Like 20 pages to go of this edit and I am exhausted. Also I really want to do another read through/edit but am worried that's pushing it before the deadline

Super excited to announce that I'm running another online trans theology conference, this time with @cdjtheology.bsky.social ! We're looking to connect theology with contemporary research in trans studies. 20th-21st Aug, with US-friendly timings londonjesuitcentre.churchsuite.com/events/wevpt...

Why are all online resources suddenly in ebook form? I need page numbers to cite!

Deadline is the end of this month and it's making my brain a bit strange.

So much of this book is like 'hey, here's a thing. It can be used in ways that lead to freedom and ways that leaf to oppression. Let's try deliberately using it for freedom?'

Me: carefully analysing the underlying logic of conservative theology and gender anxiety. This guy: just literally saying it out loud.

Thought I was done with this chapter. Actually needs a major restructure because I keep coming back to take bites out of Charles Kingsley and I should probably...eat him all at once? Gross.

Concerned that the rhetoric of the terrible article pitting trans rights against women's rights in the Church Times ensures that the pushback will be taken to prove the article's point (rather than as evidence that a broad base of people reject its premises...)

Seventeenth Century Danish Witch (or possibly 'wax effigy of a child')

Black Lace Veil Brides

I have a month to turn this into something coherent and rigorous. More coffee.

Hwæt! Tis the season when I repost my epic mashup of Beowulf and Dr. Seuss.

'audience research suggests that the language preferred by this group is confusing to some people, so instead we're just going to say slurs'

What does protection from discrimination on the basis of gender reassignment mean if the national broadcaster can determine that language near universally used to harass and exclude is the most neutral way of talking about trans people?

This isn't surprising, as I've already seen this kind of language used in statements aiming to be supportive following the SC ruling. Apparently we're all supposed to now pretend that the average person doesn't know what a trans person is without reference to agab.

Doesn’t feel good that the head of BBC News Content is instructing reporters to refer to trans people with slurs. If this leak is real it raises questions about who made this decision, who was consulted, and why the BBC chose to ignore its own editorial guidelines on slurs and offensive language

It is 2025. The EHRC in the UK keeps trying to materialize a trans bathroom ban out of a muddled UKSC opinion third-sexing all trans people. A bill to criminalise those who provide trans minors with transition care passed in the US House of Representatives. And cis "allies" still think this helps.

Consistent experience of my adult life is government reviews using 'biopsychosocial' to let them dismiss any biological or social factors as purely psychological when experienced by minority groups.

It's like they keep timing this shit for important moments in the church year (Supreme Court was just before Easter). Guess I'm going to be avoiding social media and the news until the 26th...

Christmas order of service derangement level - my hand slipped and I made this...

When transphobic “academics” complained about a “chilling effect” on their “research” they meant people describing their transphobic “research” as transphobic. Now there is a REAL chilling effect for trans academics of top-down establishment measures like fines & toilet bans. archive.is/oYqXS

Book now has a draft cover. Guess I'd better get my act together and finish writing thing thing. Just a little thing called Christmas in the way...

'Biological' male or female used for trans+ people is misgendering and not neutral, it's a slur. It doesn't matter if a judge said it. Media folk using it are doing a similar thing to interviewing racists and not just repeating their slurs in quotes but adopting them themselves. It needs to stop

Male socialisation was knowing that I was doing 'boy' wrong sonehow as early as playgroup, and spending school desparately trying to perform 'boy' well enough to not get beaten up...

15 years or so ago I rocked up, as a bright eyed and bushy tailed fresher, to a meeting about being a reporter for [Student Paper in Oxford]. Completely put off when basically the first thing the editor said was that we should literally chase ambulances. This seems related, somehow.

I have printed out a draft of the book to scrawl all over. 8ish weeks to deadline, two of which are full of Church Christmas...

if you genuinely want to argue that the Equality Act, when introduced, intended to make unlawful an approach to trans inclusion that has existed *since the 1970s*, I absolutely cannot take you seriously

Must make this galvanise me into writing/editing rather than scare me out of finishing the book.

Bleak.

As a charity trustee I understand the position these charities are in, and probably have more sympathy than most. But if the Guides and the WI can't challenge this stuff, how can any smaller org? The SC ruling seems to have anticipated the details being hashed out in court, which won't happen now.

I know they won't, but all the government would have to do would be to whip its huge majority to pass legislation allowing trans inclusion. They simply do not have to pretend that the Equality Act 2010 mandated segregation - we do not have a US style Supreme Court!

The article explicitly notes WI had had a trans-inclusive policy *since the 1970s*!

Seriously, though, how to get past a) the fear I've missed an extremely obvious source that undermines my entire argument and b) the urge to engage with everything to prove I've read it?

People just have to stop publishing work that resonates with the book that's due in January. It's torture for the part of me that feels I need to engage with everything that's even vaguely relevant and is terrified of missing an obvious discussion partner! (also this looks great)

Well done guys. Real inclusive there.

Reflecting once again that perhaps we'd be doing better in terms of feminist/queer theory if we'd cared less what Lacan thought

If the Prescott memo is true, and there is a secret cabal of LGBTQ+ journalists stopping any negative stories about trans people being published or aired at BBC News, then, I have to say, they’re doing a really fucking shit job of that.

This is hilarious. As far back as the 90s the BBC also failed to report that The Undertaker and Kane were gaining an unfair advantage by pretending to be brothers...

'Innovative Puseyite' fits quite well tbh. (link to quiz: anglican-quiz.vercel.app)

Ordered an untitled hardcore 7" (g.l.o.s.s. 2015). Was sent a different untitled hardcore 7" (Cell 2017). Both are 10 minutes of a woman yelling over guitars, so I can see where the mistake happened.

"You are out of your mind. Too much learning is driving you insane" - the Acts of the Apostles

The problem the theologies of suffering is that they are so often presented to those who are suffering by those who appear to be suffering less. And in doing so they seem to appeal not to the joy of solidarity but to exactly the kind of opposotional, hierarchical thinking they claim to reject.

Went for a run. Remembered why I don't do that. Back to the gym for me.

Thoughts on the 'sensible liberal ratchet' brought to you by getting frustrated by certain theologians who do a similar thing:

"I am convinced that the preferential choice for the poor is a source of extraordinary renewal both for the Church and for society, if we can only set ourselves free of our self-centeredness and open our ears to their cry." Pope Leo, Dilexi Te

The real strangeness is the sudden allergy to weaponised 'guilt' from a political tendency which loves to assign guilt by association to people who aren't white men.

Seeing discourse on 'right to belief' and it's making me think of how many people seem to demand One Single Consistent Ontology of Transness before they'll accept it and, like, the whole history of philosophy shows we don't even have a single consistent ontology of humanness.

Broke the 50k word barrier! Actually having a readable book by the Jan deadline feels somewhat doable now!

Six draft chapters. None of them really end yet. Need to write a 'context and rationale' type intro. 2 days of study leave left before we're back to 'somehow write in "spare" time. Need to do So Much Editing.