In my free time I enjoy writing about (more!) extravagantly dark themes that make my strange little life feel significant. In particular, I've enjoyed thinking about the social and political roles played by difficult emotions like disgust, terror, and horror. Sometimes I write down my thoughts about this stuff, and occasionally people let me publish them.

Short descriptions of my essays on these topics are listed below. Please email me if you're interested in reading a draft of any works-in-progress. And if you read anything that I write on these topics, I'd love for you to read Speak No Evil.
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​Email: dpayton[at]virginia[dot]edu

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HORRIFIC PUBLICATIONS

1. We Should Be Angry, But We're Horrified Instead (APA Blog). This is an essay about horror and denial, and why it's so difficult to get angry when you're horrified.
2. ​Speak No Evil. This is an essay about the (2022) Danish film Speak No Evil, analyzed in comparison to the more recent (2024) American remake.
3. ​Gender and Monstrosity. This is an essay about the nature of monstrosity, personhood, and being trans.​

OTHER PUBLIC WRITING

1. ​Gender and the Limits of Language (APA Studies in LGBTQ+ Philosophy). This is an essay about how the proliferation of gender and sexual identity categories can present problems for queer people when it comes to how we connect with each other, as well as when it comes to being understood by others.
2. Trans Rights and Academic Freedom ​(with Jordan Pascoe for the APA Blog). This is an essay about the meaning and costs of academic freedom, for trans faculty and students.
3. Why We Shouldn't Compare Transgender to Transracial Identity (with Robin Dembroff, Boston Review). Unlike gender inequality, racial inequality primarily accumulates across generations. Transracial identification undermines collective reckoning with that injustice. 

WORKS-IN-PROGRESS

• ​Gradual Disturbance. ​A short essay about the social mechanics that horror writers use to transport us from reality to the world of horrific fiction.​​ ​​​​​

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HORROR SYLLABUS
​I am in the process of developing a syllabus of horror films. I spontaneously began enjoying horror movies in my mid 20s, which meant (among other things) that there was a lot of horror I'd never seen (and this is still the case). But even then, I had a sense for the fact that horror films build on each other in a way that seems unique to this genre. Newer films incorporate tropes and other narrative elements from older ones, and often make references to previous works which are not immaterial to the story.

​I thought it would be nice to have a guidebook for working through the genre chronologically, one which would present the films in order of development, and offer a bit of exposition on how each movie in that timeline incorporates and builds upon what came before it.

This is not a philosophy syllabus; it's just a fun thing for nerds who are new to horror and like to approach their hobbies in a systematic way, as I do. It's still a work in progress, but if your'e interested, you can access the most recent version of the syllabus here.