This American ex-wife

[cosmolinguist]

Wow. I just read a whole book in a day.

And, y'know, a day that was not lacking in other things I had to do!

I've been reading Lyz Lenz's newsletter for a long time, I watched this book progress and then I've had it on my library hold list for a long time and today it appeared. It's called This American Ex-Wife and it's about her own divorce and her life since.

I started the audiobook when I started doing chores this morning, and unloading the dishwasher while hearing about someone who decided her marriage had ended when she got home from a work trip in the middle of the night to a trash bag that her husband had left just inside the door for days made me feel like I'd been knocked off my feet. The juxtaposition to my calm, orderly chores that I welcome most mornings, and the recognition not of the exact situation but so much that felt like she described feeling then, was a lot.

I enjoyed the book, I got a lot out of it -- not least because she is about my age and grew up so similarly to me that I know I went to an open day at the college she attended (though I chose another myself) even though she never names it. Her book makes me wish I'd written a book, even though hers is about motherhood and the political failure to provide childcare and staying in the Midwest and mine would be about disability and so many forms of queerness.

But one of the things that stands out most strongly to me right now is something a transmasc online friend said a few days ago in a conversation mostly about something else: "It also really bugs me when people project masculinity onto my child or adolescent self in photos. She was a girl. I'm not. Both can be true." I feel that anyway, and this book has made me particularly feel like it matters that I was a woman when I was married. Everybody thought of me as one and treated me as one for almost or entirely the whole time I was married. An agender friend once said they "caucus with the women" and that's how I feel here: the dynamics of my marriage and how it ended fit many patterns and a lot of those patterns are about women and about heterosexual marriages.

Comments

[sfred]

*nods*
I think there are different genders for different bits of my childhood, but projecting boyhood onto all of it and my early adulthood doesn't feel helpful, even though the people who do it are trying to be affirming.

[cosmolinguist]

Yes all of this. Definitely different genders for different parts.

Thanks for understanding and articulating this. <3

[sfred]

<3

Something both lovely and creepy

[jesse_the_k]

When one encounters an experiential doppelgänger.

Does the author narrate the book?

Re: Something both lovely and creepy

[cosmolinguist]

She does! I meant to mention that, it's one of the things that makes it so good.

[silveradept]

I'm sure it's easier for others to only have to think about one kind of trans narrative, but it usually flattens complexity in terrible ways.

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah. I've been talking about this on fedi a lot lately...

[azurelunatic]

My past self was trying so hard to be a girl, bless her heart.

And while any woman suffers oppression simply for being a woman, I will never be free. Both from solidarity and because ... what are we calling them these days ... natalist gender-forcers? ... Natalist gender-forcers will see me as a woman until I grow a prick at which point they will call me a monster.

[cosmolinguist]

Yep. Our liberation is bound up with each other's.