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Grace Lavery / Joseph Lavery & Daniel M. Lavery / Mallory Ortberg - "Straight with extra steps" couple trooning out to avoid "dwindling into mere heterosexuality"
Honestly, that's the kind of man appearing in several romance novels. The guy who gets won over by the quirky girl and has his day made brighter as the two of them go through life mocking other people for being normies/unintellectual and finding a passionate common ground by their big brains and big passion. He acts out mean because he's been tragically hurt and betrayed, but he's so tender on the inside and lets his guard down for the girl who's just like him on the inside. I think Mallory assumed Joe was like this. Mallory assumed wrong.
Whatever the case was, I think she had a made up character of Joe in her head and a romance arc and marriage arc planned out for them based on her ideal romance. I think sh
I didn’t follow The Toast either, but once I started reading this thread it rang a bell and I recalled having read some articles from it and was vaguely aware of who Mallory was. I wasn’t someone who was part of the community it seems the Toast built and fostered.
I think you’ve explained very well why Mallory wanted, or idealized Joe. It’s the best explanation / theory I’ve read to explain the inexplicable.
As stated before I think her Christian college experience, and sort of proper, but witty, wholesome girl image after college didn’t make dating or romance easy for her. I think she imagined, or day dreamed, in her 20’s about some indie film romance with a guy wearing a Joy Division t-shirt and Joyce, Rimbaud and Jean Genet on his milk crate bookshelves. She fancied a literary guy, but one that was cool. She might have believed Joe was that guy all spiffed up, sober and in his 30’s. (He wasn’t but this is Mallory’s fantasy)) He even had the proper academic credentials that would impress her liberal and cool friends. On paper I guess he seemed ideal for a woman who was nearing 30 and worried she’d never meet Mr. Right.
Joe checked boxes in reality, and even far more so in her imagination. Maybe it’s why she’s such a doormat. Well that, and I think she had very little relationship experience until Joe. It’s sort of how teen girls are vulnerable to abusive relationships because it’s been all theory, no reality until they have their first boyfriends. It’s easy for teens to assume abnormal or abusive things are normal if they’ve had little experience with them, or if they grew up in an abusive household. I don’t think Mal grew up in an abusive household, but one that was very submissive and respectful to the male head of the household.
Maybe she was very private in that one personal area in her life, but I don’t recall any reading of any particular romances or relationships involving Mallory in her 20’s. She had Nicole Cliffe, and that gave off weird vibes . Vibes like if Parker and Hulme met in their 20’s, instead of their teens. Many people assumed Mallory was a lesbian, but quiet about it. Mallory seemed to love sharing and extrapolating about her life and adventures, but there was a distinct silence when it came to any romantic relationships or sexual adventures. If Joe was her first serious relationship, or first serious adult relationship after college, it would explain a lot.
It seems far fetched, but I truly hope she wasn’t a virgin when she met Joe. I would assume her few years of drinking would have at least got her inadvertently laid on occasion.
Ended up finding this piece that Joe wrote for Chicago Review, which I don't think was posted here at the time. Based on the timeline he provides, this was written around August 2021 and published January 2022.
He cited this thread because we criticized his porn poem readings.
I write a couple of days after a syllabus of my own, which includes W. H. Auden’s erotic gay poem “The Platonic Blow,” was described by the cloud of unknowing anti-trans agitators who follow me around as “rapey,” “predatory,” “traumatizing,” and “disgusting.”
Maybe she was very private in that one personal area in her life, but I don’t recall any reading of any particular romances or relationships involving Mallory in her 20’s. She had Nicole Cliffe, and that gave off weird vibes . Vibes like if Parker and Hulme met in their 20’s, instead of their teens. Many people assumed Mallory was a lesbian, but quiet about it. Mallory seemed to love sharing and extrapolating about her life and adventures, but there was a distinct silence when it came to any romantic relationships or sexual adventures. If Joe was her first serious relationship, or first serious adult relationship after college, it would explain a lot.
It seems far fetched, but I truly hope she wasn’t a virgin when she met Joe. I would assume her few years of drinking would have at least got her inadvertently laid on occasion.
I didn't pay much attention to her until this thread, but it's something I have wondered about because it never seems to come up- has she even alluded to some high school relationship or anything of that nature in her columns? She might just be private about it, but it seems nearly as likely that she was basically a femcel. A predatory freak like Joe would certainly know how to exploit that weakness.
She has claimed to have dated men and women and to be queer (see this grovelling article in Vice). No names pop up, but your superior research skills might find someone.
Two revealing quotes jumped out amongst the ladyball-washing.
So she did the logical thing and applied to Azusa Pacific University, a Christian college near Los Angeles, where she knew she would feel comfortable and safe.
Of course she went for comfort and safety in a place where someone else sets the rules for her.
When she did inform her parents that she was dating a girl, she almost wanted them to respond with fireworks, Roman candles aimed right at her. She wanted someone to be angry at. Instead, she says, "they were really loving and pretty open-minded."
„My parents are such assholes they love me unconditionally!”
Accusing your father of sexual offences and covering for a pedophile is a hell of a way to go through a delayed teen rebellion and attempt to create an adult personality.
This reminds me of a person I know (who any armchair diagnostician would classify as some type of Cluster B in short order) who dated a black boy in college with the express purpose of getting her rich and perfectionist Jewish daddy to yell at her. When it didn't work, she immediately broke it off.
Extrapolating from what I know about this person to Mallory, I would not be surprised if she has indeed never really had any very close romantic relationships. Just a series of experiments and performances trying to provoke reactions and feel important enough.
Joe absolutely does not know anything about Fourier, but he does remember Marcuse claiming Fourier wanted to make pleasure the highest goal of society. It's also funny how he's responding to people reacting to his "radical" anti-prison position that nothing should be a crime by saying he's a neo-Fourieriste who likes Lenin considering both wanted prison-states that severely punished any deviation from authority's demands.
Poor Joe. He promised so much--to crush all of his TERF enemies in debates--but all we got is some crying about KF. And it is just emoting. Joe tells us how he feels and thinks he has assailed KF with a knockdown argument.
Perhaps if Joe attempted to construct an argument in defense of compelling undergraduates to read gay erotica, he could--at least temporarily--rise above pervert rodeo clown.
If you are reading this, Joe, recall that these "unknowing anti-trans agitators" introduced you--a self-professed "scholar of feminism"--to Olympe de Gouges, and you shut the fuck up that sex-based rights are a recent idea that coincided with Caitlyn Jenner. You dropped your idiotic idea everywhere you could, suddenly stopped, and haven't repeated it since. Eat shit.
I am so glad you found this, it made me genuinely laugh out loud. I can't believe he quoted the entire title and subtitle of the thread.
I had a flick back and remembered this particular incident. He's being disingenuous (of course he is). We weren't horrified by the poem itself, as he implies, or even it being taught. We were horrified by the fact he made his undergraduates memorize it and recite it out loud in class, for no real reason except, we suspected, because making the young women say naughty words and describe blowies in front of an audience gave him a stiffie. He got all haughty about that and accused us of homophobia.
I love the fact he was so mad he had to put it into his writing so that he could tell a sympathetic audience "See? you SEE how mean they are about me?"
She has claimed to have dated men and women and to be queer (see this grovelling article in Vice). No names pop up, but your superior research skills might find someone.
Two revealing quotes jumped out amongst the ladyball-washing.
Of course she went for comfort and safety in a place where someone else sets the rules for her.
„My parents are such assholes they love me unconditionally!”
Accusing your father of sexual offences and covering for a pedophile is a hell of a way to go through a delayed teen rebellion and attempt to create an adult personality.
The lesbian stuff is from her own lips, but had been inferred or hinted at before she was publicly discussing it.
I have no idea what her sexual orientation is but get the idea Mallory was mostly uncomfortable with male sexuality and much more comfortable with females in general. I think she’s a straight or bi, but had always had an easier time relating with females since they aren’t usually sexually aggressive. No lesbian would pursue a guy like Joe.
I guess Joe being fey, English, loving Victorian literature and putting on a dress was a game changer. I think Joe declaring himself a trans woman would have neatly solved a lot of internal conflicts for her. Submission to a tranny is totally safe and different than submitting to a straight man!
You posting a link to that article interviewing Mal and Joe removed some cobwebs in my brain. I definitely read that on Vice years ago.
I remember this article specifically because I thought all the praise about the “amazing troll free” space and the “goodwill fostering” miracle site made me roll my eyes. But I also remembering her in another interview talking about what a big influence “weird Twitter” was on her. This surprised me because Weird Twitter was entirely spawned by trolls and shitposters. I thought she seemed either very confused or was just an irritating poser. I can’t recall which article came first, but I read both around the same time and found it ironic. I figured it meant WT must truly be dead and buried if this was the new fanbase.
Mallory was obviously eager to change her public image post-Toast. It’s made very clear in her interviews done between the Toast folding and her relationship with Joe being made public. I think Mallory wanted to be the “good type” of bad girl, a rebellion meant to appeal to the dominant woke progressive crowd and increase popularity among a particular set of young costal elite hipster types. She seemed focused on being a progressive lesbian until she met Joe and delved into the troon sphere. She could do one better than common lesbian. The lesbian didn’t shock or surprise anyone anyway, not even her parents.
Boring exposition about WT, only read if you had any passing interest WT or why Mallory talked about it after it had been neutered
Many moons ago I was involved in weird Twitter because I had been entangled in SomethingAwful and FYAD as a teen which is what weird Twitter was for a long time - just taking FYAD bs and humor (sans image macros) to a bigger public space with the bonus of trolling corporate Twitter accounts.
I had no weird Twitter accounts of note. I just shitposted by earnestly trolling corporate accounts and interacting with the posters I knew from SA. SA turned to garbage even before WT so WT attracted almost only goons for the first years as a new place to post, well before it had the label of WT)
Mallory was not part of weird Twitter when I was around. Maybe she interacted with the “weird Twitter” hive mind down the road after I stopped paying attention or had a secret account. I cannot fathom her having any involvement in WT until cancel culture helped sterilize it.
Even mentioning WT seemed like such a “weird” thing to make a point to tell a reporter, but I guess it was suddenly a cool thing to a wider audience. Like a girl wanting a group of naughty kids to know she really liked them and she wasn’t such a good girl after all. Mallory seemed to be wanting to have a Grease/Sandra Dee showing up at the carnival moment after The Toast. I can say I had long stopped paying attention to the WT spaces so I don’t know if Mallory became a princess in the ranks.
At the point in the game when she made this statement many WT accounts were hoping to further their career aspirations via their Twitter. I’m sure they lapped up any media mentions from a minor e-celeb and gave her a big hug. WT was very far from its FYAD origins by this point anyway.
Mallory would have been the wave of increased attention that also led to the comedic neutering of WT. It had been growing and attracting people not from the SA world for five years by then but at some point it did start conforming to woke politics sensibilities or at least feared its wrath. I had lost interest and had not kept up much after 2013 or so.
When I did dip into Twitter after that most of the WT accounts that had remained long term tiptoed to not anger woke scolds and some became woke scolds themselves. A few feared canceling to the point they preemptively posted mea culpas because they lived in dire fear of people digging up their old SA and WT posts and discovering all the wrong think and slurs. They feared losing their precious high follower accounts, others just got banned and fucked off. Some of the bigger WT accounts really wanted book contracts or writing gigs in various industries and hoped their WT could be parlayed into that.
So to be fair, it wasn’t just about joining the PC hive mind, but not wanting to endanger sudden hopes of using WT to help their careers or start one. So for many it wasn’t about shitposting and fun anymore, but became serious business…but it started out entirely about shitposting and trolling to a larger audience. (FYAD only had other goons to mock, Twitter opened up giant opportunities for mockery and trolling. It started out insular but spread well beyond the in-joke humor after the first few years. )
The lefty purity spiral also killed Something Awful, but it was already in steep decline. The election of Trump was apparently the death knell for humor and fierce intolerance for any wrong think, but I had been gone for many years by that point so didn’t witness it’s take over by millennial tumblr users
Anyway it all gives the impression she wanted to be involved in more transgressive and shocking things, once they were politically correct according to the current left group census. After The (Milque)Toast. WT was definitely a hard left safe space by 2017.
Trusting Joe as her partner for this adventure into less wholesome or “transgressive” realms was an incredibly unfortunate and dumb choice.
Her writing now, imo, seems just much like it did in The Toast, with added militant trans and woke flavors of course. Her writing is extremely conformist to progressive political dogma and only edgy or shocking to maybe Midwestern Christians over 40, her parents and Trump boomers, Her most shocking, transgressive achievement is her public/private submission to and humiliation by Joe. Her radical transformation into a man who disowned his family, changed coasts and got cucked by a trans woman, didn’t seem to effect or transform her writing sensibilities or writing voice at all.
Contrast Joe: mildly aloof, tries to act like he doesn't need to care, mildly fey, constantly namedropping philosophers and authors whenever he can to demonstrate his great knowledge, speaks in fancy pants words as much as possible, makes a grandstanding about how he is the most extreme in the room and WILL demonstrate it (mistaken for confidence and seen as attractively breaching norms), attempts to be wry and witty and cheeky to demonstrate his knowledge over others (mistaken again for confidence and seen as a misunderstood genius with her values), hidden sadness from his past... and he's even hard to please (because narcs crave novelty), which is an appealing challenge. And Br*t*sh! (May Null forgive me for uttering the phrase INullah)
TL;DR: Sideshow acts like he's the smartest, most clever asshole in the room, while simultaneously sounding and acting like he REALLY needs to take either a Vineland, Weschler, or both tests for retardation.
Her writing is extremely conformist to progressive political dogma and only edgy or shocking to maybe Midwestern Christians over 40, her parents and Trump boomers, Her most shocking, transgressive achievement is her public/private submission to and humiliation by Joe.
Her Toast writing is the apex quirky lit-nerd girl stuff. I was assuming, maybe wrongly, she wanted to change that label after The Toast. The last year of the Toast she looks like a proper young woman, long hair, skirts, blouses, etc…A year after that, and the Toast’s closure, she’s got the full soft butch prog hipster look going in publicly photos.
I was also assuming there might be some noted change in her writing voice when she went from wholesome, quirky chick lit writer to woke transman with troon wife that likes posting photos of their sex life and lives in polycule.
Seems like radical personal transformation might translate into her writing, esp since her much of writing is personal in nature. But minus the generic trans-stuff and woke scold vibe I don’t detect much change in her general quirky girl writing style. Her doing an advice column was a strange given the circumstances.
Presenting the public “proud transman with trans wife living in polycule persona” counterproductive if you wanted to continue to writer persona of quirky girl writing centric humor pieces for quirky bookish women. Pooners busting male writer stereotypes I guess? Then again Mallory’s private life only became public fodder after Joe, she seemed fairly private about her personal life until he came on the scene.
Presenting the public “proud transman with trans wife living in polycule persona” counterproductive if you wanted to continue to writer persona of quirky girl writing centric humor pieces for quirky bookish women. Pooners busting male writer stereotypes I guess?
If you are reading this, Joe, recall that these "unknowing anti-trans agitators" introduced you--a self-professed "scholar of feminism"--to Olympe de Gouges, and you shut the fuck up that sex-based rights are a recent idea that coincided with Caitlyn Jenner. You dropped your idiotic idea everywhere you could, suddenly stopped, and haven't repeated it since. Eat shit.
This is so funny and accurate. And Lily saying "I didn't want to read fanfiction, I wanted my life to be a fanfiction." These are two women who were such sheltered homebodies that they don't even have a roadmap for how to rebel or be interesting. It's at this point that Joe worms in and suggests that true liberation comes through humiliating group sex. These are all horribly uncool people, but one of them is so much more degenerate that the other two think of him as the one with cool access because they wouldn't have imagined getting into the things he comes up with.
