the w word

ten years as a t-slur, Amanda Lear and other thoughts on gender

What does it mean to be a woman? It’s a question from which I have long since retreated. I retreat because it is so beloved by the bad faith actors and those with malicious intent in the relentless public discourse around trans women’s existence. In my own work, particularly my first book, I instead tried to focus on the material conditions in which tra…