Midday on Mercury

First Thoughts

It feels like we're really in the thick of the story now, and Greaves is cooking. I think the framing of the book (forced-trans-fiction), the way I encountered it (via trans-bluesky), and the framing (an early-middle-aged cis dude reads this book) all work as a kind of a gravity well for me to hyperfixate on the trans narrative elements here, but it bears repeating: Alyson Greaves is a good writer.

People on the internet have informed me that Chapter 7 is some of the best stuff in the whole series, so I'm quite glad to have stewed on it so long, inadvertently. I'm also very lucky that work didn't hit the metaphorical fan when I was reading and writing about it. Nothing bad has happened per se, I'm just really busy and therefore slower and dumber than during an average week; your patience is appreciated.

Greaves explores some of the implications of Stef having to double-closet as a shithead towards the end of the chapter, and I think she does a wonderful job starting to create a little more of a lived-in world around these characters in so doing.

For my "review" portion of the post, I just think that a lot more straight cis dudes should read this book. There's kind of a debate out there on whether or not "reading fiction" helps you level up empathy, and I don't care in a general sense. Reading good history makes you think about and inhabit dead people, and there's not much of a gulf between 'dead' and 'imaginary' to be honest. But the way Greaves writes trans characters is really valuable for people like me because we just don't have these conversations normally. And like, I've known trans people, and I didn't come into this as like, a knuckle-dragging bigot or anything. But in interpersonal relationships we never really talked about it because it generally seems incredibly invasive to ask about it. And politically, it's really easy to stop at the kind of topline ethical questions. You know: sports, public spaces, medical care.

So I think I've never had any inkling what it would feel like during a bout of dysphoria like Stef experiences this chapter. And, I get the sense that I'm somewhere on the top half of engagement with that sort of thing. So, some day when we fix English literature class, I hope people read this.

This chapter Greaves also experimented with form a little bit more than she has been with some e-epistolary writing. I hope she does more of that - I like when she deviates from the pretty straightforward prose she tends to favor, even if it makes it harder to pick up on the braids she weaves. The web-chat portions broke the chapter up nicely into pieces, and it's great to see these people working in so many different registers.

Frankly, I do wish that these were a bit shorter, because it's been tough to find the time to read and write around other responsibilities for me this week, and I don't like to leave the chapter read in pieces because Greaves usually calls back to something earlier, subtly.

The chapter is "Midday on Mercury" for anyone who needs a link.

One of you said something cryptic about meeting Aaron, and I gotta be honest, I think Greaves writes him as incredibly funny. If he weren't a gross little incel e-flasher, I think he'd be a cool dude, but that's a whole other planet.

Recap

Stef's Journaling

We start out with Stef's diary. At the outset, she's writing a journal that must be deleted to avoid detection, and, what a symbolically freighted thing to be doing.

There's a strong parallel between that and Quite Contrary's difficulties later ("Never not him").

I'm not sure if the diary is meant, too, to be a parallel to being an egg? Or self-closeted might be the proper term? This is speculative, but if a journal is a kind of internal monologue, and she wants to track her transition, but she has to delete the journal, there's this aspect of experiencing herself as a "her", but then literally deleting that acknowledgement.

On a metatextual level though, the self-deleting journal works really well as a metaphor for early days on a project, I think. I don't normally write anything except for code. Usually that's code for projects that an organization owns (a company right now, companies or campaigns or nonprofits in the past.) But occasionally it's for open source projects or my own use.

And cracking open a new side project always feels very fragile, very tenuous. Or kind of like puking into the Grand Canyon; you know something came out, but it's a long time before there's any real impact on the world. Things get abandoned, turn out not to be a good idea, go unused, &c. I'd imagine it's the same for any creative project early on - "Will this be anything? Is there even anything to track?"

Last off on the journaling, there's a kind of emergent fallout to Dorley for Stef. The diary is a self-representation for the self. Not being able to keep a diary is an annihilation of the self. Which is the entire function of Dorley; help these men by making them different people. Aaron is going to cease to be, in a significant way, and that's fine. But Dorley is still doing things to Stef, even if the institution unknowingly has her consent. Will she cease to be also?

Tracking Transition

I don't understand this, to be honest? I also don't need to, but I got the sense that this was a thing in the real world, too.

I did some light internet-searching and came up with like, railway terminology, but that's a clear nonsequitur. I know Stef's talking about keeping track of the changes that she goes through, but I'm basically sure that I'm missing out on the motivation of why.

And since Greaves writes about this without a lot of fanfare or explanation, I kind of assume that this is a broader thing in the real world.

Dysphoria

Anyway, after Stef deletes her journal entry, and has a bout of dysphoria? A fit of dysphoria? An incident of it?

I've never read nor seen a depiction of dysphoria before this, I don't think. And I think that's a bad gap. I think, bad faith pundits are incentivized not to take trans people seriously, and so they don't. And trans advocates are busy fighting for trans rights, so they're not going to take a time out to explain their pain packaged up for a cis audience. But shitting Jesus it sounds truly horrible to go through if this is what it's like for people.

"Took you twenty-one years to call it dysphoria, didn't it?" he mutters to himself, with enough presence of mind to face away from where Abby said the cameras are. "Idiot."

Poor girl. It's really easy to feel for Stef.

Christine's Conversations with Vicky, Aunt Bea

First off, I don't think I realized that graduates are still restricted. Which makes Indira a bigger deal in that case.

Dorley is set during a time of institutional evolution. We read more about that fluctuation later as well, with the changing standards of who gets recruited.

If you think you might be under suspicion of backsliding, put on a nice dress and stay in your room with the door open, so you look like you have nothing to hide.

Christine kind of is backsliding right? Like, regardless of her gender expression preferences, she's at least stalled out in the Programme a bit. She has also been doing an awful lot of cyber-criming.

Christine has a heart-to-heart with Vicky, as they prepare to do some protesting later on. I wonder if Vicky's girlfriend Lorna knows anything about Dorley. It seems like the kind of thing that'd be almost impossible not to tell your partner.

Some More Self Oblivion

"I'm a straight guy," Paige had said, although that wasn't yet her name, "and so are you, but if we let ourselves forget what we know about each other for just a few minutes…"

This little fragment kind of points to some of that diary-danger for Stef, I think. Stef hates these men, in a way that they don't hate each other. Right or wrong there's presumably some solidarity for them as prisoners that Stef can't have.

But she's still going to be going through the same process, with some of the same conditions. So I'm worried about what's to come for her.

Aunt Bea

a typical product of our programme: you were angry and bitter in all the ways I expect, rebellious in all the ways I expect, and ultimately compliant in all the ways I expect. And thus unmemorable to someone like me, who has seen many dozens of young women bloom

It's interesting to see Aunt Bea as a compassionately conservative old guard of something. What does it mean, exactly, that she doesn't take the time to know these women? Is that just because the years take a toll, or is she more out of touch because of the passage of time? I think I was too harsh on Aunt Bea in an earlier post, but I'm still not really sure.

It's at least very humanizing to have her kindly rebuke Christine for smoking.

Stef's time with Da Boyz

Stef is making a friend for physical safety, and presumably also for some kind of social toe-hold. She picks Aaron, who is a shit, but at least dislikes nazis?

Honestly he's growing on me a little bit as a character, despite being, again, an incel. I think that's just Greaves' good work, and I presume that Aaron will continue to be a slug in places. But he's funnily written.

It's interesting to me that Aaron has been in one of those homosocially-violent regimented spaces before. And an upper-class one as well.

I'm not sure why Stef finds Aaron the least-objectionable of this cohort of recruits. Maybe there's a parallel between struggling in a bullshit upper-class environment and struggling to deny that Stef is trans? That might be some kind of grounds for shared empathy, them both wanting out of arbitrary institutions they didn't choose?

Maybe there's a class solidarity? Stef's parents moved to the city or something, I suppose over economic changes, Aaron's dad struck it rich?

I'm also still quite curious about what Raph did, if it was over and beyond infidelity. I would have thought that wouldn't be enough, but for Christine's later explanation that the standards change.

Anthill

Christine ends up at a protest event for trans rights, and wants to ask Lorna something but we don't learn what.

Vicky wants to marry Lorna, and seems to be serious.

The gang are going out next week to celebrate for Lorna, and hopefully Christine will get her shit together enough to go.

The Dorley Pigeon Server and Some Other Forum

The last moments are some internet chats between Christine and a trans forum's membership, and Christine and Stef.

> distilled: you're one of us now
             you've been transed against your will

> Christine: Yes

I love this excerpt. And the whole segment was a really fun reminder of the kind of non-web-online I used to be.

I don't have a ton else to say about this except that, online subcultures always give me a sense of nostalgia. That's a part of why bluesky has been fun. I know that the way some people use it it's a figurative hell, but if you keep that block-hand strong and only follow people whose content you actually want to read, it gets to feel like the kind of online community where you see folks around, and make some internet-friends.

It's interesting to see Quite Contrary, who's clearly having a hard time, and is kind of a road-not-taken for Stef? Would Stefan have ever transitioned without Dorley? I don't know, but he clearly should have - Stefan was so miserable that he'd rather be a girl in prison than a boy free.

The idea of a beacon or a totem is really touching. And I suppose the importance of that is where Stef and Christine's chatlogs as a journal come into play. The chat logs aren't physical at all, but Christine is such a computing-oriented person, and Stef and she both study lingusitics, so at least thematically using a longitudinal corpus of text is a very cute totem.

Those also seem like they constitute a bit of a risk later on if anyone ever surveils Christine properly.

I'm honestly anxious for Stef though. I know she'll be a happy person after the end result, but unlike Da Boyz, it would be a genuine tragedy if she weren't her anymore but some other woman.

Midday on Mercury

I don't know if this was intentional, but the title of this chapter reminds me of Patrick McCabe's Breakfast on Pluto, another trans story centered on one Patrick "Pussy" Braden and during The Troubles.

As I recall it's more of a tone poem than a tidy narrative, and I suspect that the first chapter's time jumps and a vague memory of that book combined to set my expectations that Dorley would be a lot less of a character-driven interpersonal story than it is.