[2020 U.S. Election]

I hope not to read Kanye's name again 'til 2021. Please don't let him gain any further ground. Who's got the time? Or, at this point, a robust enough constitution? Joe Biden wouldn't have been my first choice, but there's often some acquiescence in politics, I think, and he'll do.

[Madame X one year anniversary thread!]

Other than the pain she had to endure while on its promo trail, I enjoyed every minute of the quirky pop odyssey that was the Madame X era. What an album. What a woman! After so many years in the biz, it's no small accomplishment that Madonna is still a vital creative presence who's committed to breaking new ground musically. Love her for it.

[J.K. Rowling Faces Criticism for Transgender Comment]

It's hard not to interpret her rhetoric as something other than J.K. saying in an implicit way that she doesn't want trans women to stake their collective claim to her identity, as a trans woman's experience of being a woman is different from hers and therefore of dubious validity. It's true that trans women cannot know what it's like to menstruate, to be socialized as girls, to move through the world as unmistakable females and to be treated as such from birth, etc., but isn't this all unrevelatory? Doesn't bringing it up ad nauseam just further propagate a cruel notion that trans women are basically just approximations of women, women facsimiled? It's cruel, and it's gate-keeping, and it's a bit confounding as I can't imagine being trans to feel like a day at the beach or a walk in the park. Theirs is just a womanhood of a different kind, fraught with challenges that may or not always be dissimilar, and they're not really denying such differences, as far as I know, so I still don't know why she and others like her feel so threatened by trans women hoping to take their places at the very broad table of... people who are not men.

I am, though, so maybe this is just speculation and conjecture that could mean everything or nothing. It's a discussion worth having, though, with some tact, and I wish people were able to weigh in on it without being righteously indignant or overly unsympathetic.