Nick Clanchy

Some people in Scotland will never get gender clinic appointment on 224-year waitlist Revealed waiting times of all GICs in UK: Most Trans+ people in the UK will wait more than a third of their adult life to get an appointment, and some will never receive care

🆕️🚨 After painstaking research, dozens of FOIs and months of analysis we release the Gender Clinic Files which reveal waiting times for every GIC in the country.

They lay bare, how far off the mark the Health Secretary's estimation of the average wait is 👇

www.wearequeeraf.com/gender-clini...

What Happened to the University’s Commitment to Free Expression? Charley Kirk, uAlberta, and Me | Centre for Free Expression I was shocked when the University of Alberta administration informed me, one of its law professors, that I was being placed on non-disciplinary leave for my social media comments in the wake of Charli...

"Why would it bow to antidemocratic pressures by placing a professor on leave without their request, consent, or involvement? That any university would do this is beyond comprehension and is cause for alarm about the future of academic freedom in Canada."

New issue of Feminist Philosophy Quarterly is out, and it's a symposium on Katharine Jenkins's book 'Ontology and Oppression', guest edited by Susan Brison and @jennysaul.bsky.social:

Call for Papers: Special Issue of Feminist Legal Studies Feminist Responses to the Regression of Trans Rights: Strategies, Alliances, Hope Amidst continuing backlash against trans rights, recognition and inclusion, two recent decisions from the UK have substantially impacted not only trans people’s legal status but also legal and social narratives of sex, gender and identity. The narrative that trans inclusion has a chilling effect on the rights of others, particularly women, has been adopted uncritically by both the UK Supreme Court in For Women Scotland and the Office for Students in its finding that the University of Sussex’s trans-inclusion policy had a chilling effect on free speech. These cases highlight a backlash that has been ongoing for some time, and sparks debates and fear of what may lie in the near future for trans people and kin, as well as other gender-variant persons, not only in the UK, but across jurisdictions and in a global perspective. The discourse of the ‘gender critical’ movement is splintering both the feminist and LGBT+ movements globally, with some aligning politically with the Far- and Christian Right against trans rights, adopting their terminology of ‘gender ideology’ and potentially posing a wider threat to sexual and reproductive rights. While this a difficult situation for trans people, kin and allies, this special issue seeks to emphasise that legal battles – including battles (temporarily) lost – are also an opportunity to seek to reinforce old alliances and to form new ones, to find new legal frontiers and imaginaries, to reinforce the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of legal arguments as well as intergenerational memory of what feminist legal work is, has been and should be about. How, we ask, do these decisions (and those like them globally) reflect and reproduce structures of coloniality, heteronormativity and cisnormativity? What do these decisions add to critiques of legal feminism? What would be construct…

📣🏳️‍⚧️ Call for Papers

We are inviting papers for our special issue, “Feminist Responses to the Regression of Trans Rights: Strategies, Alliances, Hope.” The issue will be dedicated to trans-inclusive feminist legal analysis that addresses attacks on trans rights & lives.

Details below. Please share.

Especially if you didn’t last year, definitely go for a winter hike in the forest!! You won’t regret it

A clear liquid resembling white wine in a wine glass. Salon Badin, a small basement speakeasy. Jazz night.

Description of a Mottainai cocktail from the menu at Salon Badin: Mezcal, Fino Sherry, Dry Vermouth, Eastern White Pine, Fermented Honey, Juniper Berries. Mottainai is the ancient Japanese principle of using a living organism or ecosystem to its fullest potential. Fermentation is what drilled this philosophy into me, unlocking flavours from every part of every ingredient, ones I’d never accessed before. The wild fermentation that is raw honey, needles, cone, and bark of Eastern white pines, juniper and turkey tail mushrooms grown on conifers, to me, represents the Mottainai of Quebec’s forests. It ties together different components of the ecosystem we call home.

Finally, the best drink I’ve ever had in my life

A photo from the 2025 Montreal Street Photography exhibition at the McCord Stewart Museum depicting a woman with wild hair sat behind the wheel of a car. Next to her appears to be a cat wearing a suit.

Rodney Graham’s Media Studies ‘77 at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, depicting the artist sitting on a desk as if about to present a lecture.

James Tissot’s October in the Museum of Fine Arts depicting a woman wearing a long black dress in the style of the 1870s surrounded by the golden leaves of a tree.

Mark Tansey’s Action Painting II, depicting several people painting a rocket taking off in impossibly quick time. The painting is monochrome with a greenish tint.

Art

Inside the Basilica, a golden altarpiece is bathed in blue light.

Outside the Oratory: a green dome tops imposing stone.

Churches

A queer pride flag has been painted onto the road through the Gay Village, which is pedestrianised throughout the summer.

A spectacularly dilapidated concrete building down by the river near the Old Port.

A protest sign which hung between two trees on the McGill Campus during the 2024 student encampment which reads: “Queers Solidaires de la Palestine: Fuck Le Pinkwashing”

A statue of doctor and communist revolutionary Norman Bethune on Maisonneuve.

Walking around

A mural depicting three Indigenous women (possibly a grandmother, mother, and daughter).

A mural depicting geese taking flight.

A mural depicting a Black woman with hoop earrings and a pet bird against a pink background.

A mural depicting a tabby cat wearing a bowtie.

Murals

Fireworks at the Montreal Fireworks Festival, summer 2024.

Two deer constructed out of fairy lights stand in Atwater Square.

A chipmunk constructed out of fairy lights stands outside a church on St Catherine.

A large metal ring between two buildings on St Catherine frames Mont Royal in the background.

Night

A large metal ring between two buildings on St Catherine frames Mont Royal in the background. Early evening, summer 2025.

A view from Summit Woods the top of Mont Royal west over the St Lawrence river. The trees are bare and the island covered in snow. Late afternoon, winter 2025.

The sun has just set behind a fountain in Parc Jarry. September 2024.

A spectacular orange sky over Lac Sacacomie. Summer 2024.

Dusk

A view of downtown Montreal from Kondiaronk Belvedere at the top of Mont Royal just before dawn, summer 2024.

A view of downtown Montreal from Kondiaronk Belvedere at the top of Mont Royal just after dawn, summer 2025.

Dawn

A shaded fountain with a church in the background, near Laurier.

The Chinese garden at the Jardins Botaniques.

A beaver eating an aspen leaf near Lac Sacacomie.

An overgrown topiary dog in Westmount Park has dried out in the summer heat and needs a haircut.

Summer

A pink magnolia in full bloom at dusk near Laurier metro.

A friendly rabbit I sometimes used to walk past on my way home from work at Université de Montréal.

Spring

Two conifers covered in snow at the top of a mountain, late afternoon winter light. Behind the boreal forest stretches to the horizon. Winter hike 18th Jan 2024.

A frozen stream in the boreal forest. Winter hike 29 Nov 2024.

A view of the boreal forest from the top of a mountain.

My friend Caroline and I at the top of Mount Sutton in winter, behind us are snow-covered trees and in the distance you can see Vermont. Winter hike 3rd March 2024.

Winter

A tree with yellow leaves photographed from below against a clear blue sky, near Park St George.

A mound of pumpkins on the street outside a supermarket near Westmount Park.

First chipmunk I ever saw on the ground in the forest, which is covered with fallen leaves.

Fall trees reflected in Beaver Lake at the top of Mont Royal.

Fall

It’s my last week in Montréal/Québec/Canada and ngl, I’m really going to miss it! Feel very lucky to have had the chance to live and work here these last two years

A photo thread:

How Can We Live Together? - Boston Review Ezra Klein is wrong: shame is essential.

"Common decency stigmatizes people that do not participate in it—removes them from voluntary association. We indeed have to live with one another, but terms and conditions apply."

me on why Ezra Klein should be ashamed / why shame is Good Actually

www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

Boxer Shorts Blues: My Path to Gender-Affirming Underwear in Prison Nonbinary writer K.C. Johnson soon learned that behind bars, even their underwear was subject to deliberations.

Nonbinary writer K.C. Johnson soon learned that behind bars, even their underwear was subject to deliberations.

Read their Life Inside essay ⬇️

Fair! Also whenever I think of William James I remember him being dubbed “the nitrous oxide philosopher” in an Atlantic piece I read once, which I think adds to his sexy murder poet credentials (www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...)

Don’t think I’ve ever seen a photo of a philosopher with stronger sexy murder poet vibes than this, what say you @lastpositivist.bsky.social?

Ane Engelstad has a cool new paper in Hypatia on epistemic hopelessness as a vice oppressed people in particular may be liable to develop: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Went to this last night and it was so so good, 50 mins of heartfelt complex thoughts and feelings about trans visibility in the current moment: youtu.be/cqhiup5qSY8?...

Thanks Louis! Let me know if you’re ever in the UK visiting Ariel/Jordan/etc :)

*personal news* For the 2025-2026 academic year I’ll be a Departmental Lecturer in Ethics and Feminist Philosophy at Oxford, starting next month - excited among other things to get to teach my first graduate class!

Kafka-land at UC Berkeley The 160 members of the university notified that their names were forwarded to the DOE's Office for Civil Rights were not informed of any specific allegations against them.

"Of course, I am not K, but I find myself uncannily identified with his predicament." Judith Butler's open letter to UC Berkeley.

Cognita Prime (Red Dawn Academic Press (Alumnus)) - PhilPeople Cognita Prime is an alum of Red Dawn Academic Press. They are interested in Metaphysics and Epistemology and Science, Logic, and Mathematics. Follow them to stay up to date with their professional act...

Every week I get an email from PhilPapers saying there’s a new item in my topics of interest and every week it’s some bizarre bullshit by this super weird AI bot, e.g. “On the Nature of the Perfumed State Social Scientist Sippenhaft Critical Race Theory (CRT) Jackal”: philpeople.org/profiles/cog...

Judith Butler on being named to a list of UC Berkeley faculty & students provided to the Department of Education to be investigated for anti-semitism, w/ zero transparency about what they're being accused of or by whom. Pure McCarthyism & totally indefensible. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

If you’re interested in riots specifically, I remember liking Jonathan Havercroft’s “Why is There No Just Riot Theory?”: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...