Imogen Binnie talks about how, when she was writing + editing + publishing Nevada, she was very frustrated with the stories about trans people that were being published at the time by cis authors. Stories where a tortured trans protagonist goes through hell during transition but ultimately emerges victorious and transitioned. The "Gender Novel(tm)", as Casey Plett put it. I've personally never read any of these books, and I'm not too interested in doing so; but the trend seems indicative of something that I think about sometimes: liberals are obsessed with endings.

The end of history (lol), the end of racism (lmao even), the end of COVID (how do they come up with this stuff), and — the end of transition. In the afterword, Binnie talks about how she purposefully wrote Maria to be a "post-trans" protagonist, to disrupt the idea that trans people take hormones, get surgery, and happily disappear, their lives as trans people effectively over, ready to live as cis people. The idea that the Gender Novel (tm) was pushing. That there is a set "end point" to transition. Maria is clearly still struggling, still wrestling with her issues around dissociation, dysphoria, and transness.

That's why I like Nevada's ending so much. The fact that it doesn't end, that Maria and James' storylines don't get wrapped up with any kind of satisfactory conclusion. Because for a lot of trans people, it doesn't really end; at least, not nicely and neatly. It unsettles cis liberal sensibilities, cis liberal desires for a conclusion to the struggle. And well, upsetting liberals is my favorite thing.

Another (unrelated) thought — in class, the topic of James' pronouns came up. At first my answer was "well idk, I don't think it's that serious", but then I thought a little bit more about it, and I think I came to a different conclusion.

The entire second part of Nevada is basically a long, drawn-out "what-if" scenario for a lot of trans people. For people in James' position, it's "what if a magical trans person descended from the sky to talk to me about my gender issues"; for people in Maria's position, it's "what if I met someone who is probably trans, and how could I help them?"

I think there's a strong aspect of asking: what would you, the reader, do in this situation? What would you say to James, if you were in Maria's position? Was Maria's method effective? Is there any way she could have done it better? I guess this is the question the "egg prime directive" was trying to solve, lol. I wonder how soon that appeared after Nevada's publication. (For the record, I personally don't believe in the egg prime directive. But I did bring it up in class when the discussion touched on this subject, because I'm annoying and internet-poisoned like that.)

And along with that, there's this question hanging in the air — what pronouns? Maria uses she/her in her head, but well, maybe Maria wasn't the best at this. Binnie uses he/him. I think this part of the story is written to unsettle people, to unsettle cis people but also trans people too.

To not get into too much detail, I am curious if this is a particular experience for the characters/the author, or does this reflect more broadly for trans people? I guess it doesn't really matter either way, but it's never something I've seen come up before in trans (well, maybe more accurately gender questioning) resources.

One thing that I find interesting, is just coming out (to myself) has been enough to change my libido and habits. Where masturbation is something that I would do 1-2 times a day, I've only masturbated once over the past week. My appetite has also completely changed. I had a habit of compulsively grazing and cleaning my plate, but I have been recognizing when I'm full and it's much easier to control my calorie intake. I don't know if this is just due to keeping a detailed diary and engaging in much more self-reflection, the effects of depression from dysphoria (although I generally feel happier), or breaking free from sexual/gender repression.

he felt trapped in his jobs, just like i did last night, but between him and me is a completely different situation. so i have a new theory - what if i've been carrying his feelings around to my situation? just like i did with my mom and her discomfort with me presenting fem?

jeez, feeling other people's emotions is absolutely wild.

Like I'm a nebulous genderqueer nonbinary trans thing, very much not a woman, very much not a man. I'm definitely trans, but every time I use the word "transmasc" I wince a little inside because it sort of technically describes me, but I don't feel transmasc, if that makes any sense. And I know there are many feminine transmasc people, and it doesn't make them less transmasc (a struggle over "validity" isn't my problem here) — but I don't feel like them, either?

And because I spent so long trying to disassociate myself from womanhood, because I internally don't feel like one, I kind of feel like I don't have the right to claim experiences of misogyny and sexism? I have never been a woman, I socially transitioned as nonbinary when I was sixteen, so I've never experienced what it's like to be an adult woman. I look like a woman to a lot of people, but my internal experience is so not "woman" that it's hard to register if people are being sexist to me or whatever. (Add onto the fact that I'm autistic, and it's even worse; I literally cannot read people's bad intentions.)

But I don't feel like a man either? My "passing" goal is to just be able to wear really femme clothes while not getting immediately read as as a cishet lady. Nothing about "manhood" appeals to me, and honestly, very little about even just the vague performance of "masculinity" (female masculinity included) appeals to me either. I want testosterone because I want a body that I like better and I want to stop getting read as a girl all the time. That's about it.

So I'm in this bind — because I feel so disconnected from every aspect of the binary, even the more queer, complex manifestations of masculinity/femininity as they appear in queer communities, I feel like I can't claim anything? Like, for example, I'm very anti-patriarchy, I would consider myself a feminist. But I don't feel comfortable identifying with the effects of patriarchy, even though I know that I am not free from said effects, because I feel like... I'd be stepping over womens' voices as someone who is not a woman? And yet I also don't feel comfortable calling out men from the perspective of being another man? I feel like these are all very silly, unserious thoughts. But they are my thoughts.

There's more ways this manifests, but I'm going to stop here for now. In a lot of ways I feel like being nonbinary and trans has made me worse at understanding gender, rather than better at it. I'm no End Of Gender punk or anything, I know I'm still very much enmeshed within our current gender system, but I feel like I'm in this liminal state where I have no idea from which positionality I should critique it. I guess the positionality of a weird disconnected nonbinary person? There's this term "transneutral", maybe that applies?

When I used to spend a lot of time on tumblr, I actually liked calling myself tme, because it was a way to signify that I was not oppressed by transmisogyny while also not having to identify myself as transmasc. But I think that's a tumblr thing, and now that I don't spend time there anymore I don't know what terms to use...

Okay so like Probably Not, but this keeps gnawing at my brain. If you are part of other marginalised groups, I feel like doing gender transgression (visibly) becomes way way more dangerous in our hellworld, Idk. I know this is probably me shamefully showing my ass, someone tell me what to read about this pls.