“There are some for whom catchphrases such as ‘born this way’ and ‘trapped in the wrong body’ make trans people acceptable because the narratives they represent render us passive victims of our own freakishness–and so they justify our existence outside the gender norm. The implication is that no one could or should choose to be as horrifyingly wrong as my body makes me. But I do not believe that one requires justification to live and identify as one chooses. When I decided to start hormone therapy, I did not do it because I hated my body. I did it so the world would see my gender closer to the way I do. I did it because I loved myself, because my body is mine, and because I am the one who decides how to navigate it through this complicated and violent world. This is a love story between a woman and her body.”

Joshua Trees are a weird thing that stayed since the last Ice Age. They're on the decline anyways because no mega mammals eat their seeds and pop them out else where anymore. Hasen't been one around in over ten thousand years but still they persist. Sometimes they thrive in small areas and other times they die out.

People asking if there is anything that can be done, YES.

When it comes to testimonies of the generations that went through the Nakba, I have compiled a small but very rich list of resources to help keep their testimonies alive.

"redemption arcs are toxic, you shouldn't try to fix someone!"

"Well, I don't think we have any alternative other than remaining optimistic. Optimism is an absolute necessity, even if it's only optimism of the will, as Gramsci said, and pessimism of the intellect. What has kept me going has been the development of new modes of community. I don't know whether I would have survived had not movements survived, had not communities of resistance, communities of struggle survived. So whatever I'm doing I always feel myself directly connected to those communities and I think that this is an era where we have to encourage that sense of community particularly at a time when neoliberalism attempts to force people to think of themselves only in individual terms and not in collective terms. It is in collectives that we find reservoirs of hope and optimism."