Here’s a fact about human nature: you act according to what you believe is possible. If you don’t think you could ever really reach your fitness goals, you won’t make time to hit the gym. Why bother with an exercise in futility? If you think there’s no way you could…

I want progressive values to win. I believe they can. I don’t think most progressive activists agree. There’s a funny parallel between left-wing and right-wing activists: each of them has the same view not only of their own side, but of the other. They’re both convinced that their opponents are…

Paganism has no creed and no central authority. Not only is there no orthodoxy — there isn’t anyone to test for it. That’s made it home for people with all kinds of speculative, avant-garde ideas. Sometimes that freedom allows people to create beautiful concepts, theological artists creating masterpieces of ritual…

Simply existing as a trans person in a hostile society is not a revolutionary act. I used to think it was. When my transition was just getting started, I immersed myself in the trans activist community. We told each other that merely by living, we were challenging the standards of…

When I was a teenager, I thought the 50s sounded dystopian. The idea of everyone living in a white-picket-fence suburb, siloed off into their little nuclear family units (and unable to step outside of their role without getting shunned, fired, and punished) struck me as something close to living death…

Early in my gender transition, I fell into a habit shared by a lot of newly-out trans people. The difference between me and a cis person was that while they’d only lived as one gender, I’d been in the shoes of two. That allowed me to claim some special insight…

I used to cancel people, back when we called it “calling out.” I unfollowed the problematic, passed along the receipts, and made sure to temper my praise of any public figure with the requisite digs at their privileged identities and lack of social-justice zeal. I did it partly out of…

Social justice is not identity politics. As I understand it, identity politics involves the members of a group speak for themselves, asserting their own interests in the face of a hostile or indifferent majority. I think most social justice advocates would accept that as their ideal — that’s why they…

The other day I was doing laundry. I heard what sounded like a crowd a few blocks away. If I focused, I could make out what they were shouting, a call-and-response chant. Someone with a megaphone led the crowd: “What do we want?” “Justice!” “When do we want it?” “Now!” …