While I understand the distinction between shame and guilt being between “how I am” vs “what I did”, I feel like this misses what is for me a major component of shame. Shame is often pre-emptive: I feel ashamed of things I want to do, before I’ve even done them. I fear mockery and ostracism….
Category: Other essays
On the Correlation Between COVID Cases and Deaths
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…
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…
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…
On “You might change your mind!”
Less than one in ten people who being transitioning step backward (“detransition”) at some point. Not all of them detransition completely. About two out of five first marriages end through divorce rather than death. (This number is higher for second and third marriages.) And yet… it is far more common for people to try to…
About That Syrup Thing…
Why are some White people so upset about losing Aunt Jemima? Please note: I’m White. While I’m glad you’re reading this, make sure you’re reading Black voices. If you decide to skip this and do that instead, wonderful. Some suggestions: Ijeoma Oluo, Ibram X. Kendi, Matthew Kay, Carol Anderson, bell hooks, Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Angie Thomas, and…
Race and Class Privilege in the Age of COVID-19
Madonna recently referred to the COVID-19 pandemic as “the great equalizer”. In the sense that any infection itself doesn’t care about wealth, ethnicity, or background, she’s right. But the harsh reality is that our US culture is deeply steeped in inequities that impact our experiences, including during times of crisis like this. Both the mainstream news…
Black History Month: Mathematicians
For Black History Month 2020, I wrote a brief biography of noteworthy African-American mathematicians. This is not meant to be a canonical, prioritized, or exhaustive list, although many of these mathematicians are often on “best of” or “firsts” lists. There are many more Black mathematicians whose names deserve to be known, a list that grows…
Martin Luther King and Children’s Books
Recently, there was criticism of the “Who Was…” book on Harriet Tubman, based on its depiction of a young enslaved Harriet as being happy despite her situation. At the time, it was pointed out that the author of the book is White. I researched the “Who Was…” series in general and found that most of…