The Trans Rights Readathon Is Upon Us!

Book covers of the books I'm reading for the trans rights readathon

The Trans Rights Readathon launches this Friday! This decentralized readathon helps raise money for great trans causes while reading books by trans authors.

This year, I’ve pledged to read 8 books and aim to raise $4,000 for the Lavender Rights Project!

Please donate to help me reach this goal!

Thanks to generous donations, we’ve raised $695 so far.

You can boost this TikTok, Mastodon, BlueSky, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and follow my reading updates on TikTok, Goodreads, and Storygraph.

I’ll be reading:

  • Bad Boy by Elliot Wake
  • Boys Weekend by Mattie Lubchansky
  • Heartstopper Volume 2 by Alice Oseman
  • Heartstopper Volume 3 by Alice Oseman
  • Heartstopper Volume 4 by Alice Oseman
  • Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt
  • The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You by S. Bear Bergman
  • The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White

By donating, you’ll help trans people in need connect legal services, economic justice needs, and housing. The Lavender Rights Project is a wonderful nonprofit created for and by trans people. They serve the Puget Sound Area and do some legal work nationally. One of their current major efforts (in collaboration with Chief Seattle Club and King County) is building a 35-unit building providing permanent supportive housing for QT2BIPOC in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.

The Readathon provides a source of joy and celebration, which as a nonbinary trans masculine person, let’s have more joy, please! It’s a chance to uplift trans authors and provide material support to trans people. Let’s drown out the hate and keep on dancing.

Do You Mean Women? Or Do You Mean Those Not Affected by Cis Male Privilege?

Four professional women sit together around tables.

As professional business organizations attempt to diversify and welcome Gen Z, you may conflate the two and have to adjust your mindset and your group.

For over 15 years, my professional career has sat at the crosshairs of tech and community. In the US, tech1 is dominated by men, especially cishet able-bodied white men. Community professionals (those running these groups) are predominantly cis white women, and cishet able-bodied white men dominate as community “thought leaders.” None of this is shocking, given we live in a white supremacist patriarchal society, and our workplaces and associated groups reflect this.

In workplaces, men are given more leadership opportunities and more chances and space to voice and enact their ideas. Many men choose (consciously or unconsciously) to use patriarchal tools of violence to enact domination for power in little and world-changing ways.

Women comprise the majority of community roles because they’re considered “natural” at nurturing, compassion, empathy, general social skills, and a host of other feminine traits seen as inherent to women.2 As long as they don’t push back against the hierarchy and are okay with men rising to the top as leaders as these men chase power (influence + fame + money). Many women choose (consciously or unconsciously) to use patriarchal tools of violence to enact domination over other women and people of intersecting marginalized identities (especially against people of color) for power in little and world-changing ways.

Cishet able-bodied white women, in particular, often choose to be “second” in white supremacist patriarchy under white men rather than align with the global majority. This can look like pulling up the ladder behind them, not promoting employees equitably, considering themselves “not like the other girls,” socially enforcing Western beauty standards, etc. This false assimilation can be alluring to gain power and keep the status quo under hierarchical workplace and societal systems and allows white women (or anyone else grasping at pick-me status) to not do the work of unpacking, understanding, repairing, healing from, and rejecting white supremacist patriarchy.

For-profit (tech) companies have used community as an avenue to soften their image and create super fans. Some have created cults as cults result from using your community-building skills and expertise for unethical or nefarious purposes. They also use women (and sometimes other underrepresented minorities) to soften their image. Cue Sheryl Sandberg. On smaller scales, I’ve witnessed many female employees of all levels “make nice” with people who were incredibly and often rightfully pissed at the company’s male CEO or other executives.

Enter the “nice” way to push back against workplace patriarchy: professional women’s groups

Continue reading “Do You Mean Women? Or Do You Mean Those Not Affected by Cis Male Privilege?”

This Barbie is a Trans Nonbinary Person.

Left: A recent selfie of me with Barbie advertisement says This Barbie is a trans nonbinary person. Middle top: Photo of me at my 8th birthday with the Barbie cake. Middle bottom: Me and my Barbies and off-brand Barbie house Top right: my cake-making grandma and myself at my 8th birthday Bottom left: My brother Jonathan wrenching on the Barbie convertible with real tools.

Life in smooth plastic. It’s fantastic!

As a child, I had an army of Barbies. Not a modest country’s army. Like US military spending army. I got Barbies for every birthday and holiday. I had my mom’s old Barbies. I accumulated more Barbies from neighbors whose teenagers didn’t want them anymore, and plenty of garage sale finds. My maternal grandma made me a Barbie birthday cake where the cake was Barbie’s dress, and in the middle of the cake stood Barbie.1

My Barbies had an ice cream parlor (garage sale find), a horse stable (stolen from my younger brother), and an off-brand Barbie home (Christmas gift from the JCPenny catalog).2 I’d decorate their home with craft supplies and random things I found. Those little plastic pizza separators in personal Pizza Hut pizzas I’d earned in book reading contests made great Barbie stools.

Barbie could be anything. Barbie was in charge. Barbie served ice cream. Barbie rode horses and raised rabbits like me. Barbie went on dates with other Barbies. Barbies spent a lot of time obsessed with fashion. Barbie was an astronaut. Barbie was a supermodel. Barbie gossiped. Barbie fought, despite a largely unbendable body except for Figure Skating Barbie. Barbie was also friends with all the other Barbies, Kens, and even the lone Skipper.

Barbie was a storytelling and fashion vehicle. I could act out my little stories, and in between, Barbie could wear the loud neon fashions of the 1980s and 90s with too many ridiculous heels that mine mostly forwent. Continue reading “This Barbie is a Trans Nonbinary Person.”

The Trans Rights Readathon Results

Trans Rights Readathon Campaign Results Thank you! $3,050 raised for Trans Lifeline 30 donors 7 books read and book covers

Sometimes, even I forget that I can do something.

On Monday, the Trans Rights Readathon came to a close. I’m over the moon to report that we raised $3,050 for Trans Lifeline, a trans-led nonprofit that provides peer support and microgrants for trans people.

30 donors, plus myself, pledged to either pay per book I read during that week or made a flat donation to my campaign. I read a total of 7 books by trans authors.

My book list:

❤️ The Unbalancing by RB Lemberg (fantasy)
🧡 Cheer Up! Love and Pompoms by Crystal Frasier and Val Wise (YA romance comic)
💛 Heartwood: Non-binary Tales of Sylvan Fantasy, edited by Joamette Gil (YA fantasy comics)
💚 Your Body is Not Your Body: An Anthology, edited by Alex Woodroe and Matt Blairstone (horror short stories)
💙 Chef’s Kiss by TJ Alexander (contemporary romance)
💜 The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi (literary fiction)
🖤 Whipping Girl by Julia Serano (nonfiction gender/queer studies)

The Trans Rights Readathon was a decentralized campaign kicked off by author Sim Kern, and anyone could join to read books by/about trans people and donate money to trans causes. Continue reading “The Trans Rights Readathon Results”

The Girly Perfection of Flawless Polished Nails

Greco Roman statue that is chipped on the face

How I painted my fingernails like a man

I hated painting my nails. While I zealously painted my toenails for decades, I hated painted fingernails. They always chipped, and I’d pick at the remaining polish and destroy my nails as layers peeled away like onion skins. I couldn’t stop myself from picking them apart.

Until my late 20s, I was too poor and cheap to get professional manicures. But even when I did (not often), I’d dread the walk over to the neat little racks showing off what brands and colors the salon offered to pick mine.

My nails have always grown quickly and are strong and thick. Every keyboard bares indents from my nails, water carving through stone to form a river over time. While they eventually break, my nails stand against the wear and tear I’ve put them through, like ranching, gardening, and washing dishes. I’ve never had gels or professionally applied length because I could have natural long ones. Mostly, I’d look down at my nails one day, and they’d be very long again. Or I’d break an index fingernail, and suddenly keyboarding was catawampus. Or a cis woman would notice my hands, exclaim at how very long my nails were, and share how disappointingly brittle hers are.

But polish? Every chip made me feel like a failure. Like a little bomb telling me I did something wrong. I just had them done; they should be flawless like a woman in an advertisement with her flowing hair, lush makeup, and buttery hands with flawless nails.

Intellectually, I know no one’s nails are flawless, even if fresh from a manicure.

Every little chip felt like another flake of failure at being feminine, at being a woman. Continue reading “The Girly Perfection of Flawless Polished Nails”