A Mind Asleep

Hi, friends. This post breaks the usual theme of my blog. I'm writing to let you all know that I contributed a guest post to another blog. The guest post started as a Facebook comment in a thread discussing J.K. Rowling's stance on trans rights, and the FB friend whose page it was invited me to expand what I wrote into something he could put on his blog. Six hours of writing later, I ended up with a monstrous piece of writing that could have served as a chapter in a book on the delinquency of Rowling.  He was kind enough to publish it, despite the length. The post is here:  What Your Trans Friends Hear When J.K. Opens Her Mouth The piece goes into detail regarding the repercussions of two specific aspects of Rowling's views on transgender people. I go over the consequences associated with excluding trans women from women's spaces and some of the consequences for spreading the myth of transness as a social contagion in young people. I wrote that piece for people who do n...

 “That’s ugly dude. You gotta shave.” I put my hand over my chin and blushed as the other boy laughed. “Why do you have that? Just shave it off,” he said, rubbing his chin and then pointing to mine. “I don’t know,” I said, dropping my eyes. “Leave me alone.” “Jeez,” he muttered as I stormed off to class. I gingerly touched the single, inch-long hair coming off my chin and felt nauseous. I had been putting off asking my dad how to shave. For the last few months, little hairs had started coming out of my face. I had tugged at the longest one, thinking that maybe a could pull it out. It hurt terribly, so instead I tried to ignore it. I could not ignore it. The thick dark hairs were there every time I looked in the mirror. There were only maybe 5 very noticeable ones, but lighter fuzz was beginning to cover my jaw like mold growing out of an old loaf of bread. I stared at them in the mirror, and, with a sense of horror in my gut, I touched one of those hairs just enough to feel r...