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

[Constellationzero]

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.

NO.

How about

NO.

Launch Sideshow back to the YOO KAYY with a trebuchet. Take that ugly whore Lilly too.

 

[Bookwork]

tl;dr: If Joe does not return to Berkeley in 2025 to teach for at least a year, he will have to repay the salary he received during his 2023 sabbatical - $90,675.

How I reached that conclusion:

Joe's sabbatical was limited to one year, the year being observably 2023, see Leaves of Absence/Sabbatical Leave, UC Benefits and Privileges, UC Office of the President (APM-740-17b), p. 8; link and attached below.

Joe received $90,675 during the sabbatical, down from $95,250 in 2022, UC salary database (just updated!).

He is required either to return to Berkeley and teach for at least a year or to repay $90,675 to the university, APM-740-16d, p. 7.

He was allowed to postpone his return by taking leave in 2024, APM-740-16d, p. 7. He may have been allowed to burn through accrued paid sick leave in addition to paid family/medical leave; leave for the brief JHU visiting professorship; and could possibly have been granted up to a year of unpaid leave, allowing him to return to Berkeley for the fall 2025 term rather than the spring term. These different kinds of leave are covered by APM-700 here.


Am I reading it wrong? Corrections/insights appreciated. Could Lily take out a second mortgage to buy her baby mama's freedom?

 

[sarna]

tl;dr: If Joe does not return to Berkeley in 2025 to teach for at least a year, he will have to repay the salary he received during his 2023 sabbatical - $90,675.

As I say about how history rhymes, this is the exact issue that forced the final confrontation between College of Charleston and Rhys McKinnon. In that case CoC let the debt slide (around 40 large in that case, if memory serves) in return for never seeing Rhys again.

 

[Dr. Butt]

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.

This is still living in luxury to most of the world!! It would be a really fun, always-have-food-in-the-fridge life! With a house and air conditioning! And sushi restaurants and exotic American alcohols for sale 24/7! What the fuck is his problem??

 

[sarna]

What the fuck is his problem??

In a way, this whole thread is a struggle to answer that question.

 

[monstrous bubo]

Given the reflection in the mirror it’s weird he’s struggling with the plain fact.

This entire thread only exists because Joe and Tard Baby struggle with plain biological facts.

UC salary database (just updated!).

Hello to the person responsible for updating the database. You felt the disturbance in the force, ten million souls crying out in autism, and you responded. When you’re ready, please start posting the goss about Joe here.

 

[Stupid Sexy Flanders]

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.

Well, of course, but I suspect that the whole "reading blowjob poems" might've been one of the things that started a conflict between them in the first place. His classes would've likely appealed to a large female demographic. Plus there's a lot of hijab-wearers in universities these days, whom I don't think would be entertained by the whole thing. It also wouldn't surprise me if they reported him as coming across as creepy due to it and the department took a "special interest" (which is transphobic) in review his course work material.

Besides that, I imagine he'd have to do a lot of groveling in general. He's a coward in real life, so being actually confronted by a colleague would terrify him to no end as I'm sure deep down he'd know he'd just fold and go to the corner and seethe.

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.

You've never met a narcissist.

and could possibly have been granted up to a year of unpaid leave

It's actually funny to think about that they had to flee Brooklyn due to Joe being retarded enough to take an unpaid leave. I guess that would explain why Mallory suddenly decided to take a low-wage job in elder care would be a way forward - they suddenly needed a stable income, fast. Now Lilly's the only breadwinner in the family and whatever meagre income Mallory gets for her book will support them. This is your future ladies - supporting your favourite genderblob as he pisses away his academic career!

 

[AirdropShitposts]

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.

As I say about how history rhymes, this is the exact issue that forced the final confrontation between College of Charleston and Rhys McKinnon. In that case CoC let the debt slide (around 40 large in that case, if memory serves) in return for never seeing Rhys again.

Rhys did fuck up though because he could have dragged things out for years until he was established as that activist. He even had the inklings of it when he claimed he was going to sue the school for trying to get him to pay that back. But Larry Krasnoff was a brilliant genocidal transphobe and seemed to know Rhys would take the money and run if he thought he was beating them. IIRC, they waived the debt and gave him some years salary to go away but he also agreed to drop any potential claims. A lot of these lolcow professors, and general lunatic professors, don't really understand how fast schools will agree to this and their lawyers will scream at them to offer it. You'd pay out way more if a tenured professor tries to fight, even if you win in the end and that's cases where they're actually trying to fire the person for legitimate reasons rather than they're just a pain in the ass who doesn't do anything.

I can't tell if Joe understands this or if he's just naturally sociopathic, I'm guessing the latter because he thinks his big move against the fascists is to publish things they've said. When really it's to harass the university for years as they increasingly will do anything for you to go away. He must not really want to teach so I think he should just refuse to go back and rack up the debts and wait for them to sue him. Then he can rise like a phoenix as the victim of an organized transphobic attack on a trans academic. A trans Joan of Arc against the combined forces of Berkeley, Kathleen Stock, Trump and J.K. Rowling trying to silence a tenured academic just for being trans.

I endorse this strategy for him because I doubt he'll bother to read his contract or even have someone else read it for him (is Mal locked outside or is she available to read something?) to tell him at which point this will give them cause to just straight up fire him.

 

[Bookwork]

Wouldn't it be wonderful to have another cow making bankruptcy filings someday?

Surely he's noticed Giuliani just doesn't pay and nonetheless goes flitting around the country in first class with female protégés.

Be inspired, Joe.

ETA - Mallory's got more to say about siblings - "Sister Systems in Austen" link | archive

“We must stem the tide of malice,” Mary Bennet says to her sister Elizabeth after they learn that the youngest Bennet, Lydia, has run off to London with Mr. Wickham, “and pour into the wounded bosoms of each other the balm of sisterly consolation.” Elizabeth can only “[lift] up her eyes in amazement” at this suggestion, and is “too much oppressed to make any reply. Mary, however, continued to console herself with such kind of moral extractions from the evil before them.”

As it happens, Elizabeth never finds herself able to reply to Mary under any circumstance; she does not speak to Mary once in the entirety of Pride and Prejudice. She is occasionally sorry for Mary, sometimes “in agonies” over her behavior in public, and often mortified by her badly-timed aphorisms, but whenever Mary tries to address Elizabeth in particular, Elizabeth falls pointedly silent. In this Elizabeth is characteristic of Austen heroines: she’s profoundly ashamed of her relatives and (mostly) unwilling to say so. Mary’s unique brand of vanity and ignorance demands silence. Elizabeth is never witty at her expense, which suggests a carefully constructed shield of protective silence, since she so often deploys witty remarks in order to bear bad or foolish behavior. Jane she adores, Lydia and Kitty she will happily criticize to her father if the situation calls for it, but with Mary she can only observe the principle that “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

If you are a character of importance in a Jane Austen novel, your mother is likely either dead (Emma, Persuasion) or incredibly socially embarrassing (Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park). The sibling relationship is a much likelier field for displays of growth, affection, and fidelity.

If your mother is dead, you almost immediately received a replacement of equal or greater value. Good mothers are sensible, excellent, and fungible. They anticipate their own deaths, and they make the necessary arrangements in advance; they do not insist on uniqueness. Emma Woodhouse’s mother died “too long ago for her to have more than an indistinct remembrance of her caresses; and her place had been supplied by an excellent woman as governess.” Anne Elliot’s mother, who receives the highest praise of any of Austen’s mothers as an “excellent woman, sensible and amiable,” arranged for her own substitution before dying in the form of Lady Russell, “one very intimate friend, a sensible, deserving woman, who had been brought, by strong attachment to herself, to settle close by.” After Lady Elliot’s death, we are told that Lady Russell “had almost a mother’s love, and mother’s rights” towards Anne.

Lady Russell is less successful with Anne’s two lousy sisters, having “scarcely any influence with Elizabeth” and barely registering as a person at all to Mary. Anne has the worst luck in siblings in all of Austen, worse even than Fanny Price, who at least has William as a correspondent. The highest praise the narrator of Persuasion can give to Anne’s younger sister Mary is that she “was not so repulsive and unsisterly as Elizabeth, nor so inaccessible to all influence of hers.” No Austen heroine escapes siblinghood; Jane does not concern herself with only children. For the most part, sisters begin as they mean to go on: those who love one another at the beginning of a book will remain close at the end of it, while sisters who dislike each other tend to remain embattled or even become estranged. Exceptions include the Steele sisters in Sense and Sensibility (Lucy learns not to confide in Anne after Anne betrays the secret of her engagement to Fanny Dashwood, and even gets some of her own back by stealing the last of Anne’s pin-money in order to elope with Robert Ferrars); Kitty and Lydia Bennet in Pride and Prejudice (they are as close as Jane and Elizabeth throughout most of the book, encouraging one another into new displays of ignorance and thoughtlessness, but are kept separate after Lydia’s elopement, to Kitty’s eventual improvement); and Julia and Maria Bertram in Mansfield Park. Julia and Maria are introduced as a matched pair, unanimous in their casual disdain for their poor cousin Fanny, but they quickly grow apart in adulthood and are first divided by their rivalry for Henry Crawford, a separation which becomes permanent after Maria’s attachment to Henry forces her removal from polite society.

The sister with whom she was used to be on easy terms was now become her greatest enemy: they were alienated from each other; and Julia was not superior to the hope of some distressing end to the attentions which were still carrying on there, some punishment to Maria for conduct so shameful towards herself as well as towards Mr. Rushworth. With no material fault of temper, or difference of opinion, to prevent their being very good friends while their interests were the same, the sisters, under such a trial as this, had not affection or principle enough to make them merciful or just, to give them honor or compassion.

Brother-sister pairs tend to get along well in Austen (although half-brothers are dicey, as with John Dashwood’s abandonment of his duty towards his younger half-sisters in Sense and Sensibility). Fanny and William Price plan to set up housekeeping together after he gets out of the Navy: “It was William whom she talked of most” during her first removal to Mansfield Park, “her constant companion and friend; her advocate with her mother (of whom he was the darling) in every distress.” Mary and Henry Crawford are teasingly critical but in reality each thinks very highly of the other (“She loves nobody but herself and her brother,” Fanny thinks during a particularly uncharitable moment), and Mr. Darcy’s careful solicitude for his younger sister Georgiana extracts one of Elizabeth’s first concessions that he might be an admirable person after all: “‘He certainly is a good brother,’ said Elizabeth, as she walked towards one of the windows” during her visit to Pemberley. Mrs. Reynolds, Darcy’s housekeeper, agrees that “This is always the way with him. Whatever can give his sister any pleasure, is sure to be done in a moment. There is nothing he would not do for her.” This type of familial affection often draws favorable attention on the marriage market: Elizabeth starts to reconsider just how amiable a husband such an attentive brother might make, while in Mansfield Park Henry Crawford’s increasingly-sincere interest in Fanny Price is piqued by her affection for William: “Her affections were evidently strong. To see her with her brother! What could more delightfully prove that the warmth of her heart was equal to its gentleness? What could be more encouraging to a man who had her love in view?” Where every aspect of daily life must be funneled into the marriage market; affectionate sisters and devoted brothers make for appealing wives- and husbands-in-training. It is her psychological connection with William that enables Fanny to survive her repressive upbringing at Mansfield with any sense of self intact. She transfers, but does not replace, her love for William onto her cousin Edmund, and it is only this semi-closeted love for both ‘brothers’ that enables her to reject Henry Crawford’s proposals despite mounting pressure (the Bertrams want Fanny to marry out, while Fanny wants to marry further into the family; even her disobedience is filial).

Austen’s best living mothers are Northanger Abbey’s Mrs. Morland — whose highest qualifications are her “useful plain sense [and] good temper” and the fact that she has avoided dying in childbirth — and Sense and Sensibility’s Mrs. Dashwood, who is volatile, imprudent, and whose most frequent financial advisor is her nineteen-year-old daughter Elinor (whose ability to govern her own feelings is a “knowledge which her mother had yet to learn”). Yet Mrs. Morland is so busy “in lying-in and teaching the little ones, that her elder daughters were inevitably left to shift for themselves,” while Elinor must encourage Mrs. Dashwood into forbearance and politeness, like a party whip. Yet Mrs. Dashwood is only occasionally governable, while Mrs. Morland, we learn, is “not happy in her attempt at consolation” of Catherine; neither mother becomes much more effective, insightful, or socially fluent throughout her narrative. If Mrs. Dashwood is any better at the end of the novel than she was at the beginning, it is only in becoming a little more like Elinor, usually after trying as hard as possible not to do so, if she can possibly help it.

Jane Austen heroines all serve as improvements on their mothers and mother-figures, either in talent, character, or both, although one of the indicators of their superiority is that they will never admit it. Miss Taylor, Emma’s governess who had “fallen little short of a mother in affection” is demoted in the very next paragraph, in which we learn that “between [Emma and Miss Taylor] it was more the intimacy of sisters…the shadow of authority being now long passed away, they had been living together as friend and friend very mutually attached, and Emma doing just what she liked.” Even the extremely loyal Anne Elliot admits to Captain Wentworth that Lady Russell did “err in her advice” to break off their engagement eight years ago, while still maintaining that she herself had been “right in submitting to her,” a neat little trick whereby Lady Russell was wrong to begin with, but Anne was right in going along with her as a sign of respect — “My mother, right or wrong.”

Where do these excellent heroines, with their occasional, forgivable, likable faults, derive their excellence? The best mothers among them are critically absent, wrong-thinking, badly informed, or misguided. The worst of them are anxious and self-obsessed (Mrs. Bennet), stupid and hypochondriacal (Mrs. Bennet, Mrs. Price), indolent and unimaginative (Lady Bertram) — very often worse than no mothers at all. Fathers are not much better. Mr. Bennet and Sir Thomas Bertram are the best of the bunch, and they barely know their children. Mr. Woodhouse is kind-hearted and impossible, Sir Walter Eliot is mortifying, and Mr. Henry Dashwood fails to suitably provide for his daughters before dying. No heroine finds a friend in her parents. The intelligent ones are indifferent, the kind ones are unreliable, the rest are scarcely worth ignoring. It is only in her siblings that she can look for anything like real companionship, equality of terms, and unrestrained affection: “Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connexions can supply; and it must be by a long and unnatural estrangement, by a divorce which no subsequent connexion can justify, if such precious remains of the earliest attachments are ever entirely outlived. Too often, alas! it is so. Fraternal love, sometimes almost everything, is at others worse than nothing.”

Sisters, in Jane Austen, are either the best of friends (Jane and Elizabeth, Kitty and Lydia Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility, particularly after Marianne stops resisting Elinor’s attempts to mother her) or absolute pills designed to make the heroine look even better by comparison (Mary and Elizabeth in Persuasion, Maria and Julia Bertram in Mansfield Park). This rings true to the experience of childhood: Who has ever felt, growing up, that their sister was merely okay? Depending on the day, she was either the greatest confidant, resource, and companion tailor-made to give your life greater meaning, or the wicked, insurgent agent you were forced to share a trundle bed with by forces beyond your ken.

On her substack she says in the freebie, "Careful readers of the Chatner will realize that since the birth of our son Rocco in April the percentage of posts about Jane Austen has increased exponentially." She leaves it to Dear Reader to imagine why but does say this installment concludes her analysis of sibs in all the Austen books except Northanger Abbey "because, to be honest, I don’t really like Northanger Abbey."

 

[monstrous bubo]

Mallory's got more to say about siblings - "Sister Systems in Austen"

I look forward to her analysis of Austen’s selfish husbands and long-suffering wives. In the meantime, I shall prepare my essay „Kill yourself - in Austen: the use of literary analysis as passive aggression”.

 

[Autistic Nonetheless]

You’d think that one of the lessons of Jane Austin is how money, as separate from class or privilege, changes people, and not always for the worse.
And while I disagree with Auden that she was a subversive preacher of independence maybe that's an interpretation Mal should take to heart.

 

[Dr. Butt]

Plus there's a lot of hijab-wearers in universities these days, whom I don't think would be entertained by the whole thing.

Joe's creepy actions in class could actively endanger a hijab-wearer's opportunity to stay in school & get herself a non-culty future, if her parents are paying for it.

 

[Prescription Bugs]

Well, of course, but I suspect that the whole "reading blowjob poems" might've been one of the things that started a conflict between them in the first place.

Every time I think of him making them memorize and recite blow job poems aloud, and my own innocence during my freshman year of college, and the disgusting predatory assholes that lurk in liberal academia, and his estrogen-deflated, granny panty-clad, crotch blob tingling while he *watches them recite* I feel all mad again.

But hey they’re legal age and America is too prudish right? Gotta release them from their sublimation.

Somehow he’s found more than one puss willing to ride that squish and this is bonkers to me. The fact the shriveled dollar store squishmallow makes sperm leading to something as cute as his spawn needs to be in some world records book for weirdest anomalies.

Rant over.

 

[Trianon]

or the wicked, insurgent agent you were forced to share a trundle bed with by forces beyond your ken.

Love that she always brings this up when talking about her sister, as if that's the reason she hates her, and not the seismic rift over pedophilia that actually drove them apart. Why do this unless she's trying to be more relatable to readers instead of a walking red flag of trauma.

 

[MirnaMinkoff]

This is still living in luxury to most of the world!! It would be a really fun, always-have-food-in-the-fridge life! With a house and air conditioning! And sushi restaurants and exotic American alcohols for sale 24/7! What the fuck is his problem??

Both Joe and Moe suffer from deep seated jealously and resentment when it comes to wealth. Joe moreso than Mallory, he’s trying to teach her how to be as miserably covetous and empty as himself.

Mallory was thrilled to find a creep who loathed her parents and wanted to waste money on hideous designer clothes.

 

[Thomas Eugene Paris]

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.

Oh, obviously. I should have been clearer. I assume that we would both be dismayed to discover how many people reading this thread think that the uterus is an endocrine tissue, especially considering where we are (sorry, everyone). I felt like it was an ideal opportunity to clarify.

Mallory was thrilled to find a creep who loathed her parents

Maybe someday Mallory will realize the enormity of what this implies about herself, Joe, and their relationship. Beyond a certain age, choosing a partner based on how much he hates your parents says more about the two of you than it does your family of origin.

 

[Mayhem]

Speaking of literature, all of this is a rather Kafkaesque situation -- more specifically, "The Metamorphosis."

In the story, Gregor Samsa is the sole supporter of his family after his father makes a failed business deal and nearly loses everything. Gregor had been in the military, but he comes home to pay off his father's debts and keep a roof over his family's head. He's actually pretty good at it -- the family is comfortable, if frugal, and Gregor even manages to scrape together enough money to send his talented sister to a music observatory.

But one morning, Gregor wakes up unexpectedly changed. Overnight, he's turned into a disgusting bug ("Ungeziefer" in German, which is best translated as "vermin") and his family is absolutely horrified. He loses his job immediately. He eats nothing but garbage and his family traps him in his bedroom and turns it into a storage area. They stop interacting with him, and he becomes more bug-like every day. When the last human vestiges of Gregor's soul are stirred by his sister's violin playing, he escapes his room and his sister, embarrassed, insults him. In the meantime, the entire family has had to take jobs to make up for Gregor's lost income, and they realize they don't need him after all. Rejected by his family, he decides to die. After he dies, the family is happy, because they are better off without him.

can I please have a 100k advance from Substack thank you

 

[Thomas Eugene Paris]

tl;dr: If Joe does not return to Berkeley in 2025 to teach for at least a year, he will have to repay the salary he received during his 2023 sabbatical - $90,675.

How I reached that conclusion:

Joe's sabbatical was limited to one year, the year being observably 2023, see Leaves of Absence/Sabbatical Leave, UC Benefits and Privileges, UC Office of the President (APM-740-17b), p. 8; link and attached below.

Joe received $90,675 during the sabbatical, down from $95,250 in 2022, UC salary database (just updated!).

He is required either to return to Berkeley and teach for at least a year or to repay $90,675 to the university, APM-740-16d, p. 7.

He was allowed to postpone his return by taking leave in 2024, APM-740-16d, p. 7. He may have been allowed to burn through accrued paid sick leave in addition to paid family/medical leave; leave for the brief JHU visiting professorship; and could possibly have been granted up to a year of unpaid leave, allowing him to return to Berkeley for the fall 2025 term rather than the spring term. These different kinds of leave are covered by APM-700 here.

View attachment 6303144View attachment 6303145
Am I reading it wrong? Corrections/insights appreciated. Could Lily take out a second mortgage to buy her baby mama's freedom?

What the fuck is he even thinking? Seriously, what is his end game? He can't possibly think that the four (!) of them can live in Brooklyn on Mallory and Lily's respective salaries, which seem all but guaranteed going forward.

He seems the type to murder-suicide.

 

[AMHOLIO]

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.

What if his get out of baby free card is taking a trip back to Britain and "forgetting" his greencard so he never has to deal with his tard baby or Rocco or child support again?



There was a lot of arguing on why Lilly chose to stay and fuck Joe and I think we're overlooking the simple answer: Lilly is likely also a short term thinker who chooses things based on passion and spite rather than long term planning. She could be as braindead as the married pair but we wouldn't be able to tell because she doesn't talk much. For fuck's sake, she dressed in a clown outfit for kinky roleplay with Joe, I think she's as immature as they are but hides it better since she had a wife beforehand who DID make good choices and could talk her out of things. Lilly likely wanted a baby for the sake of it and cementing her as the head woman in the polycule, unlike Mal, and likely will not be a great parent to Bobby Joe with or without Joe Sr.

 

[Bookwork]

Mallory was thrilled to find a creep who loathed her parents and wanted to waste money on hideous designer clothes.

Joe, of course, hates everybody and so is eligible for many more wives who want their parents hated.

Some cultures once decreed that a man could take no more wives than he could support. Joe will boldly trounce that outdated nonsense once and for all by taking as many wives as he needs to support himself. Radical!

There was a lot of arguing on why Lilly chose to stay and fuck Joe and I think we're overlooking the simple answer: Lilly is likely also a short term thinker who chooses things based on passion and spite rather than long term planning. She could be as braindead as the married pair but we wouldn't be able to tell because she doesn't talk much.

Y'know, I do tend to think of Lily as "the normal one" when she's just another one.

Granted, she's managed to hang on to her career, her house, her family(?), and her tits, so she's faring better than Mallory at this point, but at least three of those things meet Joe's needs and that's why she hasn't had to damage herself irreparably or be banished. Yet.

Meanwhile, back in Brooklyn, excitement mounts as the Sept. 14 U.S. launch of Feminism Against Cisness approaches starring Grace Lavery, Beans Velocci, Emma Heaney, and Jonna Wuest at the Lesbian Herstory Archives. Will Joe phone it in or is his airfare covered?

They will get fewer bomb threats than a launch of Feminism Against Transing Kids would.