Category: Life
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Time traveling with film
I watched 1987’s No Man’s Land the other night. I loved it, not for the writing or the acting, but because it felt like I was visiting another time: a version of the eighties showcased through home interiors, streetscapes, restaurants, cars and tech. There’s something about being able to step into the eighties, nineties, and…
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Anti-trans and anti-gay rallies across Canada, deconstructed
Following the failure to portray gay people as an existential threat, conservatives have shifted to trans people’s increasing acceptance as the latest wedge issue. Supported by an ecosystem of American conservative television, British tabloids, reactionary content creators, and a long-standing history of homophobia and transphobia domestically, these forces have resulted in the biggest rallies against…
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Childlessness, Grief & Future
This May will mark ten years since I went to the fertility clinic to freeze my sperm. I’m don’t think I will renew this year. The way I saw it, I had three options to conceive a child: The opportunity for the first has passed. I’m single, it would take me five years to be…
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International Chess Federation Bans Trans Women
The International Chess Federation, FIDE, has banned trans women from participating in women’s events in a new policy: In the event that the gender was changed from a male to a female the player has no right to participate in official FIDE events for women until further FIDE’s decision is made. Such decision should be…
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Towards a burn-out world
For the third time in my career in tech, I’m experiencing burn-out. Part of it has to do with working at a start-up. But I think much of it can be attributed to what it’s like working white collar jobs in 2023, compared to twenty, thirty, forty years ago. The promise of advancing tech was…
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I’m addicted to my phone
I have heard a definition of addiction as being “an increasing and compulsive tendency to avoid, pain, boredom, silence, inner development, and moral responsibility by displacing it with outer stimulation.” Jim John Payne, Being at your best when your kids are at their worst I’ve been having a good few weeks. I took a five…
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Anti-trans mob in Ottawa
On Friday (June 9th), a mob of transphobes descended on three Ottawa schools in the west end. They believe that educators are corrupting cisgender children into becoming trans; a reformulation of the old “the gays are recruiting children” trope.
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It’s terrorism.
A week before starting to write this article, neo-Nazis showed up to harass families attending a storytelling event in Toronto. They were incensed that the story was read by a person wearing outfits associated with a different gender. Among the detractors was the leader of the Canadian Nationalist Party and members of White Lives Matter…
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A bibliography for trans history in Canada
This list is not definitive. It started with what was in my own collection, and then I expanded it to cover more titles that I was aware of or had read. Consider it just a snapshot, limited by my own access and bias. It covers up until 2024. I’m generally uninterested in trans autobiographies beyond…