And Whether Cis People Really Get It I think about privilege a lot. I've written a few posts about it here, including this post on a variety of forms of privilege that I have. You might notice, if you read it, that I don't list "male privilege" as one of them. That's because, well, I
A Reader's Question A few people have asked me how they should refer to my past in terms of name and pronouns. In fact, people have more typically asked me more generally: how should you refer to a trans* person's past. Below the fold, I'll post a friend's actual questions and then my response. A
Check-Raising Tourists The subtitle is a reference to the famous poker movie Rounders. Now, to "real" poker players, there are just a tonne of flaws in the realism of the movie (the underground clubs are somewhat accurate; the betting patterns in the key hands are not), but with that said, it's still a favourite. Only
Short Answer: No Idea, Stop Asking Every once in a while I get asked about how guys think. The implicit, or sometimes explicit, presumption is that I must have some sort of insider information, since — they seem to think — I used to be (or still am?) a guy. This post is about how
Do You Know About Yours? Many of us carry around at least some form of privilege. Some have many forms of privilege. Of course, we often didn't ask for this privilege, and we often didn't do anything to gain the privilege, but that doesn't mean we're not responsible for it. Privilege is essentially an unfair
In Response to Complaints About Being Mispronouned I've written a few posts related to some misponouning incidents in my old department (I've since moved departments to take up a postdoctoral position). I want to keep pushing this, because not only were the incidents themselves horrible, but the responses by others — people who're ostensibly allies
For an Apology That Probably Won't Come This is something I wrote early December 2012. As the title suggests, I woke up this morning waiting for an apology that probably won't come. I was out late, and I slept in a little, and I awoke hoping that there might be an email message with an
That Is, My Lack of a Place I've been thinking a lot lately about my connection to the "community." Essentially, I'm a bit of an outsider. The biggest source of ire about my work tends to come from other trans* people. Sure, I get some hate mail from cis people, but they never say that
More Questions from Class Last week, I explained how I often include an "Ask a Trans Person" lecture when I'm teaching gender identity and transgender issues. I included a few questions that I was asked and how I answered them. In this post, I'll continue with more questions from that class. Again, I welcome reader
Another Round of Student Questions This term, one of the courses that I'm teaching is an introduction to ethics, both theory and issues. I spent the first 1/4 to 1/3 of the course teaching the ins and outs of various central theories, and how to apply them to real-life cases like euthanasia, abortion, crime and