When I Get a Round Tuit

First Thoughts

Only One Lens

The subheader line is part of a longer tear by Christine, but it's a perfect encapsulation of what's wrong with those guys.

The "one lens" claim is a really interesting pretext for the extremity of Dorley so far as I can tell. I wonder how many lenses, say Pippa, will have in 2 years' time. Or Christine, for that matter. Because if there's only one lens, and they're removing the masculinity that constitutes that lens, it's almost a kind of murder? And sure, almost a kind of giving birth.

Does it feel like being a different person to have transitioned, I wonder? The colloquial term "dead name" maybe offers some shallow evidence that it would. I know there's a trans protagonist and a lot of women who used to be men in this book, but I'm curious, is Christine best understood as trans? She doesn't quite think so, but neither does Stef quite for parts of this chapter. Will Christine in 1 year? Will Stef? I know this is a "very-trans" book, and since it's about transition that kind of implies that these characters will come to see themselves very differently. I'm curious if their misgivings about themselves as women or as trans women is common to people in the terms they present them, or if they're to do with Dorley specifically.

Anyway, I'm here to roll this rock up the hill, and to give a couple of people an excuse to re-read a book they like, probably. For everyone else, a reminder of when/where we are in "When I Get a Round Tuit":

Brief Recap

Stef

"Don't call me a girl."

"But you are a girl. You said—"

"I don't deserve it."

This chapter deals with nuts and bolts of Stef's decision to pretend to be one of the men being held in Dorley. Christine gets on board with Stef's decision to stay. Stef is to be in Dorley, but Christine creates an extra layer of schemes so that Stef's sister doesn't go into mourning.

Pippa shows Stef her new dorm-room. Also "duck egg", is that commonly an "off-white" color? Because, a lot of ducks lay, for example, blue eggs. Is "duck egg" British for "eggshell"?

Deep stuff, I know.

It's really depressing that Stef feels like she isn't a man but isn't as good as a woman. On In Bed with the Right they talked recently about the notion of beauty as a stand-in for moral virtue. And, yeah duh-doi watch any cartoon. But also, how terrible to feel like that's true and like you're on the wrong side of the bargain.

Is it that Stef is so ashamed of not already having transitioned that it's been keeping her from transitioning? I don't think it'd be a good use of Greaves' time necessarily to make us read a bunch from the perspective of Da Boyz, but I'm curious if people in their position would feel the same way once Dorley gets a little bit further in this process.

Will Raeph feel like he isn't a woman but doesn't deserve to be a man, for instance? Christine tells Stef that nobody has to earn a gender, it's just theirs. But Dorley on its face refutes that claim -- Da Boyz are ostensibly people who no longer deserve their claimed gender.

So for them, gender can be justifiably revoked, but for Stef it doesn't have to be justifiably earned. At least by the logic of Dorley.

I think that implies something deeply incoherent about the ideology of Dorley. I'm disinterested in the ethics of Dorley as an institution because:

• That's so not the point of this story that I feel stupid for typing this very clause
• Dorley is an ethical black hole, more or less

But the notion that manhood is to be earned but womanhood is everyone's birthright is, maybe, a little bit misogynistic?

I'm really pulling for a Dorley reform story, or something else that deals with the contradictions at its heart.

Pippa

"Re 'Bland Men': I'm not sure if she's doing this here, but Alyson sometimes conveys a POV character's sexual orientation by having them describe one gender in more detail than another. It's most obvious when you compare scenes in her novel 'Show Girl' with the lesbian variant she's been writing"

I'm glad to have read that before I read the description of Pippa, because it sounds like Stef's eyes popped out and she had to pick her tongue up off the floor.

The relationship Stef has between attraction and admiration is striking. I have to mull it over, it feels like it relates closely to her belief that she doesn't deserve to be a woman?

Pippa doesn't have as much to do here as Stef naturally, but Greaves' writing of her becomes more nuanced when the reader gets the chance to see her out of her role as a sponsor.

Christine

Christine is still up to her knees in intrigue, but has at least gotten it to a new equilibrium. Or made it so bad that it crossed a line somewhere and became okay again?

Nobody can Just be one Thing.

like it's a piece of driftwood in the middle of the ocean. Even as they get farther and farther from shore, they can't bring themselves to let go, because they've never known anything else. We have to pry their fingers off, one by one. Force them to learn how to swim

Driftwood is a nice simile here.

Something that carried Da Boyz far enough to get here, but can't carry them further. Something like the aftermath of a bad storm.

I'll get into this more towards the end because it's a little range-y, but the current moment seems like it has a kind of monomania about masculinity. That's new.

I think.

Not sexism or patriarchy or anything, that stuff is of course tradition. But this all-consuming anxiety about it seems genuinely novel.

I wonder how much the men who don't want to be in Dorley share innately with Stef, but in reverse-time. Stef was so alienated by her body until Dorley, and it sounds like they will be alienated from their bodies by Dorley in much the same way.

Stray Thoughts

The Works

What conditions are necessary for a bearable life?

I think is Peter's refrain in Intermezzo as he deals with his own crisis of masculine virtue.

For Peter it's more of a conflict between his personal conservatism and political progressivism. Or his failure to live up to the demands of abstract rigor in a concrete world maybe. He's sort of a sugar-daddy to a young almost-homeless sex worker (Naomi) in the novel, and sort of a suitor for a more age-appropriate academic (Sylvia) with some chronic illness and pain.

And what strikes me as common to Intermezzo and The Sisters of Dorley is the deep interpersonal scarcity coupled with the shallow societal scarcity that drives it.

The fact that Stef needs Dorley is a sort of abomination in a society that can generate as much wealth as a contemporary developed economy can. And the fact that she has to live this nested lie (being Stefan in the broader world, imprisoned, on a Eurotrip) is really just the fault of a social system that could afford to help her if it wanted.

By the same token, Naomi and Peter's relationship has to overcome a recursive mutual mistrust that all comes down to money. And Peter's relationship with Sylvia likewise has a recursive mutual mistrust over sexual inadequacy.

Point being, I suppose, that you should read Intermezzo? I mean, you should, but also the kind of material-sexual complexes we build up are just, good fodder for fiction but a bad time.

Curdled Masculinity and Reform

It's almost impossible to reform someone whose masculinity has… curdled

The kind of funhouse-mirror men in Dorley are out and about in the real world. I don't want to spend a bunch of time on "Crisis of Masculinity" stuff, but I think the kind of jerks in Dorley are new, but not necessarily worse, if that makes sense.

Like, Jesus Christ, taking a look out there now it's kind of a legitimate psychic horrorshow for young men, socially. Because you can be a nerd who is also kind of sporty, but you can't be a full hikikomori incel who also rows crew, you know?

So the idea of "curdled masculinity" feels like it's a relevant framing for the kind of problems younger guys are facing and causing. More so than "toxic masculinity", maybe?

I wanna cut this topic off for now and save it for its own post at some point, because "can a rotten man be redeemed?" isn't really about Dorley, it's about manhood, and if I'm gonna write about that I'd at least like for it to be opt-in instead of opt-out.