1 Title: Selected Annotations I Wrote in the Margins of My Copy of Imogen Binnie's <em>Nevada</em>
4 Tags: autogynephilia, review (book)
7 > _You sound so innocent
8 > All full of good intent
9 > You swear you know best
10 > But you expect me to
11 > Jump up on board with you
12 > And ride off into your delusional sunset_
14 > —"King of Anything" by Sara Bareilles
16 I don't get why this book is so popular.
18 I mean, I get why this book is so popular, but I'm not happy about it.
20 _Nevada_ is the story of 29-year-old trans woman Maria Griffiths, who steals her girlfriend's car and goes on a cross-country road trip.
22 In Star City, Nevada, she meets an autogynephilic
24 James isn't buying it. Then he steals her heroin and the book ends.
26 https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/02/book-review-on-the-road/
28 https://archive.is/kDO75
30 https://github.com/ZoeyWolfe/have-you-read-nevada
32 http://web.archive.org/web/20171013145452/http://haveyoureadnevada.com/nevada.pdf
38 [Steph is Maria's cis girlfriend.]
40 > She acts like she's into it. She's thrashing, hands at Steph's wrists, pulling. Not that hard, although <u>Steph is probably stronger than Maria</u>, so it's not like Maria could
42 less probable than Imogen Binnie would like us to believe
44 > Then it's Maria's turn. She already knows she's going to fake it. Maria's relationship to her body, it's a mess, she can barely get it together to be naked in front of anybody, much less get off with someone in the room. You'd think it would be impossible to fake it, with junk like Maria's got, but you can. Maria knows some stuff about faking it. One time somebody told her that when she came in their motuh, they could tell she'd come because when that pre-<u>come</u> stuff turned into regular come, it got saltier.
46 I thought the noun was [spelled differently](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cum#Etymology_2)
48 > People tend to assume that trans women are either drag queens and loads of trashy fun, or else sad, pathetic and deluded pervy straight men, at least, until they save up their money and get their Sex Change Operations, at which point they become just like every other woman. Or something? But Maria is like, Dude, hi. <u>Nobody ever reads me as trans any more.</u> Old straight men hit on me when I'm at work and in all these years of transitioning I haven't even been able to save up for a decent pair of boots.
50 that you know of (& James will, in Part 2)
52 > But when she started working there, she was like, Hello, I'm a dude and my name is the same as the one that's on my birth certificate. Then when she had been working there a year or two, she had this kind of intense and scary realization that for a really long time, as boring and clichéd as this is, but for as long as she could remember she had felt all fucked up.
54 > So she wrote about it. She laid it out and connected all these dots: the sometimes I want to wear dresses dot, the <u>I am addicted to masturbation dot</u>, the I feel like I have been punched in the stomach when I see an un-self-conscious pretty girl dot, the I cried a lot when I was little and don't think I've cried at all since puberty dot. Lots of other dots. A constellation of dots. The oh man do I get more fucked up than I mean to, every time I start drinking dot. The I might hate sex dot. So she figured out that she was trans, told people she was changing her name, got on hormones, it was very difficult and rewarding and painful.
58 > There's this whole thing now where <u>rich</u> young white people like Maria colonize Brooklyn history because in these messed-up, post-modern times everybody is desperate for something real
60 is this code for class? Maria works in a bookstore
62 > She doesn't hate trans guys who are working on the fact that they've acquired male privilege outside the queer community, but also in a weird way inside the queer community, especially in the way that their presence tends to eclipse or eliminate or invalidate that of trans women, so they're working on it and starting conversations about it and <u>being accountable to trans women</u>.
64 /r/GenderCritical would "love" this book
66 [Steph has disclosed that she cheated with Kieran, a trans man.]
68 > She probably doesn't even hate Steph. Like, as a couple they are fucked, and obviously Maria sucks at changing things her life that she really needs to change. Such as: she totally needs to break up with Steph. But for real though, Steph rules. She and Keiran, y'know, that sort of thing just happens sometimes, especially in a queer relationship, right? And it's not like Maria never fucked Kieran while she was with Steph.
74 > Maria's been <u>mentally outlining a zine</u> about this stuff that will lay it out clearly and solve everything since, like, before she started transitioning.
78 > He managed to kind of fuck her with a packer in a tiny, dirty yellow bathroom downstairs in the Burritoville on Second and Sixth. She managed to keep her skirt on the whole time and not to let him touch her junk. She certainly didn't come. Maybe he did.
80 what does this entail, exactly
82 > Turns out Piranha texted Maria last night, too. Fuck. Mostly her texts are just a bunch of cussing, because Piranha knows that Maria likes cuss words. She's a good friend. But last night she was like, <u>Dude</u>, where are you? Maria texts back: Sorry <u>dude</u>. Hang out soon?
84 interesting choice of address
86 > Maria used to have a pretty strong body, back when she was an energetic little college kid who looked like a dude and <u>journaled obsessively about gender in top secret notebooks all day every day</u>.
88 !!! [I did this, too.]
90 > She wakes up around four thirty and feels rested. Do other people feel like this all the time? It's fucked up. Her head feels all clear and she thinks for a second about pouring herself a glass of breakfast wine, but then she thinks, no this is perfect! I have four hours until I have to be at work, which means I can shave, put on makeup, then go to Kellogg's and <u>write for two and a half hours</u>. As the sun is coming up, no less.
92 <a href="/images/nevada_annotation-moleskine-ethic.jpg"><img src="/images/nevada_annotation-moleskine-ethic.jpg" width="240" style="float: right; margin: 0.8pc;"></a>
94 maybe I shouldn't doubt her work ethic
96 > She has another sip and opens her notebook, <u>one of those fancy Moleskine fuckers</u> Hemingway used to write in even though Hemingway and his patriarchal, strong silent type can suck a dick.
100 > She doesn't actually write or diagram or make a list or anything. She doodles.
102 I take back what I said about work ethic
104 > Maria was <u>this trans girl whose friends were all straight dudes</u> she'd met when she'd been telling everyone [she was a] straight dude too
106 [Underlined without comment.]
108 > In one of <u>Michelle Tea's</u> books (maybe The Chelsea Whistle?) she writes this thing about how coffee is the greatest thing in the world, it makes your eyes bug out, it makes you want to write and produce and create and it's like speed except, something something, who can remember exact quotes. Maria's like, I'll get it tattooed on my forearm so I can remember it.
110 who has a blurb on the back cover of this book—<u>quid pro quo</u>?
112 > She buys a small coffee and gives the girl her driver's license to get a computer. It's weird but <u>nobody has ever once given Maria</u> shit for the gender on her license, not in the <u>five years</u> or whatever that she's been presenting F but still an M in the eyes of the law.
114 that is surprising—is this detail autobiographical?
116 > No big deal but Maria is kind of popular and famous on the Internet, but so if everybody, so it's not very interesting.
120 > She doesn't post there as much as she used to but she still has that blog. People read it. Kids who are figuring out that they're trans look up to her. It's kind of nice although since there are so few decent resources for trans women that aren't for rich trans women or boring trans women, sometimes being the big sister is exhausting.
122 it's even worse for gender-dysphoric males who don't buy the "trans" framing
124 > Her name is Julia Serano and like most figureheads, she's very smart and sweet and right-on and <u>almost entirely unproblematic</u>, but her acolytes totally get obnoxious, taking her writings as doctrine.
128 > I know, Maria says. I just ... I've been thinking about trans stuff, like, all the time, and I don't feel like I can talk to anybody about it, because <u>I totally fucking hate everybody else who's trans</u>, and I don't want to deal with it.
132 > But she's on the couch, in her work clothes, with a bottle of organic red wine because she knows that <u>estradiol and non-</u><span class="extra-underline">organic</span><u> red wine don't mix</u>
136 > Maria reads so much that <u>she assumes that one day she'll have an idea and put together a Great Anti-American Novel or two</u>
138 unfortunately, it doesn't work like that ("assume a novel")
140 > <u>Rain rules</u>. She's all ebullient, and weirdly <u>can't wait for her lunch break so she can write in her journal again</u>.
142 I remember those days
144 > On top of which, <u>you dated what, three, maybe four girls before you transitioned?</u>
148 > On top of which, sex has always been super problematic for you. Even before you knew you were trans, it stressed you the fuck out. You thought you were into it, you definitely liked the orgasms. It's not like you had any reason you knew about to be mad at your junk, but jacking off was always way easier and less stressful than actually getting and maintaining an erection when somebody else was there.
152 > She gets a three-dollar drip coffee and gives the barista her license. She doesn't look at it, but she's <u>got dyke hair so she probably wouldn't care if she saw the M</u>.
154 TERFs are a minority of dykes
156 > She's been trying to get into it but she can't focus. It's a <u>story about a girl in New York</u> who's a knight, and she's friends with a dog, or something. <u>It's weird. She feels like you could just flip to a page and start reading. There's no plot.</u>
158 yeah, <u>those</u> books, right
160 [Steph is reminiscing about her relationship with Maria.]
162 > But it turns out that <u>using your partner basically as a sex toy to get yourself off</u>—suspending disbelief and convincing yourself that she's hot for you, that she's into it—is even lonelier than never getting off.
164 <u>usually</u> it's the trans woman in the relationship doing this—author projection??
166 > <u>Who knows what Maria is hot for, what kind of kinks she has</u>. <u>Maria herself probably doesn't know</u>.
170 > No matter how clear Steph has been about <u>the fact that no kink could possibly be too shameful to admit</u>, even something horrifying you'd never actually want to do in real life, Maria won't fess up to anything.
172 well, I can think of <u>one</u> ...
174 > One time Steph observed that Maria tends not to be very performy, and <u>when she is performy, it's almost always for herself</u>, not for anyone else.
176 ★ ♡ [[I'm like this](/2017/Dec/a-common-misunderstanding-or-the-spirit-of-the-staircase-24-january-2009/#narrative-optimization), too.]
178 [A description of James H.'s girlfriend, Nicole.]
180 > When she was fourteen or fifteen she bought a copy of Bitch magazine at Thanks Books at the base of the mountain on the east side and it was all downhill: classic feminist awakening stuff. Dots started connecting. The righteous fury about having to wear a dress to chruch when she was little and not being allowed to climb trees with the boys came back with the fury of a thousand suns. Turned out she was right to be mad about the way every grown man in town looked at her starting when she was twelve.
182 > She was the sixteen-year-old talking about Andrea Dworkin at the lunch table. Suddenly it made sense to fantasize about making out with Jason Sanger, the floppy-haired second-string kicker on the football team, and then knocking him over instead of marrying him. Basically she could see through misogynist rape culture and didn't want anything to do with it. She tried to be a lesbian, but it didn't work. She would try to think about Kathleen Hanna or Princess Leia or Scarlett Johanson when she jacked off, but no luck. At the last second they'd turn into Jason Sanger and his arms, his legs, his smirk and his tiny little butt.
184 a novel about Nicole would be better than this one, but Imogen Binnie couldn't write it
186 > It was a major dilemma until one day, at the lunch table, humorless feminist nonfiction tome on the table in front of her, she noticed James for the first time. Like, noticed noticed. <u>Hair to his shoulders</u>, probably too skinny, almost pretty but carrying himself like a boy, sitting at a table with Mark Richardson, probably talking about weed.
190 [Part 2, Chapter 5 describes James's autogynephilia.]
192 this chapter is <u>so real</u>
194 > <u>It's not like James is proud</u> of the pron that he looks at, but what are you supposed to do? Will yourself not to be a pervert? He's tried. He's still trying. He tries most nights.
198 > One blog is devoted entirely to quote unquote Scientific Transformations, so like, it will be a picture of a pretty girl in a space station with a caption that reads, Professor MacMillan stepped out of the body regenerator and his assistant smirked at the error. Or whatever. Like the premise is always nanorobots, or body switching machines, or like, who even knows? Gender-change rayguns. There are just all these pictures of women with captions explaining that they used to be men. <u>It's stupid that these are supposed to be, like, scientific</u>, because obviously science that can turn you into Pamela Anderson isn't science anyone is working on. There are archives of these things that go way back into the history of the internet but that shit is not science, it is fucking magic.
202 > If you're a straight guy who's into the idea of being turned into a girl there's not a lot of girls who are interested in being involved in that, probably.
206 > Lots of other fetishes or whatever, like, you can frame them as cool. People can look cool getting tied up and whipped. People can look cool pissing on each other, even. Imagine if Nine Inch Nails put that in a video. You could make that cool. But wanting to be a girl? Not even like, I have known my whole life, man trapped in the body of a woman, whatever. Anyone can tell you that James is not a woman. James knows who Jennifer Finney Boylan is, and <u>he is no Jennifer Finney Boylan</u>. He's just some fuckin dude who wishes he was allowed to wear dresses.
208 Jenny Boylan who married a woman & transitioned at 42? You might have more in common with her than you think!
210 > This is how James knows he's an autogynephiliac instead of a transvestite. Cross-dressing seems exciting in theory but in practice it is the saddest and most disappointing thing in the world.
214 > That should have been the end of his career as a transvestite, but the next night Nicole was doing something else, who knows what, so he didn't jack off all day and then he tried the dress on again at like eleven o'clock and managed to come that time, but it felt even worse than jacking off while reading stupid Internet caption porn. Like, he came, but there was barely even an orgasm, and there was no euphoria, and then he was just like, What the hell. Am I not a transvestite? Do I not like dresses? Do I have <u>a fetish that you cant' even do in real life</u>, like being turned on by being eaten by slutty giants?
216 [Underlined without comment.]
218 > As soon as Maria Griffiths sees James Hanson in the Star City, Nevada Wal-Mart she's like, That kid is trans and <u>he</u> doesn't even know it yet.
222 > Because if he's being totally honest with himself, on some level James has already figured out that this girl is trans and while he hasn't processed what that means yet he is having this desperate magnetic attraction to her. Like not even sexual. Just like, I want to be your Facebook friend or something. I need to grab you, to have you in my life. Whatever.
230 the next time someone tell you AGP is rare
232 And ask them, "Have you read _Nevada_?"
235 https://www.dailydot.com/irl/nevada-imogen-binnie-transgender/
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