A review by rachelhelps
Something That May Shock and Discredit You by Daniel M. Lavery

4.0

There's a cool zine maker I support on Patreon, and when she said that she couldn't stop laughing at this book, I bought it on an impulse. I didn't know that so much of the book was about Ortberg's transition. Or that he would use scriptures as a support for his feelings during transitions. Or that there would be SO MANY pop culture and medieval/classical literature references. I'm saying these things like they're bad, but they made for a very interesting book. There were, as promised, several hilarious chapters, and I laughed a lot. There were chapters I didn't really know how to feel about. I loved the chapter where Ortberg imagined Paul writing a letter in modern English, with the kind of familiarity we would email each other today. I loved the queer? reading of the story of the Green Knight. And Ortberg's vision of William Shatner as a lesbian will never leave me.

Ortberg transitioned in his early 30s, which I think is unusual in popular depictions of trans people. The way he described his long-term resistance to thinking about transitioning was really interesting to me. The usual trans narrative has someone who knows they are in the wrong body from childhood. Ortberg was more in the "ignore my body as long as possible" (yet was very depressed) camp.