Love is Personal, Violence is Cultural — we’re vectors. This is a story about people doing their best. Like we all are. Elle and Lauren Elloise (Elle) is a drummer in a band and has been messing with gender presentation on stage for years. She and her girlfriend (Lauren) generously…

“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice. “You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.” There’s a cup waiting for me at the mad-hatter’s tea party. My friends are there. And my cup waits. I see the cup. I hear my friends. …

In How Emotions are Made, Lisa Feldman Barrett describes “the classical view of emotion” and new consensus which she calls the “theory of constructed emotion”. The classical view This framework paints fear, anger, delight and joy as universal experiences: every person, from every culture, experiences these emotions because they are pre-determined, heritable features…

I recall my first week of telling people “I’m trans” and watching their face do things I had not expected. If they didn’t choke on their weeties, they at least said something weird. Some said “nothing’s changed for me, man.” Others said “oh I hope you’re safe”. …

It starts with our language — Begging for liberation never worked. We mustn’t ask. We have to tell. We do that by choosing our language. When we say, “i’m living with a mental illness” we’re begging for pity. We evoke the basement of the mental hospital; a saline drip trolley and unsound mind — only the…

Becca Rothfield lays bare the deception of our greatest modern misogynist, Jordan Peterson, in a piece titled, “Sexism and the aesthetics of rationality”. Peterson’s cunning lies not in what he has to say, Rothfield suggests, but what he doesn’t say: They’re not saying that a Good Woman (tm) has kids…

I bought a pouch of tobacco today. I’ve been without cigarettes for three days. Sometimes quitting goes well. But today I found myself stuck in a couch, unable to stand. I couldn’t order tasks in my head to perform them. I just sat there. Autistic catatonia is the psychiatric label…

In a magical otherland, where people don’t speak but instead join their hands and trace on each others’ palms, the roughness of skin and the size and shape of hands carry meanings like the sounds of voices do on earth. You wake up there. Your skin is rough and your…

Nicky is schizophrenic. In another time and place, Nicky’s clan looked to her for wisdom and spiritual guidance. In today’s bargain, she works in an office. She is undervalued and she feels it. Her distress plays out in ways unfamiliar to her colleagues. They edge her out. Cue more distress…