Endlessly frustrating that he conflates public pictures he has posted of HIS FIST IN HER MOUTH and the BunkerSluts ones. Like of the 2-3 that circulate, the fist one is the worst to me. I'm glad Herzog pointed this out. Jesse would never. And in that "Grace Lavery is a martyr" post, they also insist on calling them all private photos.
Here is one of the book talks from Feb. 9. Quite lengthy, but Joe's outfit...
Link
7:00-18:00 ~ Reading excerpts from
Please Miss
18:00-33:00 ~ The interviewer and Joe make the case that the term "memoir" is transmisogynist and that asking trans people for their stories is almost always "coercive," also transition is the same as trying to make yourself understood in language, but also not caring if you're understood
33:00-42:00 ~ Talks about letting subplots peter out to give a feeling of messiness or authenticity, a la Dickens, retaining "the capacity for self-surprise," which paradoxically endears the writer to the audience because they recognize those flawed parts in themselves. I quite enjoyed this part, I think it's a good observation and good writing advice.
38:00 ~ "this book puts the dick in Dickens!"
39:00 ~ "it's a parody of the philosopher who claims to know everything" hmmmmm who does that remind me of. This is the problem, because he never lets the obscure parts just hang out so the audience can play with them and react to them; he has to insist he knows how we're supposed to read him and that any criticism is done by fools rather than people who are closely reading him and pointing out the things about himself he
doesn't know but that are plain to those who read his work.
43:00 ~ his pretentious copyright warning
45:45 ~ "I wrote this book to get around 'the law,'" by which he means getting around copyright and libel laws, lol
46:30 ~ he sings "Hamilton" and ... I don't know, thinks he's as good a lyricist as LMM
49:00 ~ says he is writing a "legal romcom" with Buffalo Bill
49:40 ~ First reader question: "I don't trust you, nothing in this book is true." lmaoooo
54:00 ~ VAGINAS. he mimes a clenching vag.
This can't even convey how funny this is. Hang on.
56:30 ~ reads some more when he notices that one of his former grad students is on the Zoom call, immediately flips to one of the penis sections.
59:00 ~ another reader question from a NON-BLACK MINORITY trans professor trying to tiptoe around the question, which, reading between the lines, is "
why are black students so transphobic?" lmaooooooo
Joe reassures the reader that he doesn't teach black students. I'M SO.
"Why don't black people go to Berkeley?" LMAO.
Joe is like "I don't know, I can't talk about this."
Joe: "My visibility is ...
troubling." LMAO. People flee before this hulk of a man.
He makes the point here that white trans women escalate transphobia by being very visible and annoying. This is the exact point he couldn't get without the UK trans calling him out for insisting on doing the debate. LMAO.
And there it ends.
What I got from this is that Joe talks like he writes, in asides and shifts, which makes it hard to follow his point a lot of times. When he's explaining literature, it becomes grounded suddenly and engaging, so I can see why students find him likable (around 27:00 or 28:00, he does a pretty good explanation of a Kafka story). But then he goes off again into 6-7 namedrops of other authors and subcultures that are there for intellectual flourish, the kind of thing that makes sense in his head but that the audience member finds impenetrable. Even a very well-read person can't be expected to keep up with him, since only he knows how he's making connections. Mallory has this same inscrutable catalogue of references that only work when they are geared toward a specific audience type, like white liberal women who have spent a lot of time reading Austen and are distrustful of men. But remember, Joe wanted his memoir to be for middle-aged women looking to be titillated, and what do they get but extended Kafkaesque hate mail parodies and Dickens lit criticism? Nothing. Just like much of Mallory's biblical references go completely over her audience's head.
Dislike ratio:
Also Joe still has his Substack linked on his site, but it now goes to a Christian blog. Excellent.