Leg Season: REID #239

And Cousin-Uncles

Apr 29, 2025

SHORT:

They need to invent an emergency room but for when you’re feeling ugly.1

MEDIUM:

It’s finally nice out in New York, which means — obviously — legs are on display. Everywhere you look: a breeze. A shin. The erotic reveal of... a kneecap. And with it, something else: the sleek black orthopedic knee sleeve.

Women are marching around in them. Not limping. Marching. They are not wounded. They are weaponized.

The fabric knee sleeve, is not a sign of injury. It’s a declaration of survival. It’s not "I tore my ACL 2 years ago.” It’s "I survived dinner at a restaurant with my ex-husband where they bring the wine list on an iPad." These women didn’t rip a tendon, they ripped the truth out of a family therapy session like a sword from a stone. And now — they brace. For the reckoning they ushered in with orthopedic precision.

Meanwhile, you see a guy in one of those sleeves — and it’s like wait lol u went to CVS and bought that?

That’s merch.

You’re wearing a Walgreens knee-tee. No problem, of course. I love those stores and their many albums: Songs to Buy Gatorade To, Now That’s What I Call Holding It Together On Aisle Five, and It’s Christmas So Early Plus One Menorah.

But we must call it what it is.

LONG:

What else is happening?

British Parliament recently ruled that trans women aren’t women, citing "biology" as justification. To which I say: "Biology," is it, lads? Ur royal family tree’s got fewer branches than a pool cue. So maybe pipe down, Cousin-Uncle!!!? Before we get in2 a pub brawl!!! Yeh???!!

More importantly, the argument is flawed (obviously). Biological sex isn’t a simple binary — it involves chromosomes, hormones, anatomy, and secondary traits that often don't align, even among cis people. Treating "biology" like a fixed authority ignores how messy it actually is. More broadly, this reflects a failure in how trans issues have been framed. In an effort to appease cis discomfort, activists and institutions shifted from talking about "changing sex" to "affirming gender."

While well-intentioned, that shift let people believe transness is purely abstract — ignoring the chemical, surgical, legal, and social changes many trans people undergo, or seek, in order to survive. Not all trans people pursue medical transition, and there’s no single path. But reducing trans life to "affirmation" or "validation" makes it easier to ignore the real, material risks — health, discrimination, systemic barriers — that define it.

Speaking of science, I did a show last night where I presented on the famous 1970 exploding whale in Florence, Oregon. I will post an IG reel of the presentation soon, as I’ve been told to “put myself out there” and “create more hype around myself2” by many leading experts. But TLDR: a big stinky whale washed ashore a beach and “nobody wanted to cut it up or bury it” so a guy from the highway department who looked like Bill Burr x Trixie Mattel said “lets blow it up with dynamite” and everyone was like: yes!

People came from far and wide to watch it blow, and it did. But as the saying goes, “whale go up must come down”: it rained rank, bloody blubber all over everyone and they went screaming/ running for the hills and one big block of whale landed on a car and broke it.

I recounted these events and then performed a cover of “We Are The World” with the lyrics “We Are The Whale”.

Here’s a guy discovering my raw talent in real time, absolutely loving and understanding what’s happening, and then clearly going to tell all his friends about what he saw:

C U Next Tuesday