Grace Lavery / Joseph Lavery & Daniel M. Lavery / Mallory Ortberg - "Straight with extra steps" couple trooning out to avoid "dwindling into mere heterosexuality"

I don't really follow this cow but did notice his book being reviewed by Sarah Ditum in The Times on Saturday; I've transcribed it below for your reading pleasure (any spelling or grammar errors being my own):

A tiresome, taboo-trashing trans rant
There are rules about this kind of thing. When you write about a trans person, there is to be no importunate "deadnaming" (that is, using the trans person's pre-transition name). Do not suggest that trans people are "conforming to stereotypes" or "essentialising gender", and never imply that some might be under the sway of a fetish. Gratuitous references to the genitals should be absolutely avoided. How would you like it if people kept talking about your junk?
None of which, refreshingly, seems to hold any water with grace Lavery in this memoir, Please Miss. Lavery, 38, was born in Birmingham, attended whet she calls a "posh boys' school" before going to Oxford, and is now a professor of English literature at Berkeley (specialities include critical theory and gender and sexuality studies). In 2018 she came out as trans, distinguishing herself even within the febrile atmosphere of the gender wars by her willingness to get into any and all social media dramas.
In keeping with that online persona, this is not a book that can be bothered with the niceties. Lavery gleefully throws around her birth name (it's Joseph, or Jos for short). Her stories about the effects of synthetic oestrogen are straight out of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus: "Within twenty-four hours [of starting hormones] I had bought a large spider succulent, an oil diffuser and a phial of lemongrass essential oil (or essentialist oil, you would call it)."
And there is so much penis here. Not just in the subtitle (if there's a better literary pun this year than A Heart-breaking Work of Staggering Penis, I'll be highly surprised), but all the way through. Pn the first page, Lavery is having penis trouble. Since starting o hormones, she's been experiencing semi-erections: her penis (a phrase I pray I never get used to writing) feels "as though I were laying my own mis-carried foetus across my hand".
This is, of course, going to offend a lot of readers, especially the ones who believe that some trans women are co-opting female experiences for kicks. (Lavery is married to Daniel, a trans man - a union that they consider "extremely gay" but from the outside looks more like heterosexuality with pretensions.) The offence is the point: Lavery intends to provoke. The abortion-erection is a problem, she writes, because it carries the risk that "what they say about us [trans women] is true, that we are self-deluded boys attempting to get close to women for nefarious sexual purposes". And Lavery is less concerned to refute that belief than to ridicule anyone who holds it.
While trans-inclusive feminist writers speak delicately about identity, Lavery goes on a taboo-trashing rampage. She doesn't quite ascend to the outrageous heights of fellow trans author Andrea Long Chu (whose 2020 book Females: A Concern defined the "barest essentials" of "femaleness" as "an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes"), but Lavery seems to have a good time trying to match them.
So, when wriitng about the fraught issue of single sex spaces and whether the inclusion of trans women needs to be balanced against the privacy and safety of women, Lavery first attacks "the good women of Mumsnet" for being on a "sex panic tear" (how gross of them to think any male would get off in the womens' toilet!). Then, though, she admits that "going to the bathroom is kind of sexy?...Like there is sometimes a frission when people go to the bathroom together."
I suspect that statement will get more recognition from cottagers (surely a retro industry now Grindr exists) than from the average female reader, but at least Lavery freely concedes that her history sets her apart from most women. Amid her biography as a boy and then a man, she clnigs to "strange, multiple glints" that suggest femaleness to her. "When I was fetishised not as an effeminate boy is, but as a slutty girl is; when I was assaulted as a girl is." You may object that being a woman is defined by more than sexy wees, being fetishised and being assaulted - and in fact, not defined by those things at all. But Lavery will not take you seriously.
The other side of the debate is represented here in long parodies that are not as funny as they think they are@ the diary of Germaine Greer as a provincial housewife, a monologue in the character of the comedian Robert Webb (whose crime is to have admitted to some uncertainty about child transition).
Such skits are not the standard content of a memoir and this is a relentlessly non-standard memoir. Chronology is smashed up, genres are rifled, truth is very rarely the point. "I'm not trying to be clever" she says at one point, before adding, "obviously the book in general is an attempt to be clever". But the fourth-wall breaking and self-referentiality become tired fast: BS Johnson, but with narcissism instead of mordant self-loathing.
Occasionally the pretentiousness lapses, and emotional honestly almost creeps in. Describing a pre-transition era of alcoholism, Lavery writes, "I remember it now as a series of chaotic stabs, coming at me from the night", which is a good description of both blackouts and shame. Such moments are fleeting, though. More typical are the tortured jaunts into criticism, including a trans reading of Little Shop of Horrors, which have the chilling tone of a humanities symposium paper (Lavery is also an author of academic texts). Whatever your gender politics, no amount of penis can make this bearable.
 
Looking at Mallory is so deeply depressing. I know it’s been said before, but she could have been a cute little dyke dating an actual woman it not for the path of lunacy she took (:_(

but she’s fat and i would not have sex with her
Wasn't she always straight? Why do these rescue fantasies always involve "queering" of its own kind?

The lesbian radfem thing of imagining lesbian life to be this wholesome, innocent alternative to chopping off your boobs and dressing like a sped rapper leprechaun- well, I guess in relative terms it's not as horrific, but let's get real: lesbian culture is a big part of what gave rise to this whole mess in the first place. They pushed for the celebration of deviance- I don't just mean sex but the whole gender bit too, with "stone butches" binding their chests and freaking out about being touched and whatever. Lesbian hostility to normal femininity on the one hand, and fetishization of the "femme" on the other. It's all part of the same psychosexual complex that leads to trooning out.
 
The Dualities of Goodreads:
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Wasn't she always straight? Why do these rescue fantasies always involve "queering" of its own kind?
After she trooned out, Mallory claimed that she formerly identified as bisexual. I don't personally recall any concurrent evidence of this claim, only her post-troon remembrances.

I missed you guys :feels:. Hilarious sentiment from Joe earlier:
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If you want to be less cringe, may I suggest starting with everything?
 
Lesbians expressing their femininity in ways that aren’t traditional ≠ wrinkly agp freakshows in bad Little Edie cosplay.
Lesbians are, optimistically, asexual cat ladies and abuse victims hiding from men.

The rest are hormonally out of whack and predators who prey on the former.

It's not normal and it's not any better or less lulzy than troonery. They are their own barrel of creepos and perverts, crawling with mundane and exotic psychopathologies any seasoned eye immediately picks out.

But, I am here to laugh at troons, not have one-handed rescue fantasies about Brilliant, Troubled Mallory lol.
 
Lesbians are, optimistically, asexual cat ladies and abuse victims hiding from men.

The rest are hormonally out of whack and predators who prey on the former.

It's not normal and it's not any better or less lulzy than troonery. They are their own barrel of creepos and perverts, crawling with mundane and exotic psychopathologies any seasoned eye immediately picks out.

But, I am here to laugh at troons, not have one-handed rescue fantasies about Brilliant, Troubled Mallory lol.

What about being here to fuck off, because nobody cares about your multi-paragraph musings about lesbians?

I guess it’s somewhat on topic because you are successfully recreating the feeling of reading Joe’s book though.
 
I missed you guys :feels:. Hilarious sentiment from Joe earlier:
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If you want to be less cringe, may I suggest starting with everything?
Narc injury from the book not really doing anything at all? Not even those evil nasty terves seem to be buying it to hate read. I think the highest I saw it on Amazon was #41,000-something (it's currently at #62,059).

Don't worry Joe, we'll always be here to catalog your failures.
 
If anyone's interested, now that it has been published, most of the first chapter can be read via Amazon's look inside feature. You'll get to find out the other way to get Danny to open his mouth, though the answer will neither shock nor surprise you. The Kindle sample is longer than the hardback one.

Also, there's already a 5-star reader review from someone who has an extensive interest in eunuchs.
 
This is what happens when reviewers read something that is incoherent shit, and they're afraid to say the words 'incoherent shit'. So they say things like 'it is brilliantly mad' instead. This is intellectual cowardice, this is the reason the academy is in the state it is. Sad to see.
 

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This is what happens when reviewers read something that is incoherent shit, and they're afraid to say the words 'incoherent shit'. So they say things like 'it is brilliantly mad' instead. This is intellectual cowardice, this is the reason the academy is in the state it is. Sad to see.
Was that schizo Dr Matthew C Harris considered "brilliantly mad"? His social media posts got more deranged over time (since schizophrenia is degenerative, this can often be seen pretty well in social media posts)

I can't wait for some 🥝 psychology grad student or something to analyze Harris' writings for some thesis along the lines of "well he showed signs of decline into crazy, but we thought he was just 'brilliantly mad,' until it was too late."

Brilliantly mad is not generally a compliment from your contemporaries. It screams "interesting! But crazy, watch from a safe distance only" and Do Not Engage unless you love milk in realtime. but Joe is delusional and sees compliments when they are not, much to our amusement .

Maybe a paper on how 'brilliantly mad' troon men lose their inability of critical thinking over time from the troonjuice and dilating and narcissism.

At this point I don't even think him just larping as a bimbo is real, he really is just that stupid
 
Narc injury from the book not really doing anything at all? Not even those evil nasty terves seem to be buying it to hate read. I think the highest I saw it on Amazon was #41,000-something (it's currently at #62,059).

Don't worry Joe, we'll always be here to catalog your failures.

If you were constantly mistaken for an elderly caretaker of an adult with Down syndrome you would also feel depressed.

I haven’t read anyone in TERF twitter talk about joe’s book. There might be something in it that would cause outrage but it’s simply too boring for anyone to skim through.
 
I'm kind of sad that there's yet been "normie" reviews of Joe's book, professional or otherwise. There's been nothing on GoodReads or Amazon (there's a lonely five star review, obviously by someone who knows Joe). I'm really curious how someone who doesn't have a stake in either the TRA or TERF camp would react to it.
No. No more reviews. Reviews drive sales. Let the book sink like a stone, quietly, unnoticed, disappearing so profoundly that it would be as if it were never published at all. Let Joe lash out in bitter narc rage at everyone close to him, blaming them for sabotaging his book somehow. Let Lily leave him and try to rebuild some semblance of a normal life, refusing to answer any questions about him. Let Mallory disappear from view entirely. Let Joe turn his entire social media presence into frequent unhinged rants against his supposed enemies here and in his personal and professional circles who have conspired to deny him the glory and fame he so richly deserves.

Let Mallory suddenly reappear two years from now, having fully detransitioned and publishing a memoir titled Please, Jos: A Horrifying Tale of a Staggering Narcissist. Let it go into detail about all of the physical and emotional abuse she has suffered at Joe's hands. Let it confirm that he forced her to troon out, that he spent years deliberately and meticulously destroying her self-image and identity because he was so insanely jealous of her talent and fame, neither of which he would ever have, that he needed to erase her very existence. Let it become an incredible, nearly unprecedented bestseller that's all over the news for months. Let her give a spellbinding hour-long primetime interview to Oprah that ends without a dry eye in the viewing audience. Let Joe become universally known, even among uncontacted tribes in the Amazon rainforest, as the worst human being who has ever lived. Let Berkeley find a way to revoke his tenure and fire his ass. Let Joe go to ground hard to escape indictment for the many crimes he's accused of. Let Mallory's book be adapted into an Oscar-winning movie that has to be softened considerably to avoid an NC-17 rating. Let Mallory use her Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar speech to publicly apologize to her family for letting Joe drive a wedge between them, before breaking down into tears hysterically and be escorted offstage while the orchestra plays her out.

Let Joe eventually resurface, many years later, as he is arrested for solicitation in the men's room of a Greyhound station. Let him be entirely unrecognizable in his mugshot, a full hobo beard obscuring his weathered, dissipated face, all traces of his fancy designer clothes gone. Let the newscaster try unsuccessfully to suppress a chuckle while calling Joe "she." Let Mallory decline to comment for the record, except to mention in passing that Joe was the reason she ran Dear Prudence into the ground.
 
No. No more reviews. Reviews drive sales. Let the book sink like a stone, quietly, unnoticed, disappearing so profoundly that it would be as if it were never published at all. Let Joe lash out in bitter narc rage at everyone close to him, blaming them for sabotaging his book somehow. Let Lily leave him and try to rebuild some semblance of a normal life, refusing to answer any questions about him. Let Mallory disappear from view entirely. Let Joe turn his entire social media presence into frequent unhinged rants against his supposed enemies here and in his personal and professional circles who have conspired to deny him the glory and fame he so richly deserves.

Let Mallory suddenly reappear two years from now, having fully detransitioned and publishing a memoir titled Please, Jos: A Horrifying Tale of a Staggering Narcissist. Let it go into detail about all of the physical and emotional abuse she has suffered at Joe's hands. Let it confirm that he forced her to troon out, that he spent years deliberately and meticulously destroying her self-image and identity because he was so insanely jealous of her talent and fame, neither of which he would ever have, that he needed to erase her very existence. Let it become an incredible, nearly unprecedented bestseller that's all over the news for months. Let her give a spellbinding hour-long primetime interview to Oprah that ends without a dry eye in the viewing audience. Let Joe become universally known, even among uncontacted tribes in the Amazon rainforest, as the worst human being who has ever lived. Let Berkeley find a way to revoke his tenure and fire his ass. Let Joe go to ground hard to escape indictment for the many crimes he's accused of. Let Mallory's book be adapted into an Oscar-winning movie that has to be softened considerably to avoid an NC-17 rating. Let Mallory use her Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar speech to publicly apologize to her family for letting Joe drive a wedge between them, before breaking down into tears hysterically and be escorted offstage while the orchestra plays her out.

Let Joe eventually resurface, many years later, as he is arrested for solicitation in the men's room of a Greyhound station. Let him be entirely unrecognizable in his mugshot, a full hobo beard obscuring his weathered, dissipated face, all traces of his fancy designer clothes gone. Let the newscaster try unsuccessfully to suppress a chuckle while calling Joe "she." Let Mallory decline to comment for the record, except to mention in passing that Joe was the reason she ran Dear Prudence into the ground.
See now this fantasy is as lulzy as anything the actual cows say or do.

How exactly does a grown woman get "forced into" transitioning by some ugly faggot?

Are women competent, intelligent, independent adults, or should they be someone else's ward, like a child or severely retarded person, because they are otherwise so vulnerable to being coerced?
 
See now this fantasy is as lulzy as anything the actual cows say or do.

How exactly does a grown woman get "forced into" transitioning by some ugly faggot?

Are women competent, intelligent, independent adults, or should they be someone else's ward, like a child or severely retarded person, because they are otherwise so vulnerable to being coerced?
By being weak to pressure and having a ton of emotional baggage in the form of unresolved daddy issues, low self-esteem, body image issues, feelings of inadequacy, so on and so forth.
As the daughter of a famous pastor and living in the area her family still does there must have been certain expectations, some - or maybe even all - of which Mal apparently failed.
It's not even about women, men too can and often do fall victim to manipulative narcissists.
 
By being weak to pressure and having a ton of emotional baggage in the form of unresolved daddy issues, low self-esteem, body image issues, feelings of inadequacy, so on and so forth.
As the daughter of a famous pastor and living in the area her family still does there must have been certain expectations, some - or maybe even all - of which Mal apparently failed.
It's not even about women, men too can and often do fall victim to manipulative narcissists.
That's not "being forced."

See this matters because little kids ARE being forced to troon out.

What you describe is just an adult woman being too morally and psychologically weak to stand up for herself. It's not a mortal sin or anything, but it was her choice that she did of her own free will.

This feminist sperging about big mean mens in an attempt to make women utterly incapable of basic culpability for bad choices deserves to be taken seriously. Which means, if it's true, women should have a guardian ad litem just like a little kid in an ugly divorce.
 
See now this fantasy is as lulzy as anything the actual cows say or do.

How exactly does a grown woman get "forced into" transitioning by some ugly faggot?

Are women competent, intelligent, independent adults, or should they be someone else's ward, like a child or severely retarded person, because they are otherwise so vulnerable to being coerced?

You realize there quite a few women in the world and we are only talking about one, right? I know big numbers can be hard, but try counting to ten on your fingers and then imagine a number even bigger than that. That’s how many women there are! But we are talking about Mallory.
 
You realize there quite a few women in the world and we are only talking about one, right? I know big numbers can be hard, but try counting to ten on your fingers and then imagine a number even bigger than that. That’s how many women there are! But we are talking about Mallory.
So your contention is that Mallory, specifically, is not competent to make her own decisions?

You laid the lezbo smarm on so thick I think your point got lost in there.
 
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