Friction Burns

First Thoughts

I'm beginning to understand that the politics of gender have changed pretty swiftly in the time that I've been out of school. Or that college was, in fact, a pretty laid back place to be a young person. Maybe both?

Anywho there's this WSJ op-ed that I'll get into a bit at the bottom of the post (but not too too much since, "let me talk about my shitheel gender compatriots" is not the point of this blog), but it helped unlock something for me as a reader here, and that's, Aaron and Declan are new kinds of shithead.

Not the underlying cause maybe: there have always been creeps and brutes. But their expression of themselves and their comfort with it. I'm still kind of noodling on what that means for people my age and older, exactly, in the real world, but seeing some of the Dorley reprobates reflected in the broader message that it's "so hard to be a young man these days" is... unsettling. Suffice it to say that I'm a lot less convinced that the basement-dungeon is a bad idea than I was two or three days ago, as a matter of public policy.

Anyway, in this chapter, Stef is in Hell!!!

Greaves starts to show us how Dorley can still really fuck a trans person up, and it's harrowing stuff. I greatly appreciate that she bounces around so much between the basement and the upper floors here, because the basement portion is a Tough Hang.

Aaron is still peculiar to me, I mega-don't get what his deal is in a way that's pretty closely tied to how I mega-don't get why the zoomer boys all watch Andrew Tate. It's loser-shit, and to empathize with it is in some sense like being walked over by a roach: you aren't actually dirtier afterwords but you feel disgusting.

I'm, I suppose glad (?) to see such a juxtaposition between the softness of the upper-years sisters in the previous chapter and the inhumanity in this one; it's jarring but it's so (a+e)ffective.

Recap

Oh right, we didn't really have any Stef last chapter. Something I've really enjouyed about the book is how it becomes more and more The Sisters of Dorley and less and less Stef's Dorley Adventure. It's not that I dislike Stef's plot arc, so much as it's just necessarily blocked up in kidnapping purgatory. But, probably good to check back in on Da Boyz in Da Basement.

We open with Maria in the bsasement, and some of the chemical aftermath of the previous night. Pippa and the rest of the sponsorship staff are here to do medical inspections, &c. Stef wants to shave alone, and that makes intuitive sense to me; shaving one's face is a hallmark of young-manhood, so it tracks that Stef would feel uncomfortable doing that in front of someone else.

Aaron is starting to act like a human being. I wonder if that's just Stef's good influence, or just solidarity, or some third thing in addition. I'm paying a lot of attention to Aaron because someone mentioned that I'll be interested in seeing where that goes, but I don't really understand him very well (read: at all) at this point.

Once they're in the shower, we learn that Aaron exposed himself to Pippa, and has one strike (as opposed to Declan's 3.) First off, Aaron really has some kind of weird complex about his dick. I'll have to give some thought to that one, because it's pretty gross behavior and I don't really get it.

I get the impression that it's just genuinely a toxic-boy trait. And, I know intellectually that boys do that, I just have such a hard time believing it in my gut because it's such a very pukey behavior.

Aaron's Weird Dick Sitch

Streakers have always been around as a concept, but there's something fundamentally unserious about running across a soccer field as compared to being naked at a specific person.

I think some of this is generational. I'm a middle-millenial and was a little slow on the uptake; I didn't have a smartphone until I was in my 20s.

Dick picks were kind of a thing when I was in college, but not for anyone I had any respect for. Also those were of the consensual variety; my in-group were (IMO correctly) convinced that having nudes of yourself on the internet was probably not an optimal condition for a productive professional life.

There were people on chat-roulette showing their junk off by 2010 - I have friends who used to hang out and chat-roulette while they pregamed and a lot of those kids got dick-picked by random strangers.

Which, again, is just so terribly gauche.

So, this seems to me like a kind of a middling-zone of contemporary degenerate behavior better avoided entirely by everyone regardless. Aaron's specific case is, of course, a violation and an abuse, and also just kind of pathetic.

That's it, that's the whole thing: this funny character who is the second-to-least-bad of them is a really gross little dude, who is also sincerely very funny.

Stef's Self Harm

Ah, so, Stef is not doing very well, huh. Stef lashes out at Aaron in the shower whilst also setting the water to scalding-hot.

This makes intuitive sense too; Stef's exercising control, that checks out.

There's an interesting symmetry in Stef's self-harm and his lashing out at Aaron. The two of them are in a very similar situation, even though they're very different people.

In the sort of squishy panopticon of mainstream society, both are perceived as a kind of failure at being an ordinary boy. Especially given the fact that that Britain is still, even with the ongoing unpleasantness on my side of the pond, the Michael Jordan of being transphobic. So Aaron is unable to just exist as an unremarkable but minorly-affluent boy; he has to do this pathetic perv stuff. And Stef is just, flat out not a boy when the default assumption is that he is ("he" feels incorrect here, so do "she" and "they" consistently. It's going to be touch-and-go, bear with me and reach out if I could use a correction somewhere.)

So we have these two young people, both alienated from their class, and from their gender expectations, and their homes, kind of circling the drain before Dorley.

And once they're in Dorley's care, they're even more intrinsically aligned. They're not going to wash-out, I'm fairly confident. They're going to navigate this system and adapt to it, one by choice one by necessity. And so when Stef is lashing out at Aaron, it's maybe more than a little bit part of Stef's self-harm?

Meanwhile Back Above Ground

We move over to Christine's perspective, and as Indira and Hasan come in to bring the younger sisters some breakfast and hangover-fluids, we get a tidbit about how Dorley is evolving wrt expectations towards the sisters. The bit about mannerism training changing over the generations struck me, as a parent.

Someone online mentioned that Dorley compresses the intergenerational pattern. So the Sponsor/Recruit relationship stands in for the parent/child relationship. And where Christine's sponsor's sponsor's sponsor maybe needed to learn "standing up from a chair the right way in a skirt", it sounds like Christine didn't; it was a rite without reason.

My kid is a toddler right now, and as we're teaching her to say "please" and "thank you", stuff like that. How to eat at the table (on plates, not by pouring your food on the table and licking it off, for example.) And how to address other people. For example, she's still a little stuck on when to say "who" and when to say "what" when asking a question, and "What's that?!?" is not a polite way to ask about other people in the grocery store. Anyway, there's a parallel between "learning to stand up from chairs" and "learning not to call adults by their first name necessarily". It's tricky, right? Because, I don't care if she calls me by her first name, but I really don't want her to make a bad impression on any of the authority figures who will come to define so much of her future. I want her to be precocious, not "precocious", if that scans? Because there are just so many ways that the outside world can hurt someone you love.

I imagine there's a constant flood of decisions to make if you're discovering/building your externally-visible gender around you. That must be exhausting! It's hard enough doing that for someone else even on remarkably simple ideas like "do not lick the outside of the car!"

Roomies

I love Christine and Paige getting to be roomies. I would probably watch the Dorley Grads dramedy, these characters are written with a lot of love and it's infectious.

Back in the Basement

So, Stef is getting his medical examination and it's going very poorly. Pippa covers for him and helps him squeak through with the rest of the staff, but it's a dicey moment, and just one that makes you feel for Stef all over again.

And, so the examination is, what it's like to get systematic medical support as a trans person, I'm getting (update, Becca mentioned that this seems like a reference to the NHS practices of gender clinic intake, which sound morally inexcusable in a liberal democracy)? Or is that a stretch. Just, what it's like being examined in a body that is alien to you? It's really cruelly drawn here, and well done. The sponsors don't see Stef for what she is, Stef can barely express it, their goals might be aligned but only through intense miscommunication and ancillary pain. Just a whole fucking thing.

Anyway, the deep disdain for Stef that the sponsors have really highlights Stef's discomfort around the glamour of the older sisters, and it's a very powerful scene.

Detour, Minor Spoilers

Stef's poached skin reminds me of The Minsitry for the Future more than anything else; it's an injury you don't see much in fiction, and I think the symbolism is the same. Frank, in Ministry, witnesses something terrible and almost dies in it. He lives probably because of his comparative health and wealth. And his skin is scalded intensely. I think it's a symbol for being stripped of his ironic distance, and the armor that his detachment from the reality of climate catastrophe provides him (that it generally provides wealthier people.)

Likewise, this mandatory being-perceived that Stef suffers from is stripping away any pretense. It's, you know, not incredibly subtle or anything, just an interesting thematic rhyme between the two books.

I guess the friction-burns that Aaron inflicts on his cock (allegedly, have we seen Aaron jerk it?) work thematically with Stef's very hot shower along the same lines. A self-inflicted wound that strips away the skin on something vulnerable. That might be a bridge too far though, friction burns are not water burns, and it might just be a throwaway line.

Mugtree

Pippa talks through the events of the morning with Christine and Paige.

It's interesting how they all have to wrestle with the castration they suffered.

One line sticks out to me, "If you don’t ask for it, it’s mutilation."

Someone mentioned that Dorley is what if the gender norms were inverted, and that makes me wonder if, in a world with so much productive and medical capacity, we're basically constantly mutilating trans kids by not normalizing puberty blockers. I think so, probably, by this same logic? Maybe that's an extreme position to take, I'm not sure, I don't really know enough about it and I sort of doubt that I ever will, but it's at least a plausible concern.

Smash Cut to Shopping

Rerunning being a mid-teenager, but in your early twenties. And with more money.

This is just the height of fun in a nutshell I think. Well put, Greaves.

Dungeon Part the Next

Look at this one! It’s just a chick, sitting on a rock, hair all billowy in the wind. Like a commercial for shampoo.

I mean, hey, don't yuck anyone's yum Aaron. You weren't there for the first wave of Herbal Essences commercials. Aaron and Stef have a frank discussion on self-love. This vignette made me love Aaron a little bit more again; there's a subtle way to tell your friend that you're still friends after they act foolishly, and Aaron does a great job here.

Errant Thoughts

Aaron and Stef's Friendship - Some Early Ideas

I'm trying to puzzle out why these two belong together.

One dynamic that comes to mind is this sort of classic Gilgamesh/Enkidu style of friendship. I think Samurai Champloo has another example, but I don't remember those characters' names to be frank.

Gilgamesh was the demigod-mayor of Uruk or something, it doesn't matter; the point is that he was a classical epic hero and the more civilized and lawful of the two. Enkidu was a, uh, wild ox man I guess? And they would wrestle and do quests and I bet they kissed at some point but I don't remember. So, Stef would be Gilgamesh in that framing, a figure of civilization, who uh, slays the metaphorical serpent. That's a little on the nose, but sometiems a cigar is not just a cigar. Aaron, on the other hand, is uncontroled, uncivilized, uninhibited to a dysfunctional degree, and kind of a feral little pig boy man. He would be the Enkidu in the relationship.

I'm not sure that's where Greaves is coming from, or if Aaron is just the kind of boy you could justify Dorleying but not the kind of boy that you couldn't be friends with.

I guess had a friend kind of like Aaron in high school and college. He had some truly terrible ideas about women, but more along the "Porsche polygamy" vector than the "peep show" approach. And I suppose, part of the appeal for me was that I knew that nothing I ever did would be a problem for him. He was always going to be the less-evolved, shittier person in pretty much anything that wasn't his areas of expertise, or cars, or planes (he had a pilot's license and used to talk about his dream of owning a de Havilland Beaver). But in addition to thinking that it made sense for him to "have more than one female", he was also pretty funy, and liked a lot of the same stuff as me. We lived in the same neighborhood and had classes in the same buildings. It was convenient. He was a shithead, and he treated some of my closer friends pretty badly enventually (I'm a real gal's guy socially and a lot of those gals dated him at some point.)

So, I dunno, did I have a point? These kinds of friendships certainly exist, and have splash damage I guess? Now I kind of think I owe some of those women apologies, but that feels infantilizing too, to be honest. They knew he was a shithead when they met him, because he was very obviously not a nice person. Blerg.

Aaron's Dick Trutherism

I wonder if Aaron's actually been able to masturbate at all in here or if he's just been blustering, as an aside to an aside.

We All Know that Dorleying People is a Bad Idea, but what this Op-Ed Presupposes is, what if it Isn't?

He's a white man with a full head of hair; the sky's the limit.

-- Jack Donnaghy, 30 Rock

The internet got me again, with this op-ed: It's so Hawd Being a Boy Now, won't Daddy Tate Pwease Hewp Me? I am going to climb onto a barely-tangential soapbox to Dorley, so this is a fine place to stop reading if you don't want sweaty millenial energy to get on you.

A Generation of Incels

I am fundamentally of two minds about young men:

1. This behavior is all extremely lame.
2. There is clearly a social plague at work and these young men need help.

And I think both can be true, clearly. That's, maybe the secondary point of Dorley.

Manhood is Always Conflicted?

There's an old story that I have a hard time not repeating too much, so forgive me if I've talked about it before in here:

An Italian fascist is trying to recruit for the cause and he comes upon a likely young man. 'He asks him, Young man, are you interested in joining the fascists?' The young man wipes his brow and shakes his head, 'no I am a socialist'. The fascist asks, 'But why?' 'My grandfather was a socialist.' The fascist thinks a moment. 'So if your grandfather were a fascist, you would be a fascist?' 'No, I would be a murderer.'

They had MMA when I was a teenager. I boxed, I dabbled in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, I ate wings and watched 5 minutes of sweaty-dick-punching-as-sports. I was always more of a Diamond League track fan, but you go where your friends go, you know? And for me that was either MMA or Boxing or eventually MLB once I made the friends I still have today. I rooted for Manny Pacquiao against Mayweather (because Mayweather is a creep, even by fight-sports standards.) I rooted for the Sox (now I'm honestly more of a Mariners fan but that's just me being a contrarian.) Point being, there isn't some novel UFC cultural zeitgeist at work here, this is just an apparent generation kill's worth of abject failures.

One feature of "what's wrong with Da Boyz?" discourse is this claim that boyhood is just so murky now, and what you need to do has become ambiguous with different ideas on how you should live available. That is a huge ahistoric cop-out. There's never been a simple time to be a person. There have been quieter times, and I think the creeping loudness of contemporary life is harmful to youths trying to figure their lives out. But any boy in history has had to grapple with copmeting moral codes, as far as I can tell.

Let's go back to, I dunno, the 1930s. There were legitimately 3 or 4 plausible next phases in political economy and each of them asked pretty loudly for allegiance. Was it simpler then? Was there a clear right way to be a boy? Or a girl for that matter? This is just a feature of humanity.

Or let's look at the Arthurian imaginary for a bit. Arthur has to be:

• A Briton (or a Cymric I guess)
• A Christian
• A knight
• A King

All so at once. The Knights of the Round Table have to balance all of those as well. You get the Orkney brothers, really straining the definition of tolerable behavior. You get Lancelot, breaking the "bros before hos" rule pretty flagrantly. You have Galahad:

My good blade carves the casques of men, My tough lance thrusteth sure, My strength is as the strength of ten Because my heart is pure.

Who is, also a virgin and therefor kind of a loser to the Orkneys one must assume. And a killer and therefor not the best of Christians. If I have a point beyond "read The Bright Sword", it's that our notions of manhood are contradictory.

Men are doomed to choose which moral codes to follow, and that's fine actually. One might argue that being able to make that choice is intrinsic to being a functioning person let alone being a healthy man. But the desire not to have to choose is a high class problem, tantamount to the (real) stress of there being too many kinds of jam at the store.

Manhood is Trivially Easy

One thing that at least seems true right now is, it is really easy to be a man in a developed economy. There are plenty of ways to do it, but very broadly it seems like most people in my generation or at least my social circle picked:

• Have some manners.
• Have 2 different hobbies.
• Maybe do a sport.
• Use soap frequently.
• Read a book.

And that path leads to a pretty okay life. People will probably like you, you will probably be able to make a plausible living, and you'll be a decent man.

It seems like the default choice for people about 10 years younger than me is more:

• Live in the gym.
• Talk only to other men.
• Develop an eating disorder.
• Order supplements.

I don't understand how that is the dominant mode of masculinity right now. It's attenuated, it's artificial, it seems like it's fairly offputting to women. There's basically no up-side just some eating disorders and a new fasist camp aesthetic?

Dorley them all, let God sort it out.

Anyway, if this is what young men are this generation, I'm actually convinced. Dorley them, Millenial dads will probably do a better job with gen-Covid and our slutty little 5" shorts, and we can reevaluate then.

A Fleeting Moment of Earnest-Poasting

Introspecting, my instinctive loathing of Aaron and Declan and Zoomer-Incels is probably a mechanism of that same intra-gender coercive structure I keep thinking about. I'm older than these kids, have some status, and think that they're fucking pathetic. So my contempt (and the contempt of a lot of other normal men) is a plank in the institution of masculinity that's kind of bent and tensed against the weirdo-Tate-tendency.

Like, the young men aren't just all shitty by themselves, though, and even if they are we have to live with them so we have to fix them. Short of mass-Dorleyfication (which, reading this op-ed, I'm less opposed to than previously), I think guys my age probably have to start doing more Big Brother Big Sister type engagement in our communities. Because if Da Boyz are all in this rut then they probably need someone who they can identify with to get them onto a better path?

Really, I think this whole line of discussion is fucked right now. There very clearly are problems with young men that demand interventions, otherwise they wouldn't be causing so much havoc. And "take personal responsibility" is just not useful advice or policy, because there are going to be young men, and right now they're likely to do bad things.