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finesilkflower 's review for:
How to Date Men When You Hate Men
by Blythe Roberson
This is the kind of book that you buy as a semi-gag gift for your friend because BIG MOOD, but I also enjoyed the content! It's clearly built up from a framework of Twitter rants, but that's not such a bad thing. Blythe Roberson is perceptive about just what is so fucked about heterosexual dating under patriarchy, and turns on a dime from goofy humor to bitingly hot tea about misogyny and late-stage capitalism and back again.
Queer take: Boy, am I glad to be a queer person. It solves so many of these problems.
Trans take: Okay, so, it should be said first of all that I as a trans person who repressed my dysphoria for years under layers and layers of "funny" "jokes" about my deep-level discomfort with the female condition, I tend to see this as the secret subtext when it's not there, so I could be wrong here, but there were a few times when I felt like what Blythe was describing crossed the line from "all women feel this way! amirite?" to "uhhh that sounds like dysphoria." Mainly the parts about (1) ha ha! I don't know if I want to date men or be men!! and (2) being vaguely, inexplicably uncomfortable applying with the word "girlfriend" and preferring to call herself and her male partner "boyfriends." Blythe acknowledges that her friends have told her this joke is in poor taste. This sounds like a lot of test-balloon jokes that I stopped making because my friends told me they were in poor taste; feedback that I internalized to mean, "do not experiment with your gender expression, it's weird," so I didn't for 20 years and then the dam burst and I transitioned all over the place. I'm not saying Blythe is definitely trans/nonbinary but maybe food for thought!!!! Also, to any people reading this book who thought, "Oh, I'm not alone, a Certified Woman(TM) also prefers to call herself 'boyfriend' and not 'girlfriend,' that must be a normal thing for cis women so I'm not trans and I don't have to think about that," I'm actually pretty sure it's not a typical cis woman thing and maybe you should think about it a little bit!!!!
Queer take: Boy, am I glad to be a queer person. It solves so many of these problems.
Trans take: Okay, so, it should be said first of all that I as a trans person who repressed my dysphoria for years under layers and layers of "funny" "jokes" about my deep-level discomfort with the female condition, I tend to see this as the secret subtext when it's not there, so I could be wrong here, but there were a few times when I felt like what Blythe was describing crossed the line from "all women feel this way! amirite?" to "uhhh that sounds like dysphoria." Mainly the parts about (1) ha ha! I don't know if I want to date men or be men!! and (2) being vaguely, inexplicably uncomfortable applying with the word "girlfriend" and preferring to call herself and her male partner "boyfriends." Blythe acknowledges that her friends have told her this joke is in poor taste. This sounds like a lot of test-balloon jokes that I stopped making because my friends told me they were in poor taste; feedback that I internalized to mean, "do not experiment with your gender expression, it's weird," so I didn't for 20 years and then the dam burst and I transitioned all over the place. I'm not saying Blythe is definitely trans/nonbinary but maybe food for thought!!!! Also, to any people reading this book who thought, "Oh, I'm not alone, a Certified Woman(TM) also prefers to call herself 'boyfriend' and not 'girlfriend,' that must be a normal thing for cis women so I'm not trans and I don't have to think about that," I'm actually pretty sure it's not a typical cis woman thing and maybe you should think about it a little bit!!!!