Why can’t I Be Sick Like A Normal Person?

In March 2023 I got COVID which kept me in bed for 6 weeks. The following month it kept me in bed every other day. After that I got back to normal, except my body temperature remained a degree-and-a-half higher than before and, unbeknownst to me at the time, I developed Crohn’s Disease. I was diagnosed by the end of that year, and the first few months of 2024 I spent with worsening symptoms while getting infusions of Skyrizi, a monoclonal antibody treatment. It kicked in after about 4 months and I stabilized by Summer 2024.

Skyrizi is an immunosuppressant. I took extra care avoiding exposure to communicable diseases, wearing a mask at the grocery store, not flying, avoiding crowds. I got through 2024 without so much as a cold.

A little over a month ago, I got what I think was RSV. It nailed me in bed for close to a week; then I thought I was recovering, with “just” a lingering cough. Then it got worse, then a little better, then worse, then to “Convenient Care” where I got my first chest X-Ray (seemingly normal) and tested negative for COVID and Flu A & B. Then back in bed for a several days.

I couldn’t talk without coughing, so I stopped talking. I canceled what few plans I had. I rested, and rested some more. I watched more TeeVee than I did in the previous decade. I played a lot of Lexulous with the Level 8 practice robot, which I now beat more often than not.

I think I am finally recovering. Although I am still coughing, I am able to speak again. Yesterday I bicycled, albeit slowly. My brain is coming back online. Cori and I recorded a Heterodorx last night, first in weeks. Unfortunately, all I had to talk about was how sick I have been because I have nothing else going on. (Cori’s adventures make up for my lack.)

I just drew “Cough Monsters,”above, from a sketch I made near the nadir of my illness. The last drawing I made was still on the scanner — it was called “Exiting Winter,” which I drew the very day my cough started. Hilariously I thought the worst of 2025 might be behind me. Boy was I wrong.

Share

Pride Restored pins

Cori Cohn made this unassuming post on Xitter about these pins and a week later it caught the eye of some very outraged children who in their fury drove about 5 million views to it.

Pride Restored Pins

It features these pins I designed and project-managed for him. They’re a true collaboration: Cori’s vision, my execution. And now my further management and distribution, because after 2 million views I insisted on ordering more and listing them at my Merchandise Empire. Cori has run out already (obviously) but you can get them (currently backordered) here. Our new batch should arrive from China on January 24th, when I will commence packing and shipping pre-orders.

Share

Musical Memory

I have an excellent musical memory. I forget everything else, but music stays. Music plays in my head 24/7, and has my whole life. I can remember entire symphonies my sister would spin on our record player, although I have no idea what their names are, or the names of their composers, let alone conductors or orchestras. Names are the weakest part or my memory by far. Music is the strongest.

Musical memory evolved to preserve epic poetry and precious human culture, to bind the tribe and pass on important wisdom to future generations. Yet mine is full of commercial jingles from the 1970’s onward, and crappy Christmas music I never wanted to hear in the first place, and musical “product” engineered for popularity and sales by copyright industries. And now it’s hooked on AI-generated songs, not even human voices or instruments. My amazing musical memory, the strongest part of my crumbling mind, designed for binding humans together: occupied by venal, commercial, exploitative, and now not-even-human patterns, forever. God must be rolling in His grave.

I feel grateful nonetheless, not least because most of those AI songs in my head were generated at the behest of my friend Cori, so I associate them with our friendship. Cori even generated (directed? prompted? pushed a button requesting?) a commercial for “Nina’s Art Gloves” which he inserted into the latest episode of our Heterodorx podcast. It is hilarious. 

Share

He-ing Corinna

Corinna, my friend and podcast co-host, is a man to me. I don’t think it’s because I’ve been using sex-based pronouns for him, as I do for everyone. He does pass; the majority of people read him as female. When I first saw him in a video, I thought, “he passes, he’s cute.” And once I mistook him for a mom, from a distance, while he was unloading his bike parked right next to a dad unloading more bikes with his kids. I read them all as a family unit, didn’t recognize Corinna, and rode right by.

Nonetheless, Corinna is a man to me, and not just on a technicality. Calling him “him” generates for me no cognitive dissonance; I don’t get tripped up as I do with Buck Angel. 

Back in the day (circa 2017), when male transactivists liked to claim they were “expanding the bandwidth of womanhood,” gender critical radical feminists responded that such men were expanding the bandwidth of manhood. Why couldn’t we accept that some men are feminine? Men are eager to exclude effeminate men, especially effeminate gay men, from manhood. Meanwhile, unfeminine women, masculine women, were increasingly eager to exclude themselves from womanhood. Radical feminists urged everyone to broaden their acceptance of men and women, to include the full range of behaviors and presentations we call gender. 

This seemed sensible to me. I was already opposed to sexist stereotypes, being gender non-conforming myself. But prior to 2017, I believed if an individual wanted to exclude themselves from their sex class, I should support their exclusion. Isn’t that “kind”?

Well, no. It’s not kind to tell someone that they have no place in their natal sex class because they don’t feel like they fit in. Your sex isn’t socially determined. Yes, your social “sex roles” are, but I supported broadening these categories to include everyone. Women can be firefighters and airplane technicians and boxers, strong and active and butch. Men can be pretty and wear dresses and present themselves as objects for consumption, weak and passive and effeminate. 

Corinna is a man to me. An effeminate gay man with no gonads, who has been on exogenous estrogen for decades. His fat distribution is more “womanly” than my own. He has long hair; I cut mine short. He is a disenchanted transsexual. Does he want to exclude himself from his sex class? I don’t think so, but other men certainly did in the 1990’s, when he chose irreversible surgery as a teenager. 

Corinna is a man attracted to men. He has had relationships with men where both he and they pretended he was a woman. He has told me he doesn’t want to do this again. He knows he is not a woman; he wants to be with a man who accepts him as he is.

Maybe Corinna is a man to me because we’ve had so many conversations about this. Maybe it’s because I really have expanded my idea of manhood and womanhood. Whatever the reason, I now find it jarring when strangers call Corinna “ma’am,” and friends call him “her.” I acknowledge some people sincerely perceive him as female. Others might register ambiguity, but think they know what side of “be kind” they should fall on. 

Sometimes I joke that I call Corinna “he” because I’m an asshole. Or because I’m so rigid about using sex-based pronouns. But the fact is, I really, truly, sincerely perceive Corinna as a man, albeit an extraordinary one. Extraordinary men are men, and, extraordinary though he may be, Corinna is no exception. 

Share

Mon Dec 12, 6pm ET: Dreger-Wright Debate!

LIVE on MONDAY Dec 12 at 6pm EST! Alice Dreger and Colin Wright (not pictured) will DEBATE whether “Biological sex is real, immutable, and binary” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2aKX8Mcz9Q&ab_channel=CorinnaCohn


Tune in live to join us in the comments box!

 

Share