💾 Archived View for anjune.lol › gmi › themen.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 15:55:58. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

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monolalia → Others’ Worlds → I don’t know if I want to read “The Men” by Sandra Newman

Everyone with a Y chromosome abruptly vanishes from earth; they then appear in an internet video series called “The Men”, lurching along in a zombiefied state in a sort of Upside Down garbage dump version of reality. Life on earth improves as teh mens are gone, even if their particular loved ones miss them and a lot of things crash and fall from the sky and blow up and shut down all at once. The book laments at a few points that trans women were innocently dysraptured along with the menfolk despite not really being guilty of the crime of maleness but by and large isn’t about that. As for trans men (i.e., men without the nasty bits, *enlightened* men, men “lite”?) they’ve been spared. The supernatural event did not distinguish by anything other than chromosomes.

These are two sensitivity complaints among many that have been made: Life on earth gets better with trans women removed for chromosomal guilt *too*? That’s transmisogynist! Your book title identifies XY chromosomes with maleness? That’s transphobic! — Uh, okay? I guess I don’t fully get how you can write an entire lengthy blog post criticising the book for its handling of gender and sexual/romantic minorities without noticing that the one thing you *don’t* seem to take moral issue with is that a couple billion men and boys and foetuses going to hell equals heaven on earth — just that trans women aren’t spared. If you want to label it mis-anything, isn’t that really biological essentialist misandry? We were *not* condemned to the Demon World for being trans, or women, or feminine, or for passing (being deceivers), or for not passing (being pathetic)…

I dunno, stuff’s weird, I don’t much argue anymore, I’m generally told I’m wrong when I do, and I don’t feel like I belong in any of my own demographics… so I’ll just put this here now. I guess I kind of want to read the book now even if it doesn’t seem to be very good. Just to see what’s up wit dat. I suspect also identify XY chromosomes with maleness; that’s why I wish I didn’t have them…

And then, from a Goodreads review: “The only thing this book will offer you is the idea that every woman is inherently evil and only pretends to be a good person since they desire to please men. This ideology is woven into the very fabric of the book, and is blatantly palpable in many circumstances. Women are rapists in this book, they are monsters beyond measure. There was not a single scene in this book where I felt that I agreed with the protagonist or anyone else for that matter.” So now I’m completely confused.