Butterflies

First Thoughts

"Just say you're AFAB," Maria says. "You don't have to tell them the B stands for 'basement'."

Chef's kiss. I love how metasemiotic the people in this story are.

World of Darkness, huh?

Honestly, this feels pretty legible in retrospect, even compared to Bloodborne.

• Vampire: Spooky hot gender-benders with both ecclesiastical and leather accessories. TBH, I'm pretty sure that this sourcebook is what started prying me loose of like, loser-shit conservative Protestantism as a teen.
• Werewolf: Ah, so, you're governed by the feminine moon, whose whims change you and charge you with a sacred duty that you have to hide from others. Now, just for my notes, what does that have to do with being a trans woman?
• Mage: This might strain a bit, but it seems like the abyss between the fallen world and the supernal world is probably a tidy-enough metaphor for the imposter syndrome that e.g. Christine is like, near-constantly suffering.
• Changeling: It's Changeling, I don't need to talk about this one.
• Prometheus: Wait, I can still make this work. Uh, Osiris rose from the dead because of a woman? Pygmalions have imposter-syndrome? Honestly I kinda dropped off here on the Universal Monsters train, but so did White Wolf. Please forgive any weak analogies.
• Mummy: oh what the actual fuck, White Wolf, is there a goddamn Black Lagoon source book?
• Geist? What in the hell is a Geist?

Anyway, I'm beginning to suspect that I just like trans shitposters because of the apparently 100% overlapping pop-culture preferences I have with the Hive Mind. What's next, Stray Dog and Rome, Open City namedrops in Dorley?

Ok.

Pop-culture-references aside, someone was saying recently that we invert "Kafkaesque" a lot, because Kafka was about the mysticization of the banal absurd, not the banal absurdity of the mystical. So, I may be getting this sideways or backwards, but I think Dorley is doing a great job of describing something Kafkaesque but in a way that doesn't make me prefer to go do math homework or self-complete.

I know chapter 7 is a big one for people, but I really enjoyed chapter 10, Butterflies an awful lot. Maybe the most? Certainly more than the last few, which are good and engaging but also about which I've struggled to really cover anything interesting.

Alyson Greaves did a lot in this chapter to expand the fictional footprint of Dorley Hall.

If there are dominant themes here, they seem like they're of:

• Intergenerational trauma and healing
• Stymied sexual steam valves
• Found and default family

Obligatory author praise: Greaves is remarkably diligent at composing self-contained chapters that still have a cliff-hanging about them.

Also, I'm a super-dork fan of Indira and Hasan, and if he turns out to be a secret-asshole I'm going to be awfully sad. I just want someone to treat Christine's sister right.

Recap

A Birthday Party, with Hasan and Indira, who are The Best

This is all still in the context of Aunt Bea's birthday, and here Greaves uses it as a really great pretext to show some of the informal dynamics of Dorley Hall. It makes sense as a tool to expand our lens into this world, because this kind of commemorative event draws in junior supplicants and senior orbitals in a lot of networks. And it gives us a great sense of how this world ticks, with some more senior-to-sophomore mentorship included. I really like what Greaves does in this chapter, to be blatant.

A lot of "big event" chapters in fiction get so overloaded with schemes and sub-plots that the event itself doesn't get to breathe. Not so, here! Greaves gives us the interplay between Bea and the graduates of the program, Christine and Faye's situation, and manages to situate Indira in context a bit.

I especially appreciate that last: we know as readers that Indira is special because she's living this integrated life, and that that's novel in the context of Dorley. But we don't know much about her relationships outside the fact that Christine loves her fiercely. And this gives us the opportunity to see Indira bringing Hasan in on her past as much as she plausibly can.

The parts that Hasan doesn't get to have access to are, basically, her founding trauma. Indira has created a way for her to have a past as well as a future, and that kind of exceptional work is remarkable, especially in this context.

There's something in the back of my mind at the small lie that she chose this, though. Maybe it's just meant to help illustrate the difficulty that trans-ness faces linguistically/temporally? Because, at some point Indira did choose this. Christine herself says that she chose because otherwise it would be to oppose Indira, her sister.

Maybe it's the discomfort of a predicate like "to choose" in the context of real-life trans people? Because, trans women are women. So there's no choice to be a trans woman. But there's a series of choices to live as a woman. Or else you have to define choice down to nothingness (which, hey, Calvinism isn't the worst idea I guess, just not an idea I like much.)

Either way, there's both a choosing-to-be and a not-choosing-to-be that have to overlap and coexist right?, You're choosing to stop lying (to you, to others, &c.) but also choosing to become (you, a new you, whatever.) So it's probably a little bit liminal to be around people you knew before you knew?

Paige, Faye, Christine

It was either that, or fight Dorley. And that meant fighting Indira, who I already loved, even back then.

Interesting to see Dorley posed so clearly as an alternative, versus as Stef originally conceived of it ("Who is helping these women transition?") I'll be frank that I had kind of written Dorley Hall off as a structure reflexively repeating the harm from which it emerged. Because, in a very 4th-wall-breaking sense, someone mentioned that Dorley is a satire of the NHS, so of course it's repeating that harm, it's satire. And in a more textual sense, Dorley is "flinching from a second punch that isn't coming", and that's stunting its potential. So, it's good for me that Christine keeps reiterating that she thinks of Dorley as a counter-current that let her tread water instead of being swept out to shithead ocean.

Paige is an intriguing figure here too, of course, but one who I don't really understand yet, I suspect. She's the superlative that Christine feels like she can't measure up to. Later on Christine self-describes as "a girl", but I get the sense that she thinks of Paige as a more elder figure, like a Woman in contrast?

This is a low-information claim, but I get the impression that it'd be good for Christine to be a sponsor. There's certainly a call for her kind of empathy, it seems like, and the work is instinctively attractive to her.

Anyway, Paige and Christine help Faye with her sponsor, but also inadvertently maybe-inflict Maria on Stef?

I have a note from when I was reading this that just says "Faye is all kinda fucked up by this whole thing", and that seems right. And here is where I'm really pleased with Greaves as a writer in this chapter! A lot of works wouldn't write their system to have humanist workarounds and backchannels, and she did. It's good stuff, and honestly the likely backing track for the entire return to the party is just "Take 5", for the social static electricity flowing.

Paige on Gender

"Womanhood is both an identity and a social position," Paige says, more slowly than usual; she's concentrating on Faye's eyes. "I discovered quite quickly that I enjoyed occupying the social position of womanhood. Actually being a woman, in my head, is a little more conditional. But, one day, out on campus, chatting with someone after class, I realised that he was responding to me as a man would to a woman, and that I was fine with that." She shrugs. "Sometimes you don't need to actively choose a gender. You can just be you, and accessorise."

This makes a ton of sense to me. Paige spent a ton of effort to get to this conclusion and comfort, and per her Angel-gender theorizing is still investing in that regard.

Identity and Violence: the Illusion of Destiny

I promised I'd be Amartya-Sen-Posting if I got the chance and Paige gave me an opening.

So, Sen wrote Identity and Violence in the shadow of the Global War on Terror (TM), in opposition to the prevailing wisdom of the time, which was anchored in this "clash of civilizations" logic. There was this right-wing line that Islam was a hateful religion, and in contrast, the social-democrats and liberals of the day argued that "Islam is a religion of peace." Sen was, of course, entirely correct when he argues that a hateful or peaceful person can be a muslim without loss of generality.

That applies very well here in that Dorley is primarily a facility for creating women: not uninteresting women, not interesting women, but women. Identity has heretofore been the entire game. Dorley is a function from harmful young men to harmless young women, in its self-idealized form.

So there are a few wrinkles in that conception, in this chapter, that Greaves gives us:

• Not all of the harmless Dorley graduates are women. Think Amethyst, of the dark tuxedo.
• Not all of the Dorley women are harmless. Think Nell, Francesca (or for that matter Christine, who, while being a very nice character, is also someone who abuses her power over others basically every chapter so far.)
• Not all of the Dorley recruits are harmful. There's Stef, obviously, but also apparently Faye.
• Not all of the Dorley recruits are men. There's Stef, again, as a latest innovation in Dorley mistakes.

So the identity of Dorleyism or even of womanhood isn't connected intrinsically to some virtue. And, at this juncture anyway, there are sponsors like Indira, and sponsors like Francesca. Both sponsors in good standing, both good Dorley affiliates, perhaps both even "true believers."

If I have a point here, it's really just that you should read Identity and Violence, which is available on audiobook or online.

Bex and Effie

This is kind of a puzzlebox for me.

Christine helps Faye/Effie deal with the fallout of Faye's run-in with her sponsor. And Faye mentions "Bex", but also cautions Christine to call her "Rebecca", because "Bex" is a private name. Likewise, Bex calls Faye "Effie." Regardless of any subtlety, it's very sweet that these two have one another.

It works as a metaphor for the kind of gender-self-determinism and dualism that Christine and Paige get at ("being a woman" versus "seeming like a woman" for Paige, "tomboy" versus "girly girl" for Christine.) But I get the sense that that's missing something. I bet I'll understand it later.

In either case, showing us Faye and Rebecca after a chapter intensely interested in Stef and Aaron is, presumably a clue about where those two will go.

True Believer

If, knowing everything, I'd go back and do it all again, then are they really lies?"

Indira gets a promotion, and gets to (has to?) do some monitoring. Good for Indira getting a promotion. Also good for Indira and Hasan both, he seems like a swell guy. I think Indira's situation is meant to be the optimal Dorley case, so that we as readers get to see it work out for its intended purpose. I wonder what she did in her past life to end up in Dorley in the first place. I guess, being back in her own family is an innovation though, still.

Aunt Bea kind of reminds me of the recently-departed Pope Francis. Incremental change, frustrating pace, still way less scary than the prior occupant of the role.

Three Girls Changing Clothes

[T]hree girls can change clothes in the same room without anything erotic happening

Sure they can, Christine. Sure.

This hierarchy of feeling that Greaves depicts is so aspirational.

I think this is such an effective bookend for the chapter. The tension between Christine and Paige and Vicky, between Faye and Christine and Paige, is, simply-put, well-sketched.

Leading up to this, we get some clues that Dorley Hall itself has troubles. There are not enough workers, too many recruits, and too many mistakes. On net, it's another good loose thread for Greaves to pull later in the book.

Between the staffing shortages, the large intakes, and the tension of the multiple washouts from Pippa's year, I'm beginning to get the impression that Dorley is in a low-grade crisis. Almost discovered by Stef, making some poor recruiting choices (Stef, possibly Faye). I suppose the counterpoint would be Indira's situation, an example of how the facility can evolve and adapt to changing conditions and special cases.

Anyway, crisis aside, Christine is having Vicky over to spend the night. Hijinks, humiliation, or just a faint buzzing must ensue, and this time it is just the faint buzzing.

Errant Thoughts

An Aside

The decline of being into having, and having into merely appearing.

I've been thinking about Debord a lot lately, and I'm coming to believe that out trans people are inadvertently doing a kind of Spectacular hijacking, and that that's the root of so much moneyed hatred against you (sure there might be a non trans woman who reads this, but it's marginal right?).

Actually, I'm gonna be honest, and I'm gonna leave this in -- I stared at this blinking vim cursor for about 20 minutes trying to get at what I think about trans detournement in the eyes of cis-patriarchy and I'm flat out not smart enough to get it today. Honestly Samantha Hancox-Li will probably write better about it with less French nonsense next week anyway so I'll just chill out and link that into the next post.

Last Impression

• First, I'll never understand people who forget to eat. I would simply expire.
• Grandmother sounds spooky as fuck.
• Now realizing that I've never seen "xem/xe/xyr" spelled out before, just heard it spoken a handful of times, and that I have been internally misspelling those words for about fifteen years.
• "She needed an Indira," is interesting because, it sort of seems like everyone who comes through would at least benefit from an Indira? I wonder if there ought to be more of a Montessori teaching-team approach to secret forced-feminization dungeons.
• Means-testing the makeup budget is quite funny, and/but it's nice that Christine is getting the support she needs.

I was really interested to see the institutional functions of Dorley in this kind of ritualized group setting. It's an extra layer of context for Dorley, and a realistic one. Also, I don't think most authors would have arrived at this scene nor would have wrung it out for so much detail.

I think this is my favorite chapter so far. There are books that handle social scenes well, but Greaves is on some Jane Austen shit here.