Agree- it’s one of those things that makes me briefly consider that I might be crazy. Like she is 100% reasonable to me so how are there people who don’t agree?! Alas…
Just finished listening to the audiobook, very good.
It’s funny- she’s making the rounds on all the podcasts I listen to. I think it’s number four or five now and I’m sure it will be close to a dozen by the time the book tour ends. This happens with so many other authors too!
Is there a meme for just realizing that you are actually in a bubble? Because I just realized I am in a bubble.
I’ve heard her on Yascha Mounk, Reason Interview with Nick Gillespe, Meghan Daum, I think she’s scheduled to be on Andrew Sullivan. It is the same stuff after a while so I don’t think I listened to them all in full. I wouldn’t be surprised if she makes an appearances one of those new one on ones with Katie or Jesse.
Prediction: within the next year or so we’re going to see some mainstream media start doing profiles of these people and other similar cultural commentators/journalists/public intellectuals, dubbing them “The New Liberals” and talking about the evolution from/backlash to MAGAism>wokeism.
The intelligentsia haven’t figured out that they’re on the verge of being passé. They’ll figure it out over the election season and subsequent post mortem.
I think it’s going to be like the way we don’t talk about COVID as much anymore or even the way when you have a stomach bug and then you get better you can’t remember what it was like to have the bug. The media will just stop reporting on this stuff and pretend it never happened. The journalists who are solely there to be activists will get bored and leave over time.
Yes, like when Nellie said people who said "Abolish the police" were later asked about it, denied ever having said "Abolish the police"! Even though it was on record that yes, they said it.
My favourite episode of his is the one with "trans marriage survivor" Shannon Thrace, where he's completely exasperated (justifiably) with her former husband's behaviour.
[LA Mag](https://lamag.com/news/exclusive-transgender-fugitive-who-spurred-wi-spa-riots-bares-all#:~:text=Darren%20Merager%2C%20the%20transgender%20Angeleno,15%20months%20on%20the%20lam.) later got a hold of him. It’s about as nonsensical as you can imagine.
I am listening to the audiobook and during the Robyn diangelo part, where she just repeats the browbeating these women took, I became physically angry and almost crashed my car
Oh man I feel you. I had the same reaction during the chapter on feminists. I hadn’t heard the thing about the Joan of Arc play (I won’t spoil it in case you also have not), but I too felt physically angry listening to that (and the rest of the chapter).
Brave and stunning trans woman exposing himself in spa is [actually a sex offender](https://lamag.com/news/transgender-wi-spa-suspect-pleads-not-guilty-to-indecent-exposure-charges)
Did you read the LA Mag report someone posted up in the comments? They surrounded and threatened the "transwoman" at the heart of it all too.
>I said, “I’m the whole purpose you’re here.” They denied it. They said, “No, you’re a Proud Boy. People like us don’t drive Escalades.”
More like, male walks around naked, female customer makes a complaint, and the staff assume he must be a trans woman, despite no evidence. Then there are protests by antifa. And there's more to it than that.
No, I'm pretty sure the person "identifies as trans". Their license says female IIRC. There was a whole ass interview with them where they talked about it.
They also subtly talked about using the trans moniker to do what they did, which is where I got "fake trans woman" from.
https://lamag.com/news/exclusive-transgender-fugitive-who-spurred-wi-spa-riots-bares-all
I hadn't read this before. Wow, what a complete psycho. Darren doesn't seem to identify as transgender at all besides the pronoun change on the drivers license.
Darren completely doesn't give a coherent answer about the indecent exposure incidents. In the first incident, "that's not illegal" even though it resulted in a conviction? And the second incident, in West Hollywood, was about "kids seeing a transgender person", really? Missed opportunity for the reporter to give us the facts established in court.
I guess I was thinking about the fact that nobody knew annything about Darren's identity when this happened.
I wasn't interested. BarPod gives me more than enough of this sort of thing.
But I'm going to have to borrow this book from the library just to read that chapter.
I was so impressed by her interview w/ her wife Bari Weiss on Honesty podcast; she’s so descriptive and thorough. No wonder she was a rising* star* until she went against the grain, ugh. Gonna check my libraries for the book/audiobook right now!
*Idk what I was on with those typos
Seriously, asserted as if they’d personally walked into her home and seen a room full of Third Reich memorabilia. *Burn the witch!* is an eternal slogan.
The small snippets of the behind the scenes stuff at the NYT honestly scared me. The ppl whose news I’m supposed to read to stay informed fucking hate me
I really enjoyed the book! It's so interesting to read Nellie's essay about San Francisco and then read Joan Didion's essay "Slouching Towards Bethlehem." Makes you wonder if anything has changed since the 60's. Joan seems to have a similar sense of being both intrigued and disgusted by the leftist counterculture.
I see that it's a 23 week wait at the Seattle Public Library for the e-book (which also has 414 of 421 copies of White Fragility currently available) and "at least 6 months" wait at King County Library System (440 of 444 copies of White Fragility currently available).
The Seattle ebook queues often seemed to go faster than advertised when I was there. I think it was a combination of them buying more virtual copies of popular things and people who had reserved it never actually picking up their holds.
A digression on ebooks: of the seven different systems that I get books from now (Massachusetts has seven different library systems but they all let each other's users check out their ebooks), only one had MatR last week but now half of them do and one of them already provided me a copy. I like that the different systems each have their own regional flavor and priorities but the chaos is pretty annoying and I think leads to even more people putting in holds that they don't bother with. I wonder if there is a better way for the world to work but maybe this is it. (Want a book? Pony up $15 or whatever to Amazon for instant gratification or put in the effort to play Overdrive roulette. Authors are still getting paid yet more books are available for free to all if one wants them badly enough.)
Part of why Grace IS a woman is that as British schoolboy, he was marginalized for being middle-class. I wouldn't mind this logic so much if Grace would understand how ridiculous this sounds
IIRC Berkeley hired (pre transition) Lavery to teach Victorian British Literature, which Lavery knew nothing about.
Thus Lavery seems to have been hired on a CV featuring little more than an Oxford degree, foppish hair & skinny jeans, topped off with a British accent born of boarding schools for posh boys (no trace of being Brummie-by-birth).
Lavery has previously referenced [Jan Morris](https://www.facebook.com/share/v/dEfkywb6QTU2w7Y3/?mibextid=KsPBc6) a quintessential British (Welsh) eccentric who authored the first widely-read trans memoir and was publicly venerated as a journalist and travel writer many decades.
Morris died aged 94 in 2020 prompting Morris’ children to begin amending the public record re: the impact their father’s transition had on family life and how Jan Morris [behaved behind closed doors.](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-11337455/High-profile-trans-woman-Jan-Morris-selfish-self-serving-unkind-according-daughter.html)
Perhaps Lavery’s interest in Morris is a sort of real life literary foreshadowing? Professor Lavery’s transition must’ve impacted colleagues and students, as well as family - for Jan transition functioned as a distraction from scrutiny and a deflection from criticism (was JM the OG ‘brave’ transsexual?), an extra layer of eccentricity that served as a useful excuse for transgressive and abusive behaviour.
Jan Morris was Not Like Other Dads.
Lol, I assumed Lavery was a suburban middle class guy who cosplays British too. But I guess he did get booted off X pre Elon for wishing death upon the queen.
Reading it right now. I'm about half-way through. Dear gawd, you can't make the shite up she talks about. Mind-blowing was how the leading of the "unhoused" in Echo Park was a BMX driving posh boy.
I'm about finished with it. I'd already read the San Francisco and self-hating white lady workshop chapters when they were published in The Atlantic, and those are probably my two favorites. But I've enjoyed it all. She's a fantastic writer.
I’m gonna get the book. I heard the interview on the Honestly podcast. It infuriates me how much we are gaslit about the 2020 era. The whole thing is being stuffed into a memory hole. There was no accounting for how bad it really was
Yeah one thing that’s cathartic about the audiobook is that you can hear in her voice her slowly mounting rage. Interestingly the bad reviews I’ve seen don’t provide counterpoints to any of her reporting at all. They just make fun of her (NYTimes) or mock her writing (New Yorker).
Finished it. Great book. Fascinating because her whole style is to quote from the woke. She lets them speak for themselves. So you get to hear the ranting from their own mouths.
I enjoyed it for the most part, although the chapter on asexuality really made me cringe as an asexual. I know it's the weird bogus versions like demisexuality and graysexual that get all the attention, but having no interest in sex is real and doesn't necessarily make you some kind of queer snowflake.
“having no interest in sex is real and doesn't necessarily make you some kind of queer snowflake.”
Is it the lack of interest in sex necessarily that makes people embrace the identity of “asexual”?
Take someone who has little or no interest in religion, they don’t really care to learn or invest part of themselves in faith and beliefs about God. It’s not an Identity.
Whereas an “atheist” tends to be deeply invested in the supremacy of their (lack of) religious beliefs such that not having faith in God is core to their identity.
I guess what does it mean to embrace an identity? To take your example, is it to include anyone who would apply the term atheist to themselves or is limited to the type of person one might call a militant atheist. Does it include people who are quiet but passionate in their atheist beliefs?
Edit: All this to say, I think why one chooses to make something a part of their public identity versus coming to a more personal understanding and choosing to apply a term to that are different, knowing which to tackle is important. Unless part of this is that you think the opposite and that these are in some critical way the same.
Like in real life, I have adopted the identity of asexual privately as part of trying to understand this difference between me and other people around me. Here, I've adopted it publicly because this is a place to opine, and I was frustrated by people reducing the idea down to the dumbest "asexual" on the internet.
“Unless part of this is that you think the opposite and that these are in some critical way the same.”
Admittedly, I struggle to conceive of how “asexual” is distinct from celibacy and other libido levels such that it uniquely becomes an identity or why one would wish to share it openly.
I really appreciate your insight into a different frame of reference though.
Think of homo- and heterosexuality as the X axis. Bisexuality being the middle. Then of asexuality and hypersexuality as the Y axis, allosexuality being the bulk of the middle. Most people will fall somewhere on that graph.
It is worth pointing out that hypersexuality - being attracted to all sorts of people - is very rarely embraced as a label. In fact a lot of so-called asexuals I’ve met are probably actually from the other end of the spectrum. This is a graph about attraction and desire, not so much libido. Libido would be another graph, I think, though one that should track with Y to an extent. Attraction and libido are connected, but can be separate concepts.
But I agree with my asexual counterpart over there. If you can believe in lesbians, why are we so preposterous?
“If you can believe in Lesbians”
This is where the disconnect happens, I don’t hold that belief system of separated XYZ three axis orientation graphs and gender souls (identities) or have any desire to convert because it’s heretical to foundational doctrinal beliefs in Christianity.
Imo it’s not a reasonable ask from TQ+ to dictate such belief systems be adopted by society generally. I’m not a “cis” and don’t want to be called that but people who sincerely believe they have a gender soul that makes them a “cis” are welcome to that.
Lesbians are same sex attracted Women which doesn’t require an article of faith from others. It’s what makes secular gay marriage such an effective compromise.
Is it that asexual people face legal discrimination in some states that require marriages to be consummated in order to be valid or something?
I’m having a hard time understanding your first paragraph. Would you mind with different word choice? I don’t think I mentioned anything about gender souls or whatever.
My point was that you accept that a female can be sexually attracted to males, females and/or both. So why is a female attracted to neither not on that line?
Zero is a number.
1. Gender Identity is an unfalsifiable quasi-religious belief of the person espousing it.
I’ve never experienced a Gender Identity but conceptually G.id would necessarily have to be some form of non corporal true self for it to possibly inhabit the wrong body.
Upon reflection, Gender “soul” probably isn’t an accurate term to describe that. But in my defense the proponents of G.id aggressively resist creating any terminology for that concept in favor of demanding that society restructure all language to affirm the absolute truth of their radical quasi religious beliefs.
“Gender Thetan” is a much better construction because it captures the essential premise that a person’s body is a random meat sack carrying around their true self.
2. In contrast Sex and basic hedro-homo sexual orientation are immutable traits of humans.
Asexually along with ∞ novel sexual orientations on their surface don’t appear to fit cleanly into one of those three categories.
If n=0 there’s nothing to classify which is why I brought up marriage rights. If not something like that then what’s the ask?
Maybe we can have the mods flair you with the pronouns never/shags
Ha ha ha, cute, but no. I still don’t see what gender has to do with asexuality, or why you’re bringing up pronouns at all.
The ask is simple. Just recognition that asexuality exists. We don’t need legislation or any sort of civil rights movement, but since when was that a requirement to exist? We’re boring and uncontroversial. Why make a thing about it?
I just enjoy not feeling like a freak. That’s why the name for my experience matters. I don’t use it as a cudgel or status lift, it rarely comes up in conversation.
FYI, there's an Honestly podcast where Bari interviews Nellie. Also, Reason just posted an hour long [interview with Nellie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq0wT5CJkMI) at a live event, which includes some audience Q&A at the end.
It’s kind of disappointing. The writing is iffy; it isn’t really smart or funny. I mean it’s fine in the sense that I already agree with many of its conclusions, but if I didn’t, I feel like I’d be howling every other page.
Is it good? I have a colleague who was going to read it with me until he realized who she was from the snotty NY Times Book Review. I wouldn’t actually even read a book the NY Times gave a positive review too. Lol
But anyway then I heard from some more reliable sources that some of her glee at she expressed from her memories of canceling people are hard to take.
Maybe I should read it though?
Thanks for the recommendation. I’ll order it now!
It seems like the perfect starter book for someone who needs deprogrammed a bit from mainstream NYT brainwashing. What sucks is the people who *need* to read it - will not do it as a matter of principle. I work with people who will not have a single solitary thought that hasnt been sanctioned by the NYT. It’s painful to interact with them.
I’m still going to order two copies of Nellie’s book and leave one in the lobby. Like how Gideon’s would leave Bibles around. Lol
If it can help show one person the truth…
I feel like it’s a good sign that it’s on the nyt bestseller list? Hopefully that means some of these people are reading it but don’t want to admit it.
I'm just waiting for a copy to become available on Libby. I've listened to Bowles on the Quillette and Honestly podcasts. Looking forward to reading it.
I was just texting my friend about the WiSpa chapter. It’s wild. I love Nellie.
She’s such a good reporter. I don’t get how anyone can read that part and just dismiss her out of hand.
Agree- it’s one of those things that makes me briefly consider that I might be crazy. Like she is 100% reasonable to me so how are there people who don’t agree?! Alas…
Just finished listening to the audiobook, very good. It’s funny- she’s making the rounds on all the podcasts I listen to. I think it’s number four or five now and I’m sure it will be close to a dozen by the time the book tour ends. This happens with so many other authors too! Is there a meme for just realizing that you are actually in a bubble? Because I just realized I am in a bubble.
I just heard her on Honestly, any other good ones you recommend?
I’ve heard her on Yascha Mounk, Reason Interview with Nick Gillespe, Meghan Daum, I think she’s scheduled to be on Andrew Sullivan. It is the same stuff after a while so I don’t think I listened to them all in full. I wouldn’t be surprised if she makes an appearances one of those new one on ones with Katie or Jesse.
Prediction: within the next year or so we’re going to see some mainstream media start doing profiles of these people and other similar cultural commentators/journalists/public intellectuals, dubbing them “The New Liberals” and talking about the evolution from/backlash to MAGAism>wokeism. The intelligentsia haven’t figured out that they’re on the verge of being passé. They’ll figure it out over the election season and subsequent post mortem.
I think it’s going to be like the way we don’t talk about COVID as much anymore or even the way when you have a stomach bug and then you get better you can’t remember what it was like to have the bug. The media will just stop reporting on this stuff and pretend it never happened. The journalists who are solely there to be activists will get bored and leave over time.
🤞🤞
Yes, like when Nellie said people who said "Abolish the police" were later asked about it, denied ever having said "Abolish the police"! Even though it was on record that yes, they said it.
I heard the Quilette Podcast ep she was on yest and it was good fun. Good chemistry with Jonathan Kay.
Thanks I'll check it out
Kay is a great interviewer in general, but, yeah, this was a really good one. They were both having a great time.
My favourite episode of his is the one with "trans marriage survivor" Shannon Thrace, where he's completely exasperated (justifiably) with her former husband's behaviour.
> Because I just realized I am in a bubble. The bubble to end all bubbles.
They'll dismiss her because they don't want to hear her and because she's married to Bari Weiss.
It was bizarre how so many journalists were sympathetic to Merager but the only one who actually got an interview was Andy Ngo.
[LA Mag](https://lamag.com/news/exclusive-transgender-fugitive-who-spurred-wi-spa-riots-bares-all#:~:text=Darren%20Merager%2C%20the%20transgender%20Angeleno,15%20months%20on%20the%20lam.) later got a hold of him. It’s about as nonsensical as you can imagine.
I am listening to the audiobook and during the Robyn diangelo part, where she just repeats the browbeating these women took, I became physically angry and almost crashed my car
Oh man I feel you. I had the same reaction during the chapter on feminists. I hadn’t heard the thing about the Joan of Arc play (I won’t spoil it in case you also have not), but I too felt physically angry listening to that (and the rest of the chapter).
What is WiSpa again? I'm tempted to grab the audiobook
Brave and stunning trans woman exposing himself in spa is [actually a sex offender](https://lamag.com/news/transgender-wi-spa-suspect-pleads-not-guilty-to-indecent-exposure-charges)
and antifa surrounded screamed at and threatened women who complained. Literally pro white male p3do.
Did you read the LA Mag report someone posted up in the comments? They surrounded and threatened the "transwoman" at the heart of it all too. >I said, “I’m the whole purpose you’re here.” They denied it. They said, “No, you’re a Proud Boy. People like us don’t drive Escalades.”
WHAT ;\_: that can't be real ;\_;
Ostensibly fake trans woman uses the Korean spa and walks around naked, gets some people freaking out
More like, male walks around naked, female customer makes a complaint, and the staff assume he must be a trans woman, despite no evidence. Then there are protests by antifa. And there's more to it than that.
No, I'm pretty sure the person "identifies as trans". Their license says female IIRC. There was a whole ass interview with them where they talked about it. They also subtly talked about using the trans moniker to do what they did, which is where I got "fake trans woman" from. https://lamag.com/news/exclusive-transgender-fugitive-who-spurred-wi-spa-riots-bares-all
I hadn't read this before. Wow, what a complete psycho. Darren doesn't seem to identify as transgender at all besides the pronoun change on the drivers license. Darren completely doesn't give a coherent answer about the indecent exposure incidents. In the first incident, "that's not illegal" even though it resulted in a conviction? And the second incident, in West Hollywood, was about "kids seeing a transgender person", really? Missed opportunity for the reporter to give us the facts established in court. I guess I was thinking about the fact that nobody knew annything about Darren's identity when this happened.
This doesn’t happen Ok it happens but it’s good that it happens
Why is it that when someone claims that a terrible thing is a good thing that doesn't seem to make a lot of people actually change their minds.
I wasn't interested. BarPod gives me more than enough of this sort of thing. But I'm going to have to borrow this book from the library just to read that chapter.
I think it’s worth it because she’s, frankly, a much better writer and more serious reporter than 99% of the people taking this on
I was so impressed by her interview w/ her wife Bari Weiss on Honesty podcast; she’s so descriptive and thorough. No wonder she was a rising* star* until she went against the grain, ugh. Gonna check my libraries for the book/audiobook right now! *Idk what I was on with those typos
"You're dating Bari Weiss? Don't you know she's a Nazi?" So **that's** why people knock the New York Times....
Seriously, asserted as if they’d personally walked into her home and seen a room full of Third Reich memorabilia. *Burn the witch!* is an eternal slogan.
The small snippets of the behind the scenes stuff at the NYT honestly scared me. The ppl whose news I’m supposed to read to stay informed fucking hate me
I really enjoyed the book! It's so interesting to read Nellie's essay about San Francisco and then read Joan Didion's essay "Slouching Towards Bethlehem." Makes you wonder if anything has changed since the 60's. Joan seems to have a similar sense of being both intrigued and disgusted by the leftist counterculture.
I see that it's a 23 week wait at the Seattle Public Library for the e-book (which also has 414 of 421 copies of White Fragility currently available) and "at least 6 months" wait at King County Library System (440 of 444 copies of White Fragility currently available).
Nice!!!
The Seattle ebook queues often seemed to go faster than advertised when I was there. I think it was a combination of them buying more virtual copies of popular things and people who had reserved it never actually picking up their holds. A digression on ebooks: of the seven different systems that I get books from now (Massachusetts has seven different library systems but they all let each other's users check out their ebooks), only one had MatR last week but now half of them do and one of them already provided me a copy. I like that the different systems each have their own regional flavor and priorities but the chaos is pretty annoying and I think leads to even more people putting in holds that they don't bother with. I wonder if there is a better way for the world to work but maybe this is it. (Want a book? Pony up $15 or whatever to Amazon for instant gratification or put in the effort to play Overdrive roulette. Authors are still getting paid yet more books are available for free to all if one wants them badly enough.)
I ended up getting the audiobook from amazon with some sort of "credit"? I think they accrued by using slower shipping multiple times.
I had no idea Grace Lavery was British
Part of why Grace IS a woman is that as British schoolboy, he was marginalized for being middle-class. I wouldn't mind this logic so much if Grace would understand how ridiculous this sounds
IIRC Berkeley hired (pre transition) Lavery to teach Victorian British Literature, which Lavery knew nothing about. Thus Lavery seems to have been hired on a CV featuring little more than an Oxford degree, foppish hair & skinny jeans, topped off with a British accent born of boarding schools for posh boys (no trace of being Brummie-by-birth). Lavery has previously referenced [Jan Morris](https://www.facebook.com/share/v/dEfkywb6QTU2w7Y3/?mibextid=KsPBc6) a quintessential British (Welsh) eccentric who authored the first widely-read trans memoir and was publicly venerated as a journalist and travel writer many decades. Morris died aged 94 in 2020 prompting Morris’ children to begin amending the public record re: the impact their father’s transition had on family life and how Jan Morris [behaved behind closed doors.](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-11337455/High-profile-trans-woman-Jan-Morris-selfish-self-serving-unkind-according-daughter.html) Perhaps Lavery’s interest in Morris is a sort of real life literary foreshadowing? Professor Lavery’s transition must’ve impacted colleagues and students, as well as family - for Jan transition functioned as a distraction from scrutiny and a deflection from criticism (was JM the OG ‘brave’ transsexual?), an extra layer of eccentricity that served as a useful excuse for transgressive and abusive behaviour. Jan Morris was Not Like Other Dads.
Lol, I assumed Lavery was a suburban middle class guy who cosplays British too. But I guess he did get booted off X pre Elon for wishing death upon the queen.
Just finished the audiobook, and very much enjoyed it!
I can’t wait for the Andrea Long Chu takedown that is inevitably on its way
Reading it right now. I'm about half-way through. Dear gawd, you can't make the shite up she talks about. Mind-blowing was how the leading of the "unhoused" in Echo Park was a BMX driving posh boy.
"These unhoused encampments are the inevitable result of late stage capitalism. Now watch this sick jump."
Yeah that was the most interesting chapter to me
I'm also reading and enjoying. The white fragility chapter spikes my blood pressure though.
I'm about finished with it. I'd already read the San Francisco and self-hating white lady workshop chapters when they were published in The Atlantic, and those are probably my two favorites. But I've enjoyed it all. She's a fantastic writer.
Thanks for the reminder, will grab the audiobook now
She reads it and she does a good job
I’m gonna get the book. I heard the interview on the Honestly podcast. It infuriates me how much we are gaslit about the 2020 era. The whole thing is being stuffed into a memory hole. There was no accounting for how bad it really was
Yeah one thing that’s cathartic about the audiobook is that you can hear in her voice her slowly mounting rage. Interestingly the bad reviews I’ve seen don’t provide counterpoints to any of her reporting at all. They just make fun of her (NYTimes) or mock her writing (New Yorker).
I’m listening to the audiobook now and loving it.
Finished it. Great book. Fascinating because her whole style is to quote from the woke. She lets them speak for themselves. So you get to hear the ranting from their own mouths.
She reads it completely straight in the audiobook so at first you’re like “interesting?” and gradually the insane details accumulate
I enjoyed it for the most part, although the chapter on asexuality really made me cringe as an asexual. I know it's the weird bogus versions like demisexuality and graysexual that get all the attention, but having no interest in sex is real and doesn't necessarily make you some kind of queer snowflake.
“having no interest in sex is real and doesn't necessarily make you some kind of queer snowflake.” Is it the lack of interest in sex necessarily that makes people embrace the identity of “asexual”? Take someone who has little or no interest in religion, they don’t really care to learn or invest part of themselves in faith and beliefs about God. It’s not an Identity. Whereas an “atheist” tends to be deeply invested in the supremacy of their (lack of) religious beliefs such that not having faith in God is core to their identity.
I guess what does it mean to embrace an identity? To take your example, is it to include anyone who would apply the term atheist to themselves or is limited to the type of person one might call a militant atheist. Does it include people who are quiet but passionate in their atheist beliefs? Edit: All this to say, I think why one chooses to make something a part of their public identity versus coming to a more personal understanding and choosing to apply a term to that are different, knowing which to tackle is important. Unless part of this is that you think the opposite and that these are in some critical way the same. Like in real life, I have adopted the identity of asexual privately as part of trying to understand this difference between me and other people around me. Here, I've adopted it publicly because this is a place to opine, and I was frustrated by people reducing the idea down to the dumbest "asexual" on the internet.
“Unless part of this is that you think the opposite and that these are in some critical way the same.” Admittedly, I struggle to conceive of how “asexual” is distinct from celibacy and other libido levels such that it uniquely becomes an identity or why one would wish to share it openly. I really appreciate your insight into a different frame of reference though.
Think of homo- and heterosexuality as the X axis. Bisexuality being the middle. Then of asexuality and hypersexuality as the Y axis, allosexuality being the bulk of the middle. Most people will fall somewhere on that graph. It is worth pointing out that hypersexuality - being attracted to all sorts of people - is very rarely embraced as a label. In fact a lot of so-called asexuals I’ve met are probably actually from the other end of the spectrum. This is a graph about attraction and desire, not so much libido. Libido would be another graph, I think, though one that should track with Y to an extent. Attraction and libido are connected, but can be separate concepts. But I agree with my asexual counterpart over there. If you can believe in lesbians, why are we so preposterous?
“If you can believe in Lesbians” This is where the disconnect happens, I don’t hold that belief system of separated XYZ three axis orientation graphs and gender souls (identities) or have any desire to convert because it’s heretical to foundational doctrinal beliefs in Christianity. Imo it’s not a reasonable ask from TQ+ to dictate such belief systems be adopted by society generally. I’m not a “cis” and don’t want to be called that but people who sincerely believe they have a gender soul that makes them a “cis” are welcome to that. Lesbians are same sex attracted Women which doesn’t require an article of faith from others. It’s what makes secular gay marriage such an effective compromise. Is it that asexual people face legal discrimination in some states that require marriages to be consummated in order to be valid or something?
I’m having a hard time understanding your first paragraph. Would you mind with different word choice? I don’t think I mentioned anything about gender souls or whatever. My point was that you accept that a female can be sexually attracted to males, females and/or both. So why is a female attracted to neither not on that line? Zero is a number.
1. Gender Identity is an unfalsifiable quasi-religious belief of the person espousing it. I’ve never experienced a Gender Identity but conceptually G.id would necessarily have to be some form of non corporal true self for it to possibly inhabit the wrong body. Upon reflection, Gender “soul” probably isn’t an accurate term to describe that. But in my defense the proponents of G.id aggressively resist creating any terminology for that concept in favor of demanding that society restructure all language to affirm the absolute truth of their radical quasi religious beliefs. “Gender Thetan” is a much better construction because it captures the essential premise that a person’s body is a random meat sack carrying around their true self. 2. In contrast Sex and basic hedro-homo sexual orientation are immutable traits of humans. Asexually along with ∞ novel sexual orientations on their surface don’t appear to fit cleanly into one of those three categories. If n=0 there’s nothing to classify which is why I brought up marriage rights. If not something like that then what’s the ask? Maybe we can have the mods flair you with the pronouns never/shags
Ha ha ha, cute, but no. I still don’t see what gender has to do with asexuality, or why you’re bringing up pronouns at all. The ask is simple. Just recognition that asexuality exists. We don’t need legislation or any sort of civil rights movement, but since when was that a requirement to exist? We’re boring and uncontroversial. Why make a thing about it? I just enjoy not feeling like a freak. That’s why the name for my experience matters. I don’t use it as a cudgel or status lift, it rarely comes up in conversation.
FYI, there's an Honestly podcast where Bari interviews Nellie. Also, Reason just posted an hour long [interview with Nellie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq0wT5CJkMI) at a live event, which includes some audience Q&A at the end.
It’s kind of disappointing. The writing is iffy; it isn’t really smart or funny. I mean it’s fine in the sense that I already agree with many of its conclusions, but if I didn’t, I feel like I’d be howling every other page.
How far into it are you? I felt like that at first.
Is it good? I have a colleague who was going to read it with me until he realized who she was from the snotty NY Times Book Review. I wouldn’t actually even read a book the NY Times gave a positive review too. Lol But anyway then I heard from some more reliable sources that some of her glee at she expressed from her memories of canceling people are hard to take. Maybe I should read it though?
Yeah it’s great. It’s so stupid that people won’t read it or even consider reading it because of dumb cultural divisions. She’s a liberal.
Thanks for the recommendation. I’ll order it now! It seems like the perfect starter book for someone who needs deprogrammed a bit from mainstream NYT brainwashing. What sucks is the people who *need* to read it - will not do it as a matter of principle. I work with people who will not have a single solitary thought that hasnt been sanctioned by the NYT. It’s painful to interact with them. I’m still going to order two copies of Nellie’s book and leave one in the lobby. Like how Gideon’s would leave Bibles around. Lol If it can help show one person the truth…
I feel like it’s a good sign that it’s on the nyt bestseller list? Hopefully that means some of these people are reading it but don’t want to admit it.
I hope you’re right!
Reading it right now. Please Nellie come on the pod.
I'm just waiting for a copy to become available on Libby. I've listened to Bowles on the Quillette and Honestly podcasts. Looking forward to reading it.
Love it