Author: rileyjg

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A real disease for once

Leslie Feinberg died today. I did not know until reading the article about hir passing that zie was struggling with Lyme disease. Andrea Gibson posted about Leslie’s passing on Facebook and came out publicly as also having lived with Lyme. Leslie Feinberg and Andrea Gibson are two of the most influential and inspirational people I have ever encountered, so it’s strange to think they they have the same disease I had (have?). I never realized that other people (particularly those  knew/knew of) had Lyme disease. I used to think it was something that only one other 4th grader and I had, and that it ended after I left the hospital. Continue reading →

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He or She isn’t for everyone

Pronouns. Pronouns are things that we learned about in grade school and for most people, something they haven’t thought about since (unless we get into learning other languages but that brings up something else entirely). Pronouns are almost always read off the body, which is funny because they actually have nothing to do with bodies. Pronouns are related to gender, so within the gender binary, it makes sense that he/him/his or she/her/hers are the only pronouns people know, and are almost always the pronouns that people read off of others’ bodies. I’m gonna let you in on a little thing called “there are more than two genders” (it’s shocking, I know. I’ll let you think about that for a minute).

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Ownership and the Death of Pets

The other day we discussed death, and the appropriate ways in which we dispose of the dead… the human dead that is. Which got me thinking to how differently and similarly we treat our pets who die. Right before I came back to school for this semester, I’m talking the Friday before I moved in on a Monday, the stray my neighbors and I took care of passed away. He was sick; he had a really bad thyroid condition, but that’s not how he died. Continue reading →