White supremacy, but make it Goth. — Is conservatism cool now? This question, posed by countless tattooed youth pastors and/or episodes of Family Ties, is one we never tire of asking. The latest example, smeared all over my Twitter dashboard, is an article in the New York Times — somehow not the only article of its kind…

On domestic labor, “bitter” housewives, and trying to imagine what care looks like in a world where not everything falls on Mom. — It’s a ritual of the modern Internet: First, a straight woman complains about the distribution of housework in her marriage. Second, the entire Internet descends to call her a selfish bitch. This week, the woman was Mary Catherine Starr, author of “Mom Life Comics,” and the Internet’s vengeance was hastened…

It’s a long, hard summer and the produce section is the only thing keeping my spirit intact. — As I awoke this morning from uneasy dreams I found myself transformed into someone who can no longer write political blog posts. The dreams (as if you care) were about COVID. Someone had brought a very small, premature baby to a big, public indoor gathering, and the baby wasn’t vaccinated…

The once-beloved “leftist” is facing backlash for her anti-abortion views. Why did it take this long? — The first time I realized something was off about Elizabeth Bruenig, I was looking at her uterus. She had followed me on Twitter after I’d criticized someone named Matt Bruenig for harassing female journalists; she didn’t tell me they were married, and she was so friendly that I didn’t suspect…

Top surgery, public pools, ballet classes, and why 2022 feels like the worst possible moment to come back to my body. — Here is my body in July, early afternoon, in a car headed from New York to Virginia: I am lying on my side in the half-reclined passenger seat, arms crossed over my chest. My right leg is bent, foot pressed against the car door; I’m rolling my ankle, trying to…

On Taika Waititi, straight men in gay outfits, and why cis men are not “demolishing masculinity.” — I didn’t begin this week expecting to locate the single tweet that encapsulates all of my issues with contemporary Masculinity Discourse, but here we are, and here it is: Taika Waititi is the director of several movies, most recently Thor: Love and Thunder. He plays a gay pirate on…

On my nemesis — a collection of gender-based insecurities in the form of a person — and the pressure to be real. — Every day of my life, I feel his presence: The Actual Real Transgender Man. This man does not exist (although he does, in the form of all trans men who have their shit more together than I do) and yet he has taunted me since the beginning of my transition…

Conservatives insist that exposure to gender fluidity is transing our children. To which I say: I wish. — If you’ve paid any attention to the “debate” around trans rights in the United States, you’ve heard of “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” — or, as the real Nazis like to say, “grooming.” The idea, in brief, is that being trans is a “social contagion,” and that being around trans people, or…

Boy Smells has decided to market its fragrances as “breaking the binary,” but has any of their products changed its gender? I’ll check. — One of the wonderful things about being transgender is that there is no need to borrow trouble. If you don’t have something to cry about, someone will come along and give you a reason. It’s rare that you get a day to really savor the petty grievances, which is why…