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. …

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…

Othering Newton’s Alchemy — why we do it and what it says about science today Isaac Newton is one of those historical figures we revere as “a father of modern science”. He nerded out on puzzles; like the way light separates into colours through prisms and how objects are pulled towards the earth. As young nerd, I stanned the guy. I was surprised to learn…

A fabric of expectations holds together THE DEAL™ in which we live. We’re expected, for example, to partner with someone of “a different sex” (hetero-normativity). We’re expected to read and respect non-explicit social cues (class-normativity, whiteness & neuro-normativity). And we’re expected to perform genders given to us as children…

It’s exhausting to seek accommodations. Here’s how to make it smoother. — “I am disabled” and “I have X disability” don’t mean what you think they mean. To you they reference ableist norms and practices — the very stuff of late-bootstrap grind culture. But to your interlocutor, they mean something very different. They hear, “something is wrong with me”; and they’re invited…