September 25, 2026
Last Ditch Effort to Defend One of the Last Lesbian Bars from Queer Paranoia
Greenfield's Last Ditch Bar faces a boycott over one mask-optional night. The data on COVID says the real threat to this lesbian bar is queer paranoia.
Articles for tag: COVID, fear-and-emotion, Judith-Butler, lesbians
July 7, 2026
Queer Theory 101: What Does “Queer” Actually Mean?
What does queer mean? One takeaway from a quick review of—mostly negative—responses to Matthew Vines’s recent post for The New York Times, “I’m Gay, Not Queer. It Matters,” is that people are very confused about what the term queer means.
November 6, 2025
The Anti-Homoness of Straight Hipster Politics: On Homo Family Values and the Question of Political Change
Hipster irony is just more of the same: straight (male) resentment and self-righteousness masquerading as progressive politics.
September 15, 2025
Free Speech, Free Reign: The Pious Speech of Andrew Sullivan
Andrew Sullivan insists that speech is never violent. He's wrong. Every democracy acknowledges a link between speech and violent conduct.
Sex Changes
In the most recent episode of the New Thoughts Podcast, I argue that Trans* people are figures of change. And it is change that the forces opposed to Trans* loves and lives want to end.
September 7, 2025
Excitable Truth? On Speaking the Truth in Love
What does speaking the truth in love mean? It means sharing truth with a sense of irony. Truth is just not that serious. Truth is (un)serious.
Coming Soon
New post on the purposes of theory and two new episodes of The New Thoughts Podcast coming soon! Trans Desire and Social Media are my topics.
March 24, 2024
Serious Reading
* In her recent book, Who Is Afraid of Gender?, Judith Butler asks us to think critically about gender. Thinking critically about gender entails actually reading texts that seriously investigate and explore the (dis-)contents of gender. Butler explicitly defines what is at stake in the practice of reading, namely “democratic life”: Reading is not just a pastime or a luxury, but a precondition of democratic life, one of the practices that keep debate and disagreement grounded, focused, and productive. Judith Butler, Who Is Afraid of Gender? (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024), 18-19. The specific point Butler is making
