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Posts by Gabriel Holder

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TFR’s 2025 Mutual Aid Pride Drive This Pride Month, please consider donating $50 or more directly to a transfemme author in need. TFR will be matching the first $500 in donations.

In a year overshadowed by global protest and fascist threat, TFR is celebrating Pride Month by supporting transfemme authors in need 🩷

Please consider taking a moment to donate to a mutual aid campaign listed here or elsewhere. Our goal is to raise $5000, and we need your help!

Details within ⬇️

10 months ago 443 318 4 13
Preview
Court’s Ruling in Skrmetti Threatens All Care That’s Politically Contested — Assigned An anti-trans, anti-science decision relies on a history of discrimination against women, and opens the door to challenges on care like vaccines.

The decision in Skrmetti lets politicians create their own evidence to justify banning necessary healthcare.

It's bad, writes @evanurquhart.bsky.social. Not just for trans people, but for anyone whose healthcare is or could potentially be politically contested.

Read more here:

10 months ago 620 257 7 16

OUT NOW - our episode on US v. Skrmetti, the case upholding TN’s ban on gender affirming care for minors.

With @chasestrangio.bsky.social

@profmmurray.bsky.social @kateshaw.bsky.social @leahlitman.bsky.social

crooked.com/podcast/scot...

10 months ago 134 43 4 5
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LET'S SHOW UP FOR TRANS KIDS! Point of Pride is a phenomenal trans-led organization that provides *direct* gender affirming care to trans ppl, from financial aid for surgeries, HRT, electrolysis, free binders/shapewear. Every single donation makes a difference secure.givelively.org/donate/point...

10 months ago 656 304 13 21

Jstor wrapped

1 year ago 84 22 0 2
Screen cap from 500 Days of Summer, wherein JGL and ZdS agree upon their mutual love for the Brothers Grimm. The second panel reveals the ill crossed nature of their stars, as JGL has the fairy tales in mind, while--alas!--ZdS has Grimm's Law in hers. She's clearly the keeper, as in the film.

Screen cap from 500 Days of Summer, wherein JGL and ZdS agree upon their mutual love for the Brothers Grimm. The second panel reveals the ill crossed nature of their stars, as JGL has the fairy tales in mind, while--alas!--ZdS has Grimm's Law in hers. She's clearly the keeper, as in the film.

So relatable

1 year ago 137 40 1 6
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smbc-comics.com/comic/calque

1 year ago 668 110 18 8
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brand new combining diacritics dropping soon in Unicode 17, to be used for transcribing rare historical uses, and even more so for really tryhard conlangs! #linguistics #langsky

1 year ago 71 24 3 3

oh wow I love this

guy accidentally discovered a glossary in the back of an old bible, turns out to be the only written record of an extinct language which is then used to (partially) resurrect it 🤯

1 year ago 171 72 2 0
T
\ ry to imagine being the last generation to speak English. Or, worse, being the last person to speak it. For this to occur you would have seen another language replace English: first in government, administration, schools, road signs; then in everyday life; and then in your home, until English, now fully replaced, was something foreign in the mouths of your own children. Could that replacement tongue ever be much more than a tool to you? English, meanwhile, would hold, as the linguist Evangelia Adamou puts it, "the memory of your caregivers, family members, teachers, friends, and foes... emotions, dreams, jokes, and knowledge". A world, set to disappear. It is hard to imagine such a thing happening to us. English is the apex predator of tongues, with speakers running to the billions. But for others extinction is a real threat. Indeed, as Adamou's fascinating Endangered Languages
*****) makes clear, it is statistically more likely than not. Out of the 7,000 languages currently recognised by linguists, some 4,000 are endangered. Nearly 700 have fewer than 10 "language keepers"; across the globe "one language stops being used every three months".
The main focus of Endangered Languages is what it takes to prevent and even reverse such decline. Though pitched at an academic rather than general audience, it is a model introduction, and makes its case with engaging personal passion. Adamou, who came to the field through her own family's

T \ ry to imagine being the last generation to speak English. Or, worse, being the last person to speak it. For this to occur you would have seen another language replace English: first in government, administration, schools, road signs; then in everyday life; and then in your home, until English, now fully replaced, was something foreign in the mouths of your own children. Could that replacement tongue ever be much more than a tool to you? English, meanwhile, would hold, as the linguist Evangelia Adamou puts it, "the memory of your caregivers, family members, teachers, friends, and foes... emotions, dreams, jokes, and knowledge". A world, set to disappear. It is hard to imagine such a thing happening to us. English is the apex predator of tongues, with speakers running to the billions. But for others extinction is a real threat. Indeed, as Adamou's fascinating Endangered Languages *****) makes clear, it is statistically more likely than not. Out of the 7,000 languages currently recognised by linguists, some 4,000 are endangered. Nearly 700 have fewer than 10 "language keepers"; across the globe "one language stops being used every three months". The main focus of Endangered Languages is what it takes to prevent and even reverse such decline. Though pitched at an academic rather than general audience, it is a model introduction, and makes its case with engaging personal passion. Adamou, who came to the field through her own family's

it is a model introduction, and makes its case with engaging personal passion. Adamou, who came to the field through her own family's Balkan-Slavic minority language Nashta in Greece, does not mince her words about the causes of extinction. Debunking the "survival of the fittest" account, she notes that languages disappear for the most part because they are made to.
In North America, once home to 693 known languages, only 71 are classed as
"safe" today; the disappearance of the others was not accidental. Invasion, colonisation and forced population displacement all factor into language destruction, as have state structures prescribing monoglot formal education.
The birth of modern French schooling is what did for Breton, in the same way that New Zealand's "Native Schools" nearly did for Maori.
The worth of saving languages is obvious: whole cultures are contained within them. Though Adamou dislikes grabby anecdotes of the 50-words-for-snow variety, she points to the ways in which Indigenous languages can pay closer attention to the natural world than, say, English. In several indigenous languages in Mexico, for instance, objects are located not "egocentrically" by the speaker's right or left, but "geocentrically", by cardinal points or landscape features. Might we be so casually tempted to reshape the landscape if we thought the same way?
Languages can and do can return from the brink - sometimes as preserved artefacts; sometimes, as in the case of modern Hebrew, as national tongues.
Activists, governments, and researchers all have their parts to play. At the least, dedicated efforts to understand and record means that languages can live on in archives: not extinct, as Adamou puts it, but "dormant" "We may feel overwhelmed", Adamou writes, "by the urgency of language endangerment", but there is still time to act; and no better time than now.

it is a model introduction, and makes its case with engaging personal passion. Adamou, who came to the field through her own family's Balkan-Slavic minority language Nashta in Greece, does not mince her words about the causes of extinction. Debunking the "survival of the fittest" account, she notes that languages disappear for the most part because they are made to. In North America, once home to 693 known languages, only 71 are classed as "safe" today; the disappearance of the others was not accidental. Invasion, colonisation and forced population displacement all factor into language destruction, as have state structures prescribing monoglot formal education. The birth of modern French schooling is what did for Breton, in the same way that New Zealand's "Native Schools" nearly did for Maori. The worth of saving languages is obvious: whole cultures are contained within them. Though Adamou dislikes grabby anecdotes of the 50-words-for-snow variety, she points to the ways in which Indigenous languages can pay closer attention to the natural world than, say, English. In several indigenous languages in Mexico, for instance, objects are located not "egocentrically" by the speaker's right or left, but "geocentrically", by cardinal points or landscape features. Might we be so casually tempted to reshape the landscape if we thought the same way? Languages can and do can return from the brink - sometimes as preserved artefacts; sometimes, as in the case of modern Hebrew, as national tongues. Activists, governments, and researchers all have their parts to play. At the least, dedicated efforts to understand and record means that languages can live on in archives: not extinct, as Adamou puts it, but "dormant" "We may feel overwhelmed", Adamou writes, "by the urgency of language endangerment", but there is still time to act; and no better time than now.

Delighted to read this review of Endangered Languages in The Telegraph by Tim Smith-Laing:

“Fascinating…A model introduction [that] makes its case with engaging personal passion.”

Please consider ordering the book for your library!

#linguistics

👉🏼 bit.ly/3WdDmra Price 16.95$

1 year ago 8 3 0 0
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GOP effort to police trans bathroom use could extend to D.C. schools, agencies
A spokesperson for D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) declined to comment on the bill or how her administration would respond.

GOP effort to police trans bathroom use could extend to D.C. schools, agencies A spokesperson for D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) declined to comment on the bill or how her administration would respond.

A reminder that DC is hosting as many as 3 million queers from around the globe for World Pride in June 2025

1 year ago 1012 210 37 17

I’d accept being mid if it meant that I was never stressed #linguistics

1 year ago 147 18 10 3

Art drawn by people who very rarely make art and think they are “bad at art” is 1000x cooler than AI art. It’s life-affirming. It’s often unexpected. I cannot overemphasize how much I love when people just go for it. You do not need the machine for this human endeavor.

1 year ago 7573 2607 95 97

i think if you had told me that as a grad student I would be analyzing voice acting in a video game using a framework of indexicality & hegemonic masculinity. i don't know what i would have said but i really did not see this coming

1 year ago 0 0 0 0

Here's the thing about trans people and echo chambers: We don't have 'em. We're all experts on the anti-trans side, their arguments, their petty bigotries.

The same is not true in reverse.

1 year ago 1654 315 15 14

50% research
30% teaching
20% service
27% email

2 years ago 66 11 2 2

Hi! There are a lot more people here now, so: If you're writing about nonbinary people doing language or know someone who is, check this call for chapter proposals out (and if you have a half idea you want to run by us, we're doing a free workshop --details in the call) 💜

1 year ago 24 11 0 0
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A Massive Study of 16,000 Participants in 23 Countries Finds People Are More Prejudiced Against Trans Women Than Trans Men Are we ready to take transmisogyny seriously yet??

haven't had a chance to read it all yet, but folks who follow me may be interested in this article by Devon Price about a new study on transmisogyny that doesn't use the word "transmisogyny" in it (haven't read the study yet myself as it's paywalled):
drdevonprice.substack.com/p/a-massive-...

1 year ago 70 18 4 2

If you've read WEB Du Bois then you know that the reason he articulated the concept of "psychological wages of whiteness" was exactly because it is the wage the white working class are offered in exchange for breaking their bonds with POC working class. Neoliberalism enhances this divide.

1 year ago 40 10 2 0
Eye Rhyme Calamity at the 
Annual World Limerick Contest
 
There was a young poet from Slough,
Who hadn’t prepared quite enough.
He started to read
Then wished himself dead,
Having failed to think his rhymes through.
 
His brain must be made out of dough,
So slapdash, careless, unthorough!
Mumbling into his beard,
He made them unheard
And ended each line with a cough.


Brian Bilston

Eye Rhyme Calamity at the Annual World Limerick Contest   There was a young poet from Slough, Who hadn’t prepared quite enough. He started to read Then wished himself dead, Having failed to think his rhymes through.   His brain must be made out of dough, So slapdash, careless, unthorough! Mumbling into his beard, He made them unheard And ended each line with a cough. Brian Bilston

Today’s poem is called ‘Eye Rhyme Calamity at the Annual World Limerick Contest’.

1 year ago 512 139 25 15
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over three years we worked closely with a group of English language high school teachers who were committed to anti-deficit practices for combatting language stigma and discrimination. this article documents their efforts and describes what became possible: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

1 year ago 92 34 4 3
Wikipedia chapters

Background
Legacy 
LGBT significance
Trombone solo

Wikipedia chapters Background Legacy LGBT significance Trombone solo

How I introduce myself on all the new platforms

1 year ago 6764 703 83 27

so far I am learning from my peers that grad school is a lot of pursuing research you're not sure is important to anyone but you

1 year ago 0 0 0 0
pamela paul column headline: “on transgender issues, voters want common sense”

pamela paul column headline: “on transgender issues, voters want common sense”

as a voter i’d actually love some common sense on transgender issues actually. nationalized healthcare, leaving us alone otherwise, things of this nature.

1 year ago 9373 989 11 16

I’ve imported in all my Twitter posts since I’m nuking that account. So, here’s a flashback to one of my favorite threads: a data analysis of the structure of the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip!

1 year ago 49 11 3 1
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