So, content warning: This is about COVID deaths. Someone tweeted about case counts correlated to Rep/Dem voting patterns by county showing that the GOP was literally killing its constituents, and someone else rebutted that cases aren’t correlated to deaths because only about one in seven people who test positive die. But a proper correlation would…
Author: Clio
Mirrors, Windows, and Nonbinary Literature
A recent conversation about Jeff Garvin’s “Symptoms of Being Human” reminded me of the literary concept of mirrors and windows. Two of my favorite TikTokers are @finngerhardt and @mx.deran, and these two illustrate the concept well. The bulk of @finngerhardt’s TikToks are deliberate windows: The purpose is to educate cis folks about being allies to nonbinary people; these videos…
On Demi Lovato, Cancel Culture, and Fact Checking
So someone asked why Demi Lovato is so controversial and… I can’t tell. I feel like people take every little thing they say and twist it way out of proportion. They accepted a free trip to Israel and were excited about getting baptized in the River Jordan. This becomes: “Demi Lovato is a Zionist!” They…
The Sweet Tooth of Marine City
1 The five and dime where my parents bought my first typewriter is now a candy store that shares its name with a comic book series about the apocalypse, and that makes sense because I feel like I am a hybrid, half-human, half-alien, looking to be made whole, and I feel like it was there—in…
Learning to Breathe: Pronouns
I have come to dislike pronouns. That’s not quite true. I like the concept of pronouns. I was well inducted into the School of Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla. I see that it’s important to be able to refer to a person without having to use, or even know, their name. But English, like its Indo-European siblings, messed it…
Pronouns
I don’t want pronouns that tell you I’m nonbinary. I want pronouns that tell you I’m a person. I want pronouns that don’t remind me of my culture’s need to bucket everyone into “man” and “woman” the moment we look at someone. Gender is important, but only because we’ve made it so. We’re obsessed with…
On “transgendered” (offensive word)
I was watching a Jammidodger video this morning and had a realization that another* problem with the term “transgendered men” (and “… women”) is that it allows for two interpretations. If you believe that transgender men are men, then what does it mean to have been “transgendered”? It would presumably mean that, while you have…
coffee
coffee smells likemy father’s church:stale and detached andemotionally out of reach coffee burns my nostrilswith the memory of abandonmentof another late nightat workbecause he can’t stand her eitherhe can’t be around her eithershe crushes his souland reminds him that he failed as a partneras a parentas a protectoras a provider so he hides at workwhere…
Off-Key Karaoke
One of comedian Al Franken’s more enduring characters is Stuart Smalley, an awkward man who wears pastel and stares into a mirror saying, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.” Superficially, the character is a parody of self-help “fake it ’til you make it” psychotherapy strategies, where it feels like…
On Friendships and a Broken Childhood
I am the child of a minister. We moved every few years, as my father was assigned to a new church. My father told me this was because the United Methodist church didn’t want any parish to be built around a single minister; it was about the church, not the personality. When I was a…