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@silenthill2gameoftheyearedition
I recently read this post by Devon Price which details its experience of coming off testosterone, and found various aspects of it quite grating. I have admired Price for several years, after reading its book Unmasking Autism which totally reframed the way I understood myself, and also occasionally reading its posts which I found comforting, since in those days I wasn't on Tumblr and encountering reasonable takes on transmisogyny from (what I then considered to be) a transmasculine perspective was rare and valuable to me. So I was surprised to read this article and feel so negative about it. (The post is 6 months old now, so I expect I may be rehashing old ground by bringing it up, but I've only been on Tumblr a few weeks and I never saw it brought up in the various other online or irl trans spaces I was in at the time so I thought I'd put my thoughts down anyway.)
The post discusses how Price had been on T for around 7 years, and fully passed as a man in public, only to to realise that it felt dysphoric from both its physical appearance and social position. It is now undergoing what it describes as a "transition/detransition/retransition/whatever the fuck you want to call it," by reverting to endogenous estrogen augmented with estrogen cream, it/its pronouns, and being "whatever the fuck I am from moment to moment, and accepting that it wonāt be instantly recognizable". That's great.
My eyebrows were raised, though, by Price's saying "I think my transition has some real commonalities with those of trans women and trans feminine people," such as, "feeling joyful at being freed from the expectations of masculinity, even as it means encountering sexism a lot more," and, "though I will never be targeted by transmisogyny in the ways that my trans sisters are,Ā I will never disavow you or my proximity to you, and I will use my new position to speak over sexist trans men and smack down other ignorant TMEs even louder." Hmm.
One has to wonder what "new position" Price is referring to here? It describes in the post itself how coming off testosterone and identifying away from manhood has reduced its social status, resulting in being treated less seriously in social situations. How could a lowering in social position empower Price to speak louder against sexist trans men? Surely another trans man is better placed to do that than any kind of non-man. The only way this statement makes sense is if Price is referring to an increased proximity to trans womanhood by virtue of the change in identity and hormone profile. I think this is reinforced by "I will never be targeted by transmisogyny in the ways that my trans sisters are," having the unspoken corollary "but I am targeted by transmisogyny all the same."
One has to read the rest of the post to find where these supposed commonalities with the transfeminine experience lie. Much space is devoted to physiological changes like skin-softening or muscle-loss (both relatable to transfems, but not really The Point) or else to improvements in vaginal health and the regaining of fertility. Talking about these could, I suppose, be construed as in poor taste given the assertion that it is a similar experience to transfems, but I am inclined to give Price the benefit of the doubt here given that it is principally a post about changes coming off T, and these are important changes, albeit ones which if anything demonstrate how different Price's "retransition" is to a transfeminine transition.
The only particular change mentioned in the post that mapped onto transfemininity was that of increasingly facing misogynystic street harassment and harassment born of the intersection between misogyny and racism, although it's hard to see how these are transfeminine experiences rather than generic experiences of those-perceived-as-women.
The real meaning, I guess, of Price's "I think my transition has some real commonalities with those of trans women and trans feminine people," comes in the list of things that haven't changed. Thicker body hair, facial hair, a lower voice, and some facial masculinisation stand out as examples that might be relatable to trans women. But whatever "commonalities" these could represent are rather hampered by the assertion that these changes are "lifelong or long-lasting, and thankĀ godĀ for that; I would not be as content in my funny little de-man-sition if I wasnāt holding onto some of my most coveted changes." So it is similar to a transfeminine transition in that there is e.g. facial hair, but Price does not find that facial hair distressing nor particularly want to get rid of it, nor apparently does it need to get rid of it (beyond shaving) to be read as cis female in public. As a trans woman who wants to get rid of her facial hair, who feels intense dysphoria whenever she sees it, but whose facial hair is so thick that it looks like a 5-o'clock-shadow even immediately after shaving plus a layer of concealer, I cannot say I see any commonality between Price's experience and my own.
I think, if anything, Price's post demonstrates how unlike a transfeminine transition its experience has been. One part of the post which stood out was a paragraph about Price's apparently frequent hours-long masturbation sessions. And while I think it's great that people can talk about this, and have no issues at all with Price doing so, I think if a trans woman was employed as a Professor at a prestigious educational institution like Loyola University there is no way she would risk writing something like that on her public blog. (And incidentally, I did check to see if there were any trans women employed at Loyola and could not find any, but cannot ofc be sure of that as a fact.)
Other similar examples crop up throughout the post. While living as a man, Price states that, "most hookups were surprised that I didnāt have a penis when they brought me home." Again, that's amazing, it would be great if we could all live in this world where we didn't feel that we might be murdered or imprisoned for bringing a hook-up home without disclosing our genital configurations, but some of us don't live in that world.
On another occasion Price refers to feeling free to behave again how it did as a child. "My friends and I behaved exactly like this when we were growing up. I have missed it. Being a swaying, fidgety, thousand-yard-staring girlie who eloped through public space like she owned it," it says, followed by, "as a man, I felt this kind of behavior was completely inaccessible." Given the context of this coming after Price's claim that its "retransition" gave it insight into the transfeminine experience, I find this reference to girlhood (plus the understanding that those given the social role of "man" are punished for behaving this way) to be somewhat unpleasant. "Walking down the street, I sing along to my music at full volume and feel more okay beingĀ seen," it adds. That's great, when I was 4 months into my transition I would wear a hoodie with the hood up no matter the temperature and speak as quietly as possible to avoid drawing attention to the very masculine features that Price is so proud of retaining.
A particularly odd paragraph is used to explain the increase in sexism faced by Price after no-longer identifying as a man. Price states that it had been using the term "detransition" when presenting as a man, and no-one objected. But as soon as it underwent its own "detransition" it started to get backlash from transfeminists calling it a "grifter". Price characterises this as a non-man being criticised for something a man can do with impunity, and therefore sexism. But this characterisation of transfeminists' behaviour hardly makes any sense. The idea that transfeminists are more lenient to men than they are to non-men (even those who do not face transmisogyny) is totally absurd and bears no resemblance to reality. Is it not much more likely transfeminists consider statements about "detransition" from a trans person to be far less notable or worthy of critique than statements made on that topic by a "detransitioner"? Price's framing of its "fellow trans feminists" as misogynistic is also a more-than-a-little concerning in light of everything else.
But really, all of these things I've mentioned were not the main source of my discomfort with this post. That came when Price said this:
After many years of trying, it seems to me that āmanhoodā amounts to mostly this: harnessing the power that one holds over other people, particularly women, and repressing oneās weakness so that societal power does not go away.
And yeah, there's a lot of truth in that, but how did Price not know this already? To fully succeed at being a man requires you to oppress. Many an uncracked egg was transmisogynised in her youth because of her failure to oppress. I am one of those. Even well before puberty, I was telling off other boys for making sexist jokes or comments, the result of which was bullying, social exclusion and early-onset transmisogyny. I failed to be a man before I could even get started, because you are not allowed to fully be a man if you don't partake in the oppression of women.
Price says, "I was centered, uplifted, listened to, and respected when I was on T," but I was also "on T" (endogenously) and would've publicly referred to myself as a man for two decades and I was never centered, uplifted, listened to, or respected. Being "centered" is a two-way street: people give you the opportunity to take up space that could have been taken by someone else, and you take it. But in the taking of it you are centering yourself, you are a collaborator in your own centering. Testosterone doesn't magically give you "male privilege", it gives you the option of taking that privilege. And if you take that option rather than refusing it, even if you relent after some years, it says something about your character. To be clear, it is possible to be a man and be a good person, but that involves actively refusing to be centered and uplifted above women, it involves actively making yourself smaller so that women can be uplifted instead. And it seems it took Price a surprising amount of time to come to this realisation for a self-described transfeminist.
Devon Price is not a man, but all the same it was able to be a much better man than I ever was. It was able to reap the rewards of male privilege that I was never allowed to access. Devon Price is not a woman, but it is treated as a woman in society, and specifically treated as a cis woman, something I will also never be allowed to access. Price's article purports to demonstrate commonalities with the experiences of trans women, but what it actually shows is that society allows people like Price to choose between being treated as a man or as a woman, but society allows transfeminine people neither of those options.
Price states that after having experienced the social role of 'woman' and the social role of 'man' it now feels like neither, rather it feels like "a living object or eternal fantastical creature existing beyond the human inventions of species, sex, or age". And here is revealed what is really meant by being exempt from transmisogyny: it is the freedom to exist beyond the human invention of sex. Some of us aren't allowed to exist there: we want to, but we're banned. This post is written from the place we're banned from entering, while also telling us it knows how we feel and shares in our struggle. Thanks, Devon, that really means a lot...
Hey yall I just wanted to come on here and bring some attention to whatās happening at the detention center (really a concentration camp) Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey. There is a hunger strike going on right now to protest the abhorrent conditions within the camp (allegations of torture, maggots and other bugs in the food, etc) and protests happening outside the camp. ICE is not allowing any politicians to come in (as is their right) to see the conditions of the camp. I would urge yall to do your own research, but if you want videos of some people who are actually there, here are some tik tok accounts you can go follow: @ bethanyquilter/ @ whoiskingtrivv/ @ Status Coup News/ @ L.A. TACO
And here is a video explaining whatās going on in more detail than I provided.
With everything else going on in the world, it can be hard to keep up with stuff going on at home, but ICE is still out here terrorizing innocent people. We must keep our eyes on them, and keep fighting.
Feel free to add more sources or info to this post, should you have any.
I found this linktree here that has a master list of ways to help the detainees inside Delaney Hall: https://linktr.ee/SupportOurFamilies
Please support immigrant families by donating to the GoFundMe's below and purchasing supplies via Amazon Wishlist to support detainee visito
I have heard that protestors outside need medical supplies, but I canāt find the best way to provide that if you are not nearby.
every day it just concerns me how little compassion people have. no compassion for those living in the global south. no compassion for immigrants. no compassion for disabled ppl. no compassion for addicts. no compassion for prisoners. no compassion for children. like holy shit ...
i made a separate post about this but actually there are plenty of people cough white people who care about animals more than they ever do human people . not what i'm talking about make your own post
True crime really is just a paranoia generator. Anti mind your business pro cop pro snitch pro gun
Apparently the latest true crime fad rn is some guy in virginia who is wearing a pink panther costume walking around town and he scared a couple of kids so now people are like What If He Is a Predator. The police are looking for him apparently. Ok
I'm sure I'm not the first person to say this but the way true crime is framed is 9.9 times out of 10 so deeply like. Middle class white america. You're affecting the neighbourhood property values by being weird in public you need to go to jail. You stepped a foot over my property line I'm going to shoot you on my lawn. Don't touch my children!!! My parental rights says only I can abuse them. Why are my tax dollars feeding criminals just execute them. Can you believe nobody is trustworthy you should carry a gun at all times etc.
And this might be too forgiving given the impact these ppl can have on the aggregate but I have some sympathy for people who produce this sort of 'content' for money, in that I think if awful horrific crimes and really obscure unlikely outlier modes of violence were all I researched and read about all day I would want to live in a bunker maybe. But at a certain point you gotta stop don't you
Trail of a leopard dragging a carcass. Photo by Lex Hes.
donnamayvillarino on ig
Examples of Hooden Horses and Mari Lwydās at Maidstone Museumās Animal Guising exhibition- Maidstone, UKĀ
i tune out for one day and what the fuck is this
i thought maybe it was shitpost but no
Dana White is the head of the UFC. He is buddy-buddy with Vince McMahon, head of the WWE. Vince McMahon is the husband of Linda McMahon, the head of the Department of Education. This tracks severely.
i fucking hate it here god nuke us all
the snitchuation
given recent events, an important reminder
I did love house of leaves when I read it, but I also found it kind of weird how slavery is never mentioned. I'm not American, though, so maybe I lost some subtext? Anyway, I would love to hear your thoughts on the matter once you finish the book!
This is going to be long. The more I think about it, the more Iām just kind of stunned at the extent to which the architecture as grief and haunting and trauma and history book completely doesnāt at all address the fact that the house in question is a plantation. Two story three bedroom houses built in the 1720s in Tidwater Virginia right next to the James River are not anything else.
They talk a lot about how itās haunted by Virginia history, but exclusively contextualize it in the story of the lost colony of Jamestown and the starving time and the pain of white settlers, which aligns with the house-as-frontier motif that characters like Holloway and Wax fit into. The Navidsons and Holloway and the Jamestowners all go to a new place in hopes that it will change them but instead, it really only reflects them in a positive feedback loop that is ultimately self-destructive. ļæ¼
There is no mention of Jamestown as the place where slavery started in the United States. There is no discussion over who wouldāve built the house built in 1720 even though thereās only one answer.
I think this itself can work as a metaphor for how the state of Virginia deals with its own history in terms of modifying it without acknowledging any of the darkness and evil that it took to build it. The book does straight up do this but again only in the context of white settlers.
The sentiment expressed here about colonial Williamsburg is real similar to how I feel about the Navidsons moving into a plantation house built in 1720 that has been recoded and reinterpreted as a sanitized cookie cutter nuclear family single home whose dark past on that front goes completely unremarked upon. But heās talking about Williamsburg omitting the starving time and brutal struggle of the British colonial project instead.
Iām still really struggling to wrap my head around why any discussion of slavery or race is omitted in this book about architecture and haunting and Virginia. āThereās an integral part of this house that we do not talk about or acknowledge, but itās in here with us and we are haunted by itā while living on a plantation feels like a setup that is so obvious to me in a way where I kind of have to wonder if its omission is deliberate. I think if you want to be generous you can make the argument that some of it is metacommentary on the silence of white inhabitants and interpreters of spaces like these?
White academics often have deliberately cultivated blind spots for this sort of thing where in the book thousands and thousands of academic journals are written dissecting every aspect architectural and metaphysical of the house as well as Navidsonās pain and trauma while the pain, suffering, and entire presence of enslaved laborers who built the house is a non-entity in the story. In the universe of the book people have called Karen Greenās 87 affair partners to ask about her psychological state as a child and no one has written on who built the house. ļæ¼
I think if weāre talking about space and place itās also worth pointing out that contrary to popular (white) interpretations of the history of slavery, enslaved people not only built plantation houses, but also inhabited parts of them as well when forced to perform domestic labor in lieu of or in addition to agricultural labor. I say this because who and what is living in the house is a really big element of the book. Itās not just the structure and architecture of the house of leaves that gets remarked on, but also the presences and absences within it. The misconception that all enslaved people lived separately is often used by white historians to get out of having to talk about slavery and architecture altogether. No one in the book at any point considers any of the inhabitants of the house that werenāt previous presumably white owners.
There are a lot of white Virginians who have a tendency to pretend like local architecture just kind of manifested itself into the world (see: Monticello getting interpreted as like a Jeffersonian genius brainchild when the blueprints are quite sparse enslaved architects designed the house.) Similarly, at one point in house of leaves one of the sources used insinuates that white settlers just happened to find it in 1610.
Using the history of the house exclusively as a selling point or interesting fact like the realtor who sold the house to them did while they contextualize it as this bucolic white suburban getaway fresh start reminds me of the many plantations Iāve been to in Virginia that recontextualize and commodify themselves for white audiences as other things whether thatās ārestorationsā that anachronistically reinterpret slave, housing as āsharecroppers cabinsā or āguest houses,ā or plantations branding themselves as bed-and-breakfasts, wedding venues, or single-family houses. ļæ¼
But on the other hand, itās really hard when every other aspect of the house and its structure and its meaning and itās history EXCEPT its historical context about slavery goes explored or commented on by the Davidsons or the academics interpreting this documentary or Zampano interpreting the academics or Johnny Truant. Why isnāt who built the house a bigger deal?ļæ¼
TLDR: Complete total lack of commentary about slavery in the architecture and trauma book where they live in a plantation house is definitely of reflective of the pattern of erasure of black trauma and accurate history from academic and architectural spaces. Whether thatās deliberate commentary on erasure or just wholesale participation in it is up in the air for me.
I'll start by saying I'm not interested in defending Mark Z. Danielewski's racial politics. Categorically I'm rather uninterested in doing the work of white authors for them when it comes to race; I think much of HoL's narrative is just racist/antiblack and am of the opinion that this narrative decision-- intentional or otherwise-- is at best rather tasteless.
That being said, I think there are several aspects of the story that are worth addressing in the context of HoL's racial narrative. The first is-- as acknowledged in the OP and in several tags-- that HoL is very much a satire of literary academic writing as a whole and its discourse is deliberately self parodying and self contradictory to that end.
The second is that, although HoL is rather cagey about addressing colonialism directly, its references to American colonialism are far more extensive than might be immediately evident. Zampanó's lovers, for example, are all named for US bases in Vietnam, which both further cements that Zampanó and Navidson are alter egos (Navidson deliberately enlisting in the Vietnam war) and makes more clear the implied analogy between colonialism and sexual violence presented by the House. The House is a yonic/maternal symbol and one that Karen does not want Navidson to enter-- I have always read Navidson's exploration of the House as, if not an outright symbolic rape, then at least an intentional portrayal of his sexual empowerment as a (white) man to humiliate and de-person his wife. Karen refuses to enter the House; when she does, it disappears. Similarly the only Black character cannot enter the House because he is physically unable to do so-- he is structurally prevented from the same empowerment as the white male characters.
The third is the issue of Delial. As mentioned, the exploration of the House is a kind of epistemic violence, one with a racial and sexual bent. Delial becomes an object of fixation to Navidson because it becomes the point where he is unable to deny the exploitative nature of his art. He is epistemically empowered over a colonized Black girl, and he sees her existence as a means of furthering his own ends. Upon realizing this he subsumes the reality of the Black girl into his own personal narrative. He renames her, he obsesses over her image, and he uses her existence as a pretense to further alienate himself from his wife. Though he acknowledges his own selfishness in exploiting the body of a dying Black girl he reacts to this not in a way that grants autonomy to the people whose lives he made entirely symbolic, but by further exploiting it as an engine for his man-pain. (This kind of epistemic violence is echoed in Johnny's narrative, where he invents graphic and objectifying backstories for his exes when he meets a woman who had been a victim of sexual assault.)
Finally, there's the matter of intertextuality. Zampanó is based on a number of historical figures but by far the most important is white Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges. The Minotaur of House of Leaves-- and indeed the story as a whole-- derives largely from Borges' short story The House of Asterion, a story which describes a "house" of incomprehensible structure and obscures the identity of its narrator as the Minotaur until the moment he is killed. The element of the Minotaur is meant to be expunged from the narrative-- this is a bit of a joke, precisely because it gives up the game. Borges, it's worth mentioning, was very much in favor of historical Argentinian genocidal efforts against Native Americans. Argentina was exceptional even among Latin American countries for its explicit campaigns to promote white European immigration, and this is in large part why Argentina is one of three modern Latin American countries to have a majority-white population. Borges was rather embarrassed of indigenous Argentines, despite writing some handful of stories about them, and was quite laudatory of European immigration.
I don't see Zampanó as an especially sympathetic figure, and I don't believe that he is meant to be especially sympathetic. I think the conclusion to the Navidson Record-- that Karen and Navidson get married and live in suburban happiness-- is not meant to be a true ending, because the first thing we learn about Zampanó is that he died alone in an apartment full of stray cats. Zampanó-- as Navidson's alter ego-- is at least somewhat aware of his own misogyny (he's quick to claim that negative reads of Karen are usually blatantly misogynistic) but seems content to continue the same epistemic violence that is the driving conflict of HoL. He is content to represent feminist writers through snide caricatures (though I'm no fan of Camille Paglia), he retains his open romanticization of the Vietnam war, and though HoL is in large part about the violence of Navidson's insistence on knowing his own house, he's fine with referencing Karen's possible history of childhood abuse that Karen clearly did not want known.
All this to say that HoL clearly draws a connection between colonialism, antiblackness, and the epistemic violence that it makes its central theme. Does it do so well? As mentioned, I'm not really interested in arguing as much. I don't think that ambiguity is a bad thing, but I'm a bit skeptical of the tastefulness of a white author dancing around the subject of slavery and antiblackness, even if that is the point. HoL makes a lot of references to American colonial violence but, even if it alludes to antiblackness, does not even symbolically nod to slavery. HoL is a book about the epistemic violence of white male artists made by a white male artist, and there's only a certain extent to which you can satirize a thing without just doing the thing. Zampanó's snide caricature is ultimately Danielewski's snide caricature; Johnny's fetishization is ultimately Danielewski's fetishization, even if done in a way that is critical and self-aware.
the death of Sora has thrown AI video generation back into a sort of Dark Ages and it's been really good actually
"While those working at private companies can at least earn a little money, they face possible punishment if they refuse, from being denied family visits to being sent to higher-security prisons, which are so dangerous that the federal government filed a lawsuit four years ago that remains pending [note: article is from 2024], calling the treatment of prisoners unconstitutional.
Though they make at least $7.25 an hour, the state siphons 40% off the top of all wages and also levies fees, including $5 a day for rides to their jobs and $15 a month for laundry.
Turning down work can jeopardize chances of early release in a state that last year granted parole to only 8% of eligible prisoners ā an all-time low, and among the worst rates nationwide ā though that number more than doubled this year after public outcry."
No state has a longer, more profit-driven history of contracting prisoners out to private companies than Alabama.
Yet another new study debunked the basis for the anti-trans sports bans. It was never about sports but for creating legal avenues for exclusion and abjection. This is one of the largest analyses ever conducted, involving 52 studies and 6,485 trans people. Read the study here.
White Americans ... are terrified of sensuality and do not any longer understand it. The word āsensualā is not intended to bring to mind quivering dusky maidens or priapic black studs. I am referring to something much simpler and much less fanciful. To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread. ... Something very sinister happens to the people of a country when they begin to distrust their own reactions as deeply as they do here, and become as joyless as they have become. It is this individual uncertainty on the part of white American men and women, this inability to renew themselves at the fountain of their own lives, that makes the discussion, let alone elucidation, of any conundrumāthat is, any realityāso supremely difficult. The person who distrusts himself has no touchstone for realityāfor this touchstone can be only oneself. Such a person interposes between himself and reality nothing less than a labyrinth of attitudes. And these attitudes, furthermore, though the person is usually unaware of it (is unaware of so much!), are historical and public attitudes. They do not relate to the present any more than they relate to the person.
--James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, 1963
Let me click u
A rule change pushed by White House officials would slash benefits or end support for as many as 400,000 Supplemental Security Income recipi
The Trump administration wants to make a rule change that would decrease or end benefits for SSI recipients who live with their family. As many as 400,000 disabled people may have their benefits cut if this rule change occurs.
It's worth noting as always that as things currently stand, the MAXIMUM benefit a person can receive from SSI is $994 a month.
If two people on SSI are married, the MAXIMUM they can receive is $1,491 a month, total, for both of them. (Meaning marriage to another SSI recipient reduces your maximum income possible to $745 a person each month.)
Could you live on that?
Could you live on that without living with family?