Second Thoughts

Book two, in the rear view. Mirror, that is. This blog is a car. Carrying, dogs I guess? Road dogs.

Maybe because I kept rolling on after Welcome, it's been a little bit harder work to gather my thoughts on Secrets taken as a whole. To take a simplistic view, Secrets is a catalog of how secrets fail.

Disclosure takes on an interesting role in that light as a kind of managed failure of secrecy. Disclosure as a matter of fact increases the surface area of attack. It also works to co-opt potential hazards. Disclosing a secret creates an ongoing debt. Dorley simply asks, "what if you had a collections department?"

Welcome is a pretty approachable book when you get right down to it. There aren't that many perspective characters, and the action is kept pretty tightly scoped. The subject matter is, well apparently not entirely new, but was new to me, which is what counts to me. The structure coheres tightly, it is a prisoner story, and a coming-of-age-shaped one.

Secrets is a tougher read just for the sheer number of named characters. I personally had a very difficult time getting through the forced-feeding content not in and of itself but for the way that the book losses over it (more on that later, probably.)

But those caveats aside, there are three things that stood out to me as remarkable:

• "Everything Must Go" is a real goddamn masterpiece.
• Abby's reconciliation with her family in "You’re Just Someone I Was Forced to Know".
• Secrets' continued ambivalence to Dorley the institution.

Anyway, here is my retrospective on Secrets, next week I'll have read another new chapter. TL;DR for anyone not interested:

• Secrets good. More narrative sprawl, but manages to hang together.
• Dorley ambivalent about Dorley. News at 7.

The Secrets book is about secrets.

Steph and Christine are both semi-functional people now and so we get to see other people from their perspectives better.

Welcome feels like it's about Stef/ph. Trying to sum up Secrets was tricky because, sure there are themes (mostly about secrecy,) but there's less of a tightly cohering interpersonal structure. Steph knows more people, is more in the world she inhabits.

So Aaron, Christine, Lorna, Maria, Melissa, all begin to take on more prominent roles in the book.

I understand that the narrative scope is also widening to support different kinds of stories within the Dorley-verse. But I take it from the first book's stylistic choices, coupled with "Everything Must Go" and Melissa's extreme self-consciousness, that we're also just seeing a broader group of people because our early protagonists' inner lives let them/us.

Aaron

Aaron's obviously one of my favorite characters in these novels. He's a really well-written gremlin-creature, and he combines logorrhea with a sort of violent candor that keeps the book off-balance. His inability to keep secrets is more or less where we start the second novel.

It's also a symbolic version of his reason for being in the basement in the first place? He couldn't keep it to himself even when nobody else wanted to hear it. Phrased otherwise of course that's "didn't care that nobody was asking for what he was doing."

Anyway, Aaron's such a transgressive, open, and verbal, person that the way his secrets break down carries a little extra meaning? As I see it, when Aaron tells Steph about his past sins, that's disclosing that Aaron knew what he did was wrong. It's more about disclosing his responsibility in particular than it is about informing Steph or acknowledging his actions. Those are redundant; Steph's heard all about the Holt Thing's poor behavior.

Melissa, also Will to a Certain Extent

Secrets' focus on Melissa implies a kind of "unknown known" secret. She knew that she wanted to be small and stay slender, not to grow into a man, but we don't ever really see Melissa-then-Mark get to the heart of what's wrong. I talked about it like it was a vocabulary gap, and maybe it was, but it seems like she didn't know what she knew. A secret from herself as well as from everyone else.

Like I was a cheap knock-off of real people, like I couldn't function without it.

Will is, less fleshed out to date, but there's still this element of a not-knowing a fact that he can still call to mind. Unknown knowledge: that he isn't him.

Melissa's self-violence and Will's other-violence both seem like the acts of cornered animals trying to lash out.

Steph, Jodie, Lorna

Steph's secrecy costs her personally/morally/socially, of course, but relinquishing it makes her a lot closer to whole. It took some explaining for me to understand how much all of this book was about being closeted, because I am not a smart man. But the core thread common to Steph's interpersonal struggle, Jodie's fear of coming out, and Lorna's advocacy, is of course whether or not to closet.

Maybe not even "whether or not," maybe it's more precise to say "for how long to," or simply "when to."

Lorna's case for a community honesty is powerful. It's seductive, too, for her and later for Shahida. Dorley manages to have really good PR for sympathetic girls who are down bad.

Evidence of Things Not Seen

I think it's really interesting how the communal, reform-minded aspects of Dorley crowd out the, yes, once more "unknown known" aspects of abuse in Dorley.

I'll spell my thoughts out as tersely as I can, because I know it's tiresome to talk "ethics of Dorley in Dorley" ad infinitum:

• The readers of Dorley are often more pro-Dorley than Dorley.
• Dorley knows that Dorley is not a utopia.
• Dorley isn't quite sure if Dorley is a utopian project or not.

"You're Just Someone I Was Forced To Know" covers pretty well that Dorley doesn't make everyone happy. For that matter, see also Melissa. Hell, even Paige's ambivalence or Christine's reticence to be roped into the institution forever.

Like, I don't think Dorley is Dorley-pilled at its core. I find it ambivalent so far. On the one hand, there are bad men who do bad things because of bad Manhood. On the other hand, shoves a tube into you and gives you a life-long struggle around food.

So, let's talk about food, one last time. When we finally meet Melissa, she's still experiencing a life-long eating disorder that has probably caused substantial dental and cardiovascular damage. It has been clear that she had A Problem with Food for what, a decade? A round dozen years? And that worked for Dorley, because control of food is a mechanism for their broader biopolitical aims.

Food is the longest-timescale critical need that they can manipulate effectively while keeping the recruits imprisoned and in line. They could play more with sleep-deprivation if they thought it would help, but I don't think that's of much use to the hall, or else they do that in the initial cells and I just didn't pay enough attention. In contrast, food can be a condition of prison (the "Wheat on wheat" days,) of reward (Maria's Froot Loops reforms are merciful, are also only for the recruits who are cooperative,) and a handy way to get those redistributed fat deposits.

Ollie is, at the close of the second book, still in a basement being force-fed as far as the reader knows. This is not precisely an inner-circle secret I don't think? Steph... knows from "Gunpowder Boy" probably, Aaron's been threatened with tube-feeding, the older Sisters must have had similar experiences, &c. But the extreme violence of the fact is essentially self-censoring, and so doesn't make its way up to Shahida or Lorna, right? Lorna isn't going to talk through forced-feeding with Shahida as part of the secondhand Dorley brochure she's pitching.

We, the readers, get a view of Dorley which is entirely matter-of-fact about the violence in the basement. We know about the beatings, the forced-feeding, the limited diet, but they're banal and they're background to the argued point of forced transition so they fade into the background. The book isn't about whether or not it's cool to do forced-feeding to prisoners. The objections become mechanical, as Steph explains, because of the special focus of the hall and of the book.

And all of that I think Greaves intends? For one it's just not that interesting to focus on the mechanics of imaginary extrajudicial imprisonment for its own ends -- there are humanist stories to tell. For another though, we tend to spend more time with the Sisters who excel at The Programme. Steph obviously counts here, so does pretty and compliant Melissa. Aaron's way ahead of schedule, and Christine has gone from "on Bea's shitlist" to "running the fucking place" in about a quarter.

But for all of the good feelings and positive progress, the rot at the heart of the institution is inescapable and I don't think we're meant as readers to escape it? Otherwise we wouldn't have the nested disclosure of "you're being force-transitioned" and "I was force-transitioned" from e.g. Maria to Aaron. The ancient regime excerpts also serve in that regard, as does any Grandmotherly connection remaining.

The more you know, the worse it is after a point, when it comes to Dorley. Which makes it uncanny talking about the book, because people will ironically(?) sincerely(?) support the core concept, knowing the most about it.

Anyway. The focus on food is, I think, pretty critical to understanding the text as being self-consciously non-utopian.

Food is visceral like hormones are visceral. The rest of the setup you can just chalk up to "oh, well, you know it's a torture basement, the tasers are necessary." And then I think there would be more support for the violence just being window-dressing, genre convention, or what-have-you. But Greaves makes a conscious choice to explore involuntary and unhealthy eating at the core of her book, and it's not just Melissa who suffers under the regime, it's Ollie, it's Aaron, &c. I think that's because this is a book taking Dorley seriously, not just pitching "what if we did a Dorley?" as a good time for all.

And one of the corollaries to violating gender autonomy is that it's equally permissible to violate other forms of bioautonomy. Dorley acts as a little statelet in a big world, and its customs and conditions change and evolve, but its underlying threat of force is just as constant as any other state's.

So, did I Like the Book?

Yeah, duh and/or obviously. It's a good second volume and it's a really thought-provoking novel. If I ever can't think of anything or stop having fun with it, I'll stop writing about it.

I didn't get into it very much yet, but the Steph/Aaron love story to date is bizarre and sweet and funny. Also I guess you can change the ones you love, this book argues.

I haven't written much about Maria or Edy either in this post, and that's also a shame; they're fascinating characters and I'm glad to see them more fleshed out. The older Sisters were more distant in the first volume. It's fascinating to see their particular quirks of motivation emerge in the second. Edy's, well it is faith-based-outreach, to Adam. Maria's continuing inclination towards mercy and vulnerability. And yeah, the middle-Sisters' kind of bullying behavior, in contrast. They're not done even if they've graduated.

Greaves writes about Dorley-the-institution with an almost fractal ambivalence. She obviously loves these characters or at least most of them; they're too well inhabited not to be loved by their creator. But she's pretty unflinching in demonstrating their system's failure modes even when they themselves don't notice them. They've all inherited this very-high-leaving-cost institution and are trying to make the best of it. In a Reform/Revolution, Luxemburgian sense, Dorley is a staunchly reformist tendency.

Anyway, that's still the aspect of the novel that I find scratches my brain in the best way. These kind of human-machine clockwork stories are all over the sort of dad-coded history books I spend so much time reading. They are less often part of fictional stories.

And, coda, when characters (Steph, Lorna, Shahida) talk about how swiftly they've acclimated to the novel system, I think that reflects something about how quickly a new regime of living can get one's tacit buy-in. Like, it's 2025 and I am an American who does not approve of the current state of affairs. I am a frog swimming in what must be, in effect, progressively heating water. I ribbit about the uncanniness, I go to my little protests and do my little bullshit local partisan organizing in Whocareschester VT.

But the cultural stew around gender in America is, recognizable but notably distinct from 20 years ago? It's better-worse, if I can believe it. Beer ads aren't blaring at me telling me to fuck twins anymore, so that's probably good. On the other hand, woo-woo lunatics are talking about anti-inflamatory-free foods and the natural state of polygyny and I'm seeing it. As a subject of commentary, but still seeing it. So it exists and it reaches my eyes; who knows what sludge is churning around.

Side Thing: Trans/Rad/Fem, "Antithesis"

This isn't Dorley or really even Dorley-adjacent, but it's sufficiently Typewriter Monke-adjacent, so that's enough pretext for me to take the time to write about it, I guess. I finally cracked open the PDF of Talia Bhatt's Trans / Rad / Fem and I think it's worth reading so far, even though I strongly disagree with some of the early claims and frames.

I'm only through "Antithesis", so maybe my stylistic impressions will change, but I think her writing style is pretty refreshing. I like philosophy as much as the next person, but a lot of it inherits an incredibly homogeneous style. Authors will write books with intensely controversial claims and fill 80% of them with semi-boilerplate "real philosophy." I'll go out on a limb and say that Bhatt isn't a huge fan of PJ Maddy's work ("the scientist is an epistemic imperialist (laudatory)", being my semi-recalled understanding of Second Philosophy,) but I mean it as a compliment to say that her style reminds me of Maddy's.

I speak with an American accent now. My wife hates it. Calls me a yank when I’m being snotty.

I'll be honest that I don't get a lot of this. I am not a woman, not from India, and not particularly sympathetic to the scaffolding Bhatt builds in the introduction.

"Antithesis" opens talking about uneven mesh of an unevenly unjust Law. It's about India specifically, but it reminds me of rural Upper New England, too. That's partially just because of the semiotic prompts ("yank", "Lovecraft", "accompanying statistics".) It's also maybe from the thin presence of law in a sparsely populated place. There are 2 cops in my town, and none in a few of the bordering towns about 10 miles away. Compare/contrast the NYPD, who would be one of the largest military forces in the history of humankind if they were the army of a sovereign city-republic. The Law is only really enforced through self-discipline and social disapproval here, and that social disapproval takes on a necessarily conservative tenor, despite it being good witchin' country, because it is a "back to the land" place, a nostalgic place.

As I write this, my parents are in town, and you know what? I too, am coming to realize that I have a rather fraught relationship with my mother.

The way that Bhatt writes about the subjugation of marriage rings true to me. Every time I call my mom so my daughter can talk with her, she asks "Where's REDACTED?" with a discernible undercurrent of judgment. Of me, of my beloved REDACTED. And I kind of take that as an accusation that I am being womanly by being a father, while my wife is being unwomanly by having a hobby or holding public office. That little exchange by itself tells me that Bhatt is right about smothered rage and self-persuasion.

At least she had her son.

My mom went thermonuclear when my sister decided to quit her job in DC and become a school teacher. I was still in music school then, and I think my older sister served as an object of prestige for the family. She left the state and went to an elite university. The eldest sibling came back to town and spent as much money on cocaine as feasible for a wine bar server. I was going to music school of all things. What was I going to do, be an ascetic? So when our middle sister became a school teacher (a profession my mother shares with her,) it was as though all of the Cat on a Hot Tin Roof no-neck-monster-scheming came crashing down. Now I am such an exhibited object.

Bhatt writes about a missing "unfulfilled affinity" to satisfy a missing narrative middle.

Refuse.

I REFUSE to be a man.

This is interesting. She goes on to say that the "always a woman" affirmation does not feel true to her, in part (in full?) because of social barriers. From there, she goes in a direction I think is based on a deficient sense of manhood, but maybe I'm picking nits.

Manhood is not a natural state of being ... It is not natural, not inevitable, and certainly not biological destiny for a boy to burn away all the parts that feel empathy ...

That's taken out of a larger context, but I think it's a fair summary of the position.

Take this all with a grain of salt. Bhatt's rhetorical rejection of manhood seems like it buys into the conservative definition of such. It rejects that manhood ethically, and the teleology of predestined gender, but it accepts that the worst shit-bags in the world get to set the terms and virtues of manhood. This is not a Big Problem, I don't think, for Bhatt, because this book is not for men or about us. It's an effective conundrum; any incidentally laudable men would be defective as men under the scheme. But as I read the rest of the book I'll keep it in mind because as I understand her position (which, I don't fully,) I think it's repellent in this respect.

Later

As usually happens, I went for a run and thought about this. For Bhatt, that refusal is sensible. She implies a choice, not a teleology, of womanhood, that makes sense. I don't think that's true for cisgender men? I don't have the language to get at what I'm trying to say here directly.

Amartya Sen (increment the counter) writes about Islam as neither a "religion of peace" per Blair, nor a "clashing civilization" per Huntington, but as a social tradition of good and evil people like any social tradition (during the height of the GWoT, for context.) As I am more or less bought and paid for by the work of Amartya Sen, it will be unsurprising that I feel the same way about manhood. The question might well be put, "is manhood a social tradition or is it a kind of criminal?" I am, naturally, of the former persuasion. Social traditions redefine over time and contradict themselves inevitably. To paraphrase Rosa Luxemburg again, "the devil can cite Scripture for his purpose."

Trying not to flinch from the claim reflexively, it might be that I have a mode, a gear, that can suppress that empathy? That might be core to manhood.

We had a weasel disembowel some of our chickens a few years back. That's, more or less a risk if you have chickens in an open space. Predators like eating chickens to about the same degree that I liked keeping chickens. I think, ethically, we came out fine in the end; the chickens we kept lived good, slightly curtailed lives, mostly spent frolicking around outside and getting fed crab apples. But anyway, the weasel left one of the gals paralyzed on the right side, unable to lift her head, and bleeding deeply. So, I broke her neck. I have done that for 3 chickens, each of which I named, fed, watered, and stroked. I don't think I will keep more chickens. I do think that if she were keeping chickens alone in a different timeline, my wife would have been able to mercy-kill them. I also confidently believe that I had a much easier time doing so.

Maybe that's all the product of the burned away empathy that Bhatt writes about. I don't know. I don't really believe in it so it's hard for me to say. I feel empathy for my wife, and her not wanting to kill the chickens. I feel empathy for the chickens, and their irrevocable pain and injury. I feel empathy for, well not the weasel honestly. Weasels kill chickens basically for fun, and if I'd caught that thing I would have drowned it in a bucket. But a fox got one at some point over the years, and an eagle got another. I feel empathy for those animals.

Backing up though, this feels like a kind of gender essentialism that got left-shifted into the gender itself, and out of its membership's hands. And in much the same way that a religion cannot be only of the peaceful because people populate religions, a gender seems like it can't be inherently a vice. My refusal would be to accept that definition of manhood.

Rest of the Essay

Bhatt gets a bit into some of what I'd describe as very terse Beauty Myth recapitulation, which constitutes a pickle for me. My "austere-situationism" priors pretty much failed to account for the way that characters in Dorley were genuinely reified by totems and accoutrements of womanhood. So I'm not opposed to the idea that those items are part of the broader subjugation of women. But I don't understand the nuance of what's going into that claim especially in the shorthand Bhatt gives in "Antithesis."

Does patriarchy hurt men? Maybe. But it hurts women first.

I've only ever glancingly encountered "patriarchy is bad for men," maybe never actually taken seriously. But I take it from Bhatt's attention to the claim that that it's far more prominent in some circles. Making way more money, having all medical research be implicitly about you, and having an extra decade to figure your shit out are some a great ways to be "hurt" if you can get them. You have to kind of go broad and indirect to get to other tangible harms (deaths of despair, homelessness, &c.) that are plausibly patriarchal, and when you get there, there are plenty of other Big Causes that could be doing the damage.

Bhatt's framing as an emphatic refusal is going to sit in my mind for awhile even though I strongly disagree with her outline of manhood. This essay, at least, feels like it's in the tradition of Wretched of the Earth, whereas I'm clearly constitutionally unable to shut the fuck up about Identity and Violence. So, naturally there are some disagreements.

I suspect I will disagree with a lot of the rest of what she writes in this book, too.