Queer books and romances remain the strongest genres, especially in their crossovers. I challenged myself to read (or DNF) at least 90 books that I’d acquired by or earlier than December 31, 2024. I beat that goal at 140. But I did get 142 new-to-me books last year, and this year, I’m going to read 98, which is that 142 minus how many of those 2025 books I read last year.

I paired a lot of my physical or ebook reading with borrowing library audiobooks. It meant I could continue the journey while cooking, gardening, doing chores, and going on walks. (Though I am also a huge podcast listener.)

50 books (a little less than 25%) of the books I read I rated 5/5 stars. My average book rating was 3.72 stars. So many of the books on my list of 20 are by, about, and for trans people. That 5th star in the 5/5 star system for me is all about how the story resonated, and it’s not surprising that queer stories often evoke more feelings from me.

But also, whether trans, queer, disabled, and/or BIPOC, these authors likely had to fight more to get their stories into the world and to write about people like themselves, which means we’re often getting the very best stories. When I think about equity, it would be me reviewing 195 books by trans authors and them averaging 3.72 stars: the freedom to be mediocre too.

I reread Lothaire (Immortals After Dark #11) by Kresley Cole, enjoying it on audio, and the book still slaps. My top authors were Susan Elizabeth Phillips (5 books), P. Djèlí Clark (4 books), and Adriana Herrera, Rebekah Weatherspoon, Marjorie M. Liu, and Sana Takeda (3 books each). Anything with a means I listened to the audiobook only.

PS — Obviously, it’s the end of March, but I had other things on my plate, so get back on your 2026 reading goals with my recommendations!

My Top 20 Books from 2025

20. With Love, from Cold World by Alicia Thompson

Genre: cis bi man/het woman contemporary romance

This captures of feeling of being in your 20s and then suddenly realizing that, “oh, shit, I am an adult.” This was so romantic with simple, regular life magic.

19. Here We Go Again by Alison Cochrun

Genre: cis lesbian contemporary romance

I cried a lot. But loved the love stories, even, if at the beginning, I wanted to curse the main characters for being so immature. Cochrun knows how to be funny and break your heart at the same time.

18. Iron Widow (Iron Widow #1) by Xiran Jay Zhao

Genre: future dystopian sci-fi

What a punch of a story. When people gush over Pacific Rim (a film I did watch), this was the bisexual chaos revenge energy I wanted from it.

17. Simplicity by Mattie Lubchansky

Genre: future dystopian sci-fi fantasy comics

I went from being a Lubchansky fan to a Lubchansky stan. You can see this world unfolding from where we are now, but also the absurdity is cranked perhaps even higher than our current world, which seems wild.

16. American Hippo (River of Teeth #0.5-2) by Sarah Gailey

Genre: historical fantasy novella and short stories

Every single character — including the hippos — was so tightly and uniquely drawn. I just want to watch Gailey’s brain work. The main novella was a perfect heist story.

Gailey’s The Echo Wife was #7 on my 2023 list!

15. The Second Safest Mountain by Otava Heikkilä

Genre: horror sci-fi comics

This played with gender and transness in incredibly unexpected ways. I’m a huge fan of Heikkilä’s work. Compared to his other graphic novels, this used color in fascinating and brilliant ways.

14. Legends of the Leaf: Unearthing the Secrets to Help Your Plants Thrive by Jane Perrone

Genre: nonfiction botany

A lot of plant books don’t have more information than Wikipedia, especially around common houseplants. Perrone digs into the history of 25 common houseplants — what they were used for by Indigenous people and how they were brought into cultivation — and a little about their biology and why they remain popular. I learned new things!

13. An Island Princess Starts a Scandal (Las Léonas #2) by Adriana Herrera

Genre: cis lesbian 1880s Parisian historical romance

Latina lesbians causing chaos in 1880s Paris! Sign me up. Also, so sexy. No one writes steamy lesbian sex like Herrera.

12. A Gentleman’s Gentleman by TJ Alexander

Genre: trans gay man/bi man Regency England historical romance

Historical romances are really rocking my world. As my 4th read by Alexander, this one takes the cake as their best book (so far) with a delightful use of a tight single character point of view.

11. A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot #1) by Becky Chambers

Genre: future utopian sci-fi

Cozy, gentle with life lessons about purpose and finding the unexpected. Chambers is one of those authors who weaves philosophy and deep themes into her books seamlessly. Seriously, a marvel!

10. I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

Genre: memoir (mostly set in 2000s and 2010s in Los Angeles)

A kick in the teeth and as bold as the title suggests! We are all glad McCurdy’s mom is dead. I’m slightly too old to have engaged with McCurdy as a child star in children’s TV, so I’m here to say that yes, this is still incredibly engaging and meaningful.

9. The Bride (Lairds’ Fiancées #1) by Julie Garwood

Genre: cishet historical medieval English and Scottish romance (published in 1989)

I cannot stop thinking about this medieval romance published in 1989! It lays down a blueprint for so much of the genre, but stands brightly on its own through time, which is what Classics should be defined as. Also, so funny!

8. A Master of Djinn (The Dead Djinn Universe #1) by P. Djèlí Clark

Genre: 1920s Egyptian historical fantasy mystery

Clark’s execution of this universe is astonishing. He takes so many things that sound great — 1920s Egypt! Awesome women kicking ass! Egyptian mythology! Djinn being real! Disrupting the Western power structures! Lady lesbian detective in a sharp suit! — and pulls them together in a wonder weave of a plot with impeccable world-building and characterization.

7. Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

Genre: contemporary fantasy and sci-fi

This is a cozy story about violin playing and queerness that also has incredible stakes of selling your soul and possibly ending the universe. Plus, donuts! All those things are true at once.

6. A Bloomy Head (Regency Cheesemakers #1) by J. Winifred Butterworth

Genre: cis woman/trans man Regency historical romance

Murders! Surly French people versus stodgy English people! Hurt/comfort! Cheese making! Slow burn romance! Trans men defining themselves! Go read this.

5. If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin

Genre: literary fiction (published in 1974)

Baldwin wastes not a single word. A beautiful novel about wrongful incarceration with incredibly complex topics around race, poverty, gender, and generational and cultural differences. Your heart will fall over for the love of Tish and Fonny.

Baldwin’s Collected Essays: Notes of a Native Son / Nobody Knows My Name / The Fire Next Time / No Name in the Street / The Devil Finds Work / Other Essays was my #1 read in 2022!

4. Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton

Genre: memoir graphic novel (set in the mid-2000s in Alberta, Canada)

The tension Beaton builds is unrelenting. In the true story of her times in the Alberta Oil Sands, very little often happens in her day, but every interaction, change, and beat matters in this dangerous work for people, especially women, and devastating to the environment and Indigenous people and other locals.

3. Wild Rain (Women Who Dare #2) by Beverly Jenkins

Genre: cishet Reconstruction American historical romance

Spring is an unforgettable heroine. Ms. Bev never pulls a punch in her stories, and I loved the contrast between Spring as a hardened horse woman living on her own in Wyoming and her love interest Garrett, a journalist who has retained more soft edges than her. Perfection.

2. Ain’t She Sweet? by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Genre: cishet contemporary romance (published 2004)

When the drunk men stand outside at night to holler Sugar Beth’s name, you know that SEP is writing a book no one else could. Sugar Beth is a graduate class in writing and redeeming an “unlikeable” heroine who does a truly horrific thing at the end of high school, and then finds herself “back home,” broke, and feeling like a failure over a decade later to come face-to-face with the man she ruined.

Phillips’ Kiss An Angel was my 4-star headworm in 2024!

1. Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isn’t My Rapist by Cecilia Gentili

Genre: memoir (mostly set in the 1970s in Argentina)

Rest in Power, Saint Cecilia. I’ve never read a memoir structured like this. Gentili blares the power of her story as a trans femme child through it. She reads and loves the people of her hometown who shaped her into the woman she became (for better or worse). If only she had lived long enough to tell the rest.

Other 5-Star Romance Reads (alphanumerical by book title)

• Ayesha at Last by Uzma Jalaluddin
• Chasing Cassandra (The Ravenels #6) by Lisa Kleypas
• D’Vaughn and Kris Plan a Wedding by Chencia C. Higgins
• Diamond Ring (Unwritten Rules #3) by KD Casey
• A Heart of Blood and Ashes (A Gathering of Dragons #1) by Milla Vane
• Heartstopper Volume 5 by Alice Oseman
• I Shall Never Fall in Love by Hari Conner
• Infernal Relations: Heavenly Edition by Tab Kimpton
• Kiss the Girl (Meant To Be #3) by Zoraida Córdova
• Natural Born Charmer (Chicago Stars #7) by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
• The Prospects by KT Hoffman
• Second Chances in New Port Stephen by TJ Alexander
• Slippery Creatures (The Will Darling Adventures #1) KJ Charles
• That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon (Mead Mishaps #1) by Kimberly Lemming
• We Could Be So Good (Midcentury NYC #1) by Cat Sebastian
• Wicked Abyss (Immortals After Dark #17) by Kresley Cole

Other 5-Star Fiction Reads (alphanumerical by book title)

• Lucky Day by Chuck Tingle
• A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan #1) by Arkady Martine
• Provenance by Ann Leckie
• Recitatif by Toni Morrison
• The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
• Space Trash Vol. 1 by Jenn Woodall
• Stargazing by Jen Wang
• Unpacking by Steve MacIsaac
• Waves by Ingrid Chabbert and Carole Maurel

Other 5-Star Nonfiction Reads (alphanumerical by book title)

• He/She/They: How We Talk About Gender and Why It Matters by Schuyler Bailar
• Outside In Gains a Soul: 127 New Perspectives on 127 Angel and Firefly Stories by 127 Writers, edited by Stacey Smith? (I’m in this one under my old name!)
• Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout by Laura Jane Grace

4-star rated book I cannot get out of my head

Spent by Alison Bechdel

Genre: autofiction contemporary graphic novel

This made me laugh out loud so many times. Such a niche view into a type of queer middle age that I both resemble and don’t, but it’s always a good time to lovingly make fun of ourselves. Bechdel’s balance is amazing. The sauna scene is one of the most hilarious setups I’ve ever read in a comic book.

The first time I listened to Nebraska, I described it as music to slit your wrists to. (I love Nebraska, to be clear; it’s in my top 5 Bruce Springsteen albums.) I felt in the music that a depressed man recorded the album by himself, in his bedroom, on a cassette tape that never had a case. I didn’t need a film to inform me of this.

You bet your butts I saw Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (2025) in theater, taking my comrades Julia and Max with me. As a Springsteen head, I knew what the plot would be (even if I have yet to read the book it’s based on). However, with all my fan heart, this film was only good as the emotions were far too beat by beat without enough depth.

Jeremy Allen White’s singing didn’t bother me as it did when I watched the trailer. Maybe it was the theater sound or me accepting a movie is a movie. I thought he did a fantastic job with his body mimicking Bruce’s live singing style. But there were moments, especially long contemplative takes — this is a movie about a man who is depressed, so there were many — where I only saw White.

Jeremy Strong as Bruce’s manager/friend Jon Landau was great and provided some needed levity to Bruce’s depression. Their friendship is a core to anything this film successfully pulls off. I wanted a little more with the E Street Band. The romance was underbaked, and (like the rest of the characters) Odessa Young’s Faye was there only for Bruce’s emotional journey with no agency of her own.

I greatly disliked that they didn’t use Bruce’s own music in the ending emotional beats where he finally goes to therapy and then with his father. While I understand Director Scott Cooper veering away from jukebox musical instincts, many instrumentals could’ve been pulled from Springsteen’s giant catalog instead of schlocky, interchangeable emotional moment movie score.

This film also invoked that feeling of life and creativity before the internet and cellphones. Bruce was entirely unreachable — especially when depression demanded that he refused to answer his landline — except through in person visits and letters curried by those working for Bruce or his record label. A radio silence of magnitudes.

The thing that Bruce captured with Nebraska is uncatchable now. You see it uncatchable then in 1982’s fanciest recording studio, and Marc Maron’s character has to time travel to the oldest vinyl presser he knows to transfer Bruce’s cassette onto a record the old way.

In 2025, giant corporation ruins Nebraska with plagiarism fascist machine that convinces and instructs teenagers on how to kill themselves. Maybe Bruce would’ve asked AI to solve his depression, and he wouldn’t even be here, instead of getting actual help.

In the present, YouTube announced they are to ruin every video hosted there of anything older than like 2 years with AI because they want to. They’re already secretly and without permission editing people’s videos with AI.

My favorite artists sound great live, and many have something uncatchable by studio recordings. Not by auto-tune. Not by slick machines. Not by mixes that sound more like they’re for algorithms than humans. Certainly not by whatever soulless so-called perfection AI offers. Bruce’s creative vision was correct. Art captures a moment. Art is only human, flaws and all. “Don’t need to be perfect. I want it to feel like I’m in the room by myself,” White says as Bruce in the film.

I’m not sure these are all the things Cooper expected me to think about during his film. (I also worried Young’s bright red lipstick would end up on her teeth, and perhaps that would’ve been more realistic.) But that’s what happens when your mind wonders and there’s a creep of a time previously when — if you were one of the most famous cishet white male rockstars in the US — you could hide away in a house in rural New Jersey, leave the landline off the hook, and record in your bedroom, on a case less cassette tape, one of the greatest albums that rocketed to #3 in the Billboards with no singles, no press, and no tour, because you’re the Boss.

Blinded By the Light (2019) remains my favorite about Springsteen film because it better shows the power of his music. As the character Roops says, “Bruce is the direct line to all that’s true in this shitty world.” But I’m not mad about Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere.

Go to therapy! Especially you, men! Also, listen to Nebraska 82: The Expanded Edition as it slaps!

StoryGraph says that I couldn’t stomach sad books at 2024’s end. I read 92 romances and 92 LGBTQ+ books, and yes, there were many LGBTQ+ romances. 53% were romances.

In my challenge to read at least 50 books I already owned (purchased December 31, 2023 or earlier), I read 66. But I also acquired 114 books (oops!) and read 36 new acquisitions before year’s end. 43 of my reads I borrowed from the library.

Kresley Cole was my most-read author with 6 books, with Rachel Reid and Susan Elizabeth Phillips at 5 books each. All of these are romances.

The Trans Rights Readathon was once again a bright star in the year. Together, we raised $3,286.50 with 39 donors in 2024! All funds went to the local Seattle nonprofit, the Lavender Rights Project.

46 books got 5/5 stars from me, including rereading my #1 2023 book, Amateur: A Reckoning with Gender, Identity, and Masculinity by Thomas Page McBee, on audio ready by the author! But honestly, that weren’t enough 5-star reads. My average rating was 3.79. Anything with a means I listened to the audiobook.

The problem with reading so many mind-blowing and soul-changing books is that I will give you my top 20 this year instead of just 10!

20. Rules For Ghosting by Shelly Jay Shore

Genre: trans man/cis man achillean contemporary romance

Ezra is dragged back into his family’s drama at their family-run funeral home. There, he meets Jonathan, a widower and his neighbor, who helps with Jewish burial rites. Unfortunately for Ezra, he sees ghosts, including Jonathan’s dead husband. Awkward.

19. Wild Pitch (Dominating the Diamond #1) by Cat Giraldo

Genre: cis bi (man/woman) contemporary romance

Sierra is the first woman in major league baseball and must put up with grumpy Mateo, a seasoned pitcher. The two butt heads over their age gap and how they work. As they fall for each other, their mentor/mentee power dynamic switches and heats up in the bedroom.

18. Ocean’s Echo (The Resolution Universe #2) by Everina Maxwell

Genre: sci-fi queer romance

Ocean’s Echo is a sci-fi, military-based action adventure novel with a slow-burn romance between our main characters simmering in the background. The sci-fi element (trying not to spoil here) and how Tennel and Surit dealt with it made it more romantic, and that was a pleasant surprise. The action and plot movements are perfectly paced.

17. The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor

Genre: literary fiction

Taylor puts a magnifying glass on this community of (mostly) grad students who are (mostly) gay men but come from a variety of backgrounds in the other aspects of their identities and lives. All the characters struggle to see what’s next in their lives, even if, for a handful, what’s next is already what they are doing. It’s so ephemeral.

16. Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist by Judith Heumann with Kristin Joiner

Genre: memoir

If you don’t know who Judy Heumann was, you should pick this up and watch the fabulous documentary Crip Camp. Heumann was one of the people responsible for the modern disability rights movement and instrumental in passing the ADA in 1990. I hate reading a memoir about a marginalized person and saying, “Oh, they were so inspiring.” But Heumann was inspiring, and she (and many others) made this world so much better for all of us.

15. Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle

Genre: horror

Misha is a closeted horror screenwriter and showrunner in Hollywood who refuses to kill the gays in his TV show. Then he starts getting attacked by monsters from his scripts. I loved the ultimate story behind the monsters and how they were defeated because, yes, I agree with Tingle’s assessment of how this will go and how we can defeat the real monsters.

14. In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

Genre: memoir

Machado captured the kind of abuse that gets swept under the rug (queer relationship abuse by women) because it defies what the patriarchy has narrowly labeled as punishable abuse and the types and people who are supposed to be abusive. At the same time as laying out the emotional devastation, Machado plays with tropes and language and incorporates folklore and facts about domestic violence.

13. MacRieve (Immortals After Dark #13) by Kresley Cole

Genre: cishet paranormal romance

MacRieve is ultimately a book about dealing with unaddressed CSA trauma as an adult man, who’s a 900-year-old werewolf. MacRieve’s biggest hurdle is shame and talking about his trauma as he falls in love with Chloe, a young succubus who challenges everything.

12. Silver Under Nightfall (Silver Under Nightfall #1) by Rin Chupeco

Genre: historical fantasy

I love a vampire book, and I love vampires as all types of romantic fuckwits. Remy may not be a vampire, but he’s so starved for any and all affection, praise, and touch that he’s willing to engage all these terrible people. As Remy tries to save his realm from zombies, he cannot see the forest through the trees, meaning he’s great at killing monsters but terrible at plans and strategy.

11. Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt: A Memoir in Verse by Brontez Purnell

Genre: poetic memoir

I loved this! Purnell makes poetry both accessible and modern but so layered. No one talks about queerness, being Black, being a gay slut (positive), living in a body, fatness, and America quite like Purnell.

10. Heated Rivalry (Game Changers #2) by Rachel Reid

Genre: cis bi/gay achillean romance

Ilya is everything. He and Shane are rival hockey players whose tension on the ice translates to hookups and eventually falling in love. Reid’s pacing is impressive, considering the book’s 7-8 year time span. We get enough glimpses of the guys’ lives and superstar hockey careers while focusing on Ilya and Shane’s relationship.

9. The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White

Genre: YA horror

This is a scary Victorian England romp about the terror humans are capable of. White’s prose perfectly captures how vulnerable young people are, how minors are treated like property by parents, society, and systems, and how stuck youth in bad situations feel, even if being a minor has a time limit. Here, the most vulnerable (trans kids, teenage girls, autistic people) are preyed upon and exploited by those who seek power and seek to destroy what little power they have.

White’s Hell Followed With Us was #6 on my 2022 list!

8. A Botanical Daughter by Noah Medlock

Genre: historical horror

This was very much right up my alley with botanical Frankenstein vibes. Two gay Victorian gentlemen — a botanist and a taxidermist — live in a glass greenhouse, and together, they craft the titular botanical daughter (Chloe) from a sentient fungus, plant matter, and a corpse. And oh, that corpse was the murdered “gal pal” of Jennifer, their live-in housekeeper turned governess/playmate of Chloe.

7. Bitter (PET #0.5) by Akwaeke Emezi

Genre: YA fantasy

We desperately need fiction with a vision for something different than our current highly policed and corrupted capitalist state and one that doesn’t rely on a single savior character (politician/superhero/cop/chosen one/strong man/Joseph Campbell’s style hero). Bitter is a teenager dealing with the chaotic world around her, full of police violence and systemic brutality of politicians toward regular people. A community filled with people of all skills must unite to make change.

The first book in this series, Pet, was #2 on my 2021 list!

6. Celestial Monsters (The Sunbearer Duology #2) by Aiden Thomas

Genre: YA fantasy

Teo and the rest of the demigods must confront their physical and emotional limits to bring Sol back and stop the apocalypse. Thomas writes a lush, fully realized world full of Mexican mythology and a reckoning of sending your teenagers off to perhaps sacrifice themselves for the world.

The first book, The Sunbearer Trials, was #6 on my 2023 list!

5. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

Genre: literary fiction

If you forget who you are, if you lose the meaning of your name, if you lose the understanding of where and who you come from, that doesn’t mean the past and those myths won’t haunt you. If that past and those myths haunt you, they will drag you down and prevent you from flying and future myth creation.

4. Untouchable (Ravenswood #2) by Talia Hibbert

Genre: contemporary cis het man/bi woman romance

Hannah becomes a nanny for Nate’s children, and Hibbert doesn’t sidestep the potential power imbalance. She never fails to make you physically feel her characters and hang on to their every emotion. This book typifies how romance is about feelings and interiority, and I dearly love that.

Her book, Take a Hint, Dani Brown (The Brown Sisters #2) by Talia Hibbert, was #8 on my 2022 reading list!

3. A Shore Thing by Joanna Lowell

Genre: trans man/cis woman historical romance

Fun, funny, romantic, and too relatable as Muriel and Kit meet, fall in love, and overcome personal hurdles while supporting each other. There are bicycle tours, seaweed collections, shenanigans, and general breaking gender norms mayhem on the English shore. Genuine care and love are on full display throughout the prose as Lowell wrote this book to reflect her real-life marriage to a trans man.

2. We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan by Lou Sullivan, edited by Ellis Martin and Zach Ozma

Genre: memoir

Reading Lou’s diaries was getting to know both a close friend and an ancestor/elder. I felt the deep wrench in my soul over his words articulating my feelings as if in a mirror, but a reflection that no one is alone. No one is as singular as we feel. Even if Lou himself felt at points that no one had his trans experience, he eventually found queer trans men like himself.

1. Lothaire (Immortals After Dark #11) by Kresley Cole

Genre: cishet paranormal romance

Rarely do I read the year’s best book in January, but here we are. Lothaire felt like a book written for me, combine it with the new Interview with the Vampire TV show, and everything I longed for in vampire books has been realized. Is Lothaire a bad vampire? Yes. Can you fix him? No, Ellie, you cannot. But knowing all this? I still love Lothaire.

Other 5-Star Fiction Reads (alphanumerical by author’s or editor’s last name)

• Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
  Genre: dystopian fiction
• Going to Meet the Man by James Baldwin
  Genre: literary fiction short stories
• The Art of Scandal by Regina Black
  Genre: cishet contemporary romance
• Parable of the Sower (Earthseed #1) by Octavia E. Butler
  Genre: speculative fiction
• When I Arrived at the Castle by E.M. Carroll
  Genre: horror graphic novel
• Fire Season (Unwritten Rules #2) by KD Casey
  Genre: cis bi achillean romance
• Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark
  Genre: horror
• Come As You Are (Bluebird Basin #1) by Jess K. Hardy
  Genre: cishet contemporary romance
• That Kind of Guy (Ravenswood #3) by Talia Hibbert
  Genre: cishet woman/demisexual cis man contemporary romance
• “Skinwalker, Fast Talker” by Darcie Little Badger
  Genre: horror short story
• The Night Eaters, Book 2: Her Little Reapers by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda
  Genre: horror graphic novel
• Boys Weekend by Mattie Lubchansky
  Genre: horror graphic novel
• Hold Me (Cyclone #2) by Courtney Milan
  Genre: trans het woman/cis bi man contemporary romance
• The Wicked Bargain by Gabe Cole Novoa
  Genre: YA fantasy
• Sweet Vengeance (Sweet Demons #1) by Viano Oniomoh
  Genre: cis bi woman/het man monster romance
• Heartstopper Volume 3 by Alice Oseman
  Genre: contemporary achillean YA romance comics
• Heartstopper Volume 4 by Alice Oseman
  Genre: contemporary achillean YA romance comics
• Nobody’s Baby But Mine (Chicago Stars #3) by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
  Genre: cishet contemporary romance
• Smut Peddler Presents: My Monster Girlfriend (Smut Peddler Presents #7), edited by Andrea Purcell and Amanda Lafrenais
  Genre: monster erotic comics
• Tough Guy (Game Changers #3) by Rachel Reid
  Genre: cis achillean contemporary romance
• Common Goal (Game Changers #4) by Rachel Reid
  Genre: cis achillean contemporary romance
• Role Model (Game Changers #5) by Rachel Reid
  Genre: cis achillean contemporary romance
• Tentacle Entanglement by Siggy Shade
  Genre: cishet erotic monster romance

Other 5-Star Nonfiction Reads (alphanumerical by author’s or editor’s last name)

• They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib
  Genre: memoir and music criticism
• Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk by Kathleen Hanna
  Genre: memoir

4-star rated book I cannot get out of my head

Kiss an Angel by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Genre: cishet contemporary romance (published in 1996)

This is absolutely bonkers romantic comedy as it begins with a marriage of convenience between Daisy and Alex. The twists and turns astonished me from the moment we discovered that Alex works as a circus manager. How Phillips doled out information at critical times was brilliant. My jaw was on the floor, and my fingers were in the group chat to share. I will never forget Daisy and her telepathic connection to the tiger.

Hi! I’m Theo.

Several months ago, I started using the name Theo socially. (It’s always good to test out names with your friends to see how it feels.) I like it a lot, and Theo has stuck.

Going forward, I will use Theo Kane as my full author name. Hence, this site, along with most of my social media, will use it too. Yes, it’s a little honoring of my name origin story.

I’ve wanted to step away from using my overly long last name for my author work to give a bit of distance (though I am very easy to find, damn being an SEO) and because I lose people who spell my last name wrong. I will never forget my mother telling me, as she filled out a check, that for the 25 years we shared my bio father’s last name, she spelled it out every time she used her own name!

Thanks to everyone who’s taken to using my new name already and supported me on this adventure.

I arrived nameless as the doctor put a pink bow on my head: a diluted scarlet letter F.

My parents believed with their whole hearts that I’d be a boy. No reason. No shadow penis on an ultrasound. Only faith in my father’s chromosome-carrying sperm.⁽¹⁾

I imagine, on that snowy evening, when a nurse asked them for my name, they both blinked, and my mother continued watching Remington Steele.

My father abhors being wrong, especially when a woman (girl) tells him so. But perhaps he clocked my birth as a half-win, proof of his virility against his ex-wife’s divorce petition stating his infertility.

Perhaps he considered my moments-old self the test run for his future baby boy. A lady from his Missouri Synod Lutheran Church wrote that exact sentiment in my baby shower card, and I read it 35+ years later.⁽²⁾

This left naming me up to my mother.⁽³⁾

Names are powerful. They speak to destiny.

I was eventually named Erica after Erica Kane, Susan Lucci’s infamous character on the soap opera All My Children. Erica means “eternal ruler” or “ever powerful.”

Lucci played Erica from 1970 to 2011 when the show ended. Beginning in 1991, she made $1 million per episode, and it took 18 years of nominations before she won a Best Lead Actress Daytime Emmy.

TV Guide called Erica “unequivocally the most famous soap opera character in the history of daytime TV.” She was an antihero before women characters were allowed to be. Erica debuted having TV’s first abortion in 1973, the year of Roe V. Wade. She ran her own cosmetics empire and was a fashion icon, married many times, and survived childhood rape.

Erica Kane is the exact type of “bitch goddess” character drag queens adore. If RuPaul’s Drag Race had been around in the 1980s/90s, we would’ve seen Susan Lucci portrayed on Snatch Game and the actress as a guest judge.

Unbeknownst to her, my mother’s naming gift transformed the F into a glittery rainbow of possibilities. A place where the person playing Erica at Snatch Game was me. Because I wasn’t exactly the girl the doctor who looked at my baby genitals thought I was.⁽⁴⁾

F is for Faggot. It’s like a prophecy. I knew I was gay before I knew what that was. I knew I was queer first, and then later kind of figured out this gender stuff. I never knew gender without my sexuality, and bisexuality means whatever my gender, I’m queer.

F is for Faggot. I just took the long way around the sun. We had to travel to Mordor before the Eagles returned us to the Shire.⁽⁵⁾

Sometimes drag is another F-word Fun. Even if, eventually, it’s exhausting, and I wanted to rip those itchy, itchy tights off my body. Drag is a cover and a way to make it through the cruel, patriarchal gender enforcers for someone like me.

I still like sparkles and bright colors. I happily played with Barbies and grew up on a ranch where no one wore anything but jeans, tshirts, and rubber irrigation boots. You don’t muck stalls or empty rabbit cages wearing party dresses. I would’ve missed those Barbies had my baby genitals looked differently, and I never longed for trucks or Ninja Turtles because I have two younger cis brothers and we were stocked up.

My father only “intervened” on my queerness after I’d already eaten pussy and sucked dick. He would’ve done so earlier on a faggy son. I guess I’m lucky that my uncle only mocked my unused womb at 21 instead of playing smear the queer when I was 5.

Erica served me well for survival. But the drag has outlasted her welcome. An uncomfortable skin I hauled around far too long into adulthood to cover my trauma and fear. As Dua Lipa sings for the Barbie soundtrack, “Watch me dance, dance the night away/My heart could be burnin’, but you won’t see it on my face.”

So don’t be shocked or sad if you never saw my transness on my face. You were never meant to. I served CUNT.⁽⁶⁾

But Snatch Game only lasts so long, and even All My Children was canceled in 2011 and Frodo went to Valinor to heal his heart. This Fag’s journey the long way comes to a sort of end in queer masculinity. Whatever, at age 13, I saw in David Bowie and said, “I want what he has. That’s me.”

Please amend my birth certificate to say assigned F(aggot) at birth, for this destiny has come to pass.

1. Sex characteristics are, of course, much more biologically complex than chromosomes and aren’t binary. Many people are born intersex. Sex is also a cultural construct. Plus, I’ve never tested my chromosomes, so an XX assumption is a smart bet, but you’re still gambling.

2. Yes, my hoarder mother guarantees I’ll be reusing the shower paper from 1983.

3. My father is a liar who can pepper bits of truth in a narrative to expose another’s weakness or make it believable enough. He’s the one who recounted my naming origin; and my mother has never provided a counter narrative.

4. It’s so gross how much people are obsessed with baby genitals. That’s what gender assigned at birth (AGAB) starts with! No, Gina, I don’t what to know if your baby bump has a penis or a vulva. Don’t even get me started on the vile and biased ways people treat babies based on AGAB. No, Pam, I don’t want to hear about how my cousin’s less-than-a-year-old baby is a lady killer. He cannot even walk; you’re disgusting.

5. Yes, I am skipping over stuff, okay! It’s a metaphor! I never felt more correctly gendered when I heard two trans women discuss their love of The Lord of the Rings and how they never saw themselves in it because it famously lacks women. On the other hand, I was ready for adventure with my bros that I deeply and romantically loved (in the gay and not gay ways).

6a. Creativity, Uniqueness, Nerve, and Talent. Or a Celtic word with origins in female power and freedom that the patriarchy turned into a slur. As a friend who attempted to read my palm once told me, “You are very Celtic.”

6b. A whole other essay is the punishment I’ve received all my life from cishet white women gender bullies who sniffed out that there was something wrong with me and sought to correct or punish me to gain favor with (little “c”) conservative cishet white men. The leopards will eat your face too.

This hit 82% of my ambitious $4,000 goal. We raised more in 2024 than in 2023 and had more individual donors, too, so I call that a win.

All 8 reviews for the books I read are live:

Bad Boy by Elliot Wake (contemporary dark romance)
Boys Weekend by Mattie Lubchansky (satire horror comic)
Heartstopper Volume 2 by Alice Oseman (YA romance comic)
Heartstopper Volume 3 by Alice Oseman
Heartstopper Volume 4 by Alice Oseman
Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt (horror)
The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You by S. Bear Bergman (nonfiction personal essays)
The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White (YA horror)

If you’re looking for books by trans authors or featuring trans characters, a book reviewer Rhys has compiled a huge spreadsheet of books across reading levels, fiction and nonfiction, and genres. If you’re in Seattle, check out Charlie’s Queer Books in Fremont, which is owned and operated by Charlie, a trans man.

If you’d like to continue the good vibes, please support Mercury Stardust and Jory as they raise $2 million for trans healthcare with Point of Pride! Point of Pride provides funds for trans people to access healthcare and other essential needs like HRT, surgeries, binders, undergarments, and other life-saving and affirming things.

Read trans books and support trans organizations all year! We need your vocal and material support.

This year, I’ve pledged to read 8 books and aim to raise $4,000 for the Lavender Rights Project!

Please donate to help me reach this goal!

Thanks to generous donations, we’ve raised $695 so far.

You can boost this TikTok, Mastodon, BlueSky, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and follow my reading updates on TikTok, Goodreads, and Storygraph.

I’ll be reading:

• Bad Boy by Elliot Wake
• Boys Weekend by Mattie Lubchansky
• Heartstopper Volume 2 by Alice Oseman
• Heartstopper Volume 3 by Alice Oseman
• Heartstopper Volume 4 by Alice Oseman
• Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt
• The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You by S. Bear Bergman
• The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White

By donating, you’ll help trans people in need connect legal services, economic justice needs, and housing. The Lavender Rights Project is a wonderful nonprofit created for and by trans people. They serve the Puget Sound Area and do some legal work nationally. One of their current major efforts (in collaboration with Chief Seattle Club and King County) is building a 35-unit building providing permanent supportive housing for QT2BIPOC in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.

The Readathon provides a source of joy and celebration, which as a nonbinary trans masculine person, let’s have more joy, please! It’s a chance to uplift trans authors and provide material support to trans people. Let’s drown out the hate and keep on dancing.

For over 15 years, my professional career has sat at the crosshairs of tech and community. In the US, tech¹ is dominated by men, especially cishet able-bodied white men. Community professionals (those running these groups) are predominantly cis white women, and cishet able-bodied white men dominate as community “thought leaders.” None of this is shocking, given we live in a white supremacist patriarchal society, and our workplaces and associated groups reflect this.

In workplaces, men are given more leadership opportunities and more chances and space to voice and enact their ideas. Many men choose (consciously or unconsciously) to use patriarchal tools of violence to enact domination for power in little and world-changing ways.

Women comprise the majority of community roles because they’re considered “natural” at nurturing, compassion, empathy, general social skills, and a host of other feminine traits seen as inherent to women.² As long as they don’t push back against the hierarchy and are okay with men rising to the top as leaders as these men chase power (influence + fame + money). Many women choose (consciously or unconsciously) to use patriarchal tools of violence to enact domination over other women and people of intersecting marginalized identities (especially against people of color) for power in little and world-changing ways.

Cishet able-bodied white women, in particular, often choose to be “second” in white supremacist patriarchy under white men rather than align with the global majority. This can look like pulling up the ladder behind them, not promoting employees equitably, considering themselves “not like the other girls,” socially enforcing Western beauty standards, etc. This false assimilation can be alluring to gain power and keep the status quo under hierarchical workplace and societal systems and allows white women (or anyone else grasping at pick-me status) to not do the work of unpacking, understanding, repairing, healing from, and rejecting white supremacist patriarchy.

For-profit (tech) companies have used community as an avenue to soften their image and create super fans. Some have created cults as cults result from using your community-building skills and expertise for unethical or nefarious purposes. They also use women (and sometimes other underrepresented minorities) to soften their image. Cue Sheryl Sandberg. On smaller scales, I’ve witnessed many female employees of all levels “make nice” with people who were incredibly and often rightfully pissed at the company’s male CEO or other executives.

Enter the “nice” way to push back against workplace patriarchy: professional women’s groups

When thinking about Diversity, Equity, Inclusivity, and Belonging (DEIB), many CEOs and other executives lean into women and gender inclusion without giving much thought to gender. Without considering what exactly not having cis male privilege means and all the people affected by that. Women’s groups become a checkbox on a DEIB to-do list.

To be clear, I don’t think professional women’s groups are bad. I don’t think they shouldn’t happen, aren’t necessary, or that some changes and healing cannot occur within them. Or that you cannot meet incredible friends and professional peers at them. Pre-transition, I attended many professional women’s events, and I had a good time and met great friends and peers.³

What I don’t think women’s groups are doing is destroying the white supremacist patriarchy and upending the deep problems of inequity in our society.

Or, as the great poet and Black lesbian Audre Lorde said, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”

Many women’s groups are fraught with the same problems as our society. Women of color aren’t given the same voice and space as white women. Queer women run into similar problems. Trans women wonder if they’re included or if their inclusion depends on whether cis women realize they’re trans. Disabled women still face accessibility issues, sometimes literally. Low-income women are prevented from joining these groups for accessibility and classist reasons. Non-binary people never know how they’ll be received.

And sometimes — cis men are keynote speakers at these events!

When these groups replicate the same DEIB problems as workplaces, most “solutions” to fix them do not work. For example, unconscious bias training does not work.⁴ Forcing people who are further marginalized to share their (trauma) stories or participate in “mediation” about the bad situation only makes the privileged group feel good about themselves and forces more emotional labor and forced vulnerability on the marginalized group at best and retraumatizes them while leaving them open for harassment at worst.

Reread Audre Lorde’s quote, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”⁵

As gender discourse has evolved, professional women’s groups have not. The majority of Gen Z believe there are more than 2 genders and are many times more likely to openly identify as trans or non-binary than any previous generation.

Instead of evolving, many women’s groups have kept the same format and only adjusted how they brand and advertise themselves. They became for “all womxn,” “women and trans women,” “women and non-binary people,” or “anyone who identifies as a woman.”

No. Please stop.

For this post, I assume you are a well-meaning person who believes that trans, non-binary, and intersex people are real and should have rights and that you genuinely want your group to be inclusive.

Gender studies and discourse around gender have massively changed in the last 20 years. If, like me, you haven’t been in a college classroom in that long, it’s up to you to keep up. Most importantly, gender discussions amongst real people — especially trans people — have changed dramatically.⁶

Marginalized genders include anyone not affected by cis male privilege.⁷ This includes women (cis and trans), non-binary people, trans men, and intersex people. When considering gender in the workplace, we want to consider all possible underrepresented groups and their common and unique needs.

This can get tricky as sometimes cis women dominate fields, such as the community industry. This domination in worker numbers does not always translate to who gets promoted, speaks at conferences and events, writes and publishes books, etc. When I ran a community conference, this meant that cis women weren’t qualified on womanhood alone to get a DEIB scholarship to attend the conference — they were the majority of conference attendees — but I consciously made sure cis women were given equitable speaker slots.

Regardless of the community makeup, every group must continue to attract, welcome, and integrate new members. New members often demand you do better and may live and think differently than current members. Gen Z (born 1995-2012) is much further ahead in understanding greater gender variations, with 51% believing there are more than 2 genders, compared to 33% of Boomers and Gen X and 35% of Millennials.⁸

Of adults identifying as trans, 2.3% are Gen Z, 0.7% are Millennials, 0.3% are Gen X, and 0.1% are Boomers.⁹ Of adults identifying as non-binary, 5.5% are Gen Z, 1.7% are Millennials, 1.2% are Gen X, and 0.9% are Boomers. There are many complex reasons why these numbers have shifted and are drastically different generationally. No statistical differences exist in whether these people live in rural vs. urban environments or in Red vs. Blue states. In fact, 41% (the majority) of transgender people in the US live in the South!¹⁰

These shifts mean that deeper conversations about gender will happen regardless of whether you or your women’s group is prepared to have them. Even if you believe you live in a region where these conversations are “too political” to have, they will happen. We’re all learning together and from each other. Sometimes, you have to sprint to catch up.

Let’s break down those marketing taglines

“For all womxn” — This came about in the 1970s to remove the word “men” from “women,” but was largely adopted by businesses in the mid-2000s to signal the inclusion of trans women. It served its place in time but is extremely outdated as trans women are women.

“Welcoming to women and trans women” — Trans women are women. Your group is labeling trans women as another type, and thus, this is not fully welcoming to trans women.

“For women and non-binary people” — Non-binary people come in all gender presentations or none. Non-binary people can look “like men.” Are you saying the only non-binary people you’re welcoming are those who are kind of like women? Or look “like women”? Are you calling AFAB¹¹ non-binary people “women-lite” or assuming everyone in your group is okay with being referred to as “lady, gal, girl boss, she/her, etc.”? Or worse, that these “women and non-binary people” are the okay ones because of an assumption that they have a vagina? Which infantilizes trans people who were AFAB and is transmisogynistic to trans people who were AMAB.

“For anyone who identifies as a woman” — We just call those people women, and it seems like we’re categorizing some women as “other.”

Are professional women’s groups for women, or are they for underrepresented genders?

In either of these situations, you should explicitly lay out who your group is for and stay engaged in the constantly changing gender conversation. This means what works today for your group may not work tomorrow.

If your group is for women, it’s for women. It’s technically “for anyone who identifies as a woman,” except you won’t use that language. You can signal inclusivity from DEIB statements and goals and, more importantly, inclusion in leadership, group visibility, and other meaningful inclusion of a wide variety of women.

Since trans women are women, are you genuinely welcoming to all trans women? Or just those whose appearance matches who you’d consider a woman? Or are you continuing to enforce white supremacist patriarchal Western beauty standards on all the women who attend your event, which can significantly impact trans women, women of color, and trans women of color?

You should consider how you tackle “women’s issues” and host discussions in inclusive ways. If you discuss pay gaps, are you paying attention to other intersectional pay gap issues? It’s okay to discuss how becoming pregnant and having a kid that way affects your work life, but is it done assuming it will be 100% relatable to everyone in the audience? Are you clear about where the boundaries of these discussions are?

Are you ready if you decide that your group is for underrepresented genders? How about a group name and tagline? Are you prepared to accept and support — without question or forced self-ID, outing, or essentially asking about someone’s genitals — people who are men who may look and sound to you exactly like a cis man?¹² Are you ready to accept and support people questioning their gender? Are you ready for gender as an unlimited possibility menu? Are you prepared to stop explaining your group as a women’s group?

You can signal inclusivity from DEIB statements and goals around what you mean by underrepresented genders and, more importantly, inclusion in leadership and visibility of and meaningful inclusion of the wide variety of people of underrepresented genders.

But what should I do?

There is no simple solution.

You can’t just slap a new replacement label on “women and non-binary people” and call it a day. You must do the work of unpacking gender and what it means for you and your organization.

I am not a woman,¹³ but I’m a minority gender, and I no longer join women’s groups. It’s your group and decision. I do not know how you want to move forward with your professional women’s organization.¹⁴

Steps forward: what you can do.

Do what every community professional should do: engage with your community! Consider who you are serving — both your literal members and the societal and company structures you are powering.

Create deeper conversations about group goals in light of changing conversations about gender. Read, research, and connect with people who can contribute to this conversation. Pay them, and ensure you’re not asking for free emotional labor or someone to explain something you could read in a book, watch in a video, or learn from already available resources.

You can only make real change and progress in your organization by returning to its core purpose, vision, goals, audience, DEIB aims, etc. Do they still align with current times? Do they still fit how you see your organization and how you want to grow?

Is the organization tied to a larger organization or business? What are their goals? Does your women’s group only serve as PR for them? Or to soften or appease instances in business when someone cares about their DEIB goals? How should this group exist? How does it function in your industry? What values do you want it to have, and what values does it have? Does the group meet its stated goals?

Spearheading change is hard. You will meet all kinds of pushback, ranging from people resistant to change and those who believe you’re too radical and political to those who think you should be grateful they benevolently allow you to have this women’s group and you should shut up. If you do it for glory or power, you will walk away unsatisfied with trailblazing. You may even ultimately fail, be forced out, or have to walk away with rumors swirling about how unreasonable you are to work with. (Ask me how I know.)

However, you can find unexpected allies along the way, make incredible connections, and do more meaningful work than ever. Perhaps you’ll help or inspire someone ready to tackle whatever the next step is for your group, industry, or our broader world.

If you want to figure out the future of your women’s group, who it’s for, and what kind of work is necessary to make those changes, now is the time to do it!

If you’ve already done this with your group, I’d love to hear how you’ve tackled it, especially to inspire other community builders facing the same challenges. We learn from each other, after all.

Footnotes

1. Tech makes lots of money, and men flooded the industry chasing money and power as computing technology rose in the 1980s. Early computer programmers were largely women as programming was considered equivocal to secretarial work and paid in that salary band.

2. There is no such thing as “women’s skills” and “men’s skills,” only what society has forced upon us based on a doctor examining our external genitalia upon birth. To understand the science behind how gender is cultural and social, read Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine and her follow-up Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society.

3. I’m a co-founder and was president for 2 years of the volunteer-run nonprofit GeekGirlCon (which has smartly updated its conference to think bigger about gender and inclusion). GeekGirlCon is slightly different from a professional women’s group, and that’s a different post.

4. Yes, I have pushed programs and “solutions” like this in the past, and I’ve been to multiple unconscious bias trainings. Here’s a good analysis of why unconscious bias training doesn’t work, mainly because it doesn’t address actual systemic inequality at work. We must keep current with the many critiques and changes in the workplace and other DEIB discussions. We say we “believe in data,” meaning we cannot keep using band-aids that have been proven not to work.

5. Read Audre Lorde’s entire book, Sister Outsider, which is where this quote comes from and is one of the books that changed my life and my thinking.

6. Even trans people have to work on this! Check out Living Nonbinary in a Binary World (ft. Devin-Norelle) from the We See Each Other: The Podcast, where journalist Shar Jossell (a trans woman) honestly discusses her struggle to understand non-binary people and how they fit into the trans umbrella.

7. I will not discuss the nuances of privilege, passing, or any deeper marginalized gender intracommunity topics here.

8. All stats from How Gen Z Changed Its Views On Gender by Jean M. Twenge for TIME Magazine, a moderately conservative news outlet.

9. As a trans person, the 0.1% of how likely you are to be trans — the rate of Boomer identification — has been the number circulated for years! I’ve long suspected it was not true, and there are multiple, complex factors in why Boomers are less likely to identify as trans or non-binary. But another instance of “it’s just that way” of Boomer mythology masquerading as facts about all people (or even all Boomers themselves).

10. Stat from the 2022 US Transgender Study.

11. Assigned female at birth. AMAB = assigned male at birth. AGAB = assigned gender at birth. These terms are helpful in this discussion, but I shy away from using them about myself and other specific non-binary people because it’s just another way of cataloging people by the genitals they were born with. In most business settings, talking about one’s genitals or someone else’s is highly inappropriate!

12. In footnote #3, I mentioned my involvement in founding and kicking off GeekGirlCon. In a recent gender discussion with my best friend and fellow co-founder Julia, it came up how suspicious we were (in those early days) of anyone who joined the volunteer staff and was a man. In relaying this conversation to my therapist, they challenged me and asked, “How do you know that none of those men were trans men?” The truth is that I don’t know that. I don’t know for sure that none of them were trans men. Nor should any of them have had to disclose transness to gain further acceptance.

13. I am trans non-binary, and I am not a woman. I am also not woman-lite. As of writing this, I am still primarily perceived/treated as a cis woman, and I am subject to misogyny and sexism, both past and present. It’s nuanced.

In the future, people may perceive my gender differently, including assuming I’m a cis man. Maybe. I don’t know. I will still be subject to misogyny and sexism, but it may present differently depending on whether someone knows or assumes I’m trans or queer. It’s complicated, and I have boundaries on what I’m willing to share for public consumption.

14. Though you can hire me as a consultant!

Thank you to my dear friend, Rowan Allen Case, for reviewing this prepublication and offering great feedback and further insights. You’re the best! Readers, connect with Rowan and grab him up as he’s on the job hunt.

NPR’s science podcast Short Wave released an episode entitled “What You Need to Know about the Current Tripledemic” on January 17, 2024. The host, Regina G. Barber, discusses the current surge in RSV, the flu, and COVID with NPR health correspondent Pien Huang, mostly citing US CDC data and guidelines.

The episode was pure propaganda to normalize COVID. To normalize what Huang referred to as “the annual tripledemic that is RSV, the flu, and COVID” and to downplay the impact of illness, the deadliness, the risk of disability, and any possible solutions.

To be very clear — we could have ended COVID. It is a failure of governments and other billionaire elites who would rather have a sick workforce than change. Who’d rather keep you ill and stressed because you’re more controllable and it’s profitable. For example, there is no generic COVID vaccine because Bill Gates, the 6th richest person in the world, wants to make more money on patents.

(Gates — and others of his class — do not hang around unvaccinated and untested people, go where the air’s not ventilated correctly and UV light hasn’t cleaned the room, or without costly nasal spray that eliminates COVID. They also don’t fly on commercial airplanes or work in office buildings, restaurants, or grocery stores. They have access to healthcare and drugs that you don’t, and they mask with N95s or respirators if they’re ever in a place they cannot control. Do as the billionaire elites do, not what they tell us plebeians to do.)

We saw what paying people to stay home or eliminate a virus could look like, as one flu variant died when COVID precautions were still in place. Not to mention how the meager US COVID payments temporarily lifted families and children out of poverty and stimulated the actual economy.

NPR’s coverage began by referring to this as “the COVID season.” Seasons are naturally occurring events. They are forces of nature. You don’t get to choose that it is now winter (or summer) where you might live. Calling this “COVID season” seems to apply the laws of nature to it and makes infectious waves natural.

Additionally, scientific studies have specifically examined how seasonal environmental changes (temperature and humidity) affect COVID transmission. Unlike the flu and colds, COVID’s airborne transmission is unaffected by environmental changes. The virus spreads at similar rates regardless of temperature and humidity, or season.

This is further amplified by the use of “annual.” There is no reason for COVID to exist still. There is no reason for it, RSV, or the flu to be an “annual” event. We humans now understand viruses and know how to prevent and stop their spread and hopefully eliminate them, given time, vision, resources, and hope. Will there be new viruses or other illnesses in humanity’s future? Yes, but that doesn’t mean humanity should give up.

Believing in “annual” or “seasonal” illnesses normalizes that you will be sick every year or every season. This does not need to happen. You do not need to be sick. Nor do your family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, and anyone else in your community. We should not leave behind children, the elderly, disabled people, and anyone else at high risk in our community as collateral damage. Seasonally normalizes reinfection. It is not natural or normal to have caught COVID five or six times; it is a failure of public health systems and society and puts you at extra risk for Long COVID with each reinfection. This is like saying you should freeze to death as if we haven’t created ways to keep ourselves warm in the winter.

Short Wave called COVID a “respiratory illness,” the same as RSV and the flu. COVID is not a respiratory illness. It does affect the respiratory system. However, this is akin to calling lung cancer a respiratory illness. COVID is a vascular disease. Something we’ve known for several years now. It is dangerous because it attacks the vascular system, causing blood clots, heart issues, and a lot of other long-term and disabling effects if they don’t kill you first. That’s what makes COVID different from the flu.

The vascular nature of COVID is why Long COVID and its multitude of chronic symptoms happen. While you can get Long COVID from a single infection, reinfections compound symptoms, and each increases your risk of developing Long COVID. Even if you do feel fine now, COVID may have done unknown damage to your vascular system that could present in 5, 10, 15, or 20 years. In addition to those disabled by Long COVID currently, many are predicting COVID will have far-reaching and unknown future consequences as long-term damage ages and is further assessed.

In explaining why winter seasons cause more illnesses, NPR’s Huang only discussed indoor air quality in terms of “fresh air,” a.k.a. opening your window. This is not the only way to purify the air or even an efficient one. You can purchase air purifiers or newer HVAC systems that do this. Many options don’t include inviting freezing winter winds into your home.

Huang continued, “Flu and RSV have these pretty established winter patterns, but COVID isn’t quite there yet. It kind of yo-yos up and down. We had the spike during summer as well.” That’s right, friends, it’s only worrying because there’s no established pattern. If we can get COVID on your schedule, would between Thanksgiving and your work holiday party be okay? When will it feel normal to get sick? I guess that’s just life!

When Barber asked why COVID is rising, Huang mentioned waning immunity, especially to new variants, and that fewer people have gotten booster vaccines than other rounds. This is notably the first COVID vaccine that costs money as previously the US government 100% subsidized the vaccine.

Throughout their reporting, NPR persisted with a message that the tripledemic isn’t that bad. CDC numbers around declining doctor visits and hospitalizations equaled that “we may be turning a corner.”

But the “turning a corner” was immediately undercut by: “Wastewater still shows very high levels of COVID, highest in the South and the Midwest.” Wastewater says COVID transmission right now is higher than the same time last year. Wastewater doesn’t depend on someone electing to go to a doctor — whether they’re electing not to go because the infection seems mild, they cannot afford a doctor, OR the zillion reasons that US healthcare is inaccessible and inequitable. Wastewater doesn’t lie and say it feels fine. Wastewater doesn’t experience shame, can’t be bullied, doesn’t have to clock in to work, and doesn’t need money to afford healthcare.

But Huang and Barber downplayed this surge by comparing it to Omicron (the highest infections) and stating that ER visits are down 13% compared to previous weeks.

When asked why this surge in COVID — that’s apparently no big deal and just an annual force of nature — Huang said, “People aren’t masking or really taking precautions. People haven’t gotten booster shots.” Then they reported that IN THE LAST WEEK, 35,000 new people had been hospitalized and 1,200 DIED of COVID in the US. It’s been especially bad in the Southeast, which is reporting strain at children’s hospitals as kids are highly vulnerable to RSV, the flu, and COVID.

When talking steps to prevent the tripledemic from further spread, “awareness” was listed as the first step. If NPR’s science show seeks to normalize COVID, do we think cable news, newspapers, and whatever “news” source is trending on social media will get anything right?

Next was vaccination, with stats showing that 50% of US adults got their flu shot and 20% got their recent COVID booster. There was no mention of the RSV vaccination numbers. Again, the COVID booster requires you to pay now. They are harder to get than flu shots, and some places could not get the COVID vaccine in the fall. In my experience, I was in my doctor’s office for an unrelated reason, and the nurse was like, “How about a flu shot?” and did not have the COVID vaccine.

The third and final suggestion was to stay home if you are sick. Yes, everyone should do this. But people do not. 75% of adults have concealed an infectious disease to not miss work, travel, or social events. Sometimes, it is shame or fooling ourselves into thinking it’s not that bad. However, many people cannot stay home sick because they have to work. They have to care for their children or other family members. Many employees do not have access to sick days. Staying home when you are ill and resting is a privileged luxury that does not fit under our current economic system.

There was no mention of a tried and true method of preventing transmission of RSV, the flu, and COVID: masking.

Yes, even “liberal” NPR let the anti-science screaming toddler adults win. On their science program! Anyone who mocks you for wearing a mask is a middle school bully. I don’t know about you, but I’m 40, and I don’t care what people with a middle-school bully mentality think about me.

Masks are easy, simple, and effective. Let Bill Nye show you how they work. If you need someone to bully you into wearing one, Bill Nye will do that, too. Masks lower transmission rates and prevent infections, especially N95 masks. Yes, you can breathe normally in them, even with asthma, so stop acting like a toddler adult.

My one known exposure to COVID was at my neighbor’s house. The neighbor was ill but didn’t think it was COVID. She wore a medical mask. I wore an N95 for all but 15 minutes of the 2 hours I was there. There were 4 other neighbors also there: 1 wore an N95 the entire time, and 3 didn’t mask. Thankfully, no one caught COVID. One of the most effective ways to stop transmission is for the sick person to wear a mask, but the best is when everyone wears a mask. While mask wearing doesn’t 100% guarantee no COVID transmission, if combined with vaccination, you come to the closest that a regular person can get.

There is no reason to catch COVID, the flu, or RSV (or transmit it) when picking up cereal and potato chips at the grocery store or finding the perfect nail at the hardware store. Not wearing a mask doesn’t make these activities more pleasant. Not getting sick is far more pleasant.

There are no calculated risks when the majority of adults in the US are taking zero precautions. Everything is a risk, and everywhere is riskier in this tripledemic. You cannot take the risk of a family gathering when you also go to the doctor’s office — the place where people go when they are sick! — and don’t wear a mask. Or hop on public transit without a mask, yet wax poetic about how you have to eat inside at your favorite restaurant.

“Liberal” NPR politically avoided talking about masking as a precaution on their science program. They normalized the idea that COVID will be with us forever and that being sick with RSV, the flu, and COVID is a regular part of life and that forever going forward, you will have to get sick. This is anti-science. This is anti-community. This is propaganda for the chambers of commerce and business interests and a lack of government accountability and support.

NPR only hoped for a “decrease or stabilize numbers.” They could not and dared not imagine a world without tripledemic seasons that leave people sick, disabled, and dead. This has gone from a pandemic with scary unknowns to a human public health disaster fueled by a failure to think communally, use our resources, and have hope. Without hope and community, what even is a society?

At the very end, Huang mentioned that maybe we’d see “people wearing masks occasionally again” as the parting music played them out as if that was a fantasy no one dared to dream.

Dream bigger and demand better — tripledemics are not normal, sicknesses don’t have seasons, COVID is a vascular disease, get your booster, and wear your mask. Wear a mask to care about yourself and others.