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

[Bookwork]

Mallory Elisabeth Ortberg owned 4841 Congress Avenue, Oakland, CA, from 2015 into 2020. It's a 2-bedroom, 1-bath bungalow built in 1914, measuring 841 square feet on a 2,640-square-foot lot.

She sold it for an estimated $616,000 on October 13, 2020, a big chunk of the proceeds going to her mortgage company, no doubt. She was already living in NYC at that point. ETA - Did she have a tenant there for a year or so?

She bought the house on March 18, 2015, for considerably more than the asking price, paying $415,000 for a house that had been listed at $348,000 for 4 months.

I'm clipping these two items from Blockshopper because it's the one site that attaches her name to the transactions, though many sites show her living at the Congress Avenue address and track buying and selling. But Blockshopper shows only the asking price in 2015, while other sites report the higher price derived from MLS and public records.

Spoiler: More pix

Did she shell out bigly for staging?


Even more pix at the links below.

Spokeo shows a property tax delinquency in 2018 when she was the homeowner. That was the year of her double mastectomy and Joe's transition, so perhaps she was too giddy with extra-steps love to keep an eye on the tax bill.

Spokeo rates the neighborhood D because of the crime rate. You'll have noticed the gated driveway. The property nonetheless has consistently sold well above the county's assessed value so the "D" rating may be based on a rough patch nearby. In Google Street View her street looks quite nice as of 2022.

Spoiler: County records

Search for parcel APN 35-2371-6 at property search link below.


Details for Mallory's sell and buy years:

Spoiler: Her previous addresses

Past addresses on the people finder sites have garbage date ranges but are sometimes useful for further research. This example is from True People Search.

Some records have her name scrambled up as Elisabeth Ortberg Mallory.

Did we know that Joe took Mal's middle name as his own? Is the M in Daniel M. Lavery for Joe's former middle name?

Sources: USPhoneBook, Block Shopper, True People Search, Zillow, Redfin, Realtor, Spokeo, Xome, Compass, Trulia, Alameda County property record search

ETA aside: Mallory does not appear to have been a registered voter in Kings County (Brooklyn), NY, as either Ortberg or Lavery (see Stephen Morse's lookup site). That may mean she voted absentee in Alameda County, CA, in 2020. California doesn't put registrants online so I can't check. Or maybe she didn't bother to vote.

Nor did Joe register to vote in NY under either of his names. Can he vote? Has he "naturalized" as a citizen if not as anything else?

 

[Diana Moon Glampers]

So she'd built about $200k in equity in her time there, plus whatever she put in as a down payment (might have been as low as $20k).

If she'd used the advance to pay her mortgage she could have had a paid-off house in the Bay Area, the ultimate in creation of passive income even if you leave the area. It baffles me that she wouldn't become a landlord, and instead gave up a mortgage with (likely) a good rate to cash out and waste the money on designer clothes. Pretend to be a man all you want, Mallory, that is a Grade A certified Woman Moment(tm).

 

[sarna]

Mallory Elisabeth Ortberg owned 4841 Congress Avenue, Oakland, CA, from 2015 into 2020. It's a 2-bedroom, 1-bath bungalow built in 1914, measuring 841 square feet on a 2,640-square-foot lot.

Appreciate the research. I had it in my head that her place was north of downtown, in Berkeley or close to it, but I had it backwards, this is south/east on the way to the airport. A decent part of town as far as Oakland goes, but as others have pointed out, in the Sheng Thao era nowhere in Oakland is very safe or desirable anymore.

 

[kazuhiro]

@Prescription Bugs found out more about the buyer of the Oakland house and the price Mallory sold it for in two posts here.

 

[Zemblan Physics]

@Prescription Bugs found out more about the buyer of the Oakland house and the price Mallory sold it for in two posts here.

Wow, that was well worth a read. The buyer might actually be as accomplished a grifter as Joe. It would be hilarious if Joe would embrace HAES like that woman enby.

 

[Potatis Salad]

Did we know that Joe took Mal's middle name as his own? Is the M in Daniel M. Lavery for Joe's former middle name?

Nor did Joe register to vote in NY under either of his names. Can he vote? Has he "naturalized" as a citizen if not as anything else?

The "M" doesn't stand for anything, it's just M. Some type of edgelordery on Mallory's part I presume.

Nice catch that Joe is using Mallory's middle name, I did not know that. Of note: Joe has not legally changed his name. He's still Joe Lavery on all his documents.

Joe is not a naturalized citizen. He is a permanent resident (aka a green card holder). He has been eligible for citizenship for years and should absolutely do it. Not only so he can vote, but this nigga has gotten stranded outside of the United States because he lost his green card. The naturalization process is easy and cheap compared to the green card process. He can retain his British citizenship. No downsides.

I believe he hasn't applied for citizenship yet because he just hasn't gotten around to it or even seriously considered the drawbacks of remaining a green card holder. Joe and Mal are incompetent at general life stuff: finances, health insurance, Rocco's legal custody status, anything that requires paperwork.

 

[Bookwork]

@Prescription Bugs found out more about the buyer of the Oakland house and the price Mallory sold it for in two posts here.

Awesome stuff. What a face!


@Prescription Bugs noted that Mallory went through a "landlords are evil" phase in 2020, so maybe that answers the question of why she sold rather than renting the place out.

There is, of course, a little weirdness to carry over. How did a gender special claiming to be unable to afford continuing therapy and working at a non-profit finance a $616,000 house? Yes, she ebegs, but the efforts captured on the thread happened months after she closed on the house:

• October 2020 - sale recorded
• October 2020 - "Chloe & Yarrow" got on the West Elm housewarming registry; "their" choices are no longer shown (site), but it hints that she did take up residence
• June 2021 - Chloe announced "got my house," having wailed about being a black/brown enby who couldn't afford to stay in the Oakland area for lack of reparations; had closing costs and had to fix the sidewalk - help!
• December 2021 - fund-raising deadline white donors set for giving Chloe a dollar-for-dollar match for any amount up to $125,000

On the thread, speculation was that the white donors were Mal and Joe. I think it's more likely that Chloe was referring to her adoptive parents.

That would be Charles and Pouké Halpern - he's a screenwriter and a novelist; she's an artist who worked as a food stylist. Did they co-sign or give her the downpayment and some help in the first year with a challenge goal in the second year, perhaps?

Spoiler: Bios

Charles - from Amazon:

Spoiler: Text

Chas was born in Los Angeles, but spent most of his life in the San Francisco Bay Area. He grew up with two older sisters and a single mother.

Chas studied political science and French at the University of California, Berkeley. On a year abroad program in Paris, he met his future wife, the artist Pouke. Some years after their marriage, they adopted a multiracial baby daughter who now identifies as queer. Chas attributes his ability to create fully-realized female characters to his life spent surrounded by women he loves and respects.

After a short stint teaching high school French, Chas established himself as a commercial writer and director, specializing in storytelling and humor. Eventually, he turned his skill at storytelling to writing novels. He explains:“I enjoyed my life as a scriptwriter and director, but I always felt creatively constrained by having to meet my corporate clients’ demands and by having to limit myself to storytelling that could be told in ninety seconds or less.”

Chas now lives in Berkeley, California with his wife. He recently finished his seventh novel, A Handful of Clouds, the story of a divorced couple re-examining their relationship.

When not writing, Chas can be found singing baritone opera arias around the house or playing pickup basketball at the local park.

• https://www.facebook.com/chas.halpern/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/chashalp?trk=public_post_follow-view-profile

"Pouké" (Agnes Helene) - from her art site

Spoiler: Text

Born and raised in Paris, France, Pouké grew up surrounded by a love of art. As a young teen she began making intricate ink drawings. When she came to the US in her 20’s, Pouké began studying photography and video production. The result was a series of (sometimes controversial) mixed media paintings, which explored the female condition . Her “pink period”, a mixed media piece composed of used tampons caused a bit of media stir. She also made an award winning documentary based on her experiences as an artist in residence at the San Bruno County Jail. More recently, she has returned to paintings, drawings, and watercolors, with some inroads into textile and ceramic designs. The current art is a result of a long process of combining her varied interests: the whimsy and graphic design of her drawings, the emotion of her deeper personal explorations, and her love of beauty for its own sake.

From the "Sold" section of her site:

• https://www.facebook.com/p/Poukes-art-space-100044280345974/?locale=eu_ES
• https://www.saatchiart.com/pouke?srsltid=AfmBOor5ZSYGTRvKBqiZ_JOF0GJl9rfcluYSbEGyds2-Q1OLQAKE1NBt
• https://hangart.com/bio.php?id=110887

The people finders unanimously place Chas and Pouké at 2307 Derby Street, Berkeley, not a mansion, but nonetheless valued at more than $900k. Given that Chas has been writing about divorce, maybe they are no longer a they/them like Chloe/Yarrow is.

They/them Chloe/Yarrow now works for a food bank as Event Project Manager (LinkedIn). The non-profit where she worked at the time of the house sale, the Gender Spectrum Charitable Fund, was defunct by the end of 2023 (influencewatch.org).

She says she was a web designer at Squarespace for 6 years so they/them could have helped Mal get her new site whipped together. Don't be so lazy about networking, Mal!

The English dept at JHU is a footnote.

Indisputable. Another footnote: It was, of course, at JHU where John Money established the Gender Identity Clinic and "treated" the Reimer boys.

 

[Potatis Salad]

He's edging ever closer to Rhys McKinnoning.

Spoiler: text of top tweet

Being furious with one’s employer is a discomfiting situation but at least it’s honest, you know?

Meanwhile:

Spoiler: text

Last month I smoked some redcurrants—results were disappointing. Then a couple of weeks ago I made some rosehip tea, which I then turned into kombucha. Last night I blended them together and passed them through a tamis. Smoked redcurrant and rosehip kombucha relish! is good

This sounds disgusting. Beyond disgusting. Enjoy slopping Joe's latest smoked and fermented """relish""" onto your perfectly good bagels, ladies! Don't forget to rave about how much you love it!


ENHANCE:

Mallory is tending to Rocco in his bouncer on the floor while Joe fellates himself over his elaborate """relish""" achievement. L O fucking L.

 

[Chickenpolar]

Meanwhile:

Spoiler: text

Last month I smoked some redcurrants—results were disappointing. Then a couple of weeks ago I made some rosehip tea, which I then turned into kombucha. Last night I blended them together and passed them through a tamis. Smoked redcurrant and rosehip kombucha relish! is good

This sounds disgusting. Beyond disgusting. Enjoy slopping Joe's latest smoked and fermented """relish""" onto your perfectly good bagels, ladies! Don't forget to rave about how much you love it!

Joe is going to give everybody botulism.

I just hope the baby is spared but it's worrying his "cooking" is all preserves type stuff a baby could be fed.

 

[Thomas Eugene Paris]

We can introduce these three classes of person across a range of social domains, too. Public bathrooms—no more anxiety about clocking people in the women’s toilet; terfs can reassure themselves with a simple blood test or AI-based genital scan at the entrance.

I think I speak for us all when I say I'd be completely fine with this outcome. Great suggestion, Joe!

Did she have a hysterectomy? If she's still got a functioning female endocrine, well, mystery solved.

A "hysterectomy" is removal of the uterus. You're thinking of an oophorectomy, which is often performed with removal of the Fallopian tubes (salpingectomy), in which case the entire procedure is called a salpingo-oophorectomy.

 

[Larry David's Opera Cape]

A "hysterectomy" is removal of the uterus. You're thinking of an oophorectomy, which is often performed with removal of the Fallopian tubes (salpingectomy), in which case the entire procedure is called a salpingo-oophorectomy.

I know what each of those terms refers to. Troons usually have it all out in one go and refer to a "hysto," so I didn't see any need to be pedantic about specifying all the body parts involved, as everyone here knows what their deal is.

 

[monstrous bubo]

She bought the house on March 18, 2015, for considerably more than the asking price, paying $415,000 for a house that had been listed at $348,000 for 4 months.

It baffles me that she wouldn't become a landlord, and instead gave up a mortgage with (likely) a good rate to cash out and waste the money on designer clothes.

Tard Baby gonna Tard Baby.

He has been eligible for citizenship for years and should absolutely do it... No downsides.

There’s a downside if he ever wants to move back to the UK - once a citizen, the US still owns your arse for tax purposes. You have to file returns even if you haven’t earnt anything in the States, and there’s a carve-out in the US-UK tax treaty that allows the US to tax you as if the treaty didn’t exist if it feels like it. The UK has no such right under it. As a UK citizen in the US he is therefore protected from double taxation, but as a US citizen (even a dual one) in the UK he wouldn’t be. More broadly, taking citizenship would require a level of commitment that Joe isn’t capable of, based on the number of ex-wives, unhappy employers, and the Tard Baby in the corner.

 

[Trianon]

It baffles me that she wouldn't become a landlord

Her entire Dear Prudence oeuvre is about how landlords are pure evil and becoming one justifies the very earth rising up to consume you. "I hope that when you walk, plants are blighted and the soil is turned and the birds yell at you." More than just bad money sense at work here! Now instead of having valuable assets, she will keep pecking at the windows in the hopes that Lily or Joe will hear her and let her back into her home.

 

[Potatis Salad]

Joe continues to seethe about the mysterious workplace drama that he has created. He thinks "young academic" and "young tr[oon]" would both be accurate descriptions of himself.
This person didn't realize that Joe was talking about himself:

 

[behindyourightnow]

ENHANCE:
View attachment 6301204
Mallory is tending to Rocco in his bouncer on the floor while Joe fellates himself over his elaborate """relish""" achievement. L O fucking L.

Reminds me of the FtM serfs on the Tenacious Unicorn Ranch, working silently and in all submission in the shadows, while the male crossdressers preened and posed for media photos.

Speaking of which, Joe's "visiting distinguished" appointment makes me wonder how many of these institutions are slowly discovering that you can fill all the same "trans studies" quotas by hiring pooners or non-binaries instead of transwomen. Yes, pooners are boring and cringe, and non-binaries tend towards histrionics, but it's still better than having to worry about AGPs like Joe making his students discuss weird buttsex poetry and publicly admitting to jerking off at work.

There’s a downside if he ever wants to move back to the UK - once a citizen, the US still owns your arse for tax purposes. You have to file returns even if you haven’t earnt anything in the States, and there’s a carve-out in the US-UK tax treaty that allows the US to tax you as if the treaty didn’t exist if it feels like it. The UK has no such right under it. As a UK citizen in the US he is therefore protected from double taxation, but as a US citizen (even a dual one) in the UK he wouldn’t be.

That's only an issue if you're making over a certain amount per year, though. I think "foreign income" is excluded up until around $110K, and you can add housing costs on top of that to get a higher exclusion (not sure of the exact details).

In other words, not something Joe will have to worry about within a month or two

Joe continues to seethe about the mysterious workplace drama that he has created. He thinks "young academic" and "young tr[oon]" would both be accurate descriptions of himself.View attachment 6301773View attachment 6301772
This person didn't realize that Joe was talking about himself:
View attachment 6301771

We'd call that un adulte émotionnellement immature, Joe. Or maybe just un homme insupportable.

 

[AirdropShitposts]

I believe he was on sabbatical for some or all of the last few years, so the time off was technically sanctioned. No idea what he will do now though as I think sabbaticals are time-limited?

The most common form of a sabbatical is to focus on putting out a book. This is why I haven't wondered at Joe constantly putting out books nobody wants. It's justification for his refusing to return to teaching. They're just going to keep rolling them over because he clearly won't come back until they force him to.

The rest of the department will have complained about this because the more time he's off the more time they can't take off. Even in a big department like English at a big school like Berkeley you can only have so many professors on sabbatical at any one time or entire swaths of classes cannot be taught. You can always wrangle people in, or grad students or instructors, for the core classes, but your specializations depend on having the, you know, specialists. Which is interdependent, your Joyce guy can wander away for a bit because Joe can fill slots with his Sitcom shit but you get to claim to having them both because a student will over four years be able to do both. A professor who fucks off for two years or more starts to put a crimp into this.

Remember when Joe was angry about having to having to be a grad adviser? That was the "compromise" for not granting a sabbatical, because it's not real work, but it does take work off of the other professors. He's not even bothering to do stuff like that at this point. He's a drag on the department and he clearly doesn't want to return.

I definitely won't be shocked if he thinks he's pulling a fast one on the department by getting a lump sum to go away just like Rhys did. Though I think Rhys just as much wanted to get away as they wanted him to go away especially since he was imagining a career as a big time trans activist, Joe obviously seems to grasp the power he has and wants to use it against them first.

Joe continues to seethe about the mysterious workplace drama that he has created. He thinks "young academic" and "young tr[oon]" would both be accurate descriptions of himself.View attachment 6301773View attachment 6301772

Nobody would "credibly" call a 41 year old a "young academic" because that's bumping up against two decades in academia, especially if you include the grad school years.

 

[Stupid Sexy Flanders]

Though I think Rhys just as much wanted to get away as they wanted him to go away especially since he was imagining a career as a big time trans activist, Joe obviously seems to grasp the power he has and wants to use it against them first.

I really think "Please Miss" and becoming a big-time author was his literal exit plan and when that failed he started to seethe, but still not returning to work. I think he certainly feels stuck at the moment - his plan has failed and he technically still has tenure, but has now burnt too many bridges with everyone there to credibly be able to return to work. But unlike Rhys, Joe also knows that his degree doesn't mean shit in the real world outside of academia.

 

[sarna]

I really think "Please Miss" and becoming a big-time author was his literal exit plan and when that failed he started to seethe, but still not returning to work. I think he certainly feels stuck at the moment - his plan has failed and he technically still has tenure, but has now burnt too many bridges with everyone there to credibly be able to return to work. But unlike Rhys, Joe also knows that his degree doesn't mean shit in the real world outside of academia.

Objectively, his path forward is pretty simple. Go back to Berkeley and do his job. Teach more seminars about blowjob poems. It wouldn't be that awful. It's fuckin Berkeley, even a guy like Joe could score with the occasional dimwitted grad student.

But yeah, the blow to his ego -- and to his pocketbook, having to live within his means while paying bay area rent -- would probably be fatal.

It's funny how history rhymes. Rhys didn't have that bad an idea for an exit strategy. Nothing unlikely about a guy in his position making the jump to non-profit grift. He just blew it by being so uniquely terrible. In a timeline where he hadn't been quite so abusive to everyone around him, including his handmaidens, and hadn't gotten so fucking fat as to embarrass the cause before he even opened his mouth, it would have worked.

In Joe's case, though? Writing books about his dead estro-cock was supposed to be a sustainable future? People can convince themselves of some amazing things.

 

[monstrous bubo]

Writing books about his dead estro-cock

Hey, that dead estro-cock has a name!

 

[MirnaMinkoff]

Joe continues to seethe about the mysterious workplace drama that he has created. He thinks "young academic" and "young tr[oon]" would both be accurate descriptions of himself.View attachment 6301773View attachment 6301772
This person didn't realize that Joe was talking about himself:
View attachment 6301771

Joe really struggling with the fact he’s a middle aged academic. The only way he’s a “young academic” is if his sample population are dead or retired academics. Given the reflection in the mirror it’s weird he’s struggling with the plain fact.

The last time I noticed a photo of Joe that he didn’t look like a dowdy middle aged human were some of the early photos where he was dating Mallory. I think his glee over yoko’ing Moe gave him a bit of a narcissistic glow that overpowered his normal spoilt milk pallor. (Also it looked like early on Mallory actually got him to go outdoors.)

Wondered if he winced when Lilly’s pregnancy was labeled geriatric ? People will definitely assume Joe is Rocco’s grandpa.

I’m pretty convinced Joe hates Berkeley because he is probably one of the least attractive humans on the campus. In his thirties at Berkeley he had to confront the fact he must eat less and exercise to not be a middle aged pallid blob, so he opted to troon out and move to NYC instead.