His writing here is a little more palatable than on his blog, but I can't follow the emotional arc very well. Maybe it's because I've read him write about this moment before and know what feelings he's trying to convey, but parts are frustratingly vague and hard to follow. It starts very matter-of-fact about Viagra-taking and then dives into a complete mental spiral. I suppose you could say that mirrors what actually happened to him, so he's producing the feelings of anxiety with prose, but the reader has to feel tethered to it somehow. A good editor would have asked him to balance the scene better with concrete actions. Describe how Mallory is comforting him, not just "my partner was beautiful and glorious and elegant." Very abstract, so it comes off as insincere and exaggerated.
It sounds here like the Viagra had no effect at all and he was just panicking because he thought it was an aphrodisiac. You do actually have to be aroused for them to work, and he's like "NO, I just want to be cozy." How materialist, to not bother to understand the effects of something before you take it, and then get absorbed in a separate mental agony that is entirely caused by ignorance and not related to anything happening in his body.
But I can understand how a drug overriding your thoughts would be frightening for a recovering addict, even if you're stupid and have no idea what the drug actually does, but he never brings that point up! It's all a lot of throat-clearing about how trans women do this all the time, don't worry, and I only did it because of peer pressure, and also it sucks that I didn't get to experience this with a trans woman, instead all I had was this "they/them" eunuch beside me who just wanted to watch Bojack Horseman in piece. "I know things now," but what do you know? It's unclear. The sentences themselves are fine (I actually like the part about how the best narrative endings are "and that's how I proved myself wrong"), but he lurches from idea to idea without any connective tissue other than stream-of-consciousness, getting in digs about no one believing in "a binary" while sobbing about how he doesn't want to be a nonbinary hermaphrodite after all.
/review
In late here, but this passage reads like my personal (private) journal entries, a dialectical mishmash of a description of an event with the emotions around it.
This is why I try to remember to edit before making any of it public.
That said, it's much better than when he attempts to articulate or create theory /principles. The small bits of those efforts I've read were parodic, and you can't convince me otherwise.
I'm pretty sure academic philosophy should be at least internally consistent.
In any case, I'm quite new to this person, but was familiar with Danny in the Prudence years/witnessed that difficult arc. The appearance of the relationship with Jos/Grace, and specifically the humiliation and public disregard, is sad to see (though with an evangelical background, maybe that's part of the kink?). Normally, I am not bothered by people's choices (or repercussions), but I hope (in vain, I am sure) that Danny has some secret accounts somewhere. There is always Nicole, I guess.
"'I don't understand,' said simple Danny. God, he was blessed."
I can't imagine my spouse writing this about me except in the context of immediate divorce.
Wtf was the actual context of this?
Random question - was there ever any discussion of the decision for the couple to become "the Laverys"? Birth-biological woman takes birth-biological man's last name in marriage is so....non-transgressive. It is, though, perfectly in line with actual traditional roles according to their birth-bio sex/gender. Hormones and pronouns aside, they are recreating the exact dynamic their original bodies/genders would in any generically hetero-standard misogynistic dysfunctional relationship.
Did that make sense, or am I Jos-ing? I mean: deciding to transition happens for many reasons. One of them is often a rejection of traditional or binary concepts for both individuals and for society/roles in general. Another is an internal sense of self/gender that is different than the biological sex characteristics would indicate.
To reject all of that, undergo medical intervention, adopt external physical characteristics (both surgically /hormonally and style/cosmetic-wise), and decide to exist in the world as the opposite or a completely different gender to that which you appeared to be, biologically aligned to, and lived as for the first x years of life - all of that, only to, in your newly aligned /affirmed/whatever gender and presentation, retreat to the negative and clichéd psychodynamics of the gender/identity you supposedly left behind seems...problematic, like maybe you haven't actually aligned at all and are still stuck in the old-school mess that is patriarchal fuckery or whatever were your messed-up home dynamics in childhood.
You changed everything, but you're still the same asshole in a dysfunctional gender caricature and dynamic as ever. You've not rejected "traditional" society or gender expectations at all. All this to become and be seen and accepted as something different than everyone has assumed or been taught you were (not an easy road, when undertaken in earnest), and yet you still play the worst of the old role.
I don't suggest this is the case for all or even most or a lot of trans folks - I'm an ally and find most TERFs demented. But
in this particular case, there's a delusion of...something - freedom, rejection of "the old ways,"
finding one's best self, that doesn't seem present or complete.
Now, for the self-absorbed/narc-adjacent (at a minimum) white male (also educated) (and tall-ish(?), one of those little things that are often said to bring some built-in positive perceptions) who hasn't actually made any permanent external changes to his body, who has and uses full allowance to fuck and fall in love with anyone, who is essentially an upper-middle-class version of a hobosexual living off the largesse of his spouse - retaining the "traditional" toxic aspects of the male in hetero/cis relationships, this is a win-win, of course. "Living your truth" while preserving your privilege and relational power. Nice job. Easy to be edgy with nothing to risk. (Nevermind the groupie factor, which
of course is there, and Jos will, again because that's how it is for men who gain notoriety, have far more "options" of that sort than Danny.)
But for Danny, Mallory is still there (as he wrote at some point), and as the codependent female archetype in this relationship, Mallory, and thus Danny, is still left doing the emotional labor for the narcissistic, needy male archetype; tending the home front while homegirl spouse is trying to stick or be stuck constantly; putting his career second, despite its being more lucrative; being shaded as a mere support/prop/orbiter around the Sun/son; and never, ever publicly objecting to being made to look like every other silly woman who threw it all away for some dick that doesn't even want her anymore.
@FarmVille 
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