every generation needs its own war, he used to say

it took me forty pages to remember how we once were (civil property)

conventional definitions of politics - that it is a public-sphere activity, carried out in recognizably "political" institutions; that it is about control of the state... are rejected as too narrow. some have countered that there is politics in everything, that to study politics is "to analyze relations of dominance" in all settings, including the family.

-jane jaquette (1995)

"I remember her talking to the therapist and saying something to the effect of, like, you know, 'I'd be OK if Jonah just was gay, I just don't want ... him to be transgender.' And the therapist just laughed, she said, 'You know, 15 years ago, I had people on this couch saying, 'I don't mind him being a little effeminate, as long as he's not gay,'" Joel says.

-this npr story

...in which one psychologist argues that children cannot "be" transgender* until age 10 or 11. ha. so is that the age of consent for gender, for eternal salvation? puh-leeze. no one chooses their gender; it is chosen for them in at least two ways (social and biological). but why do we yearn for one constant gender, one from a set of just two? because there is nothing we want more than an identity, an accurate sense of self?

*we could (but should we?) define the term transgender as a preference for gender-sex disjoint