[ text in the image: a tweet by @JulianKJarboe on twitter: “God blessed me by making me transsexual for the same reason he made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine: because he wants humanity to share in the act of creation. I am only doing the Good Works here on Earth as intended!” /end quote]
What a beautiful gift it is to be trans and/or nonbinary! God invites all of us to be co-creators. None of us come forth from the womb fully formed – we are all called to grow, to transform, to become. Those of us who are trans/nonbinary get to do that in a unique way.
This screencap has about 12,000 notes at the time I’m seeing this post. I’ve also seen it floating around reddit here and via Danny’s book here, and here.
What I don’t mind: people often attribute the quote/idea to Danny if they first read it in his book, even though it’s framed as a quote, but this mistake is always done from enthusiasm for the material. Once this started happening a lot I joked to him that I should have asked to be attributed by my full name and phone number, and he’s quick to correct and inform people, but if it seems like that would still sting me, imagine being Danny and writing a whole ass book about your life in the middle of a really turbulent time and people keep telling you one of their favorite lines is where you quote someone else. It’s a wash lol.
However, I think I feel kind of weird about the amount of attention the screencaps of my tweet and pictures of his book get though, how rarely they link back to the source (and while this one does, and I’m engaging with this post because I think this particular OP is the nicest and most transparent example of this, I still wish it had been, I dunno, posted as a link and not an image with a tiny link in the description), because the thing is this line is also in my own book.
It’s a line in one of my stories, that I essentially drafted as a tweet of my own thoughts because in 2018, Passover overlapped with Easter and I was vaguely observing both (and Jewish readers are often the first to notice that this is a sound rabbinical argument, while Catholics will notice the Good Works framing– it’s syncretic or inter-faith on purpose, yes).
And I do mean what it says. Like, I’m sincere about the content of it, but with the pandemic tanking my book launch and maybe writing career, and now being unemployed, this kind of thing finally does just make me feel a little sad and frustrated. If even a fraction of the people who got clicks screen-capping my twitter and photographing my friend’s book lead to sales of my book that is largely about queer theology, I could pay my bills on royalties alone for, like, over a year. That’s tough right now! That feels bad.
Every single time I’ve had an experience with “going viral”, it’s ego gratifying for exactly five minutes and really discouraging for every minute after that. Just needed to put that in writing I guess.
this is my first tumblr post in a long time but I just wanted to note that I’m checking this book out from the library & my next tattoo is going to be specifically based on this quote <3
[Image: text that reads “As my friend Julian puts it, only half winkingly: ‘God blessed me by making me transsesxual for the same reason God made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine, so that humanity might share in the act of creation.’]
The Julian in question is writer Julian K. Jarboe and I believe the quote in question is from a poem in their collection “Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel”
in college a teacher explained that criticizing gentrification wasn’t about shaming or blaming the white people that were most likely living in the only apartments they could afford - it was about asking why their living there was inherently valuable. it’s not really about who - it’s about why. why white lives are literally valued more. why is the presence of white people a gentrifying force? what is it about whiteness that elicits immediate value?
And if you look up the stages of gentrification, it usually goes like “artists and teachers and etc move into this neighborhood because its what they can afford” and THEN “developers notice these people and try to capitalize on them.”
I literally never thought of it this way before and I wrote a whole ass article on gentrification:
