ok last take and then i'm logging off: I am tired of people like Stock, and the philosophers enabling her, getting to the control the narrative about "how trans people react to challenge"

late at night on a family vacation, my cousin, who's about a decade older than me, told me that he did not get the "trans thing" and thought that the social changes of the past few years were stupid. he and i and a couple other cousins grabbed some beers and went to the porch

we sat there for multiple hours, until well past midnight, having an intensely complex and incredibly good faith discussion about the ontology of gender, biology, performance, how to relate to other people with goodwill, race relations, suburban politcs, etc. lmao

the only emotion that governed that discourse was care. my basic identity was challenged, and that did not become grounds for bad faith violence, but for good, earnest, genuinely loving discussion; not even debate, but exploration

by the end, i hadn't convinced him i was right about everything; we reached an understanding of the basic ontological crisis and opportunity that transness revealed, and were excitedly discussing the utopian possibilities in response. in other words, i didn't strongarm him.

i never wanted to, because that wasn't the argumentative space we built together. what i wanted was the same thing he wanted: to reach the truth. to understand, together, what transness was.

i'm not alone here. i'm not. every single person who signed the letter in response to Stock is a philosopher because we LONG for, we lust after, good faith pursuit of truth. like, we develop all sorts of post-foucauldian explanations, but at the end of the day we do this shit...

because we love this shit. we love arguing. we love discussion. we love the dancing through and within the truth that philosophy allows.

and yes, sometimes we don't want to do that shit; sometimes we don't wanna hear and respond to transphobia. but honestly, and maybe i'm alone here: sometimes, we really actually do! IF it is premised by a good faith, loving, caregiving commitment to be explored and excavated, in

being fully investigated. because i believe that if such a premise is met (this is gauche but i truly do believe it) the transphobia will melt away. i truly believe that

this is not what Stock stands for. this is not what she offers. this is not what TERF philosophers, and their enablers, pursue. it's simply not. every single one of us knows that.

they can continue to misrepresent us as antiintellectual babies, but that is a lie. it's always been a lie. and i'm tired of it.