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

[MirnaMinkoff]

She’s just lucky she didn’t get recruited by Scientology instead, otherwise she’d be on staff and working long hours at a manual job for no money. At least this way she gets $18 an hour. None of this absolves her of responsibility.

You know, I think she was would have been a perfect candidate for Jim Jones’s People’s Temple.

Two of the main henchwomen running Jim Jone’s People’s Temple were the sisters Carolyn Layton and Annie Moore, who were the daughters of the very liberal, progressive, very kind and compassionate Rev John V. Moore who was a Methodist minister in Berkeley California. He headed up a UM church in Palo Alto…just like Mallory’s dad Presbyterian Church in Menlo Park. Rev Moore was 60’s and 70’s version of Pastor Ortberg.

Spoiler

Moore had three daughters, two died in Jonestown. Carolyn killed herself and her son (Kimo) that had been fathered by Jim Jones, and Annie was helped kill the young children or those that wouldn’t willing drink the flavor-aid with syringes full of poison. She left a suicide note praising Jones. The third daughter, Rebecca, never joined PT and earned a PhD in theology/ religious studies in an attempt to make sense of what happened to her family. Anyone interested in this subject I highly recommend Rebecca’s “A sympathetic history of Jonestown” though it was hard as hell to find back in 2008, took me months. It was published in 1985 by an academic press. She wrote a new book in the last decade on so on Jonestown but I haven’t read it yet.

I take a particular interest in the personal stories of individual women and how the politics and ideas of their era could wreck havoc on their lives and others. Obviously the extreme examples tend to be the ones documented or written about. I have Unity Mitford’s biography right next to “ Diana Oughton Making of a Terrorist”. Reading these types of book in my teens and 20’s was an invaluable education.

If Mallory’s goal in life is to make herself an interesting footnote character, a misguided extremist loony of this era, she’s got a great start. I know it’s why this thread holds a general interest for me. Like watching one of those aforementioned biographies play out in real time. Real shame Joe has endured as a main supporting character and tired trope for so long. But egocentric, insecure misogynistic love interests tend to always coattail ride at some point in these various women’s stories.

Spoiler

ETA: thanks to the years childhood has been extended post-1980 and Mallory’s late start into rebellion, she’s an outlier. Most of these women referenced were dead by 30. (Unity shot herself in the head when England declared war against Germany, but lingered on as a zombie after a bullet lobotomy until 1946)

Mallory started her foray into the extreme fringe a decade later and older than women of previous generations mentioned above which I find notable.

 

[monstrous bubo]

Joe has an attack of the vapours


link | archive

As a Professor of English he ought to know that cunt was not an obscene word in the Middle Ages (red light areas were known as Gropecunt Lanes) and therefore this name is historically sensitive. Perhaps he should read some books and not just write them. Unless of course he is reading modern sensibilities into it deliberately, in which case he’s failing both as a Bri’ish man and as a super queer transgressive shock the bourgeoisie type.

Also, gamers. Whadaya gonna do.

 

[Bookwork]

Joe has an attack of the vapours

View attachment 5941219
link | archive

As a Professor of English he ought to know that cunt was not an obscene word in the Middle Ages (red light areas were known as Gropecunt Lanes) and therefore this name is historically sensitive. Perhaps he should read some books and not just write them. Unless of course he is reading modern sensibilities into it deliberately, in which case he’s failing both as a Bri’ish man and as a super queer transgressive shock the bourgeoisie type.

Also, gamers. Whadaya gonna do.

The game's developer explains how the names were derived:

Spoiler: Text

r/ManorLords
6 days ago

u/GodAtum

What's this game's obsession with the name Cuntz?

My ox and a family member are called this!

u/gstyczen​

6d ago​

Dev​

Names were taken from a XIV century HRE census and then are assigned randomly without any special bias.​

​

u/pddkr1 ​

6d ago​

That’s very fun​

​

I always wondered whether devs took approaches like that​

​

Edit - just realized you’re a dev lol​

​

u/Bez121287 ​

6d ago​

He's "THE" dev.​

https://www.reddit.com/r/ManorLords/comments/1c8yjab/whats_this_games_obsession_with_the_name_cuntz/

 

[swingbatta]

I'll be honest, Mallory (and Noelle Stevenson, now that I know about her almost equally horrible relationship) regularly haunt me. I grew up just below that era of quirky feminist women who were obsessed with how smart, wordy, nerdy, and well-read they were. This was the era of "Look for the girl who reads" kind of dreamy idealization of the girl who always had her nose in a book and sighed at the thought of their very own Mr. Darcy, while being very loudly feminist because it's the logical thing to be.

There's a lot of autism under the cut, but tl;dr: Mallory's type isn't uncommon, and while it's very much a tragic situation caused by their own hand, it's still a tragedy for these women because they have no sense of self.

Spoiler: MILLENNIAL FEMALE-BRAND AUTISM

For the most part, these girls spent their teen years shy and desperate to be noticed by the people around them for the very rich inner life they lived. They're typically plain--not ugly, but no knock-outs and often not sure what to do with their hair or clothes--and come from overbearing families, whether that's being narcissists, being devoted to their beliefs (conservative and liberal, I've seen it with both), or generally just being such big personalities that our heroine gets bowled over in her formulative years. And, while they may embrace a variety of whimsical, manic pixie dream girl quirks (sundresses, asymmetrical haircuts, charming affects of "hippie" or "boho" or other identities), they're often too frightened to jump whole hog into a subculture, because that means people will stare at them. They want to be recognized, but only by very special people; diving too far into weirdness means they'll be perceived.

Having been in these circles and seen plenty of Mallories in my time (and, admittedly, having had plenty of these kinds of thoughts/affects myself in college), I can definitely say that they do not have a set sense of self. Which sounds ironic, given said rich inner worlds, but hear me out: these kinds of girls want desperately to be changed. They want to find someone to recognize what's lovely and wonderful about them, and then they'll be able to exit the chrysalis and bloom into the beautiful butterfly they were always meant to be. So they dig deep into being enticing--They cherish the whimsy of childhood even as an adult! They are so quirky and laugh just because they can! They love fairy tales and folklore and Austen! They're a lesbian now!--and form their identity on essentially being bait for some broody type of man or equally whimsical woman to be like "I locked eyes on you and I felt my soul blossom open". But what they often attract instead are narcissists who use them as an ever-present adoration machine. It's not necessarily romantic; a lot of these types of girls get picked up to be the Pet Ingenue of a much more demanding personality. But the end result is the same: they're sucked dry of all the things that did make them interesting, because the easiest way to keep narc supply is to tell them that those things are bad/lame/wrong and they're so desperate for someone cooler than them to tell them what to do, and they're left out to dry.

Lately, I've noticed almost all of these types of girls are a flavor of nb/trans man, which always baffled me because their womanhood was such a foundational part of who they were as people and now suddenly they're Not A Woman. And part of it is, of course, that being a Strong Feminist was the mode du jour in the early teens and now Being Trans is in its place though I admit there's always a little bit of rage in me when I see these former Feminists kotow to men in dresses wishing violence upon the feminists who remained. But I think another part is that many of them are aging out of being the ingenue and don't know how to deal with that. It's very romantic to be a young woman who knits and reads and prefers tea to coffee; when you do all that as a middle-aged woman, that's just what middle-aged women do. So I think for a great deal, transitioning is less Peter Pan syndrome and more wanting to retain that uniqueness. Seeing Mallory talk about how delighted she was about the train made me realize she's still clinging to the "I find the whimsy in the mundane" identity, but now that she's doing all her Manic Pixie Dream Girl tricks as a man, it's new and different and she is once again more unique than everyone around her.

I've had plenty of friends go down this same route. But the thing is, no matter who they beg for approval from, no matter if they lop off their tits or change their name, they're still just a bunch of hooks with nothing of substance underneath. And it's honestly tragic.

 

[Larry David's Opera Cape]

Noelle Stevenson, now that I know about her almost equally horrible relationship

Never heard of this person and looking her up didn't tell me much. What's the story there?

 

[MirnaMinkoff]

Never heard of this person and looking her up didn't tell me much. What's the story there?

I had never hear of ND (lol) either but was shocked to see a near Mallory clone, only one who was into animation instead of Victorian literature.

Makes me worry there’s a factory producing this artsy ginger femme to pooner model somewhere.

Have Mallory and Noelle, or Daniel and Indy, ever crossed paths?

 

[swingbatta]

Never heard of this person and looking her up didn't tell me much. What's the story there?

I had never hear of ND (lol) either but was shocked to see a near Mallory clone, only one who was into animation instead of Victorian literature.

Makes me worry there’s a factory producing this artsy ginger femme to pooner model somewhere.

Have Mallory and Noelle, or Daniel and Indy, ever crossed paths?

Noelle/N.D. Stevenson was the artist behind Lumberjanes and Nimona (which was totally a trans allegory the whole time you guys) and the showrunner for the She-Ra reboot. You couldn't go three clicks without running into her noodly, adorable, and female-focused comics and even fewer clicks without running into stylistic copycats. I don't know if she and Mallory ever crossed paths, online or otherwise, but there was a great deal of overlap in their audiences and they were popular in the same early-teens time frame. She wasn't as vocal as Mallory, but it was still that "nerdy lesbian emphasizes girl power and embracing women characters! Oh but oops not a woman never was fuck womanhood (unless that makes you mad at me.)"

I swear this was mentioned earlier in the thread but I can't find it to save my life, so give me clocks if necessary, but in her autobiographical comic her wife would fuck other people (possibly the boyfriend she had before hooking up with Noelle??) while she slept on the couch.

 

[Trianon]

The way he phrased this is very culturally specific to their little evangelical world. And maybe that wording is too off-putting for many outside that world to put aside in order to hear the underlying message. But basically he was calling her out on her pride. Her ego. Her desire to be the center of attention and the focus of admiration. And he was right.

I'm glad you brought this up- it seems he was probably right in the long term, and there's plenty of truth there. But to disagree slightly, even children who grow up with that language are going to balk at hearing "you are the devil." A lot of evangelical communities set the "age of accountability" at 7, which means a child is probably capable of understanding what it means to give their heart to God. That's around the time they might get baptized or affirm that they are saved. But I think this incident (at least if Mallory is describing it accurately, which is assuming a lot) shows that children are still extremely sensitive as they try to figure out who they want to be and what they want to do. It is unlikely that their dreams, which are unrealized, can be sinful in and of themselves, and I think adults should be able to subtly steer children toward self-reflection without automatically condemning them like this. (Speak in parables.) This is different than being wishy-washy and refusing to talk about sin because it's uncomfortable to modern ears. This is more about how to raise children who can question their own motives and understand that the path they first envision may not be the best for them or their spiritual health.

At first I read the article thinking she heard this message when she was in college, and in that scenario, she would have enough maturity to ignore him, recoil, change her mind, or reflect on her motivations. But sixth graders, I don't know. I think there are better ways to probe why a child is interested in writing or teaching (even if you are someone firmly against female pastors, there are other options). God wants us to use our gifts, so why not keep the door open and remind a young person that it's easy to get our worth from how well we perform, or whether we can command attention and respect? Maybe encourage them to start writing their own private thoughts down and be self-critical and discerning before sharing their work with others, to make sure it's genuinely helpful and not prideful.

(See Beth Moore as proof-positive that I am probably entirely wrong and that we should bully anyone aspiring to megapastordom! Imagine Dear Prudence leading a church!!!)

tl;dr It sounds like she had a family who did exactly what I suggested, encouraging their kids to find vocations where they could be of use to others. (The above comment from @MirnaMinkoff about needing some "brimstone" seems accurate; she hated how laidback they were.) But she wanted to break away from them and find new mentors, and she never did find anyone who could "get" her while also holding her accountable and helping her improve. She mistook someone praising her writing for someone who was on her team. And then she mistook his negging for constructive criticism.

It's very romantic to be a young woman who knits and reads and prefers tea to coffee; when you do all that as a middle-aged woman, that's just what middle-aged women do.

So sad that they never learned to romanticize spinsterdom. They could have become eccentric, childless, witchy aunts, which is a very fun archetype that can be just as whimsical as their other literary touchstones. Shame.

Noelle/N.D. Stevenson was the artist behind Lumberjanes and Nimona (which was totally a trans allegory the whole time you guys) and the showrunner for the She-Ra reboot. You couldn't go three clicks without running into her noodly, adorable, and female-focused comics and even fewer clicks without running into stylistic copycats. I don't know if she and Mallory ever crossed paths, online or otherwise, but there was a great deal of overlap in their audiences and they were popular in the same early-teens time frame. She wasn't as vocal as Mallory, but it was still that "nerdy lesbian emphasizes girl power and embracing women characters! Oh but oops not a woman never was fuck womanhood (unless that makes you mad at me.)"

I swear this was mentioned earlier in the thread but I can't find it to save my life, so give me clocks if necessary, but in her autobiographical comic her wife would fuck other people (possibly the boyfriend she had before hooking up with Noelle??) while she slept on the couch.

View attachment 5941873View attachment 5941877

Yes, I was the one who brought her up after we got a bit more insight into just how little interest Mallory had in the Joe/Lily coupling; it immediately reminded me of this comic. The difference is that the lack of respect/commitment in her relationships is what pushed Noelle into transitioning, while Mallory was humiliated by cheating after she'd taken that step.

 

[GloriousScarf]

As a Professor of English he ought to know...

This sums up about 70% of the thread.

 

[MirnaMinkoff]

Noelle/N.D. Stevenson was the artist behind Lumberjanes and Nimona (which was totally a trans allegory the whole time you guys) and the showrunner for the She-Ra reboot. You couldn't go three clicks without running into her noodly, adorable, and female-focused comics and even fewer clicks without running into stylistic copycats. I don't know if she and Mallory ever crossed paths, online or otherwise, but there was a great deal of overlap in their audiences and they were popular in the same early-teens time frame. She wasn't as vocal as Mallory, but it was still that "nerdy lesbian emphasizes girl power and embracing women characters! Oh but oops not a woman never was fuck womanhood (unless that makes you mad at me.)"

I swear this was mentioned earlier in the thread but I can't find it to save my life, so give me clocks if necessary, but in her autobiographical comic her wife would fuck other people (possibly the boyfriend she had before hooking up with Noelle??) while she slept on the couch.

View attachment 5941873View attachment 5941877

I’m glad I found animation so cloying and juvenile I lost all interest in after age 9.

A She-Ra reboot? She-Ra was a totally unneeded, bad He-Man spin off in the 1980’s, how the fuck did a millennial born in the 90’s end up rebooting that crap in the twenty teens?

Also, whatever that ugly ass cartoon style this is, makes anime look great and I have no love for anime whatsoever. It’s like someone decided to take the cartoon style of the 80’s and make it round, less detailed and ugly af.

 

[Tragon Dirtle]

Also, whatever that ugly ass cartoon style this is, makes anime look great and I have no love for anime whatsoever. It’s like someone decided to take the cartoon style of the 80’s and make it round, less detailed and ugly af.

It's Hark a Vagrant Kate Beaton's style plus CalArts wiggly arms from having gone to art school. As much as I was a fan of Hark a Vagrant at the time, so much of the scratchy pencil whimsy now can be traced back to her and her comic.

I might be wrong but the context that I remember for that comic was that Molly Ostertag was in a relationship with an older guy and was ostensibly Just Friends with Noelle in public while privately telling Noelle that the relationship was basically dead already, he was an older guy who'd taken advantage of her youth and she needed help finding her way out, definitely emotionally cheating and I think implied physically in some other comics. The comic was the evening Noelle realised from staying over at their house after a friend group evening out that Molly had been completely bullshitting her about the relationship / the sex being over. It's in Molly & the Older Guy's house after they let her stay over on their sofa. IIRC this comic went viral and basically made Molly finally ditch her cake-eating situation and commit to Noelle to publicly save face / not hurt her career, not because she actually gave a shit about Noelle. And everything since then (Noelle transing) has been her spiralling because getting what she thought she wanted has turned out to be a huge mistake, she's stuck with Molly now. Molly & Noelle are basically marketed as a brand / industry power couple and Molly's definitely a narc.

Because Freud injected his weird adult male sexual fixations into all of it. Do little girls want their fathers affection and get jealous of him paying attention to mom instead of them? Sure. Does it mean they want to fuck their dad, absolutely not.

I'm just mentioning this because I haven't seen anyone else mention it yet, but there's a belief that Freud made up his oedipus/electra complexes to find excuses for why his daughter of wealthy family patients were reporting sexual abuse by their fathers. That's not necessarily accepted as fact though, it might have just been him being a freak, and the woman who originally suggested it ended up being the inspiration for all the recovered memory bullshit later on. Wiki.

There is specifically sexualized jealousy and malice involved in how she brought her dad and brother down, too. There are plenty of tall tales that could have been told, true incidents that could have been distorted and exaggerated, that would have caused a scandal or justified her disavowing them. But she went right below the belt.

Not to mention all the weird talk about "boyhood" she's always engaging in.

I'm not some Freud fanclub president. He certainly went off the rails in some ways, and his views were certainly distorted by the sample he was working with, besides any personal or cultural biases.

But we cannot deny that the kind of woman who kind of wants to kill her mother (for instance, as reflected in her female features) and fuck her father (fuck him over, have sex with a guy who holds the same place in her life, walk in his skin like we recognize AGPs do to women they desire) is a real type that exists.

It throws a real wrench in the "women only go wrong because of Patriarchy" theory, but look around. They're there.

I don't think Mallory's fixation on her brother/father is sexual at all. I've said before how I think Mallory might have not been allowed to express negative emotions and if that's true her siblings weren't either. I can see John Ortberg's OCD fixation on potentially being a paedophile being another reaction to that - you keep having the wrong reactions to things, you're a bad person for having the wrong feelings about things, what's the most wrong feeling/reaction to something you can have, paedophilia towards kids. But, it is a christian household and John will have had more status or potential than the girls did so when he came out as 'I'm suffering under this dynamic and need help' and then got it from his parents - I think that drove Mallory nuts. Like, how dare he get all the attention for his suffering when he's the one that's suffered the least. Clearly he's not actually suffering and he must be a paedophile for real.

I'm not actually trying to slam John the father that much, I think needing to be the perfect happy family as a sign of professional competence is something that often happens with psychologists and pastors and John was both. And then Mallory also wouldn't have had any of the resources as her peers growing up but would need to pretend that she did to fit in so didn't get any external support away from her family. Narcs don't let you express negative feelings around them either - they don't have sympathy for you and only their feelings matter - so that would have felt familiar about Joe imo.

Like a page or two back, her examples of being at religious college being pretty minor - I think her inability to explore negative feelings means that if there were more serious or distressing incidents she would leave them out because she couldn't handle making them / herself publicly vulnerable. Her harping on 'boyhood' is just her going 'I'm vulnerable, you have to be nice to me.' It is manipulative.

If Grace / Joe / Groe reads the thread can you share some shit about your childhood because I want to psychoanalyse you too, what the fuck is wrong with you dude.

 

[mrae]

I don't think Mallory's fixation on her brother/father is sexual at all. I've said before how I think Mallory might have not been allowed to express negative emotions and if that's true her siblings weren't either.

Want to add that before Laura (her older sister) got chased off the internet the main topic of her writing was her struggles with anxiety disorder. There's a lot of neurosis in that sibling group.

If Grace / Joe / Groe reads the thread can you share some shit about your childhood because I want to psychoanalyse you too, what the fuck is wrong with you dude.

He has shared a little bit and it's revealing, to say the least. Single mom, dad totally out of the picture, mom outright lied and told him his dad was a priest, found out later Dad is a normie with a family including other kids. If I remember right, he's said being raised by his mom and grandmother means he didn't get "male socialization" despite the fact he literally went to an all boys school.

 

[MirnaMinkoff]

don't think Mallory's fixation on her brother/father is sexual at all. I've said before how I think Mallory might have not been allowed to express negative emotions and if that's true her siblings weren't either. I can see John Ortberg's OCD fixation on potentially being a paedophile being another reaction to that - you keep having the wrong reactions to things, you're a bad person for having the wrong feelings about things, what's the most wrong feeling/reaction to something you can have, paedophilia towards kids. But, it is a christian household and John will have had more status or potential than the girls did so when he came out as 'I'm suffering under this dynamic and need help' and then got it from his parents - I think that drove Mallory nuts. Like, how dare he get all the attention for his suffering when he's the one that's suffered the least. Clearly he's not actually suffering and he must be a paedophile for real.

I don’t believe there is any sexual component or malice with Mal towards her father and brother. However repressed resentment, competition and jealousy abound.

Want to add that before Laura (her older sister) got chased off the internet the main topic of her writing was her struggles with anxiety disorder. There's a lot of neurosis in that sibling group.

I remembered this too. She wrote extensively about her fears of going off meds she needed for her ocd and anxiety for her first pregnancy.

I think all the kids deal with various levels of anxiety and OCD issues, the difference between Mal and her siblings was her path wasn’t going to get as much praise or attention from the folks.

Her sister Laura is a successful writer, she has some sort of corporate or non-profit writing gig now. But Laura seemed to follow a more traditional path her parents would have loved, marriage, children, etc…Laura and her kids would have gotten lots of attention from her parents. She also appears to be deeply religious and does Christian advice podcasts with her dad.

Idk much about the son, other than Mal’s wild dragging through the mud, but from what came out in that clusterfuck her brother was very active in the church activities, events and mission trips. He was working with Dad, at the church, so also got 1:1 attention.

Then you have Mallory. While Mal built herself a nifty little career with the Toast I don’t think her parents were that impressed with it. If her parents raised her to think every moment in life was either to bring her closer to or further from God, I can’t imagine they viewed The Toast as anything but a little project Mal and her gal pal worked on. They hoped soon she’d get more serious and start a family (like Nicole and Laura) and/or return to the religious fold. I’m sure Nicole’s baptism really go their hopes up for awhile.

I think they were supportive of Mallory, but also hoped she would use her “gifts” more wisely to do god’s work and have a fulfilling life. They probably worried about her future as lonely spinster atheist lesbian aunt, even if it was unspoken. Like they will love her no matter what path she chooses, but really hoped they could gently sway her back to the righteous one.

The parents were probably more effusive with praise for the brother and sister, given their more traditional paths than what Mallory was doing. I’m sure the big hope was she would mature and get right with god eventually. This probably infuriated her, but it actually seemed to be happening before Joe came into the picture.
I’m the three year period between the Toast folding and Joe, Mallory had backed down from her hard atheism and was softening on god, or how belief was a comfort even if it was just belief without any certainty and plenty of doubts. Idk how much Mallory ever drank but she went to AA and talked about getting sober. I’m sure this was also seen as a step in the right direction.

This might be off topic but I was struck by something she mentioned in an interview, the one where she revealed she was now not an atheist

was recently traveling in New Zealand, and I was walking around in this preserve up above Wellington in super ancient forests and they were like, "This tree is a hundred million years old," and I was just overwhelmed with this sense of time, in a way that was very — I would describe it as horrified awe. … I felt very overwhelmed with a sense of, "I have been given so much, and the last thing that the universe or God is going to give me is death, and I don’t want that."

It’s a very self-focused, selfish, individualist thought to have when viewing an ancient forest. An ancient forest makes me appreciate being a part of a vast living tapestry, one that was here millions of years before and after me and feeling lucky to be a part of it. It does make one feel small, but in a wonderful way. Mallory stewed on her own death and her deep fear of it. I’ve held that one thing that attracts certain people to trans BS is gives an illusion of having agency or power over one’s biology.

Also, Mallory took another trip to NZ last year too I believe. I just find it amusing because I consider NZ like the safest, friendliest, whitest (except for the Chinese influx), lowest crime, prettiest little country in the western world. She found the perfect bubble country for international travel. Even the public restrooms are clean in NZ ffs.

If a parents have a teen or preteen who wanted to take an international vacay NZ would be a top choice and probably a safer place to spend a summer break than most places in the USA. Mallory could definitely recreate a similar vibe to her old sports church camp there as an affluent transman. It’s the perfect country for friendly, upper middle class white ppl that like outdoor activities. Bonus, the only natural threat is sand flies.

It just reminds of how you have rabid BLM supporters that live in safe, rich, white gated communities. Mallory is a woke scold that loves to vacay in safe white countries instead of diversity rich South America, India or Africa, places that could really use her tourist dollars more than NZ.

I'm just mentioning this because I haven't seen anyone else mention it yet, but there's a belief that Freud made up his oedipus/electra complexes to find excuses for why his daughter of wealthy family patients were reporting sexual abuse by their fathers. That's not necessarily accepted as fact though, it might have just been him being a freak, and the woman who originally suggested it ended up being the inspiration for all the recover

Probably a lot to the theory. There was a lot more repression, shame and danger surrounding sex so having private access to related females that could be silenced made them ideal victims and safer. Until after WW2 you basically had to worry about syphilis rotting your genitalia, face and brain if you wanted to get laid by anyone besides your spouse.

The advent of recent DNA tests have revealed a far higher incidence of incest than previously thought. Then consider that’s only examples that resulted in pregnancies and then live births and it doesn’t account for all the molested boys.

 

[Tragon Dirtle]

Idk how much Mallory ever drank but she went to AA and talked about getting sober.

Reading this I immediately asked myself if Grace 13th stepped her because that would explain a lot, but apparently she got sober around the same time they started the Toast, in 2013.

 

[Trianon]

I don't think Mallory's fixation on her brother/father is sexual at all. I've said before how I think Mallory might have not been allowed to express negative emotions and if that's true her siblings weren't either.

I think that sexual crimes are considered to be the worst of the worst in our current moment, and so all the trauma and slights that Mallory and her siblings feel will eventually grow into that shape. As Christians, they felt there was a great deal of sinful, corrupting power in sex, and so all their decisions about relationships had an enormous gravity to them. Their secular friends, however, would have treated sex flippantly, while treating any power differential within a sexual relationship as a crime worthy of complete social destruction. So you have a church setting that takes sex seriously but does not discuss it much, to the point where they are sometimes too slow to punish church members who mistreat each other sexually. And then you have a secular setting that does not take sex seriously and then seems to feverishly backtrack when people participate in sex that feels degrading, coercive, or transactional - even if there are no clear definitions the secular world can provide for what that means, and it cannot encourage people to be careful about selecting their partners without betraying the sexual revolution's promise of complete and total freedom.

So sexual misbehavior lurks behind everything in America. Once you decide that you were hurt by someone, your perception of them changes, and you begin to suspect they are capable of anything - in fact the WORST thing - you can imagine. If you are evangelical fleeing into the secular world, you believe that the secular crowd has made the right diagnosis: that all religious leaders WANT to get away with crimes that the secular world calls out. If you are evangelical struggling to avoid worldly temptation, that temptation seems like something that is capable of overriding your moral, rational mind, and even your ability to RESIST that temptation feels extremely tenuous and something you can't even say out loud.

There are sexual hangups here, but they are not Freudian; they are induced by two cultural poles that both fail to speak plainly and truthfully about sex. If Mallory rejects one, she must embrace the paranoias of the other, and the same applies to John III.

Edit: This is why I do agree that sometimes people are too certain that trans activists are all pedophiles; it's the flipside of this, where critics see that they are doing something so heinously wrong that it must be in service of sex. But really it's bad enough that they interfere in children's health and are dismissive of groups that are vulnerable to male assault. Whether it leads to something else or not, it's still terrible.

I might be wrong but the context that I remember for that comic was that Molly Ostertag was in a relationship with an older guy and was ostensibly Just Friends with Noelle in public while privately telling Noelle that the relationship was basically dead already, he was an older guy who'd taken advantage of her youth and she needed help finding her way out, definitely emotionally cheating and I think implied physically in some other comics. The comic was the evening Noelle realised from staying over at their house after a friend group evening out that Molly had been completely bullshitting her about the relationship / the sex being over. It's in Molly & the Older Guy's house after they let her stay over on their sofa. IIRC this comic went viral and basically made Molly finally ditch her cake-eating situation and commit to Noelle to publicly save face / not hurt her career, not because she actually gave a shit about Noelle. And everything since then (Noelle transing) has been her spiralling because getting what she thought she wanted has turned out to be a huge mistake, she's stuck with Molly now. Molly & Noelle are basically marketed as a brand / industry power couple and Molly's definitely a narc.

This is fascinating. I only knew that Molly was trying to downplay the heterosexual relationship, but I didn't know all the other details. Noelle (even unintentionally) publicly shaming her into committing is crazy.

Mallory stewed on her own death. I’ve held that one thing that attracts certain people to trans BS is believing they have agency or a choice over biology.

Zinnia Jones vibes. He got existential after transition, but it's just solipsistic "but IIIII shouldn't have to die" insufferable posting. Being confronted with our mortality can be a terrible feeling, but there's like a special pleading immature people do where they can't let go of it and, yes, decide that the universe gave them the ability to fuck up their bodies as a way of regaining control over nature..... instead of accepting that they are part of the natural world and that's all we are ever guaranteed.

Reading this I immediately asked myself if Grace 13th stepped her because that would explain a lot, but apparently she got sober around the same time they started the Toast, in 2013.

According to them, the reason Joe and Mallory didn't get together romantically for a long time after meeting was because Joe was an addict and Mallory told him she couldn't be around him. Joe was shocked that anyone could take their sobriety seriously enough to reject him, and that encouraged him to get sober as well. A few years later, they got together.

 

[MirnaMinkoff]

He has shared a little bit and it's revealing, to say the least. Single mom, dad totally out of the picture, mom outright lied and told him his dad was a priest, found out later Dad is a normie with a family including other kids. If I remember right, he's said being raised by his mom and grandmother means he didn't get "male socialization" despite the fact he literally went to an all boys school.

A mom providing the basic plot of Thornbirds to explain a child’s existence, and lack of a father, equals BPD mom in my book. I wonder if grandma did the heavy lifting of child rearing while mom worked and tried finding another Father Ralph. I’m assuming “No male socializing” means there was never a step-dad in the picture.

Joe certainly telegraphs no male socialization to me. I would also automatically assume any man specializing in Victorian lit was gay.

He went to an all boys school but I doubt he had many friends. In fact he seems to lack any long term relationships in general. I could definitely see him hanging out with the more femme boys, not just as a kid, but in college. But in college would have had females to finally socialize with on campus.

Joe would have felt most comfortable among women and gay guys. Life would have probably been a lot easier for him if was just a gay dude.

It’s just hilarious that even a failed fey man like Joe is still far more masculine than his transman husbando. In the absurd wedding photos, wearing a dress and make-up, he still is x10 more masculine than Mallory.

Oh, I also discovered there exists a very educated, intelligent, masculine Daniel Lavery that’s making the world a better place. https://www.louloufoundation.org/daniel-lavery.html

 

[unrealistic expectations]

You (or Joe? I don't remember specifically where this claim has come from) are misunderstanding socialisation. When you're a male, the world sees and treats you as a male, you're categorised as male in society. You are socialised into a bunch of gender roles/stereotypes that aren't necessarily intrinsic to having male biology but are about what role you're expected to play in society. I guess the only way to avoid being socialised as your sex would be transing a newborn.

Especially if Joe went to a boys school it's completely ludicrous to suggest he wasn't socialised male.

 

[Diana Moon Glampers]

I'm just glad they took advice I gave about a month before the kid was born and bought a big pack of newborn receiving blankets like they use in the hospital as a cheaper alternative to muslin burp cloths. I hope they take all their parenting tips from Kiwi Farms, it'll go better for them.

Unlike Bex's baby, this one does seem unusually aware for his age. Good head control. They're going to have a hell of a time keeping this one from realizing what his parents are.

 

[monstrous bubo]

I want to think Bobby Joe already knows something is up



How long before Joe works out why most new parents tie long hair back and stop wearing necklaces?

 

[Zemblan Physics]

This is why I do agree that sometimes people are too certain that trans activists are all pedophiles; it's the flipside of this, where critics see that they are doing something so heinously wrong that it must be in service of sex. But really it's bad enough that they interfere in children's health and are dismissive of groups that are vulnerable to male assault. Whether it leads to something else or not, it's still terrible.

Hard agree. I love the farms but the go-to “it’s the pedophilia, stupid” annoys me, it’s too reductive. See also “it’s a fetish, stupid” (in particular when applied to women, who are more likely to be motivated by social approval than sexual gratification).