What choice do we have (2024 output in review)

The dog died, the bunny perseveres.

Are too many children transitioning? That’s the wrong question

The decision whether to slow down or be cautious about changing behavior comes after you let the affected people have the right to make the choice, not before. The clear priority now is to support trans children and their families.

Twenty-four books I read in 2024

The books I read all the way through this year.

Elon Musk’s father is quite racist, too, and pronatalism is an authoritarian boy toy (I told Sky News)

If you really tried to promote pronatalism, inevitably what you end up doing is promoting a retrograde sort of anti-feminism.

Parenting beyond magic (that NY Times story about switched embryos)

Why do people do what they do -- as individuals, and as groups? One of the purposes of social science is to discover the unspoken assumptions and unarticulated motivations behind social behavior. One such question I have been thinking about lately is: why do people have children, and what does "having" children mean? So this…

Trump is a fascist but this isn’t Nazi Germany

Americans will not suddenly wake up in 1930s Germany -- even the Germans didn't, because before the 1930s was the 1920s, and the 1910s, and even more history before that.

A unit on genocide for a Social Problems undergraduate class

Introduce the Holocaust, and then discuss how genocide became a construct in the international legal system with the power to evoke emotional and political responses, as well as legal responses -- with today's war in Israel / Palestine as the case.

Why I’m joining the American Sociological Association again (because of fascism)

In light of the imminent threat Trump poses to higher education and sociology, my beefs with ASA will have to wait.

Pronatalism won’t work but the far right loves it anyway (me in The Hill)

Right-wing politics has always been more concerned about restoring historical gender regimes and protecting their vision of European culture than addressing the contemporary structural challenges of modern society.

Replication and extension of NYTimes Upshot analysis of White men without college degrees

Rising returns to education retold as race/gender grievance - in context.