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torishams's reviews
295 reviews
To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life by Hervé Guibert
3.5
3.5/4
I keep going back and forth about how I feel about this book. I think it has a large impact, but the reading experience itself wasn't necessarily always compelling to me. The long sentences really require you to pay attention, and I found myself having to trace back at times to figure out what Guibert was trying to say. I think that's very intentional though, it was just something I had to be aware of and prepared for in terms of my reading mindset. I saw another review that talked about these lengthy sentences also give a feeling of breathlessness and fatigue, mirroring Guibert, which I think is also a productive lens to understand the writing style through.
* I was stretching invisible nets from my window to his to save him
* you could see it in his eyes, that panic at a suffering no longer mastered inside the body but provoked artificially by an outside intervention directed at the site of the illness under the pretext of eliminating it, and clearly this pain was more abominable for Muzil than his private bodily suffering, which had become intimately familiar to him.
* I’d borrowed Jules’s Leica to record the details, such as the wastebasket that still held a crumpled envelope bearing an address Muzil had started to write. In four months, the torment of absence had had time to deposit itself on all these things like a dust it was not impossible to brush off, they were all untouchable, and that was why they had to be photographed before they were covered over by more disorder.
* Before his death, Muzil had managed, discreetly, gradually, to separate himself somewhat from the one he loved, even having the amazing reflex, thew unconscious grace to spare this loved one at a time when almost all of his body, his sperm, saliva, tears, sweat — we weren’t so aware of this then— had become highly contagious…
* After I constantly sought out the most spectacular attributes of death, begging my father to let me have the skull that had accompanied him through medical school, hypnotizing myself with horror films… I began to disdain this bric-a-brac, put away the medical school skull, avoided cemeteries like the plague, for I’d reached another stage in the love of death, as though I were impregnated by death in my innermost being and no longer needed those trappings, but desired instead a closer intimacy with my idol, continually seeking the feelings it provoked, the most precious and hateful of all: fear and longing.
* If only one of us had been sick, that would probably have created an equilibrium of protection that would have cut the suffering in half. Together we were drowning helplessly, for neither one of us could save the other from sinking to the bottom, to the absolute and utter depths.
* And unhappiness, once you were completely sunk in it, was a lot more livable than the presentiment of unhappiness, a lot less cruel, in fact, than one would have thought.
* …because it was only natural to betray my secrets, since I’d always done that in all my books, even though this genie could never be stuffed back into its bottle, and I would never again be a part of the human community.
I keep going back and forth about how I feel about this book. I think it has a large impact, but the reading experience itself wasn't necessarily always compelling to me. The long sentences really require you to pay attention, and I found myself having to trace back at times to figure out what Guibert was trying to say. I think that's very intentional though, it was just something I had to be aware of and prepared for in terms of my reading mindset. I saw another review that talked about these lengthy sentences also give a feeling of breathlessness and fatigue, mirroring Guibert, which I think is also a productive lens to understand the writing style through.
* I was stretching invisible nets from my window to his to save him
* you could see it in his eyes, that panic at a suffering no longer mastered inside the body but provoked artificially by an outside intervention directed at the site of the illness under the pretext of eliminating it, and clearly this pain was more abominable for Muzil than his private bodily suffering, which had become intimately familiar to him.
* I’d borrowed Jules’s Leica to record the details, such as the wastebasket that still held a crumpled envelope bearing an address Muzil had started to write. In four months, the torment of absence had had time to deposit itself on all these things like a dust it was not impossible to brush off, they were all untouchable, and that was why they had to be photographed before they were covered over by more disorder.
* Before his death, Muzil had managed, discreetly, gradually, to separate himself somewhat from the one he loved, even having the amazing reflex, thew unconscious grace to spare this loved one at a time when almost all of his body, his sperm, saliva, tears, sweat — we weren’t so aware of this then— had become highly contagious…
* After I constantly sought out the most spectacular attributes of death, begging my father to let me have the skull that had accompanied him through medical school, hypnotizing myself with horror films… I began to disdain this bric-a-brac, put away the medical school skull, avoided cemeteries like the plague, for I’d reached another stage in the love of death, as though I were impregnated by death in my innermost being and no longer needed those trappings, but desired instead a closer intimacy with my idol, continually seeking the feelings it provoked, the most precious and hateful of all: fear and longing.
* If only one of us had been sick, that would probably have created an equilibrium of protection that would have cut the suffering in half. Together we were drowning helplessly, for neither one of us could save the other from sinking to the bottom, to the absolute and utter depths.
* And unhappiness, once you were completely sunk in it, was a lot more livable than the presentiment of unhappiness, a lot less cruel, in fact, than one would have thought.
* …because it was only natural to betray my secrets, since I’d always done that in all my books, even though this genie could never be stuffed back into its bottle, and I would never again be a part of the human community.
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
This was okay - I'm not a big fantasy reader, but I enjoyed it a surprising amount. Not sure if I care enough to read the sequel though...
3.5
This was okay - I'm not a big fantasy reader, but I enjoyed it a surprising amount. Not sure if I care enough to read the sequel though...
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
4.0
Men will truly obsess over a painting before going to therapy.
* It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.
* “Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself.”
* “There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral—immoral from a scientific point of view.” “Why?” “Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sings, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly—that is what each of us is here for….”
* And beauty is a form of genius—is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has divine right of sovereignty.
* “They say that when good Americans die they go to Paris,”…”And where do bad Americans go to when they die?”…”They go to America”
* “Do you think my nature so shallow?” cried Dorian Gray angrily. “No; I think your nature so deep.” “How do you mean?” “My dear boy, the people who love only once int heir lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect—simply a confession of failure. Faithfulness! I must analyze it some day. The passion for property is in it. There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up…”
* “…Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a rally great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating… He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others writ eh the poetry that they dare not realize.”
* There were poisons so subtle that to know their properties one had to sicken of them. There were maladies so strange that one had to pass through them if one sought to understand their nature.
* Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away. Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and the intellect. But now and then a complex personality took the place and assumed the office of art, was indeed, in its way, a real work of art, life having its elaborate masterpieces, just as poetry has, or sculpture, or painting.
* The basis of optimism is sheer terror. We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbor with the possession of the virtues that are likely to be a benefit to us.
* One should absorb the color of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar.
* Nay, without thought or conscious desire, might not things external to ourselves vibrate in unison with our moods and passions, atom calling to atom in secret love or strange affinity?
* There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.
* “I am tired of myself tonight. I should like to be somebody else.”
* Each man lived his own life and paid his own price for living it. The only pity was one had to pay so often for a single fault. One had to pay over and over again, indeed. In her dealings with man, destiny never closed her accounts.
* “What are you?” “To define is to limit.”
* Romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art. Besides, each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it. We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.
* Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
* It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.
* “Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself.”
* “There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral—immoral from a scientific point of view.” “Why?” “Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sings, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly—that is what each of us is here for….”
* And beauty is a form of genius—is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has divine right of sovereignty.
* “They say that when good Americans die they go to Paris,”…”And where do bad Americans go to when they die?”…”They go to America”
* “Do you think my nature so shallow?” cried Dorian Gray angrily. “No; I think your nature so deep.” “How do you mean?” “My dear boy, the people who love only once int heir lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect—simply a confession of failure. Faithfulness! I must analyze it some day. The passion for property is in it. There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up…”
* “…Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a rally great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating… He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others writ eh the poetry that they dare not realize.”
* There were poisons so subtle that to know their properties one had to sicken of them. There were maladies so strange that one had to pass through them if one sought to understand their nature.
* Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away. Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and the intellect. But now and then a complex personality took the place and assumed the office of art, was indeed, in its way, a real work of art, life having its elaborate masterpieces, just as poetry has, or sculpture, or painting.
* The basis of optimism is sheer terror. We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbor with the possession of the virtues that are likely to be a benefit to us.
* One should absorb the color of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar.
* Nay, without thought or conscious desire, might not things external to ourselves vibrate in unison with our moods and passions, atom calling to atom in secret love or strange affinity?
* There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.
* “I am tired of myself tonight. I should like to be somebody else.”
* Each man lived his own life and paid his own price for living it. The only pity was one had to pay so often for a single fault. One had to pay over and over again, indeed. In her dealings with man, destiny never closed her accounts.
* “What are you?” “To define is to limit.”
* Romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art. Besides, each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it. We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.
* Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
Happy Hour by Marlowe Granados
3.75
Nothing really happens, but in an engrossing way. I think if I read this some other time, I wouldn't have been able to get through it, but for some reason, it kept pulling me back in. There were several parts about growing up, girlhood, feeling lost, and friendship that resonated so deeply that I think they made me like this book more.
* Seeing someone you used to love is like visiting a house you once lived in. everything about them is familiar yet strange. the greater the distance between you, the more unbelievable they seem. maybe i have always been involved in some kind of fieldwork. (10%)
* When we were younger, everything for the first time always felt the best, or at least the Most, and sometimes getting older feels like striking the same chord and it sounding different. i shared this melancholy with Gala, who sees nostalgia as the first sign of aging, and she said, “I don’t know how you can be sad in this heat! I, for one, am trying to stay young for as long as possible.” (17%)
* Summer solstice came and went, and in a way I find that sad because even though it is the longest day of the year and marks the beginning of summer, from now on, the days grow shorter and shorter. It’s true that some parties end before they even begin. (33%)
* “It’s funny how in a place where everything is an Experience, people see such little value in just living.” (35%)
* Though we give the appearance of it, I wonder when we were truly carefree. Were we ever? It’s an odd, impalpable thing to always chase. I’ve felt it in small, delicious fragments, and usually when I’m dancing. The only way to achieve even the veneer of such freedom is to resist being pulled down by the weight of everything. (37%)
* She introduced Gala and me to the critic: “Isn’t it rare to find two people who like art without the intention of ever making it? I’m really wowed by people without artistic inclinations, aren’t you?” The critic peered over his glasses to take a good look at us. “How do you know they’re not just gathering material?” (39%)
* I realize now, the older you get, the harder it is to be impressed because people make you feel ashamed of ever being impressed by anything at all. I keep many glowing remarks to myself because of this. (41%)
* Sometimes I long for anything that might be frivolous. I go between feeling much too young and much too old for my age. I crave nothing serious, but when I pursue it, I am the one to drag a dark cloud overhead. It’s much easier to seem silly and light than to be the sum of your experiences. If only I could exists as perfect lightness, always laughing with my mouth open. I would float through life with ease, believing in my own unserious personality. It takes no effort to convince people you are in fact just that. They start to expect that of you, and nothing more. (44%)
* I have tried to stitch together tenderness from each person. Wring them of it. I want all the tenderness in the world. It’s a natural urge to want to be important in someone’s life. The soft underbelly of a coarse man. A preview is never enough because I am insatiable. (56%)
* Is it wrong to think of pain as quantifiable? If it is not in quantities, how can we digest it? How does it move through our bodies without us knowing its size? (67%)
* It’s funny how children can still go on even after their parents have died. You’d think it was only polite for someone who gave you entrance to the world to see you through it. (81%)
* I’m lucky because moment to moment I do not feel the sum of my experiences. I work hard to keep it that way because if I did, I would never do anything. I’d never go anywhere. Resilience is key. It would be nice if whenever someone said, “I love you,” it meant, “Everything will be fine.” It’s all reassurance anyway. (82%)
like that last one is so devastating are you kidding
* Seeing someone you used to love is like visiting a house you once lived in. everything about them is familiar yet strange. the greater the distance between you, the more unbelievable they seem. maybe i have always been involved in some kind of fieldwork. (10%)
* When we were younger, everything for the first time always felt the best, or at least the Most, and sometimes getting older feels like striking the same chord and it sounding different. i shared this melancholy with Gala, who sees nostalgia as the first sign of aging, and she said, “I don’t know how you can be sad in this heat! I, for one, am trying to stay young for as long as possible.” (17%)
* Summer solstice came and went, and in a way I find that sad because even though it is the longest day of the year and marks the beginning of summer, from now on, the days grow shorter and shorter. It’s true that some parties end before they even begin. (33%)
* “It’s funny how in a place where everything is an Experience, people see such little value in just living.” (35%)
* Though we give the appearance of it, I wonder when we were truly carefree. Were we ever? It’s an odd, impalpable thing to always chase. I’ve felt it in small, delicious fragments, and usually when I’m dancing. The only way to achieve even the veneer of such freedom is to resist being pulled down by the weight of everything. (37%)
* She introduced Gala and me to the critic: “Isn’t it rare to find two people who like art without the intention of ever making it? I’m really wowed by people without artistic inclinations, aren’t you?” The critic peered over his glasses to take a good look at us. “How do you know they’re not just gathering material?” (39%)
* I realize now, the older you get, the harder it is to be impressed because people make you feel ashamed of ever being impressed by anything at all. I keep many glowing remarks to myself because of this. (41%)
* Sometimes I long for anything that might be frivolous. I go between feeling much too young and much too old for my age. I crave nothing serious, but when I pursue it, I am the one to drag a dark cloud overhead. It’s much easier to seem silly and light than to be the sum of your experiences. If only I could exists as perfect lightness, always laughing with my mouth open. I would float through life with ease, believing in my own unserious personality. It takes no effort to convince people you are in fact just that. They start to expect that of you, and nothing more. (44%)
* I have tried to stitch together tenderness from each person. Wring them of it. I want all the tenderness in the world. It’s a natural urge to want to be important in someone’s life. The soft underbelly of a coarse man. A preview is never enough because I am insatiable. (56%)
* Is it wrong to think of pain as quantifiable? If it is not in quantities, how can we digest it? How does it move through our bodies without us knowing its size? (67%)
* It’s funny how children can still go on even after their parents have died. You’d think it was only polite for someone who gave you entrance to the world to see you through it. (81%)
* I’m lucky because moment to moment I do not feel the sum of my experiences. I work hard to keep it that way because if I did, I would never do anything. I’d never go anywhere. Resilience is key. It would be nice if whenever someone said, “I love you,” it meant, “Everything will be fine.” It’s all reassurance anyway. (82%)
like that last one is so devastating are you kidding
Real Life by Brandon Taylor
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
4.0
I have an insane amount of tabs in this book, enough said. But really, this book was so heartbreaking even though like nothing happened. I think it felt like it mirrored my life this summer so I felt deeply connected to it. It explores being a researcher, not knowing if you're on the right path in life, childhood trauma, sexuality, racism, grief, and loneliness. My main issue with it was the ending, which felt overly ambiguous in my opinion. However, there were so many moments where I felt so seen (which is what often makes a book special). I'll put a few of my favorite quotes (but there are literally so many):
-It wasn't so much that he wanted to leave graduate school as that he wanted to leave his life. The truth of that feeling fit under his skin like a new, uncomfortable self, and he couldn't get rid of it once he acknowledged it. It was all the same, gray waiting, a fear of not being able to take it all back. (27)
-He skimmed beneath the surface of waking, gliding along a vast silver sea of light, viewing it from below, the world passing him by, passing over him. (51)
-...but he turns, leaves. Away through the blue shadow that has taken the lab now that the lights have turned off. His motion doesn't trigger them, as though he is a natural part of this place or a ghost. (99)
-He wasn't looking anyway, but at the same time he wanted to be looked at the same as anyone else, to be seen. (110)
-If Vincent leaves me... I don't know what I'll do," he says... It's the sort of thing you say with a laugh, a soft roll of the shoulders. That's the only way to express the inconsolable grief of it, the fear that begins down in the tripe, in the guts, in the core of who you are and what you want and what you need. (133)
-...when you go to another place you don't have to carry the past with you. You can lay it down. You can leave it for the ants. There comes a time when you have to stop being who you were, when you have to let the past stay where it is, frozen and impossible. You have to let it go if you're going to keep moving... The past is greedy, always swallowing you up, always taking. If you don't hold it back... it will spread and take and drown... I can't live as long as my past does. It's one or the other. (203)
-"I'm sorry all that happened to you, that I made you tell me." "You didn't do anything wrong. Besides, I guess I've been walking around waiting for someone to ask." "Have you?" "Maybe so," Wallace says. "Maybe we all are? I don't know." (217)
-His father had done some magic trick, converted certainty to doubt with no more effort than it took to ask, <i>What are you crying for?</i> Why had he done that? Why? But here, with Brigit, the reason sharpens, its clarity terrifying. He is crying because he cannot recognize hinsmelf, because the way forward is obscured for him, but ther eis nothing he can do or say that will bring him happiness. He is crying because he is lodged between this life and the next, and for the first time he does not know whether it is better to stay or go. Wallace cries and cries, until eventually he is hollow and empty until there's nothing left to cry about, until he feels like he's being rung like a bell. (268)
oops that was a lot of quotes...
anyways go read this book!!
-It wasn't so much that he wanted to leave graduate school as that he wanted to leave his life. The truth of that feeling fit under his skin like a new, uncomfortable self, and he couldn't get rid of it once he acknowledged it. It was all the same, gray waiting, a fear of not being able to take it all back. (27)
-He skimmed beneath the surface of waking, gliding along a vast silver sea of light, viewing it from below, the world passing him by, passing over him. (51)
-...but he turns, leaves. Away through the blue shadow that has taken the lab now that the lights have turned off. His motion doesn't trigger them, as though he is a natural part of this place or a ghost. (99)
-He wasn't looking anyway, but at the same time he wanted to be looked at the same as anyone else, to be seen. (110)
-If Vincent leaves me... I don't know what I'll do," he says... It's the sort of thing you say with a laugh, a soft roll of the shoulders. That's the only way to express the inconsolable grief of it, the fear that begins down in the tripe, in the guts, in the core of who you are and what you want and what you need. (133)
-...when you go to another place you don't have to carry the past with you. You can lay it down. You can leave it for the ants. There comes a time when you have to stop being who you were, when you have to let the past stay where it is, frozen and impossible. You have to let it go if you're going to keep moving... The past is greedy, always swallowing you up, always taking. If you don't hold it back... it will spread and take and drown... I can't live as long as my past does. It's one or the other. (203)
-"I'm sorry all that happened to you, that I made you tell me." "You didn't do anything wrong. Besides, I guess I've been walking around waiting for someone to ask." "Have you?" "Maybe so," Wallace says. "Maybe we all are? I don't know." (217)
-His father had done some magic trick, converted certainty to doubt with no more effort than it took to ask, <i>What are you crying for?</i> Why had he done that? Why? But here, with Brigit, the reason sharpens, its clarity terrifying. He is crying because he cannot recognize hinsmelf, because the way forward is obscured for him, but ther eis nothing he can do or say that will bring him happiness. He is crying because he is lodged between this life and the next, and for the first time he does not know whether it is better to stay or go. Wallace cries and cries, until eventually he is hollow and empty until there's nothing left to cry about, until he feels like he's being rung like a bell. (268)
oops that was a lot of quotes...
anyways go read this book!!
Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender by Kit Heyam
This was a nuanced, complex look at how we can use history to affirm queer identities. Some sections were a bit more compelling than others for me, but there were some really interesting points, and I liked that there was a section devoted to discussing other cultural identities (and dispelling the widespread idea that Two-Spirit is the same as nonbinary). Here's some of my favorite points:
* when white people use the genders of people of color in this way, it recapitulates a colonialist dynamic of exploitation. the desire to name and categorize people according to Western metrics reflects and reenacts a similar colonialist impulse.
* For these scientists, sexual dimorphism was one of the things that divided people into different races: white people’s bodies were the most ‘perfectly’ divided into male and female, while people of color had fewer differences between the sexes. we can see the legacy of these racist ideas everywhere today: they’re behind the association of Black women with masculine-coded anger, and the feminization of Asian men.
* historical methodology - the way we’re accustomed to doing and thinking about history academically - tends to demand a much higher standard of evidence to ‘prove’ that someone in the past can be called trans than it does to ‘prove’ that they can be called cis. Because trans people are a minority, we’re seen as an aberration from the norm; our society treats cisgender-ness as the default, or ‘unmarked’ state of human beings… this approach also enables historians to avoid the horror of accidentally mislabelling a straight, cis person from the past as queer. As if, as a result, we mislabel a queer or trans person as straight or cis… well, funnily enough, that doesn’t cause as much anxiety. Our sense of what we need to be cautious about has been insidiously shaped by homophobia and transphobia.
* Trans people who write about our own history are often accused of bias… you’re absolutely right! But I would also say that I’m no less objective than any other historian. Because we live in a society that sees cis people as the default, the majority of histories are biased against finding trans history even when they try not to be. But funnily enough, it tends to only be marginalized groups who are accused of lacking objectivity.
* For the majority of trans writers, the most common genre in which we can get our voices heard is the memoir. The problem with this emphasis on testimony is not just that it demands trans people cede our right to privacy, exposing our vulnerabilities in order to prove that we deserve basic human rights; it’s that it creates an expectation of testimony.
* When we assert the realness of our identities, we’re not just trying to convince anti-trans campaigners that we deserve rights: in many cases, we’re also trying to reassure ourselves that our genders are real, in the face of a world that continually tries to undermine them.
* While in a sense everybody who writes a history book is rewriting history, in another sense it’s not possible to rewrite the past: it happened and nothing can change it. What is possible is to reread the past… What this doesn’t mean is ‘reclaiming’ people from the past as part of trans history… this capitalist language of ownership is part of the problem… thinking in this capitalist way also leads us to see historical representation as a scarce resource we need to fight over, rather than as something we can expand, reshape and share.
* Just because someone only lived as a gender different from the one they were assigned at birth for a short proportion of their life, then - such as living as male for a 6 year term in the army - we shouldn’t dismiss the validity of their short-lived trans experience. And we should call it trans experience…because regardless of what motivated them, the stories of people like the American Civil War soldiers show us that gender is malleable and has never been limited by birth assignment.
* We often think of dress as a costume: something that we put on over our internal self, which might reflect or obscure our true identity, but never reshape it… My own dress both reflects and reshapes my gender…
* As Sophie Labelle puts it, ‘every time you laugh at the idea of a man dressed as a woman, a trans girl gets more scared to come out.’
* this is the dangerous flipside of the “born this way” argument: it can lead us to think that trans identities are more valid, or only valid, if they have a proven biological cause.
* the idea of sexual dimorphism also has a racist history… as Richard von Krafft-Ebing put it, in a representative view, “the higher the anthropological development of the race, the stronger these contrasts between man and woman.”
* The simple precept of knowing people on their own terms can transform more than history; it also has the power to liberate us in the present.
* when white people use the genders of people of color in this way, it recapitulates a colonialist dynamic of exploitation. the desire to name and categorize people according to Western metrics reflects and reenacts a similar colonialist impulse.
* For these scientists, sexual dimorphism was one of the things that divided people into different races: white people’s bodies were the most ‘perfectly’ divided into male and female, while people of color had fewer differences between the sexes. we can see the legacy of these racist ideas everywhere today: they’re behind the association of Black women with masculine-coded anger, and the feminization of Asian men.
* historical methodology - the way we’re accustomed to doing and thinking about history academically - tends to demand a much higher standard of evidence to ‘prove’ that someone in the past can be called trans than it does to ‘prove’ that they can be called cis. Because trans people are a minority, we’re seen as an aberration from the norm; our society treats cisgender-ness as the default, or ‘unmarked’ state of human beings… this approach also enables historians to avoid the horror of accidentally mislabelling a straight, cis person from the past as queer. As if, as a result, we mislabel a queer or trans person as straight or cis… well, funnily enough, that doesn’t cause as much anxiety. Our sense of what we need to be cautious about has been insidiously shaped by homophobia and transphobia.
* Trans people who write about our own history are often accused of bias… you’re absolutely right! But I would also say that I’m no less objective than any other historian. Because we live in a society that sees cis people as the default, the majority of histories are biased against finding trans history even when they try not to be. But funnily enough, it tends to only be marginalized groups who are accused of lacking objectivity.
* For the majority of trans writers, the most common genre in which we can get our voices heard is the memoir. The problem with this emphasis on testimony is not just that it demands trans people cede our right to privacy, exposing our vulnerabilities in order to prove that we deserve basic human rights; it’s that it creates an expectation of testimony.
* When we assert the realness of our identities, we’re not just trying to convince anti-trans campaigners that we deserve rights: in many cases, we’re also trying to reassure ourselves that our genders are real, in the face of a world that continually tries to undermine them.
* While in a sense everybody who writes a history book is rewriting history, in another sense it’s not possible to rewrite the past: it happened and nothing can change it. What is possible is to reread the past… What this doesn’t mean is ‘reclaiming’ people from the past as part of trans history… this capitalist language of ownership is part of the problem… thinking in this capitalist way also leads us to see historical representation as a scarce resource we need to fight over, rather than as something we can expand, reshape and share.
* Just because someone only lived as a gender different from the one they were assigned at birth for a short proportion of their life, then - such as living as male for a 6 year term in the army - we shouldn’t dismiss the validity of their short-lived trans experience. And we should call it trans experience…because regardless of what motivated them, the stories of people like the American Civil War soldiers show us that gender is malleable and has never been limited by birth assignment.
* We often think of dress as a costume: something that we put on over our internal self, which might reflect or obscure our true identity, but never reshape it… My own dress both reflects and reshapes my gender…
* As Sophie Labelle puts it, ‘every time you laugh at the idea of a man dressed as a woman, a trans girl gets more scared to come out.’
* this is the dangerous flipside of the “born this way” argument: it can lead us to think that trans identities are more valid, or only valid, if they have a proven biological cause.
* the idea of sexual dimorphism also has a racist history… as Richard von Krafft-Ebing put it, in a representative view, “the higher the anthropological development of the race, the stronger these contrasts between man and woman.”
* The simple precept of knowing people on their own terms can transform more than history; it also has the power to liberate us in the present.