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…

Congratulations! Read on for more good news. — Hi there! Welcome to Pride 2022. I’m your assigned representative, here to deliver the good news: You’re transgender. Let me guess: You got here by Googling “am I transgender.” Or “signs you might be transgender.” Or “illness make people believe they are transgender.” Or “hormonal disorder testosterone make woman believe…

On Johnny Depp, and our seemingly endless ability to humanize and forgive abusive men. — His speech is slurred. He’s puffy. He struggles to answer basic questions. Ask him what movies he’s been in, or who he played in those movies; sometimes he can’t recall. He’s trying some kind of accent these days — transatlantic, a Katherine Hepburn thing; on lines like “sir, this is…

Trans men are erased from discussions about abortion. Undoing that erasure left me stranded between selves. — I wrote my second book the year my daughter was born. We had no money for day care, and no desire to send our newborn to one; my husband worked from home several days a week, and while he sat in the kitchen, a sitter came over. If I was…

Despite efforts to paint peaceful protesters as a threat, the real violence is coming from those who want to force birth. — Giving birth is violent. I can’t believe I have to say that, in this century, but I do. Pregnancy is a nine-month-long gauntlet, in which the human body is pushed to and beyond its limits, and if anything at all goes wrong — pre-eclampsia, a badly located placenta, an ectopic…

We are not going back to the way things were before Roe v. Wade. We’re going somewhere much worse. — Roe v. Wade is dead. I’ve written that sentence so many times, for so many years, that it barely registers. I’ve been mourning the loss for half a decade. I’m used to mourning now. …

As the right wing moves to immiserate or kill everyone but cis, straight white guys, the targets don’t even know they’re in the same fight. — Writing about gender as a trans feminist feels like a fool’s errand in 2022. For one thing, our enemies understand the field of play better than we do. …