in the Embassy he says, “‘Are the sons of Atreus alone among mortal men the ones / who love their wives? Since any who is a good man, and careful, / loves her who is his own and cares for her, even as I now / loved this one from my heart, though it was my spear that won her’ ” (9.340ff.). The Iliad ’s depiction of both Achilles and Patroklos is nonchalantly heterosexual. At the conclusion of the Embassy, when Agamemnon’s ambassadors have departed, “Achilles slept in the inward corner of the strong-built shelter, / and a woman lay beside him, one he had taken from Lesbos, / Phorbas’ daughter, Diomede of the fair colouring. / In the other corner Patroklos went to bed; with him also / was a girl, Iphis the fair-girdled, whom brilliant Achilles / gave him, when he took sheer Skyros” (9.663ff.). The nature of the relationship between Achilles and Patroklos played an unlikely role in a lawsuit of the mid-fourth century B.C., brought by the orator Aeschines against one Timarchus, a prominent politician in Athens who had charged him with treason. Hoping to discredit Timarchus prior to the treason trial, Aeschines attacked Timarchus’ morality, charging him with pederasty. Since the same charge could have been brought against Aeschines, the orator takes pains to differentiate between his impulses and those of the plaintiff: “The distinction which I draw is this—to be in love with those who are beautiful and chaste is the experience of a kind-hearted and generous soul”; Aeschines, Contra Timarchus 137, in C. D. Adams, trans., The Speeches of Aeschines (Cambridge, MA, 1958), 111. For proof of such love, Aeschines cited the relationship between Achilles and Patroklos; his citation is of great interest for representing the longest extant quotation of Homer by an ancient author. 32

When New Afrikan men speak of having "lost our manhood" under slavery, no one thinks they mean sex-change operations but everyone knows what they say is true. When a boy isn't hard enough don't the others say he's "pussy"? But they aren't thinking he grew a vagina, are they. And when Mike Tyson snarls at an opponent at a press conference, "I'm gonna make you my girlfriend!", we know what that's about. Same in the white womens community: when a woman is too outspoken, too strong, not white enough, even in the Women's Union" they cut her, saying "She's like a man'.' Gender isn't about biology (that's why people go ape over gays and trans, because queer gender-bending smudges the chalked-in gender lines & reveals how artificial it all is).

Non-fat, hetero-presenting men (often white and surreptitiously bolstered by their participation in academia) still continue to steal from fat, queer, disabled, trans, and/or bodies of color, insisting that they get to be the gatekeepers of who gets to accept their body. That they understand the headlines we’re all too familiar with better than we do. That they, and they alone, are the rightful rulers of a safe space that was built to escape their domination in the first place. Because having the rest of the world available to them simply isn’t enough; they want our designated areas too, and they’ll use our verbiage against us when necessary to convince us that we should be ashamed for being selfish by demanding the right to exist while feeling worthy of respect.

One cannot be lazy. How do we do that? How do we win men to fight for women’s liberation? How do we win whites to struggle against racism and for the emancipation of people of color? It’s the same thinking, right? Well, it is. We have to extricate ourselves from narrow identitarian thinking if we want to encourage progressive people to embrace these struggles as their own. With respect to feminist struggles, men will have to do a lot of the important work. I often like to talk about feminism not as something that adheres to bodies, not as something grounded in gendered bodies, but as an approach—as a way of conceptualizing, as a methodology, as a guide to strategies for struggle. That means that feminism doesn’t belong to anyone in particular. Feminism is not a unitary phenomenon, so that increasingly there are men who are involved in feminist studies, for example. As a professor I see increasing numbers of men majoring in feminist studies, which is a good thing. In the abolitionist movement I see particularly young men who have a very rich feminist perspective, and so how does one guarantee that that will happen? It will not happen without work. Both men and women—and trans persons—have to do that work, but I don’t think it’s a question of women inviting men to struggle. I think it’s about a certain kind of consciousness that has to be encouraged so that progressive men are aware that they have a certain responsibility to bring in more men. Men can often talk to men in a different way. It’s important for those who we might want to bring into the struggle to look at models. What does it mean to model feminism as a man?

The intellectual justification for transphobia on the left is usually framed as concern about a mythological 'trans ideology', which is individualist, bourgeois and unconcerned with class struggle. As we've seen, however, the majority of trans people are working class, and the oppression of trans people is specifically rooted in capitalism. In short, capitalism across the world still relies heavily on the idea of different categories of men's work and women's work, in which "women's work" (such as housework, child-rearing, and emotional labour) is either poorly paid or not paid at all. In order for this categorization to function, it needs to rest on a clear idea of how to divide men and women. Capitalism also requires a certain level of unemployment to function. If there were enough work to go round, no worker would worry about losing their job, and all workers could demand higher wages and better conditions. The ever-present spectre of unemployment, on the other hand, enables employers to dictate conditions. Equally, in terms of severe crisis this 'reserve army' of unemployed people can be called into employment as and when the economy requires it. This system of deliberate unemployment needs ways to mark who will work and who will be left unemployed. In our society this is principally achieved through race, class, gender, and disability. Social exclusion and revulsion at the existence of trans people usefully provides another class of people more likely to be left in the ranks of the unemployed (even more so if they are trans and poor, black, or disabled - which is why unemployment is highest among these trans people).

In the abolitionist movement I see particularly young men who have a very rich feminist perspective, and so how does one guarantee that that will happen? It will not happen without work. Both men and women—and trans persons—have to do that work, but I don’t think it’s a question of women inviting men to struggle. I think it’s about a certain kind of consciousness that has to be encouraged so that progressive men are aware that they have a certain responsibility to bring in more men. Men can often talk to men in a different way. It’s important for those who we might want to bring into the struggle to look at models. What does it mean to model feminism as a man? I tour the campuses regularly, and I was speaking at the University of Southern Illinois during a Black History Month celebration and I came into contact with this group of young men who are members of a group they call “Alternative Masculinities” and I was totally impressed by them. They work with the women’s center. They have been trained in how to do rape crisis calls. They were really seriously engaging in all of that kind of activism that you assume that only women do. And then I remembered that many years ago in the 1970s there were a couple of men’s formations like Men against Rape, Black Men against Rape, Against Domestic Violence, and I remember thinking then that it’s just a matter of time before this gets taken up by men all over. But it never really happened. So I was reminded by these young men in “Alternative Masculinities” that after all of these decades they should today represent a far more popular trend. But this is the kind of thing that needs to be happening.

Broadly speaking, components of processed foods and animal products, such as saturated fat, trans fat, and cholesterol, were found to be pro-inflammatory, while constituents of whole plant foods, such as fiber and phytonutrients, were strongly anti-inflammatory.938 No surprise, then, that the Standard American Diet rates as pro-inflammatory and has the elevated disease rates to show for it. Higher Dietary Inflammatory Index scores are linked to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease939 and lower kidney,940 lung,941 and liver function.942 Those eating diets rated as more inflammatory also experienced faster cellular aging.943,944 In the elderly, pro-inflammatory diets are associated with impaired memory945 and increased frailty.946 Inflammatory diets are also associated with worse mental health, including higher rates of depression, anxiety, and impaired well-being.947 Additionally, eating more pro-inflammatory foods has been tied to higher prostate cancer risk in men948,949,950 and higher risks of breast cancer,951,952 endometrial cancer,953 ovarian cancer,954 and miscarriages in women. Higher Dietary Inflammatory Index scores are also associated with more risk of esophageal,955 stomach,956 liver,957 pancreatic,958 colorectal,959 kidney,960 and bladder961 cancers, as well as non-Hodgkin lymphoma.962 Overall, eating a more inflammatory diet was associated with 75 percent increased odds of having cancer and 67 percent increased risk of dying from cancer.963 Not surprisingly, those eating more anti-inflammatory diets appear to live longer lives.964,965,966,967 But how does the Dietary Inflammatory Index impact body weight? Obesity and Inflammation:

The stories I used to read where men transformed into women suggested a kind of instantaneous loss—a sudden vacuum where their manhood had once been, both literally and figuratively. But what has happened to me has actually been a slow blossoming, a colonization of myself with myself. The estrogen dissolving under my tongue will enter my bloodstream and slowly disseminate throughout my body, just as the other pills I am taking will shut down production of testosterone in other parts of my body. Sooner or later, my cells will realize that estrogen is now my dominant hormone and begin to soften my skin, to grow my breasts, to thicken my hair. We are, none of us, a single set of destinies set by the accident of our birth. We can change and be changed. Our bodies know the language they must speak to make us the people we must become.

I'm also afraid of women who've either emboldened or defended the men who have harmed me, or have watched in silence. I'm afraid of women who adopt masculine traits and then feel compelled to dominate or silence me at dinner parties. I'm afraid of women who see me as a predator and whose comfort I consequently put before my own by using male locker rooms. I'm afraid of women who have internalized their experiences of misogyny so deeply that they make me their punching bag. I'm afraid of the women who, like men, reject my pronouns and refuse to see my femininity, or who comment on or criticize my appearance, down to my chipped nail polish, to reiterate that I am not one of them. I'm afraid of women who, when I share my experience sof being trans, try to console me by announcing "welcome to being a women," refusing to recognize the ways in which our experiences fundamentally differ.

Terms such as "man bun," "man purse," "guyliner," "meggings," and the new "romp-him" (romper) have entered the American lexicon. These terms refer to new fashion trends involving men wearing garments or using grooming regiments once thought of as exclusive to women. The term metrosexual comes to mind. While they may be amusing to read, and certainly to say out loud, they are dangerous roadblocks preventing the collapse of the binary. That notion might also make you laugh. Think about it. What purpose do these unnecessary labels serve, other than to single out that these stylistic choices go against the grain? Eyeliner is applied to people's eyelids. Leggings are worn by people who have legs. The gendered associations exist solely as social constructs. Men used to wear leggings all the time in the middle ages. Probably would have shopped at Sephora too, if there had been one at the faire.

Do you ever think of the number of men that go out and kill women? I do. And when they are caught (if they are caught) and interviewed, sometimes they say that their mom used to beat and belittle them, or they couldn't live up to their fathers standards. Their first girlfriend cheated on them, or their dick is just so, so small. It's all bullshit. Nothing gets them as hard as curating fear, of terrifying something innocent, of peeling the wings off flies and tearing the legs off spiders, of drowning kittens, of putting a woman in her place. Demons are said to be most attracted to our fright. The energy of our terror let's them be something. I don't think men are that different. It's our fear and their force that keeps them in power. They say "not all men", and I say they're right. I've never known a trans man who's fed off my fear. I've never known a gay man to leer at me as if I'm little more than a meal. Just these heterosexual cis men who this world was built for, who it was built by. They don't seem to need a reason to hate us. As a society, we accept that there's a little murderous rapist in most of them. Something he just needs to get out of his system, like that thigh clenching need to come. It's why we tell our daughters to cover up, to keep an eye on her drink, to call when she gets there, to smile, to watch her mouth. But we tell our sons they can be whatever they want to be, as long as it's something masculine. Men are hardwired to spot vulnerable women, knowing just what to search for. They've been conditioned since birth, like wolf pups watching and observing how to be a predator. Social structures that reveal how to hunt with the greatest ease and practicality. They seem to sense these girls no one will realize are missing. These women who society already views as a lost cause, destined for turmoil. As if she was just put on this earth to satisfy a man's bloodthirsty need.

Until the last decade or so, sex (or gender) and chromosomes were recognized to be among the most fundamental hardware issues in our species. Whether we were born as a man or a woman was one of the main, unchangeable hardware issues of our lives. Having accepted this hardware we then all found ways – both men and women – to learn how to operate the relevant aspects of our lives. So absolutely everything not just within the sexes but between them became scrambled when the argument became entrenched that this most fundamental hardware issue of all was in fact a matter of software. The claim was made, and a couple of decades later it was embedded and suddenly everybody was meant to believe that sex was not biologically fixed but merely a matter of ‘reiterated social performances’. The claim put a bomb under the feminist cause with completely predictable consequences for another problem we’ll come to with ‘trans’. It left feminism with almost no defences against men arguing that they could become women. But the whole attempt to turn hardware into software has caused – and is continuing to cause – more pain than almost any other issue for men and women alike. It is at the foundation of the current madness.

Negative images of emigration were transformed into positive ones, not by Wakefield in 1830, but by a much broader trans-Atlantic ideological transition around 1815. Its semiotic shape was the partial displacement of the word “emigrant” by more positively loaded words. According to David Hackett Fischer and James C. Kelly, “before 1790, Americans thought of themselves as emigrants, not immigrants. The word immigrant was an Americanism probably invented in that year. It had entered common usage by 1820.” Related terms also emerged in the 1810s. “Pioneer in the western sense first appeared in 1817”; “Words such as mover (1810), moving wagons (1817), relocate (1814), even the verb to move in its present migratory sense, date from this period.” This was indeed a “radical transformation . . . a new language of migration.”72 But Fischer and Kelly fail to note that it was not solely American and that settler, not immigrant or pioneer, was its main manifestation. In Britain, settler was used in its current meaning at least as far back as the seventeenth century, but it was used infre- quently. By the early nineteenth century, it had connotations of a higher status than “emigrant.” Settlers were distinct from sojourners, slaves, or convict emigrants, and initially even from lower-class free emigrants. In Australia, “‘Settlers’ were men of capital and, in the 1820s, regarded as the true colonists, to be distinguished from mere laboring ‘immigrant’ . . . though eventually all Australia’s immigrants were termed ‘settlers.

we neared Liverpool’s Lime Street station, we passed through a culvert with walls that appeared to rise up at least thirty feet, high enough to block out the sun. They were as smooth as Navajo sandstone. This had been bored out in 1836 and had been in continuous use ever since, the conductor told me. “All the more impressive,” he said, “when you consider it was all done by Irish navvies working with wheelbarrows and picks.” I couldn’t place his accent and asked if he himself was Irish, but he gave me a disapproving look and told me he was a native of Liverpool. He had been talking about the ragged class of nineteenth-century laborers, usually illiterate farmhands, known as “navvies”—hard-drinking and risk-taking men who were hired in gangs to smash the right-of-way in a direct line from station to station. Many of them had experienced digging canals and were known by the euphemism “navigators.” They wore the diminutive “navvy” as a term of pride. Polite society shunned them, but these magnificent railways would have been impossible without their contributions of sweat and blood. Their primary task was cleaving the hillsides so that tracks could be laid on a level plain for the weak locomotive engines of the day. Teams of navvies known as “butty gangs” blasted a route with gunpowder and then hauled the dirt out with the same kind of harness that so many children were then using in the coal mines: a man at the back of a full wheelbarrow would buckle a thick belt around his waist, then attach that to a rope dangling from the top of the slope and allow himself to be pulled up by a horse. This was how the Lime Street approach had been dug out, and it was dangerous. One 1827 fatality happened as “the poor fellow was in the act of undermining a heavy head of clay, fourteen or fifteen feet high, when the mass fell upon him and literally crushed his bowels out of his body,” as a Liverpool paper told it. The navvies wrecked old England along with themselves, erecting a bizarre new kingdom of tracks. In a passage from his 1848 novel Dombey and Son, Charles Dickens gives a snapshot of the scene outside London: Everywhere

XIV [Every day you play with the light of the universe.]” Every day you play with the light of the universe. Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water. You are more than this white head that I hold tightly as a cluster of fruit, every day, between my hands. You are like nobody since I love you. Let me spread you out among yellow garlands. Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south? Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed. Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window. The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish. Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them. The rain takes off her clothes. The birds go by, fleeing. The wind. The wind. I can contend only against the power of men. The storm whirls dark leaves and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky. You are here. Oh, you do not run away. You will answer me to the last cry. Cling to me as though you were frightened. Even so, at one time a strange shadow ran through your eyes. Now, now too, little one, you bring me honeysuckle, and even your breasts smell of it. While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth. How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me, my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running. So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes, and over our heads the gray light unwind in turning fans. My words rained over you, stroking you. A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body. I go so far as to think that you own the universe. I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells, dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses. I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees. Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. Trans. W.S. Merwin (Penguin Classics; Bilingual edition, December 26, 2006)

It’s a trusted app that offers a good platform for trans dating. It has hookups for all categories according to what you want or desire. I strongly recommend it for trans women and men who want to get people whom they wish to have in life. If you are looking for a romantic and serious relationship that will put a smile on your face, then this is the way to go. While on these media accounts, whether on iOS or Android version, you feel free to be yourself and narrate your history but there explaining what you feel comfortable with on the platform. You will be in a position to know each other on the site and build strong relationships there.

There’s dizzying evidence of the unlivability of Canada wherever one looks. That NDN kids, NDN women and men, queer and trans NDNs, are all enticed by the freedom of non-existence is an ethical problem at the core of Canadian modernity.

One immediately thinks of the now common intonation that ‘trans women are women’ or ‘trans men are men’. As journalist Helen Joyce has noted, such expressions fall into the category best encapsulated by psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton as ‘thought-terminating clichés’, those ‘brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases’ that ‘become the start and finish of any ideological analysis’.

For all that is said about male privilege, trans men do not seem to get any of it. The only thing conceded to them are the pronouns; other than that, males do not share power, spaces, brotherhood, prizes or political offices with them. They are not allowed to really be men, which leaves us with the following equation: men can be women, but women cannot be men, men can be men, but women cannot be women, men can be trans women, but women cannot be trans women. Men can be everything, women nothing.

If only I could be a woman. With soft hands, big breasts and long hair. To have men fawn all over me, to see them rise and fall. Alas, but all I have is small feet.

When Margaret Thatcher transitioned her speaking voice to a more male register to be listened to by men of the House of Commons, she was not scrutinised in the same way a trans man would be - her voice was mainly praised ... becoming more masculine is always [socially] favoured over perceived femininity.

Smith is a “red-pilled” men’s rights activist. The Wachowskis saw them coming again, and called them out. Again. They’re so mad at those of us who live outside the system they’ve convinced themselves they’re also outside the system. All so they never have to examine their own truth… while still doing the system’s bidding.

Trinity enters the power station. Only cis white men are in charge (they literally have the power). “Hold it right there, little lady.” Denigration. Infantilism. Patronizing. They gotta go.

it’s actually way easier just to humor these men who grew up watching movies where the girl doesn’t like the hero until he’s been persistent enough to make her like him. This is the grease that keeps the gears of the heteronormativity machine spinning, obviously, but it’s just easier to slip out of an awkward situation with an awkward guy than it is to call out the misogyny inherent in what he’s doing. It’s a tough spot to be in, but also, this is coming from an angry dyke who’s also trans and who, at one point, had society try to use her as a vessel for that kind of misogyny.

Another piece of research found that when women were reported to the police for abuse, which men often to as a form of attack, they (women) were arrested to a disproportionate degree given the fewer incidents where they were perpetrators. The study found that men were arrested for one in every ten incidents, whilst women were arrested for one in every three incidents.

People can be incredibly resistant to considering facts that don't fit with their world view and the belief that women are as violent and abusive as men is one that too many seem to be unwilling to let go of. Sex differences in intimate partner homicide rates (homicide includes killings sentenced as both murders and manslaughters) show that so-called 'sex symmetry' is a myth.

[...] In the space of 50 years, we started from a place of formidable feminist collective energy and action pulling together and creating new services to support women who had been subjected to men's violence. Within a couple of generations, we have come to a place where many, if not the majority, of those working in the same organisations and supporting later generations of victim-survivors of men's violence seem to have lost their political edge. What happened to the willingness or ability to stand up for women's sex-based rights and protections, to the understanding of the patriarchal context of men's violence against women?

When I talk about sex differences and reporting or domestic and sexual violence, people often suggest that the differences are exaggerated because it's such a taboo for men to report. Not only does this fail to recognise that reporting abuse is also a taboo for many women, but research has found the opposite to be true: that men overestimate their victimisation and underestimate their own violence, whereas women are more likely to overestimate their own use of violence but underestimate their victimisation. Women normalise, discount, minimise, excuse their partner's domestic and sexual violence against them, and they're more likely to find ways to make it their fault.

[...] Criminal behaviours of those who had legally and medically transitioned from men to trans women followed the pattern of male offending and those who had transitioned from women to trans men continued with female pattern offending. Males who had transitioned were 18 times more likely to be convicted of violent crime than females.

If indeed all lives mattered, we would not need to emphatically proclaim that “Black Lives Matter.” Or, as we discover on the BLM website: Black Women Matter, Black Girls Matter, Black Gay Lives Matter, Black Bi Lives Matter, Black Boys Matter, Black Queer Lives Matter, Black Men Matter, Black Lesbians Matter, Black Trans Lives Matter, Black Immigrants Matter, Black Incarcerated Lives Matter. Black Differently Abled Lives Matter. Yes, Black Lives Matter, Latino/Asian American/Native American/Muslim/Poor and Working-Class White Peoples Lives matter. There are many more specific instances we would have to name before we can ethically and comfortable claim that All Lives Matter.

Because of its internal complexity and single-minded focus on oppression, intersectionality is riddled with divisions and subcategories, which exist in competition with—or even in unrepentant contradiction to—each other. Some people in the United States therefore argue that gay white men (Fitzgerald 2019) and nonblack people of color—generally assessed as marginalized groups—need to recognize their privilege and antiblackness (Chung 2017). This can lead to the insistence that lighter-skinned black people recognize their privilege over darker-skinned black people (Tracey 2019). Straight black men have been described as the “white people of black people” (Young 2019). It is also not uncommon to hear arguments that trans men, while still oppressed by attitudes towards their trans status, need to recognize that they have ascended to male privilege (Abelson 2014) and amplify the voices of trans women, who are seen as doubly oppressed, by being both trans and women. Gay men and lesbians might well find themselves not considered oppressed at all, particularly if they are not attracted to trans men or trans women, respectively, which is considered a form of transphobia and misgendering (Sara C 2018). Asians and Jews may find themselves stripped of marginalized status due to the comparative economic success of their demographics, their participation in “whiteness,” or other factors (Kuo 2018; Lungen 2018). Queerness needs to be decolonized—meaning made more racially diverse—and its conceptual origins in white figures like Judith Butler need to be interrogated (Small 2019).

Horseman is the haunting sequel to the 1820 novel The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving and takes place two decades after the events that unfolded in the original. We are introduced to 14-year-old trans boy Bente “Ben” Van Brunt, who has been raised by his idiosyncratic grandparents - lively Brom “Bones” Van Brunt and prim Kristina Van Tassel - in the small town of Sleepy Hollow, New York, where gossip and rumour run rife and people are exceedingly closed-minded. He has lived with them on their farm ever since he was orphaned when his parents, Bendix and Fenna, died in suspicious and enigmatic circumstances. Ben and his only friend, Sander, head into the woodland one Autumn day to play a game known as Sleepy Hollow Boys, but they are both a little startled when they witness a group of men they recognise from the village discussing the headless, handless body of a local boy that has just been found. But this isn't the end; it is only the beginning. From that moment on, Ben feels an otherworldly presence following him wherever he ventures, and one day while scanning his grandfather’s fields he catches a fleeting glimpse of a weird creature seemingly sucking blood from a victim. An evil of an altogether different nature. But Ben knows this is not the elusive Horseman who has been the primary focus of folkloric tales in the area for many years because he can both feel and hear his presence. However, unlike others who fear the Headless Horseman, Ben can hear whispers in the woods at the end of a forbidden path, and he has visions of the Horseman who says he is there to protect him. Ben soon discovers connections between the recent murders and the death of his parents and realises he has been shaded from the truth about them his whole life. Thus begins a journey to unravel the mystery and establish his identity in the process. This is an enthralling and compulsively readable piece of horror fiction building on Irvings’ solid ground. Evoking such feelings as horror, terror, dread and claustrophobic oppressiveness, this tale invites you to immerse yourself in its sinister, creepy and disturbing narrative. The staggering beauty of the remote village location is juxtaposed with the darkness of the demons and devilish spirits that lurk there, and the village residents aren't exactly welcoming to outsiders or accepting of anyone different from their norm. What I love the most is that it is subtle and full of nuance, instead of the usual cheap thrills with which the genre is often pervaded, meaning the feeling of sheer panic creeps up on you when you least expect, and you come to the sudden realisation that the story has managed to get under your skin, into your psyche and even into your dreams (or should that be nightmares?) Published at a time when the nights are closing in and the light diminishes ever more rapidly, not to mention with Halloween around the corner, this is the perfect autumnal read for the spooky season full of both supernatural and real-world horrors. It begins innocuously enough to lull you into a false sense of security but soon becomes bleak and hauntingly atmospheric as well as frightening before descending into true nightmare-inducing territory. A chilling and eerie romp, and a story full of superstition, secrets, folklore and old wives’ tales and with messages about love, loss, belonging, family, grief, being unapologetically you and becoming more accepting and tolerant of those who are different. Highly recommended.

I didn’t hear a single story about the people who are disproportionately at risk of homicide: sex workers, the homeless, young men of color, trans women. Instead, there were more teaser-trailers for TV specials about murdered moms, or moms who murdered.

The second issue is that men are now edging women out of prized positions and awards while wearing dresses and heels. The hottest flashpoint in the culture today is the transgender movement, with the progressive mob even coming after feminists, such as the famed author of the Harry Potter series, J. K. Rowling. Anyone who dares to oppose the idea that men can become women (or vice versa) is targeted. Activists use the derogatory term “trans-exclusionary radical feminists,” or “TERFs,” to criticize those who, like Rowling, embrace the idea that a woman is someone who is a biological female, from birth, distinct from mere gender expression.

For trans* people, the designation of heterosexual or homosexual is based upon gender identity. So a trans* woman who is attracted to men would be considered heterosexual, while a trans* woman who is attracted to women would be considered homosexual or lesbian. A trans* woman attracted to both sexes would be bisexual. Likewise, a trans* man who is attracted to women would be heterosexual, a trans* man attracted to men would be homosexual or gay, and one who is attracted to both would be bisexual.

A cop says “I think we can handle one little girl”. We open with a cis white man being dismissive of a woman... who then kills all the men attacking her.

Did you know cis people get gender-affirming surgeries too? A cis woman who’s had a mastectomy and gets breast reconstruction? A cis woman who gets a breast augmentation? Collagen lip injections? Cis men who get pectoral implants? Or take medication to prevent hair loss? Or help them maintain erections? All are gender-affirming medical procedures!

For some [Papists] (gymnē tē kephalē, without wish of concealment) altogether deny the authenticity (authentian) of Scripture in itself without the testimony of the church and think it worthy of no more belief (I shudder to relate) than the Koran, Titus Livy or the fables of Aesop. In a former age those who undertook to dispute with our men concerning the authority of Scripture belched forth these blasphemies. Such are the impious words of Hosius against Brentius ('Confutatio Prolegomenon Brentii,' in Opera [1583], 1:530). He asserts that it can be said in a pious sense that 'the Scriptures have only as much force as the fables of Aesop, if destitute of the authority of the church.' Eck says that 'the Scriptures are not authentic, except by authority of the church' (Enchirdion of Commonplaces 1 [trans. F.L. Battles, 1979], p. 13, 'On the Church and her Authority'). Baile says that 'without the authority of the church we should no more believe Matthew than Titus Livy' (cf. Andre Rivet, Sommaire de toutes les controverses touchant la religion [1615], p. 217). Andradius says, 'There is nothing of divinity in the books in which the sacred mysteries are written and that there cannot be found in them anything to bind us to religion and to believe what they contain; but that the power and dignity of the church are so great as that no one without the greatest impiety can resist it' (Defensio tridentinae fidei catholicae 3+ [1580]). Stapleton says, 'The church must be considered in such a light, as that we ought not to believe the testimony in any other way than the apostles believed the testimony of Christ, and that God is not to be believed except on account of the church' (adversus Whittak., lib. i, c. 7+ [1620]).

Jezebel" or harlot stereotype dates back to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade where Black men's and women's bodies were oversexualized and objectified, as a way to dehumanize and market them as attractive commodities that could be bought, exploited and sold. By creating the Jezebel stereotype, enslavers attempted to rationalize their routine sexual exploitation of enslaved African women (Green,

It makes more sense to think of misogyny as the continual policing and punishment of certain women for their perceived failures to stay subordinate to men.

LGBT activism also fails on intersectionality for trans people themselves. It has no interest in acknowledging the somewhat different political and social situations of trans men and trans women respectively, but insists on treating both as identical for the purposes of lobbying. As far as trans activism is apparently concerned, there is no relevant difference in the situations of a fourteen-year-old transidentifying teenage female, attracted to other females, who is crowdfunding ‘top surgery’ and self-harming in the meantime, and a forty-one-year-old late-transitioning autogynephilic heterosexual male with no intention of divorcing the wife.

So straight away I want to be absolutely clear about what I’m not saying, before I go on to explain and justify these points in more detail in the next chapter. (I can anticipate a lot of these misunderstandings because they’re frequently fired at me by critics, as assumptions about what I must really be saying.) I’m not saying that to physically alter oneself to look like the opposite sex, or unlike one’s own sex, or both, isn’t ever a reasonable thing for adults to do in response to developing a misaligned gender identity. I think it can be, and have explained why in Chapter 4. More generally, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with looking or being radically sex nonconforming, either naturally or artificially. Quite the opposite. Personally speaking, I value and celebrate sex nonconformity: masculine women, feminine men and androgyny. Indeed, it’s partly in the service of this evaluation that I’ve made the arguments I have. I’m not underplaying the psychological relief it gives many trans people to think of themselves as members of the opposite sex. Nor, perhaps surprisingly, am I saying that trans women and trans men, respectively, shouldn’t ever call themselves ‘women’ and ‘men’ or be referred to that way by those around them. I’ll explain why in the next chapter. I’m not saying trans people are ‘deceivers’, nor that they are ‘delusional’ or ‘duped’ – far from it. I’ll explain why in the next chapter, so there can be no doubt.

First off, when I say ‘male contraception’, we’re talking about birth control for folks with penises and testes. Not men. Just like how not all women have periods and not all menstruators are women, not everyone with a penis is a man and not all men have penises. Trans and non-binary folk exist!

I’m fascinated by this idea that the parliament has become too focused on ‘woke issues’ at the expense of what the public really care about, because the implication of that is that any minority group that needs protected aren’t the public, the public are whatever the majority group is. If we govern on the basis of that, we would only be governing for straight, white, middle-aged men, who deserve good government like everybody else.

The job of the reformer is to grab hold of our figuratively trans-ed society’s XY chromosomes and not let go. No matter how much people have been memed and psyopsed into believing they are introverts and conditioned to practice antisocial behaviors, people want to love and be loved. Men and women were designed to not be alone. No one wants to feel like nobody cares about them. Knowing this is a weapon against globohomo; a weapon that you personally can wield powerfully against this hideous, decrepit world.

Practically it is all right, but medico-legally it is wrong, to make the genitals the universal criterion in the determination of sex. Medico-legally, sex should be determined by the psychical constitution rather than by the physical form. There are thousands of physical females who feel themselves to be men and have the mental traits of men, and there are thousands of physical males who feel themselves to be women and have the mental traits of a woman. Should any blame be attached to such individuals when they conduct themselves according to their psychical sex?

When I was small, I wanted to be a boy. No, it was more than that–I thought that I had to be a boy. I understand that there are children who refuse to identify with the sex on their birth certificate because they are trans, but I’ve never thought that was the case with me. It was more that the assumption everywhere, in the early seventies, seemed to be that women were lesser beings than men, and girls lesser beings than boys, that they did lesser things and lived lesser lives, and I did not see why I should accept those lesser conditions. There was a whole world out there for me to observe and explore and think about, and I had no interest in interrupting my activities so that the world could look at me and judge whether I was pretty or nice or good–whether, in other words, I was becoming a girl. Why on earth would I want to be one of those? Why would I, when I was so much more interested in looking than in being looked at?

Someone is always willing to listen to you,” Melina explained. “When the only stories told are by straight white men, it becomes the norm. People assume that the only stories that will turn a profit are stories about that particular experience—when in fact there are whole untapped audiences who would love to see their lives replicated on a stage. Do you know how gratifying it would be for more women or Black or Latinx or Indigenous or trans or disabled people to see themselves represented in theater? The answer is no, you don’t—because you’ve always seen yourself reflected there.

You can tell a lot about a society by those they push to the margins, and our community doesn’t leave much room for men of color, trans men, disabled men or anyone who doesn’t look like our friends. We show them the door. We tell them they aren’t allowed in here.

From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia...could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.

Beginning in late 1914 and accelerating over the next three years, the Turkish government rounded up Armenian men for forced labor, worked many to death building a trans-Turkish railway for German business interests, then shot the survivors.

As long as trans women are seen as less desirable, illegitimate, devalued women, then men will continue to frame their attraction to us as secret, shameful, and stigmatized, limiting their sexual interactions with trans women to pornography and prostitution. And if a trans woman believes that the only way she can share intimate space with a man is through secret hookups or transactions, she will be led to engage in risky sexual behaviors that make her more vulnerable to criminalization, disease, and violence; she will be led to coddle a man who takes out his frustrations about his sexuality on her with his fists; she will be led to question whether she's worthy enough to protect herself with a condom when a man tells her he loves her; she will be led to believe that she is not worthy of being seen and must remain hidden.

Back in 1415, Prince Henry and his brothers had convinced their father, King John of Portugal, to capture the principal Muslim trading depot in the western Mediterranean: Ceuta, on the northeastern tip of Morocco. These brothers were envious of Muslim riches, and they sought to eliminate the Islamic middleman so that they could find the southern source of gold and Black captives. After the battle, Moorish prisoners left Prince Henry spellbound as they detailed trans-Saharan trade routes down into the disintegrating Mali Empire. Since Muslims still controlled these desert routes, Prince Henry decided to “seek the lands by the way of the sea.” He sought out those African lands until his death in 1460, using his position as the Grand Master of Portugal’s wealthy Military Order of Christ (successor of the Knights Templar) to draw venture capital and loyal men for his African expeditions. In 1452, Prince Henry’s nephew, King Afonso V, commissioned Gomes Eanes de Zurara to write a biography of the life and slave-trading work of his “beloved uncle.” Zurara was a learned and obedient commander in Prince Henry’s Military Order of Christ. In recording and celebrating Prince Henry’s life, Zurara was also implicitly obscuring his Grand Master’s monetary decision to exclusively trade in African slaves. In 1453, Zurara finished the inaugural defense of African slave-trading, the first European book on Africans in the modern era. The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea begins the recorded history of anti-Black racist ideas. Zurara’s inaugural racist ideas, in other words, were a product of, not a producer of, Prince Henry’s racist policies concerning African slave-trading.1

["Manning Up"'s] essays definitely nuance the idea of transitioning into a “shared manhood” (much like feminists of color have complicated the idea of “shared womanhood”). Trans men don’t all transition to just become “men,” which was one of the projects’ cornerstone concepts. They become black men, white men, queer men, straight men, working class men, affluent men, fatherly men, single men, spiritual men, etc. etc. All of these mean different things when filtered through social and intimate, familial lenses. One major boon of the growth in transgender literature ... is that we get to tease out these complexities in lives that will be popularly portrayed as monolithic unless we provide counter-scripts." - from a National Book Critics Circle interview with writer Rigoberto Gonzalez

women lose control when they’re afraid and that men lose control when they’re in love.

But, someone will say, does God not know, even without being reminded, both in what respect we are troubled and what is expedient for us, so that it may seem in a sense superfluous that he should be stirred up by our prayers-as if he were drowsily blinking or even sleeping until he is aroused by our voice? But they who thus reason do not observe to what end the Lord instructed his people to pray, for he ordained it not so much for his own sake as for ours. Now he wills-as is right-that his due be rendered to him, in the recognition that everything men desire and account conducive to their own profit comes from him, and in the attestation of this by prayers. But the profit of this sacrifice also, by which he is worshiped, returns to us. Accordingly, the holy fathers, the more confidently they extolled God's benefits among themselves and others, were the more keenly aroused to pray ... Still it is very important for us to call upon him: First, that our hearts may be fired with a zealous and burning desire ever to seek, love, and serve him, while we become accustomed in every need to flee to him as to a sacred anchor. Secondly, that there may enter our hearts no desire and no wish at all of which we should be ashamed to make him a witness, while we learn to set all our wishes before his eyes, and even to pour out our whole hearts. Thirdly, that we be prepared to receive his benefits with true gratitude of heart and thanksgiving, benefits that our prayer reminds us come from his hand. (Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, ed. John T. McNeill [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1960], Book 3, chapter 20, section 3.)

Money - you demolish cities, root men from their homes, you train and twist good minds and set them on to the most atrocious schemes. No limit, you make them adept at every kind of outrage, every godless crime - money

Queer contagion, including the anxiety triggered by gender nonnormativity, found its viral materiality in the early 1980s. The diagnosis of gay cancer, or GRID (gay-related immune disorder), the original name for AIDS, was a vengeful nomenclature for the perversion of existing in a world held together, at least in part, by trans/queer undoing. Found by chance, queers began showing symptoms of unexplainable illnesses such as Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) and Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP). Unresponsive to the most aggressive treatments, otherwise healthy, often well-resourced and white, young men were deteriorating and dying with genocidal speed. Without remedy, normative culture celebrated its triumph in knowing the tragic ends they always imagined queers would meet. This, while the deaths of Black, Brown, and Indigenous trans and cis women (queer or otherwise) were unthought beyond the communities directly around them. These women, along with many others, were stripped of any claim to tragedy under the conditions of trans/misogyny. Among the architects of this silence was then-President Ronald Reagan, who infamously refused to mention HIV/AIDS in public until 1986. By then, at least 16,000 had died in the U.S. alone. Collective fantasies of mass disappearance through the pulsing death of trans/queer people, Haitians, and drug users - the wish fulfillment of a nightmare world concertized the rhetoric that had always been spoken from the lips of power. The true terror of this response to HIV/AIDS was not only its methodological denial but its joyful humor. In Scott Calonico's experimental short film, "When AIDS Was Funny", a voice-over of Reagan's press secretary Larry Speakes is accompanied by iconic still images of people close to death in hospital beds. LESTER KINSOLVING: "Over a third of them have died. It's known as a 'gay plague.' [Press pool laughter.] No, it is. It's a pretty serious thing. One in every three people that get this have died. And I wonder if the president was aware of this." LARRY SPEAKES: "I don't have it. [Press pool laughter.] Do you?" LESTER KINSOLVING: "You don't have it? Well, I'm relieved to hear that, Larry!" [Press pool laughter.] LARRY SPEAKES: "Do you?" LESTER KINSOLVING: "No, I don't.

Any creative writing teacher worth their salt will tell you that a great story never starts at the beginning, it starts when something changes.

people are so wary of transgender progress because we highlight how something we often consider carved in stone can be so easily manipulated

Black Women Matter, Black Girls Matter, Black Gay Lives Matter, Black Bi Lives Matter, Black Boys Matter, Black Queer Lives Matter, Black Men Matter, Black Lesbians Matter, Black Trans Lives Matter, Black Immigrants Matter, Black Incarcerated Lives Matter. Black Differently Abled Lives Matter. Yes, Black Lives Matter, Latino/Asian American/Native American/Muslim/Poor and Working-Class White Peoples Lives matter.

The loss of white ethno-cultural confidence manifests itself in other ways. Among the most important is a growing unwillingness to indulge the anti-white ideology of the cultural left. When whites were an overwhelming majority, empirically unsupported generalizations about whites could be brushed off as amusing and mischievous but ultimately harmless. As whites decline, fewer are willing to abide such attacks. At the same time, white decline emboldens the cultural left, with its dream of radical social transformation. ... From a modern perspective, the most important figure to emerge from this milieu is Randolph Bourne. Viewed as a spokesman for the new youth culture in upper-middle-class New York, Bourne burst onto the intellectual scene with an influential essay in the respected Atlantic Monthly in July 1916 entitled ‘Trans-National America’. Here Bourne was influenced by Jewish-American philosopher Horace Kallen. Kallen was both a Zionist and a multiculturalist. Yet he criticized the Liberal Progressive worldview whose cosmopolitan zeal sought to consign ethnicity to the dustbin of history. Instead, Kallen argued that ‘men cannot change their grandfathers’. Rather than all groups giving and receiving cultural influence, as in Dewey’s vision, or fusing together, as mooted by fellow Zionist Israel Zangwill in his play The Melting Pot (1910), Kallen spoke of America as a ‘federation for international colonies’ in which each group, including the Anglo-Saxons, could maintain their corporate existence. There are many problems with Kallen’s model, but there can be no doubt that he treated all groups consistently. Bourne, on the other hand, infused Kallen’s structure with WASP self-loathing. As a rebel against his own group, Bourne combined the Liberal Progressives’ desire to transcend ‘New Englandism’ and Protestantism with Kallen’s call for minority groups to maintain their ethnic boundaries. The end product was what I term asymmetrical multiculturalism, whereby minorities identify with their groups while Anglo-Protestants morph into cosmopolites. Thus Bourne at once congratulates the Jew ‘who sticks proudly to the faith of his fathers and boasts of that venerable culture of his’, while encouraging his fellow Anglo-Saxons to: "Breathe a larger air . . . [for] in his [young Anglo-Saxon’s] new enthusiasms for continental literature, for unplumbed Russian depths, for French clarity of thought, for Teuton philosophies of power, he feels himself a citizen of a larger world. He may be absurdly superficial, his outward-reaching wonder may ignore all the stiller and homelier virtues of his Anglo-Saxon home, but he has at least found the clue to that international mind which will be essential to all men and women of good-will if they are ever to save this Western world of ours from suicide." Bourne, not Kallen, is the founding father of today’s multiculturalist left because he combines rebellion against his own culture and Liberal Progressive cosmopolitanism with an endorsement – for minorities only – of Kallen’s ethnic conservatism. In other words, ethnic minorities should preserve themselves while the majority should dissolve itself.

If I had taken the initiative to seek out information about the LGBT rights movement, I would have found that it was a Black trans woman, Marsha P. Johnson, a Latinx trans woman, Sylvia Rivera, and a butch lesbian, Stormé DeLarverie, who were the catalysts of the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City, which led to the first ever Pride march, which birthed the Gay Rights Movement, which became the LGBT movement. But I didn’t, largely because I assumed that, much like the majority of the history that we are taught in the British academic syllabus, it was cisgender, white, gay men that initiated that movement.

Louis examined the goddess. She wore a silk gown and a gold chain; there was no doubt about it, she was a lady! That she was small and slender; that her face was pleasant, but a little vague; that her smooth chestnut hair framed her eyes of a faded blue: all this mattered nothing, was of no importance to a dog; for dogs form judgments more surely than men. They employ for this purpose none of the poor instruments that lead you and me astray, such as observation, reason or experience. Their instinct is unfettered; and it never betrays them. They know who will love them of his own accord; they guess whose affections they will have to conquer. This is why Louis, with a triumphant cock to his plumy tail, passed negligently by the mistress of the house, to pay his respects to the formidable individual who at this moment, seated at the family table, was carving a magnificent joint.

Sorry-looking and unlovely, with a dull coat that has all the appearance of having been clumsily patched, the sponger is generally of medium build, as though he feared that he might occupy more space if he grew bigger and find it even harder to win a place in the world of dogs and men. He is preeminently humble, servile and discreet. He refuses to be snubbed; his skin is impervious to insults; he accepts a kick with an air of compunction.

BRODEN GIAMBRONE: The struggle for marriage equality affects all LGBT people … However, that said, it is clear that across the globe the marriage equality movement has monopolised the discussion on LGBT rights and often distilled it to marriage as the defining feature of the movement. In many countries, these movements are led by privileged gay men and lesbians who promote it as the last vestige of inequality. This is mirrored back to us in the quote from US VP Joe Biden, ‘[marriage equality] It’s the civil rights of our day. It’s the issue of our day.’ Or the quote by Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore, ‘[Gay marriage] is the civil rights issue of our generation.’ When marriage equality is positioned as the last stronghold of inequality and the great leveller of the rights of LGBT people in society, there is a failure to acknowledge other significant issues within the LGBT community … From my point of view, marriage equality is an undeniably pressing issue for the LGBT community and a fundamental right that we must all get behind in achieving. However, it is not the defining civil rights issue of our time. It is one of many that we face as a society that must be fought for and won. By positioning marriage equality as the last vestige of LGBT inequality we run the risk of depoliticisation of the LGBT community once it’s been achieved. As in, we’ve won, we’re done, let’s go home. It’s clear that the trans community must stand with the LGB community on this issue but there must be a recognition that trans rights are also human rights and must be supported, promoted and financed. Marriage equality should be seen as part of a struggle on many fronts and not the sum total of what we need to be free and equal.

Men. Men are so likable. Just as well. Are men the source of our inspiration? Yes. Are men our biggest challenge? Yes. Are men our enemy? Yes. Are men our most stimulating rival? Yes. Are men both our equals and entirely different? Yes. Are men attractive? Yes. Are men funny? Yes. Are men children? Yes. Are men also fathers? Yes. Do we argue with men? We do. Can we manage without the men we argue with? No. Are we interesting because men like interesting women? We are. Are men the ones with whom we have the most important conversations? Yes. Are men annoying? Yes. Do we like being annoyed by men? We do.

I remember walking to a group for trans men and getting the most withering looks. I hadn't even opened my mouth. But I was the only one in a flannel shirt. Everyone else was decked out in the height of androgynous fashion. I was just wearing that because it was cold out. But I still felt unwelcome. 'Queer' fashion is supposed to be the opposite of 'straight' fashion...we create a code only we can understand; a look we can feel proud of because we got to choose it, not them. When you can be in real danger if you guess wrong about whether someone's queer, it makes sense to have our own language...but sometimes it's winter in Wisconsin and you get left out in the cold.

Blackness is not just black straight men. There are gay men in this work doing amazing work. There are queer folks. There are trans folks. There are gay and lesbian folks, bisexual…. There are atheist black people.

Both the capabilities and evolutionary strategies of men and women, capabilities and strategies that were of course interconnected and mutually reinforcing, made men much more predisposed to fighting than women.

Cognitive studies, aided by brain scanning, have revealed that men and women in fact use different parts of their brains in coping with various cognitive tasks. Furthermore, whereas the right and left hemispheres of a man's brain are much more specialized, those of won1en operate in greater co-operation, and the corpus callosum connecting them is larger. Not only are the bodies of women and men structured somewhat differently but also that particular organ of their bodies, the brain, and hence their minds.

Cognitive studies, aided by brain scanning, have revealed that men and women in fact use different parts of their brains in coping with various cognitive tasks. Furthermore, whereas the right and left hemispheres of a man's brain are much more specialized, those of women operate in greater co-operation, and the corpus callosum connecting them is larger. Not only are the bodies of women and men structured somewhat differently but also that particular organ of their bodies, the brain, and hence their minds.

There had always been radfems in New England, enclaves of sneering middle-class white women who talked a lot about performing gender roles and appropriating lived experience. They curated incestuous little social media cells where they repeated the same six talking points to the same thirty other women while cis men came sniffing around their hindquarters, venting pent-up hatred on trans women and making sure real women saw them doing it so they could get accredited as feminists and maybe, if they were lucky, catch a whiff of pussy.

Clinical research has found that somewhere between 20 and 37 percent of diagnosed anorexia nervosa sufferers are Autistic.[24] Since Autism is underdiagnosed in the populations who are most likely to be diagnosed with eating disorders (women, trans people, and gay men), the actual rate of co-occurrence might be much higher.

On each of the maddening issues of our time – sex, sexuality, race and trans – the Valley knows what is right and is only encouraging everyone else to catch up. It is why Twitter is capable of banning women from its platform for tweeting ‘Men aren’t women’ or ‘What is the difference between a man and a transwoman’.7 If people are ‘wrong’ on the trans issue in this way, then Silicon Valley can ensure that they do not have a voice on their platforms.

Part Two: When St. Kari Met Darth Vader, Star Wars Dark Lord of the Sith  “What are those?” Kari shouted grasping Luke’s arm as her eyes jolted nervously into the air. “I’ve never seen such pretty planets before.” Luke tracked her line of vision and grimmed as he spotted three Corellian Imperial Star Destroyers coming out of hyperspace into the same vortex that his own damaged ship was whirlpooled into. They appeared to be stabilizing the vortex opening by their anti-gravity wells maintaining their relative positional orbit. “Hey’st, what are those white things? They look like men. Surely they are not ghosters, are they?” pawed Kari at Luke to get him to see. “Imperial troopers,” shot Luke, grabbing her arm back. “There’s too many of them C’mon, we got to hide.” “What’s does that mean? And what are those red light-thingy’s coming toward us?” Instantly Kari and Luke were inundated by a barrage of suppressing E-11 blaster rifle fire. Luke flinched out of reaction while Kari stood upright seemingly oblivious to the inherent danger. He was struck to see the girl-entity pluck a laser bolt out of the air and examine it with an other worldly look, as if it were a rare flower in a garden. “I like this,” she smiled. “I’ll pin it to my cloak.” And doing so she did, it maintaining its fiery penetrating redness that did nothing more than to adorn the girl’s wardrobe for quite some time momentarily puzzling Luke. Usually they burnt out quickly. “Can I get some more of these?” she politely asked Luke. “Not right now,” drawled Luke peering over a boulder. “If they capture us we’ve had it.” “Had what?” asked Kari naïvely. “Them ghost-men you mean’st? Oh, don’t worry, Walker of the Skies, just leave it to me,” and with that Kari pulled her blade and sashayed toward the Imperial clones humming her favorite Top 10 battle hymns. “Wait!” Luke shouted trying to snatch her back but it was too late. Luke never saw anything such as this. Like Han, he had seen a lot of strange galactic stuff in his time. Kari had become a misty blur and was skipping across the battlefield as some sort of sword-brandishing luminescence, hovering for a short time over those she slain. “Hey, Walkersky, these spirits don’t have any souls,” she yelled looking up from her blood soaked garments. What do you want me to do with the rest, kill ’em?” “I, uh ,” was all he managed to get out of his mouth as he rubbed his jaw. Kari shrugged and went back to work, picking off the whole brigade by herself. “See’st? I told’st thou not to worry” Kari said panting, coming up to Luke and sitting besides him. “What now?” “We gotta get outta here before more Imperials arrive.” “Untruth oats?” (Nether Trans. “art thou nuts?”) “Run from battle?—is that that what means?” “It means Vader’s coming—.” go to part ii con't

Austin smiles at me while Leah argues with Hazel. Now that I know he’s Ezra’s new maybe-special friend, I pay a little more attention to him than I would have before. He kind of reminds me of a golden retriever, with his floppy blond hair and blue eyes. The first time I saw him in acrylics class, I kind of immediately hated the guy. He’s the sort of person the world adores, just based on the way he looks, a little like the way people obsess over men like Chris Hemsworth and Chris Evans and Chris Pine and all the other famous Chrises, plus Ryan Gosling, claiming that they’re liberal and that they aren’t racist and that they’re feminists, but not really thinking about why they’re so obsessed with white men, and why they don’t love any people of color the same way. I love that I have brown skin. I love that I’m queer, and that I’m trans. But sometimes, I can’t help but think how much easier my life would be if I was someone like Austin.

Being trans and gay really limits my dating options. I don’t have the right equipment for gay men, most bi men don’t know what to do with me, and I’m not interested in women.

We are a tribal species. Unlike young schoolchildren, we prefer division to addition. We divide ourselves into groups of our own justification, sensible or not. Hunters or gatherers. Settlers or nomads. Men or women. Cis or trans. Natives or immigrants. Citizens or noncitizens. Black or White. Rich or poor. Gay or straight. Believers or nonbelievers. Extroverts or introverts. Rural or urban. Nationalists or globalists. Republican or Democrat. Conservative or progressive.

You cannot continue to have ONLY TWO gender specific categories in any field anymore. We need to open up the spaces and recognise other genders too. In your SHOWS, have Trans categories. Have Gay categories. Have men categories. Have Women categories. And so on. INCLUDE EVERYBODY.

One way to sidestep such guilt is to make our objects of envy boys rather than men. There is a definitive boyishness to the litany of masc aspirational figures I opened this chapter with, and it's not at all incidental. They are all safe boys to love: non-threatening, gentle, empathic, features that are amplified by the nexus of youth and whiteness. This is, indeed, what makes them popularly palatable teen heartthrobs, and what makes transmasc cathodes to them ones that don't threaten to devour. Awkward-Rich, in a brilliant criticism of what he calls "the boys of queer trans theory," suspects that the figure of the boy (as theorized in the work of Jack Halberstam, Bobby Noble, and others) emerges as central to these strains of trans masculine theorizing because he stands for a kind of "masculinity without phallic power" that "fashions masculinity for the [feminist] movement." In halberstam's work, the boy—and, specifically, the paradigmatic boy that is Peter Pan—signals a refusal to grow up and into the staid gender stereotypes associated with heteronormative adulthood.

Raun concludes that "while trans male vlogs manifest potentials—and possible futures—they also create norms for how trans men look, feel, and talk about their transition, and how they vlog about it," operating as both "commencement and commandment". These vlogs are part of a cultural ensemble that installs narratives of transnormativity, teaching viewers what transition is supposed to look like, what they might one day look like, operating as a visual litmus test against which one might measure their "progress" and gauge what the process and the "post" of transition might be.

This framework puts trans masculine people at a really painful crossroads: Do we transition and self-actualize, with the knowledge that doing so will render us complicit in the oppression of our sisters, the same oppression we've experienced all our lives? Or do we force ourselves to live as women (or else non-men of a different sort, though this ideology leaves little space to conceptualize nonbinariness), repressing the parts of us that call toward a transition away from womanhood and/or into maleness?

So we position ourselves as "sons of the movement," to cite the title of Bobby Noble's 2006 book on the relation fo trans men to feminist and queer cultural landscapes. We interpellate ourselves as the queer kin of feminist foremothers. Or we shift our attention toward the examination and critique of violently toxic forms of masculinity, instead, as Thomas Page McBee has done in his creative nonfiction, including the books Man Alive and Amateur. Or we articulate and amplify a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between power, privilege, and masculinity, utilizing conceptual tools borrowed from intersectional feminisms to differentiate ourselves from cis men and to clarify the many stratifications of race, class, (dis)ability, and sexuality that differentiate transmasculinities from one another.

...trans men's relationship to gender cannot be understood by adding the privilege of maleness to the oppression of transness; the interaction between these axes substantively transforms both such that it generates an experience qualitatively different from either alone.

In a male-centered gender hierarchy, where it is assumed that men are better than women and that masculinity is superior to femininity, there is no greater perceived threat than the existence of trans women, who despite being male and inheriting male privilege “choose” to be female instead. By embracing our own femaleness and femininity, we, in a sense, cast a shadow of doubt over the supposed supremacy of maleness and masculinity. In order to lessen the threat we pose to the male-centered gender hierarchy, our culture (primarily via the media) uses every tactic in its arsenal of traditional sexism to dismiss us.

Trans people are a living reminder that something we steadfastly believe to be carved in stone (gender) is actually a very moveable feast.

She didn’t understand the differences between trans men and cis men, didn’t see the disparity in our payloads of privilege, and she probably believed, as many otherwise well-meaning people do, that to acknowledge the difference, to say trans men are men and also more complicated, hello, more ontologically fraught, is to commit an act of transphobia when it’s the opposite. It’s affirming our complexity.

You’re mansplaining,” Autumn says, tapping a note into her laptop, no doubt a demerit for her report to the dean of Diversity and Inclusion. “I’m a trans man,” I say. “If anything, I’m transplaining.” “Trans men are

Because he’s been forced to grow up so fast—by a political apparatus that stripped him of the luxuries of innocence—he has a difficult time comprehending the banal preoccupations of most adolescents, feeling as if no one can really fathom all he’s gone through at such a young age. He spends many days at the base of a bottomless well of loneliness, staring at his own reflection in its solitary waters. Adults tell him that he’s “very mature” or that he’s an “old soul,” but Wyatt insists that he never had a choice in the matter. “I feel like my teen years have been stolen,” he says. “Even if I have good memories, it’s always like, Oh, this is the year the bathroom bill was introduced, not This is the year I went to Disney with my family. I wish being trans wasn’t my whole life—because it’s really not—but it does affect a lot of my life.” For as much as Wyatt resents the confines of ballet, the shame of being corrected by a teacher every time he dares to express his individuality as an artist, partaking in his Monday night men’s class is among the few times he can remember feeling true joy in South Dakota; there, dancers are allowed to bend the rules with lessened reproach.

It's possibly the hardest thing about being trans: making people understand that your life has been dominated by something that, for them, has never even been a problem, something that, quite frankly, they never even heard of.

That the label of “TERF” can be levied against a trans woman who insists upon her own sex is a function of the total cultural victory of the Gender-Conservative project. Feminism has been indelibly associated with transphobia, transmisogyny is considered a function of ‘misandry’, and the trans woman is instrumentalized as a voiceless pawn by a myriad of cultural forces that seek to exploit her symbolic significance. The conservative antifeminist can point to her as a consequence of leftist overreach threatening the most fundamental underpinnings of society’s (patriarchal) organization, while the liberal antifeminist can use her woes to bemoan how unfair and extreme feminism has grown towards men, advocating for an ever-kinder, ever-gentler feminism even as abortion rights are undone and ideological investment in rape culture resurges. After all, that is one thing the conservative and liberal and even leftist man have always agreed upon: the woman’s rightful place, and the necessity of silencing her attempts to protest it.

Trans activists cite the risk of physical harm to self-declared women in men’s spaces as one justification for appropriating women’s spaces, yet trans activists have no concern for natal women and girls who need our own safe spaces now threatened by legislation. If trans-identified women are afraid of men’s spaces and increasingly being protected by legislation, why don’t women who have been subjected to male violence throughout our lives, get the same legal protection.

Trans activists who demand that women pledge allegiance to trans truths have launched a new age of inquisition. Women are being silenced, shunned and assaulted for speaking the truth that men cannot be women.

it implicitly suggests that women are at risk of harassment, rape and violence from trans women. This, quite clearly, is prejudice. Making sweeping, awful assumptions or accusations towards any minority group is prejudice.

There are no reported cases of trans women assaulting women or children in public bathrooms.

Even the devil does not trust men to honor a bargain, so it does not deal with them. It offers power only to women.” “What about trans women?” Zara asks, writing the question in her document. “How does that work?” “Of course I have written invocations for trans women,” Emer says. “Demons do not care about bodies. They only care about souls.

For now truly is a race of iron, and men never rest from labor and sorrow by day, and from perishing by night; and the gods shall lay sore trouble upon them. But, notwithstanding, even these shall have some good mingled with their evils.

Every savage can dance,' declared Jane Austen's Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. His antagonist's riposte now seems odd—'I doubt not that you are an adept in the science yourself, Mr Darcy.' 'Science' is among the most slippery words in the English language, because although it has been in use for hundreds of years, its meanings constantly shift and are impossible to pin down. That plural (meanings) was deliberate. In the early nineteenth century, when Austen casually mentioned the science of dancing, other writers were still using 'science' for the mediaeval subjects of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Long afterwards, 'science' could still mean any scholarly discipline, because the modern distinction between the Arts and Sciences had not yet solidified. The Victorian art critic John Ruskin listed five subjects he thought worthwhile studying at university—the Sciences of Morals, History, Grammar, Music, and Painting—none of which feature on modern scientific syllabuses. All of them, Ruskin declared, were more intellectually demanding than chemistry, electricity, or geology. However skilfully Mr Darcy performed his science of dancing, Austen could never have called him a scientist. That word, now so common, was not even invented until twenty years later, in 1833, when the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) was holding its third annual meeting. As the conference delegates joked about needing an umbrella term to cover their diverse interests, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge rejected 'philosopher', and William Whewell—one of Babbage's allies, a Cambridge mathematical astronomer—suggested 'scientist' instead. The new word was very slow to catch on. Many Victorians insisted on keeping older expressions, such as 'man of science', or 'naturalist', or 'experimental philosopher'. Even men now seen as the nineteenth century's most eminent scientists—Darwin, Faraday, Lord Kelvin—refused to use the new term for describing themselves. Why, they demanded, should anyone bother to invent such an ugly word when perfectly adequate expressions already existed? Mistakenly, critics accused 'scientist' of being an American import, a trans-Atlantic neologism—one eminent geologist declared it was better to die 'than bestialize our tongue by such barbarisms'. The debate was still raging sixty years after Whewell first introduced the idea, and it was only in the early twentieth century that 'scientist' was fully accepted.

Reflex originally means the intercepting and reflecting of a light ray by a mirror. Trans- ferred to living creatures, the reflex is conceived as the reception of an external stimulus by a receptor and the stimulus-elicited response by the effectors. In the process the stimulus is converted into nervous excitation, which has to pass through several stations on its way from the receptor to the effector. The course thus described is referred to as a reflex arc.

Another weakness in the women-controlling-their-bodies explanation is that there are plenty of ways in which most pro-choice people otherwise agree that women (and men) should be restricted in what they do with their bodies: seat belt laws, prostitution laws, restrictions on trans fats and giant sodas, mandatory health insurance, and so forth. Hardly anyone holds views actually consistent with the idea that people should be able to do whatever they want with their b

At ease men.” Zhang said as he patted one soldier on the soldier.

Moses, who was a Hebrew, led the Hebrew Israelites out of Egypt in the wilderness (read Exodus chapter 3 to the end of Exodus chapter 14). At this point once the children of Israel were in the wilderness they started to sin against the Most High. The children of Israel were enslaved by the Muslims and the white Europeans also. The European involvement in the slave trade to America lasted over 3 centuries. The Muslim (Arabs) slave trade lasted 14 centuries and still exists in some parts of the world. Two out of three Hebrew Israelites slaves brought to American was men used for agricultural work. Two out of three were women were enslaved and by the white Europeans and the Muslims for sexual exploitation, concubine, harems, and for military services. Slaves that were transported across the Atlantic about 95% went to Central and South America, Portuguese, French, and Spanish possession. The other 5% went to the United States and that 5% consented of the tribe of Judah who are the so called Negros and the tribe of Gad who are the North American Indians. During the Trans-Atlantic slave trade Europeans didn’t have to venture into the jungles of Africa to capture the Hebrew Israelites because they were already sold into slavery by the African chief or by the Muslim slave traders at the coast. The Trans-Atlantic slave trade had three guilt partners; the African Chief s, the Muslim Arabs and the white Europeans.

What I want to tease out and focus on are the ways that misogyny, femmephobia, and transmisogyny come together to royally screw over femme people of many genders; how misogyny, femmephobia, and transmisogyny are part of global systems of gender that extract a hell of a lot of labor and energy from femme and feminized people, from parenting and caretaking being considered “free labor” to sexist assumptions of femme perma-availability being made in queer and trans communities. Also, the gendered wage gap is real. Cis and trans women really do get paid less than cis men, and women and femmes who are racialized, disabled, imprisoned and institutionalized, trans, rural and poor/working class get paid extra bad.

I have a dream - that one day, black people won't be black - white people won't be white - brown people won't be brown - gay people won't be gay - straight people won't be straight - women won't be women - men won't be men - the trans won't be trans - believers won't be believers and non-believers won't be non-believers - instead, we all will be just human.

The Inquisition believed that there was such a thing as truth, and that it was important; well, likewise Richard Feynman. But the Inquisitors were not Truth-Seekers. They were Truth-Guardians. I once read an argument (I can’t find the source) that a key component of a zeitgeist is whether it locates its ideals in its future or its past. Nearly all cultures before the Enlightenment believed in a Fall from Grace—that things had once been perfect in the distant past, but then catastrophe had struck, and everything had slowly run downhill since then: In the age when life on Earth was full . . . They loved each other and did not know that this was “love of neighbor.” They deceived no one yet they did not know that they were “men to be trusted.” They were reliable and did not know that this was “good faith.” They lived freely together giving and taking, and did not know that they were generous. For this reason their deeds have not been narrated. They made no history. —The Way of Chuang Tzu, trans. Thomas Merton1

Digital natives and millennials seem more at ease with gender fluidity. In the last year or two, we have seen high-profile moves towards trans awareness and acceptance. Young men, particularly well-educated, metropolitan guys, seem a lot less afraid of appearing gay. Maybe the Department of Masculinity is losing its grip. Like those once unassailable high-street chains which suddenly go bust, maybe the Department will one day reach a tipping point where no one will buy its wares any more. As with many real stores, maybe the Internet is helping to break the Department’s monopoly. Young men are shopping around for alternative visions of the masculine role that fit how they feel. In the future, I hope young men can easily adopt a plurality of masculinities as easily as shopping for a coat.

The only reason I have alluded to this is that the ascetic ideal has, for the present, even in the most spiritual sphere, only one type of real enemy and injurer: these are the comedians of this ideal – because they arouse mistrust. Everywhere else where spirit is at work in a rigorous, powerful and honest way, it now completely lacks an ideal – the popular expression for this abstinence is ‘atheism’ –: except for its will to truth. But this will, this remnant of an ideal, if you believe me, is that ideal itself in its strictest, most spiritual formulation, completely eso- teric, totally stripped of externals, and thus not so much its remnant as its kernel. Unconditional, honest atheism (– its air alone is what we breathe, we more spiritual men of the age!) is therefore not opposed to the ascetic ideal as it appears to be; instead, it is only one of the ideal’s last phases of development, one of its final forms and inherent logical conclusions, – it is the awe-inspiring catastrophe of a two-thousand-year discipline in truth-telling, which finally forbids itself the lie entailed in the belief in 127 ‘the religion of suffering’. 118 Third essay God. (The same process of development in India, completely independ- ently, which therefore proves something; the same ideal forcing the same conclusion; the decisive point was reached five centuries before the European era began, with Buddha or, more precisely: already with the Sankhya philosophy subsequently popularized by Buddha and made into a religion.) What, strictly speaking, has actually conquered the Christian God? The answer is in my Gay Science (section 357):128 ‘Christian moral- ity itself, the concept of truthfulness which was taken more and more seriously, the confessional punctiliousness of Christian conscience, trans- lated and sublimated into scientific conscience, into intellectual rigour at any price. Regarding nature as though it were a proof of God’s goodness and providence; interpreting history in honour of divine reason, as a con- stant testimonial to an ethical world order and ethical ultimate purpose; explaining all one’s own experiences in the way pious folk have done for long enough, as though everything were providence, a sign, intended, and sent for the salvation of the soul: now all that is over, it has conscience against it, every sensitive conscience sees it as indecent, dishonest, as a pack of lies, feminism, weakness, cowardice, – this severity makes us good Europeans if anything does, and heirs to Europe’s most protracted and bravest self-overcoming!’ . . . All great things bring about their own demise through an act of self-sublimation: that is the law of life, the law of necessary ‘self-overcoming’ in the essence of life, – the lawgiver himself is always ultimately exposed to the cry: ‘patere legem, quam ipse tulisti’.129 In this way, Christianity as a dogma was destroyed by its own morality, in the same way Christianity as a morality must also be destroyed, – we stand on the threshold of this occurrence. After Christian truthfulness has drawn one conclusion after another, it will finally draw the strongest con- clusion, that against itself; this will, however, happen when it asks itself, ‘What does all will to truth mean?’ . . . and here I touch on my problem again, on our problem, my unknown friends (– because I don’t know of any friend as yet): what meaning does our being have, if it were not that that will to truth has become conscious of itself as a problem in us? . . . Without a doubt, from now on, morality will be destroyed by the will to truth’s becoming-conscious-of-itself: that great drama in a hundred acts reserved for Europe in the next two centuries, the most terrible, most questionable drama but perhaps also the one most rich in hope . . .

In every part of their lives, young men need access to conversations about what it means to be a man in ways that are not rooted in power, dominance, and violence. We owe it to ourselves to imagine what a post-patriarchal Black masculinity might look like. And, frankly, until we have that conversation, men will continue to kill Black women (cis and trans). And they will continue to kill each other.

In fact, objects are known only through the subject, while the subject can know himself or her- self only by acting on objects materially and men- tally. Indeed, if objects are innumerable and sci- ence indefinitely diverse, all knowledge of the sub- ject brings us back to psychology, the science of the subject and the subject's actions. The fourth remark: People may say that I thus engage in philosophy or epistemology and no longer in scientific psychology. But, in the research that we pursue, it is impossible to dissociate psychology from epistemology. Indeed, if we study only one level of development (for example, that of the adult or adolescent), it is easy to distinguish the prob- lems: psychological experience, emotions, intelli- gence and its functions, etc., on the one hand, and the broad problems of knowledge (epistemology), etc., on the other. But if we want to study cogni- tive functions and pursue a developmental point of view in order to study the formation and trans- formations of human intelligence (and this is why I specialized in child psychology), then the prob- lems must be formulated very differently: How is knowledge acquired, how does it increase, and how does it become organized or reorganized? These are the very questions that must be answered.

people can often make assumptions about trans people. Some people still call us ‘sex change people’, for instance. This assumes that all trans people are having the same experiences and that all of us are having surgeries. Depending on where you are in the process, a trans person may have had no medical intervention. Some transgender people may never have medical interventions if they don’t want them. You guessed it, it’s about identity, and identity – how you feel on the inside and how you want to present yourself to the world – has absolutely nothing to do with your genitals or what medical procedures you may or may not have had.

Non-trans people weighing in with opinions about trans bodies is very much like men weighing in with opinions on childbirth.

things were still horrific. The catcalls were constant, the glares and heckles never ceasing every time I so much as wore lipstick. Getting dressed and leaving my house, facing the scorn of strangers and the constant threat of physical violence, became an act of superhuman courage. Some days, the anxiety would win and I wouldn’t leave my apartment. One time two men on the subway loudly discussed whether they should set me on fire for being a faggot. I pretended not to hear them through my headphones.

Women and girls make this world a nicer and kinder place. The women and girls in our world are capable of taking care of their own lives. Men and boys must never dominate any girl or woman in life. Men and boys must learn to be better human being by respecting all genders - women, men, trans, or any other.

it’s time to remember that boys and girls now change restrooms based on a whim with new Trans laws across the country.  Sororities are going to have men members whether they want them or not.

Humans struggle with difference. We shape stereotypes and patterns of behavior that help us navigate an often perplexing and confusing world, but they often fail us by reducing the full humanity of others to a dull set of characteristics. When faced with difference, whether in regard to who someone finds sexually attractive or how someone conceives of their gender, we have often fallen back onto the well-worn belief that the problem is them. Psychology does not exist above and beyond our prejudices, no matter how much it aspires to scientific objectivity. It has too often started not with a concern for the mental health of others but rather our own discomfort, and mental illness becomes the label we use to classify that discomfort by reassuring ourselves that "they" are the problem. But "they" are also "us," of course. There are trans mental health professionals just like there were gay mental health professionals back when homosexuality was pathologized. Our understanding of gender and sexuality has grown significantly in just the past few decades, but our diagnoses and our nomenclature have proven slow to catch up. This is a matter not just of proper labeling but of justice; as long as gender dysphoria remains, trans people can still be diagnosed with a mental illness if some facet of them is uncomfortable with being trans, not a difficult task to accomplish in a still-transphobic world. This can impact their ability to be parents, to work the jobs they want, to work at all, to be housed, to be protected from discrimination. Gender dysphoria as a diagnosis is an improvement over gender identity disorder, but it is far from perfect, and it continues to give ammunition to the Rowlings and Singals of the world. Hopefully, in due time their arguments will appear as irrational and off-base as the belief that men became gay because their mothers loved them too much.

And, even if a man were to pretend to be a woman in order to win, trans women would still not be to blame. If you are afraid of a cis man pretending to be a woman in order to win women’s sports, you are afraid of toxic cis men, not trans women!

Men cannot afford justice in any sense that tran­scends their own preservation.

Must we relearn everything you were ever taught about biology and history? Clownfish are the answer. Intersex people are cited to prove that you can change sex. But you know that your child isn’t a clownfish and is not intersex. You learn that your child was “assigned” a sex at birth. The nurses and doctors just decided for reasons unknown and possibly nefarious, what gender your child was. The DNA tests and ultrasounds are wrong as well, as science no longer exists. You learn there are forty-seven genders and that genders can change all the time. Sex is dead. It has no meaning and is just used as an excuse to discriminate against trans people and all the other-gendered people. You soon discover that yes, even the Holocaust was the source of suffering for no, not the Jewish people, but primarily transgender people. And of course, you are probably a Nazi yourself if you think differently. Historical figures, mostly women, it seems, are also now being reclaimed with their rightful trans identity. Joan of Arc and Louisa May Alcott were not feminist heroes but trans men. Trans women are literally women, you learn. That’s it. A fact. Women now have penises. Women are now committing rape and murder at higher rates than ever recorded throughout history. Trans women are also miraculously better at sports than natal women for reasons no one can discern. When competing against women, now known as uterus havers, trans women win all the competitions and titles. Any “cis” women objecting to this are just sore losers. “Cis” is the new label you must go by if you don’t despise the body you were born with and want to alter it. You are told this is a great privilege to be “cis” and that trans women suffer much more than any cis woman ever could or ever will, no matter what has happened to you as a “cis” woman. You go underground. You join groups that vet members. Here you can speak freely because all members know what you are going through and share your horror of the gender party.

When the only stories told are by straight white men, it becomes the norm. People assume that the only stories that will turn a profit are stories about that particular experience—when in fact there are whole untapped audiences who would love to see their lives replicated on a stage. Do you know how gratifying it would be for more women or Black or Latinx or Indigenous or trans or disabled people to see themselves represented in theater? The answer is no, you don’t—because you’ve always seen yourself reflected there.

At the end of the day, this isn’t about who is and isn’t a woman. It’s about who performs womanhood enough. It’s about who presents themselves as being a good little pretty wifey who doesn’t stand up to men.

Last year, Crystal Cash, a trans woman from the USA, was shot in the face by Christian extremists. She survived but is now unable to talk.

This healing is for everyone. Perhaps the greatest oversight of the trans movement thus far is that it has positioned gender-based trauma as something that only trans people experience. As a result, there are millions of cisgender, heterosexual people—particularly men—who have never coped with the trauma they’ve experienced, who don’t even recognize their experiences as trauma in the first place. They’ve spent a large portion of their lives being told that they are not man enough if they do this or aren’t masculine enough if they do that, and none of these imperatives are even recognized as gender policing. So many men remain trapped in a cycle of abuse that says you can’t cry, can’t recognize your pain, and must participate in cultures of violence. For many, participating in this cycle of abuse is even a badge of honor. This book is particularly for them. In our world as it is today, it isn’t a question of whether you’ve had gender-based trauma in your childhood. Everyone has had some. Rather, it’s a question of what degree of gender-based trauma you’ve experienced, what degree of distance you felt from your body and your peers. We all need to heal on one level or another.

It’s so funny to me that people accuse trans and nonbinary people of imposing this gender conversation on them, when the real imposition was dividing billions of complex, divine, nuanced souls into two categories: men and women. They tell you that there are only two genders, and they get away with it because they kill, disappear, erase, discredit, and delegitimize all of us who, for hundreds of years, have lived alongside you. Alok

Like a man, I am oblivious to the stakes of the diagnosis and to Lynette's rage taking on new proportions. I don't think I would have responded any differently pretransition. I didn't feel like a woman then. In the rare moments I have thought about my female anatomy, it's only to consider how to make it disappear. I yearned for my mother's breast cancer to be the genetic kind so I could have a preventive double mastectomy, and was disappointed when she called me gleefully to tell me it wasn't. I don't anticipate Lynette's rage coming at me, and I make a terrible joke: "Maybe the doctor would do a twofer," I say as we leave the surgeon's office. I would love to get rid of the body parts she is clinging to. I don't have a clue what it feels like to inhabit her body even though in a biology classroom way our bodies still have plenty in common. Binaries mean everything and nothing in these moments. The binary of what remains of our shared women's anatomy still does not allow me to inhabit what Lynette feels like as a woman losing her uterus. The binary that makes me a man in this situation brings a truth home to Lynette's body that we thought we had faced but hadn't.

Relatively few female-to-male transgender people pursue “bottom surgery”—which probably is a good thing. I have talked to enough transgender-identified people who have suffered a botched phalloplasty (or had friends who did) to fuel a lifetime of nightmares. Whereas 36 percent of biological females identifying as “trans men” have had top surgery and another 61 percent desire it, according to the U.S. Transgender Survey of 2015, only 3 percent have had phalloplasty and only 13 percent even want it.26

The tale of Brown’s eventual exit from the party is an unsavory one. Regina Davis, who according to Brown “held together the proudest of our programs, our school”, had been hospitalized with a broken jaw after being beaten by several men in the Party. Brown had called Huey P. Newton to inform him of this, only to be euphemistically notified that he had indeed authorized her “disciplining”. This compelled her to inform Newton of Davis’ many tasks and responsibilities, as Brown was sure he didn’t realize how indispensable a role Davis played, or was otherwise ignorant of how much she oversaw. She impressed upon Newton that Regina Davis managed everyone from the teachers to the cooks, decided menus and purchases, spoke to parents—“She is the fucking school.” If Davis had asked a male member of the Party to carry out a task and been refused, Brown stressed that she was well within her rights to verbally reprimand him, and the retaliatory violence Davis had suffered was both disproportionate and alarming. Newton’s response was simply that he already knew everything Brown had told him. “The Brothers came to me. I had to give them something.” [Emphasis mine.] Televised or not, it seems the revolution will not be gender-inclusive.