I am a social psychologist, clinical assistant faculty member at Loyola University Chicago, and the author of the book Laziness Does Not Exist. Over the past few years, I have written extensively about the harm done by the Laziness Lie, an unspoken, yet pervasive cultural belief system that preaches the following:

1. Your worth is determined by your productivity

2. You cannot trust your needs and limitations

2. There is always more that you could be doing.

The Laziness Lie has a deep and troubling history, dating back to chattel slavery and the dawn of European imperialism. To this day, the…

In the name of protecting vulnerable children from a supposedly menacing, corrupting outside world, much is done to render kids restricted, uninformed, and powerless. This despite the fact all evidence demonstrating that when children are well connected to a broader community, and have access to education and exposure to a variety of different lifestyles and points of view, they are far more likely to flourish. Most child abuse happens within the private confines of spaces we’ve been told keep them ‘safe’; the home, the family, and the church.

Last summer, a family friend began circulating Q Anon-adjacent rhetoric about the…

Like far too many people, I spent the majority of 2020 curled up in an awkward ball, fighting back tears, my phone craned in front of my face and giving me a nonstop tour of all the world’s horrors. I was adrift in a sea of uncertainty, and the graphs of COVID cases posted to Twitter promised me empowering knowledge but only left me more filled with dread. I was lonely and emotionally starved and Instagram and Facebook DMs offered me social snacks, with a side of secondary trauma and shame.

I was thankful to have the internet to keep…

The ability of transgender people (particularly transgender kids) to access affirming healthcare is under attack. In the UK, a high court recently ruled that transgender teens cannot meaningfully consent to puberty blockers, and thus may not be granted access to such treatment until after turning eighteen. In Arkansas, a bill recently passed restricting minors’ access to gender-affirming healthcare, and similar bills have been floated in Missouri, Florida, Ohio, Illinois, Oklahoma, Colorado, South Carolina, Kentucky, and South Dakota.

The argument underlying this latest push to curtail trans people’s rights is that the effects of taking puberty blockers are not sufficiently studied…

Last January, I was out thrift shopping with my friend Imani when my phone suddenly stopped working. We’d made it about halfway through a long row of wool coats when I went to check my email and found I had no signal.

“That’s really weird,” I said to Imani. “My phone isn’t connecting to any towers.”

“Maybe the store just gets a bad signal.”

“No, that’s not it,” I said. “There are no bars, not even empty ones. And no little LTE or 4G symbol.”

“Try restarting it?”

I turned my phone off and back on again, and still there…

Trigger Warning: This piece discusses suicide ideation, emotional abuse, eating disorders, and gender dysphoria.

Tom and I had been living together for nearly a year when it happened. Over the summer we had been almost literally attached at the hip, subletting a studio apartment and playing N64 together all night on the couch. I loved him passionately and fantasized about merging my soul with his completely. I couldn’t get close enough. I wanted to disappear into him. No amount of time by his side was ever enough. Then one night in the fall he told me that we needed to…

This week, the livestreaming platform Twitch came under fire for announcing their programming for Womxn’s History Month. Their use of the term womxn — which is often used by cis people to signal trans and nonbinary inclusion — was rightly criticized for being ill-conceived and performative.

What’s the matter with “womxn”? Well, if you took to Twitter the day of Twitch’s announcement, you’d probably get the impression that its major problem is cringey-ness. And it’s true, the word does make me wince. Womxn’s a word that does nothing to change trans people’s material circumstances, and it condescends to us and…

Humans 101

I’m a social psychologist, clinical assistant professor, and the author of the book Laziness Does Not Exist. My book is all about how our culture’s fear of laziness leads to overwork, exploitation, and alienation. In it, I also discuss how each of us can unlearn our hatred of laziness and build more authentic, socially connected lives. For anyone who doesn’t have the energy — or time — to read a full book about how busy and overworked we all are right now, here are five key insights from my book you can read in a single sitting:

1. The laziness lie

The “laziness lie”…