Strong Verbs Are Just Better

It's been over nine months since I made a reading post, although I did do a 2022 round-up. This is a pity, since I had some Opinions about some of the things I read in Dec 2021 and Jan 2022. But here we are. Perhaps I will make some bonus reviews in the coming months, as well as catching up with 2023 so far.

You can find my online recs at @ [email protected], if that's of interest to you.

As surprises no one, I've been reading a lot of trans history. I really recommend the ABC radio two-parter Crossing Time: Australia's Transgender History, which they put out for World Pride. In particular, I was fascinated by Robin Eames' discussion of Edward de Lacy Evans, a trans man who seems to have lived happily and securely with his wife until exposed by a man Eames describes as his brother-in-law - and elsewhere as the father of de Lacy Evans' wife. I checked up, it's the WIFE's brother-in-law who is implicated in both of these things.

What Eames points out, in that interview, and this piece for The Conversation, is that *we only find out* about these trans people (mostly men) when something goes wrong, usually a personal grudge, bringing them to the attention of the law or the asylum. Broadly, this matches the pattern which Jen Manion traces in European and American transmasc legal records (as opposed to military figures or published adventures of afab sailors): a surprising degree of social security, especially through marriage and/or secure businessmanship; mobility (eg through sales careers) facilitating new starts; and a tendency to be judged by at least some community members on the standards of the gender-roles the individual performed (pub landlord, husband, flirtatious sailor, etc).

The general tendency among historians seems to be that trans women were not afforded these same securities in the past. Jules Gil-Petersen points out that when we start to see trans women emerging in the American legal record it is as marginalised urbanites, performing insecure gendered labour (this is covered in her recent post towards a trans history of abortion) like sex work, bar service and dancing.

Separately, I've been talking with a trans femme friend about historical transness, and my friend's perplexity over how someone like Eleanor Rykener *seems to have passed*, for most purposes, and only come to legal attention *because* of her sex work. Photographs of Magnus Hirschfield's clients look, in contemporary transfemme parlance "bricky", but also, in the historical photographic context, much like a lot of other 1920s women! I've been watching historical costuming TikTok, and *so much* of the premodern feminine silhoutte, whatever it may be at the time, is achieved by building out, not (except in very high society) cinching in. Even regency gowns had underlayers, although I'm sure that it was much easier in Victorian or early modern England to "pass" with a testosterone-dominant body. One of Manion's arguments about transmasc figures is that clothes very much maketh the man: few seem to want to make the corrolorary argument that clothes might effectively make the woman, in at least some contexts.

Fanny and Stella were living the high life, cross-dressing for fun as well as sex, and it was their *blurring* of those lines which brought them to the attention of the law.

Meanwhile, returning to the trans men Eames cites, and some of Manion's examples: it is often the wife's family or an ex-husband who brought the trans husband to the attention of the law or the psychiatric authority. It seems safe to conclude then that some men might have successfully passed by remaining unmarried, or by marrying widows with no relations to interfere. Jules Gil-Petersen, talking about the economic marginalisation of trans women, points out that they were not only excluded from the employment market upon transition, but also from the marriage market: but ... is that true?

We completely take it for granted that women happily married trans men, drawing as we do on previous lesbian readings of similar relationships. Why assume no men would marry trans women prior to the age of medical transition? Queer men exist, and might have good family reasons to need to be married. Might such a man be in a better position to shield his wife from family interference than the wives of trans men were? Granted, if none of those cases *at all* came to public light, then they must at the very least have been less common than the trans husband variation. But I also note that Manion argues strongly for mobility *away* from cities to small towns enabling security for trans men: has anyone been looking in small town archives for trans women? Jules Gil-Peterson has a book forthcoming offering a long history of transmisogyny: if she's done both urban and countryside archive research, and found only urban evidence, I'm hoping she spells out where she looked and didn't find anything as well as where she did.

Ed: it occurs to me the day after writing this out that a key difference between trans m / cis f marriages and cis m / trans f is, of course, the position of power afforded by being the husband. In many of Manion's examples, the women claim not to have known their husband's assigned sex: it's certainly plausible although any individual case might be bluffing. Hence, the cis woman has a way out which doesn't completely lose face. The hypothetical cis man marrying a stealth trans woman, however, does not have that: as husband, he's not able to say "uh, well, my spouse seemed weird about undressing and avoids sex, but she did say she was ill..." He has no way of exposing her without exposing himself, except for routes dangerous to the trans woman: abandonment (she can't come after him without exposing herself), or even murder. Hence, no legal records. This would also mean that where some of the transmasc husbands probably *did* marry their wives without giving her full prior knowledge, hoping that either she had figured it out, loved him enough to accept it, or would maintain the relationship anyway out of fear of reputational loss - the hypothetical trans woman *doesn't* have that option, or would almost never (exceptions would be: marrying a man known to be impotent or an invalid; an agreed-upon lavender marriage wherein she did not specify what made her different to other women and undesirous of sex). I still think that lavender marriage with a queer man, and perhaps marriage to a widower (no expectation of children), would be plausible, but the hypothetical trans woman has far fewer cards to play than the trans husband.

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Currently Reading:
Fiction: The omnibus of Mercedes Lackey's "The Mage Storms" trilogy. I just started it and it's really... nice, just nice to be reading epic but soft fantasy again.
Non-fiction:

Greg Jenner's "Dead Famous", in audiobook. It's fun, good background noise while doing chores and such. I love his sense of humour; and he's ALSO a masterclass in giving citations without using footnotes. I am never at sea listening to the audio: he cites key primary sources, major scholars, and even entire theoretical debates (Bhaktin came up at some point!) in fantastically accessible prose. If I were still teaching I'd get the hard copy and take photographs, particularly of the bit which did a run-down of structuralist and post-structuralist approaches to relationships between individuals and media representation, as an example for student writing: how to paraphrase for analytical use (rather than merely summarise), evalate and contextualise in natural-sounding sentences.

I also got a couple of chapters in to Shon Faye's The Transgender Issue, it's very good but also... kinda grim, and very contemporary-politics rather than exploratory or historical or any of the other interesting angles which keep me going through grim content.

Poetry: Nothing atm
Lit Mag: I got about 1/3 of the way into the Laphams Quarterly issue on Friendship, but it's somewhere in my boxes now. Instead, I finally started the Summer 2019/2020 issue of Archer, an Indigenous guest-edited issue. Here, have a quote from an interview with SJ Norman, by editor Maddee Clark:

I feel the Mob are generally socialised to understand ourselves as part of a lineage and in intergenerational relationship. Not in some dynastic way! I know that I am the futuredream of my ancestors, that in fact they are dreaming me right now, and I find tremendous strength in that.
White folks like to think they are always the first to do something, though, and that erasure is one of the more toxic hang-ups of settler colonialism and of capitalism. People suffer because of it, communities suffer because of it.
If some of the younger queer and trans artists that I know had half a clue of the rich, powerful artistic and cultural lineages they belong to, and were prepared to embrace the Elders [nb: source capitalisation] that are available to them in their imediate communities, maybe they would not feel as alone as a lot of them appear to. Maybe they wouldn't be reproducing violence and exclusion to such an extent.
This is a syndrome that Melbourne in particular really suffers from. Sydney is a very different context where people are held in a strong weave of intergenerational support and accountability.

I liked that, partly because I've been thinking about the differences between Melbourne and Sydney lately - how Melbourne has both the radical left and the stronger neo-nazi presence (and more academic terfs, too), whereas Sydney has a really strong strain of religious conservatism. Protestant, Catholic - even Islamic, tbh, no other city in Australia has made global headlines with the sheikh of its largest mosque comparing women to unattended meat. I've been trying to find the flip side of that, like the radical left and the neo-nazis go together (apparently Basel is the Melbourne of Switzerland in this respect, as well as in the cool riverside dining options sense). If this description is accurate, perhaps that might be it? I wonder. I wonder what Norman bases this on.

There are other things which intruigue me about this - when is white queer engagement with our "lineage" renewal, remedying our lack, and when is it unwarranted taking up space. Sandy O'Sullivan, who is interviewed in the ABC post I linked above, was twitter tagged in some reviews/recs of it which enthused about the Edward de Lacy Evans story, and probably some others I didn't see; O'Sullivan became wildly frustrated with the enthusiasm of white queers for white queer history. (I became frustrated with the program editing: I know Sandy HAS archival examples to discuss, but all that remained in was the macro level theoretical discussion about what Sandy calls "the colonial project of gender", which is very important but not a good neat oh hey I learned a thing lemme tell you in two tweets kind of rec-highlight.) I don't know. I don't have a solution here. I'm a goddamn medievalist, I'm the opposite of a solution. (I am, at least, no longer employed to generate more European lit canon content... Which, if I generate it anyway for fun, is possibly worse.)

Recently (well, this year) Finished:

The Correct Order of Biscuits: And Other Meticulously Assembled Lists of Extremely Valuable Nonsense by Adam Sharp

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


It is difficult to explain why I paid for an audiobook of what is, basically, tweet threads. But I did and I enjoyed it. Good background noise. Whole book elevated by the fact that the "About the author" is given in lists as well.


The Brexit Tapes by John Bull

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Another book of tweet threads: co-incidental, I promise, I started The Correct Order of Biscuits long before this one and just finished them close together.

This is funny. This is a poorly proof-read self-pub (speaker tags swap between first and last names, formatting issues with the footnotes). This is also an archive of popular tweet threads, which really needed a developmental editor to turn it into a workable book. Given it came out well after the events, it needed some re-structuring to give it a through-plot, and also knowing later developments in britpol, limiting it to a single PM doesn't... work.

The conceit of being historical archives though is FANTASTICALLY well done, no cringe about it at all, absolutely doubled down on every humourous aspect. Ergo I did enjoy it.


Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This was completely acceptable aeroplane audiobook content. As a novel, though, it left something to be desired, I think because I'm not into DnD. I'm familiar, but not INTO it. It felt like reading fanfiction for a fandom I'm not in - except the romance plot, while still a dominant plot, was much too chill for me to get into cross-fandom reading. It... uh... I think it relies on you having certain assumptions about what an orc is like, what this or that character type is like, that I just don't have due to not playing DnD. So I didn't viscerally appreciate the subversions, even when I knew they were there, and I noticed how thin the character work actaully was.

Compare to T Kingfisher's White Rat books, where I can see the DnD worldbuilding but the storytelling and the characters hold up even if you don't care about that.


Dracula by Bram Stoker

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This took me almost a year to finish, in the "Phoebe Reads a Mystery" audio read. I started it having not long finished The Turn of the Screw, and tried to keep up with "Dracula Daily", but the book is not chronological and I liked that structure better than the Dracular Daily structure. Then life happened, got distracted, etc. But: I did enjoy it, my genre knowledge is much enhanced, and Weird Professor van Helsing is my weird, weird fave.


And also - not putting a goodreads review in, but I finished The Return of the King (having been working away at the entire trilogy since August) in the Andy Serkis audiobook. Loved it. Loved Andy Serkis' narration: for the most part, and especially with Gollum, it's a distinct read, not a reprise of the movies. But there were bits - the tune to The Road Goes Ever On And On; certain lines from other characters (in ROTK, it was Theoden's speech before battle) where he echoed the intonation, without imitating their voices. Perfect. Loved it.

One (1) Bonus Backdated Review (Nov 2021, apparently):
The Satapur Moonstone by Sujata Massey

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Belated, but: yes! Good! I liked this, I will read the next one. I particularly liked the plot involving an attraction *not* pursued - felt very historically grounded, and added depth and complexity to Perveen's character.

Some Online Fiction: These I will... eh, let's say two recent two backdated?
Recent:

Jonathan Louis Duckworth (Diabolical Plots): 21 Motes. Forget androids and their electronic sheep: do AI enchanced appliances feel love?

Amal Singh (Diabolical Plots): Tell me the meaning of bees. At first I thought this was an allegory for climate change, and then for dementia. I suspect it is not an allegory at all, but it is deeply resonant and I recommend it.

Backdated:

Megan Arkenberg (Nightmare Magazine): The Crowgirl. I do not normally read horror, let alone zombie fiction, but I was on a big Arkenberg kick in December 2021 (I recall distinctly: I listened to this one between the bus arrival in a small Swiss town and the cat boarding place opening so I could pick Mercury up, as I walked a loop around the village). I loved this.

Rachel K Jones (Uncanny Magazine), Six Fictions about Unicorns. Also recommended, although I don't have the same visceral memory of exactly where I was and when and how much I loved this one.

Recently Added To the TBR:
Fiction: Most recent addition is "Beyond Human: Tales of the New Us", an anthology through Lower Decks Press, I believe because one of y'all on here is in it.
Non-fiction: The two most recent additions are "The Feminist and the Sex Offender: Confronting Horrors, Ending State Violence" by Judith Levine, and "The Goldfish in the Parlour" (a book on Victorian human-animal relationships) by John Simmons. The Duality of Reader, etc.
The list still marked "academic": Most recent appears to be Nancy Armstrong's "How Novels Think".
Poetry: Paisley Rekdal's "Nightingale". I follow Rekdal on Twitter, I know she does Ovid adaptations, but hadn't added this to my tbr until recently.

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*bows, flourishes*

This has been What Are You Reading Almost On A Wednesday, first time since June 2022, please clap.