I want to start a thread on Danny and Grace Lavery but I’m reeeeallly concerned about transphobia. So I’m going to start it and monitor it carefully. If it disappears it’s due to assholes.
So. They’re bonkers, no?
So Daniel and Jules are smart, funny people, and they share some very interesting insights on the way trans people, especially trans masculine people, talk about testosterone, the myths surrounding it, and the subtle way trans men/mascs perpetuate fearmongering about what testosterone is and how it goes to work on the body: https://www.thechatner.com/p/jules-gill-peterson-reunites-with And part 2 in conversation with an HRT provider: https://www.thechatner.com/p/my-changes-are-they-reversible-yet
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>JULES: so, tell me, is TESTOSTERONE evil man juice that one must microcode?
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>*microdose. don't know what it would mean to code it.
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>DANIEL: that's what people mean when they say "learn to code"
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>JULES: no one tell Abigail Shrier that "girls learn to code" is actually code for transitioning!
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>DANIEL: I don't believe it is such a juice, no. I had certainly heard lots of questioning/transmasculine people talk about wanting to try HRT as part of a trial run, or take a 'lower' dose (the 'lower than what' part always remained vague, if I were to guess I would imagine most of them had a sense of 'whatever dose you all give the 'regular' trans guys just cut into halves or quarters and I'll take one of those,' but that's just my guess)
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>but one of the first times I really heard ‘microdose’ to refer to such an approach was last November, when Alyza Enriquez published A Beginner's Guide to Microdosing Testosterone During Your Transition. I really appreciate their description of figuring out an HRT schedule that suited their needs without much guidance; that's meaningful and important. But I found that title added to that vagueness, rather than introduced clarity! I don’t think this term serves us well.
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>“I began taking a low dose of hormones to achieve subtle masculinizing effects, a process that I call microdosing testosterone (or “T”).” But lower than what? Subtle as compared to what? And why the use of a term with a specific definition (drug doses low enough to be termed 'sub-therapeutic,' generally for the purposes of studying cellular reactions) to refer to something so subjective?
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Hi, I'm reading the comments from a Slate advice column from about 2 weeks ago and a commenter said "Daniel needed to be fired after the landlord podcast." I assume they mean "Big Mood, Little Mood" but does anyone know what episode or podcast the commenter means? Thanks?
This pod came up in my suggestions awhile ago and I saw that Grace Lavery was on this week and gave it a listen. They talked about Jesse of course and while she didn't try to make any amends towards him, overall she came across as reasonable even when I didn't agree with her conclusions. Kinda cements my suspicion that a lot of twitter drama is for show.
I thought this discussion between Danny Lavery and Jules Gill-Peterson was really terrific, especially the points below in response to a certain way that I've see many talk about "microdosing" or "low-dosing" HRT. I've felt very similar to Danny and Jules on this matter, insofar as while I think it is incredibly important that each of us have as much autonomy as possible in deciding how we wish to present and feel in our bodies, there is also SO. MUCH. weird binary/sexist stuff in the bigger discourse of 21st-century rich-nation societies around T.
Many end up viewing it as some kind of toxic chemical, whereas estrogen is apparently...totally neutral (as Danny and Jules put it, it's just the same old "men are tough/strong/remarkable whereas women aren't", in a way). And a lot of this simultaneous pedestaling and denigrating of T *is* very anti-trans (think of Abigail Shrier's writing) against transmasc people. Because we too exist in this society alongside the Shriers and the more humdrum everyday fantasies about endocrinology, we too feel on some level afraid of T even when we long for the changes it is likely to bring us.
DL:
>I had certainly heard lots of questioning/transmasculine people talk about wanting to try HRT as part of a trial run, or take a 'lower' dose (the 'lower than what' part always remained vague, if I were to guess I would imagine most of them had a sense of 'whatever dose you all give the 'regular' trans guys just cut into halves or quarters and I'll take one of those,' but that's just my guess) [...]
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>“I began taking a low dose of hormones to achieve subtle masculinizing effects, a process that I call microdosing testosterone (or “T”).” But lower than what? Subtle as compared to what? And why the use of a term with a specific definition (drug doses low enough to be termed 'sub-therapeutic,' generally for the purposes of studying cellular reactions) to refer to something so subjective?
J G-P:
>I think the original problem here is generated by medicine: as the anti-Black and misogynoir [bullshit with the olympics](https://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJwlkM2OhSAMhZ_msrsGUH5csJjNvIZBqF4iogEc49tPvSbktJS2h3zOVpi3fJl9K5XcMtRrB5PgLBFqhUyOAnkI3jCpGec98abzTAtNQhmm
... keep reading on reddit ➡
Pure speculation here, but wondering if they are not as close as they were? I’m not an Insta person, but when I check in, it seems like no interaction lately? It’s harder to tell now that Nicole is off Twitter, but it really seems like an absence of performative friendship, when there used to be a ton of performative (also real, no denying it) friendship.
I wonder if the third in the Laverys’ marriage didn’t sit well? I don’t think it is the money she lent them. Nicole clearly does not care about money and probably would not have lent it to them expecting to get it back.
So I was listening to the episode about the Liz Bruneig drama, during which Katie mentions that the 1A NPR podcast did a episode on the substack “controversy”. I was curious how main stream media was covering it so I gave it a listen. Towards the end of the episode a trans man (who coincidentally is Lavery’s husband) briefly mentions Jesse before tearing in to Graham Lineham, and how he should be kicked off the platform.
I’m unfamiliar with Lineham and was curious if he truly was a bullying transphobe or was he simply being smeared by trans activists. After looking him up I see a substack article from someone I was unfamiliar with, Lavery, but decide I’d give it a shot.
During the introduction of the article, Lavery spends three paragraphs attacking Jesse. For each accusations she provides a source in the form of a hyperlink, that leads to either a tweet or an article that he’s written as “evidence”.
While reading I checked each source, ( taking after the footnote checking master himself, Norm Finkelstein) and to my great shock every claim turned out to be completely false or taken out of context.
None of the sources include anything remotely transphobic or could have the possibility of being misunderstood. Either Lavery was lying through her teeth and not expecting readers to fact check her, or she lifted the sources from a tweet and was to lazy to actually check any of them.
There is edit in the article where she mentions being emailed by Jesse about her piece and calling out the inaccuracies, but of course she smugly waves it off.
Truly one of the most fraudulent pieces of writing I’ve ever read. It’s worth checking, it’s wild to see a piece of journalism this bad.
To her credit though, she said she didn’t believe the rumors about him being a sex pest.
Here’s a link:
https://grace.substack.com/p/graham-linehan-should-be-kicked-off
