a prison, a body (nsfw)

[Mina]

But lets put this straight, being any kind of sex worker, including fin domming, is risky, grueling, emotionally crushing and often physically damaging work that takes a great deal of skill and is almost never properly compensated. It is really fucking hard.

Click to shrink...

Is it weird this immediately made me think of Simone Weil? Because in conjunction with my post and the story it immediately made me think of Simone Weil. If there's a dream of proletariat splendor, there has to be a waking side. The degradation, the humiliation (and not of the fun sort), your mind and energy hollowed out and used up by the grind of it all.

Article:

Conceivably a plant or factory could fill the soul through a powerful awareness of collective— one might well say, unanimous—life. All noises have their meaning, they are all rhythmic, they fuse into a kind of giant respiration of the working collectivity in which it is exhilirating to play one's part. And because the sense of solitude is not touched, participation becomes even more exhilirating...

...If factory life were really this, it would be only too beautiful. But such is naturally, not the case. The joys here described are the joys of free men. Those who people the factories do not feel them, except in rare and fleeting moments, for they are not free. They can experience them only when they forget they are not free; but they can rarely forget, for the vise of their servitude grips them through the senses, their bodies, the thousand and one little details that crowd the minutes of which their lives are constituted

Factory Work, Simone Weil

The sexual dynamics at play flip this notion of joy in freedom vs joy in servitude, but I don't think they're entirely necessary for that transformation. At the end of the day the work is there on both sides. Rowan laboring, Helen grinding, every drone and technician and person in Helen's work group giving up some sizeable, important piece of themselves to someone else for the sake of productivity. Rowan can find comfort in the hollowing, it gives her more room inside of herself. Other people would probably hate it before they became too inured to really care.

Article:

Thought is obliged to remain in constant readiness not only to follow the monotonous progress of movements indefinitely repeated, but to find within itself resources to cope with the unexpected.

Such an obligation is contradictory, impossible, and exhausting. Body may often be exhausted evenings upon leaving the factory, but mind is more so and invariably so. Whoever has experienced this exhaustion—and remembers it—may read it in the eyes of nearly all the workingmen filing out of a plant. How one would like, along with his time-card, to check in his soul upon entering the plant, and then check it out intact at quitting time! But the reverse takes place. One takes it into the plant where it undergoes its ordeal; evenings, drained by exhaustion, it can do nothing with its hours of leisure.

In someone whose inner life and mind are too busy, anxious, at war with oneself, etc, that total cessation can be bliss. I really get the kink side of things with Rowan, much of the gender conundrum and conflict, but what I can still really feel in my bones is the joy I'd sometimes get when I could pour myself into a mechanical, repetitive task at work and just smother my brain. That's not to say that I related to those task that way all the time, or even most of the time. Repetitive, attention consuming jobs can be absolute hell and I've lost so much time to the post shift collapse into a pile of dull, exhausted meat. But, sometimes you just let your muscles do what they've been trained to, your mind focused on the execution, and you know you're a good girl, making stuff for the man.

 

[The Sandman]

I think that as much as being transgender, Rowan's story is that of someone with near-crippling depression. At the very least, I can totally understand and empathize with the desire to just let someone else take care of things for you because mustering the will to do them yourself is a constant struggle and you're convinced that even if you get yourself to do something you'll probably just do it wrong. And just as much with the desire for someone else to take the choice away and force you to do those things until it's no longer such a struggle to motivate yourself to do them.

 

[RalphNumbers]

Gargulec, I wanted to thank you for writing a prison, a body. This hits really close to home for me. While it might push a number of my kink buttons, it definitely hits my dysphoria buttons, so it hasn't exactly been a pleasant read, but it seems like a worthwhile kind of unpleasantness.

I'm only a bit past the halfway point, as I'm having to read this in little dribs and drabs, but I wanted to share some thoughts. I can only assume things are going to get a little brighter as the story progresses; Rowan is going to find some form of peace, and Helen is going to get a clue. I'm honestly not sure how the story could progress otherwise.

I can sort of see what Rowan sees in Helen, with her dogged pursuit of a rationale she can hold on to, but damn that girl needs to broaden her horizons. She's attacking this whole situation with the obliviousness of someone certain they have nothing left to learn on a subject.


I have to say I find the body/mind division this seems to be positing a little odd; the line seems drawn in an strange place to me, with a sort of suppressed agency ascribed to the body that ought to be freed. Read with my preconception of that divide, that philosophy seems kind of horrifying from a trans perspective, or even an orientation perspective in Rowan's case. If the body rules, shouldn't the male bodied anal and oral stimulus favoring Rowan be operated as a gay man drone not a gay woman drone? But maybe their definition of the body/mind boundary is shifted far enough that gender identity and orientation are included on the body side? I wonder if that's the way most people conceive of that separation, and I'm the one with the odd definition in thinking of my mind as the state of a hundred billion node neural network marinated in various hormones rather than some sort of rational abstraction divorced from any meaty underpinnings?
...Or I suppose they may just not see gender and orientation as things drones need.

As an aside to the above, the only indication of Rowan being exclusively into women I've noticed is from Helen who is 1: lacking a clue and 2: the woman Rowan seems exclusively into, so given Rowan generally seeming fine with the prospect of being used by men as a drone I take that with a grain of salt. That said, Rowan actually seems surprisingly sanguine with a number of things regarding her experiences that would freak me right out (even as a lot of the aspects that appeal to her also appeal to me), so maybe she's just desperately counting on not having a choice making things easier.


One last note: I hope those who need them take the warnings at the beginning of the thread seriously. It seems like this particular story is being treated lightly for various reasons (every character means well, the protagonist is a well written trans woman, it's couched in feminist language, the author is queer and considered somewhat of a trusted expert by the board, etc). But keep in mind that that those are credentials not mitigations; from the perspective of someone to whom this kind of story could be hazardous they actually enhance the danger. What could wound more deeply than a well developed character you strongly identify with, in a state of intense emotional vulnerability, dealing with crushing illegitimacy and despair, as her friend/role-model/crush adds her own condemnation with an air of reluctant realism, all in the language of a movement that's laid claim to womanhood, as written by a trusted expert?

 

[Gargulec]

xix. helen. what it is

An image of a man clasped into polished, blue plates of futuristic armor, face obscured by a skull-print visor stood the screen, the empty space to his left filled by blocky text (in Futura Bold) spelling out Explanations and apologies.

"Hi, friends," the voice of Mircea Leon sounded from the speakers, and it was not what Helen had expected it to be.

She anticipated the sort of a high-pitched screech that she had heard from random clips of angry YouTube personalities raging against there being women on the internet. But Leon's diction was far from a pathetic whine: he spoke clearly and barely with an accent, his voice and somewhat throaty, almost like a young Tom Waits. She looked at his armored avatar, and wondered if it was why he did not show his face. He sounded so much better than he looked.

Immediately, she felt a dart of shame. It wasn't right to judge people like that, even if those people, like him, were a—

She glanced at the two columns of index cards, outlining the parallel lives of Leon and Rowan, and turned back to the screen.

"As you have probably noticed," the voice continued, the armored figure emoting in a rudimentary fashion to his words, "I have not uploaded a video in some months. I apologize for that. I will be explaining it shortly but the TL;DR is that I am discontinuing LurkingCritic."

The hope that she had swelled; she found herself leaning in slightly, as if to urge him on, to hear from his mouth what she had wanted to hear.

"Before I go into details, though," he said, the title of the video fading from the screen, "I want to thank you guys, especially those of you who reached out to see if I was OK. I'm sorry for not responding, but don't worry. I am doing well, I found a new job..."

"Pygmalion?" Helen murmured to herself, glancing at the date the video went live. She would have to check that against the chronology she had assembled later.

"...but also had a lot of other things happen in my life that made it impossible for me to focus on the channel. Which brings me to the question I am sure everyone here wants to know the answer to."

A new splash of text emerged, this time reading the end of the channel.

"It's with a heavy heart that I have to announce that this channel is now officially closed. This will be the last video that I upload to LurkingCritic; I have deactivated the Patreon as of some weeks ago. I will leave the LC Discord open, but I will not be using it anymore. Control over the channel will be handed over to Masaka61, who has been running the show for some time now anyway."

The faceless warrior looked almost hunched, as if dejected or regretful. The voice itself remained collected and steady, but there was weight to it, one of a farewell. It wasn't hard to tell that this was not easy for Leon to record.

"There are several reasons for why I am doing this," he said. "I will go over them shortly, but before that I want to stress that it has nothing to do with YouTube trying to push me out. I have not heard from them ever since the channel was reinstated, and despite rumours, there was no action taken by anyone to silence me. Honestly, I'd be flattered if some of the assholes I fought against tried to turf me out, but no."

Assholes. Helen frowned—was he referring to them? Feminists? Social justice activsts? Or maybe someone else?

"Also, to those of you speculating that I have been brainwashed by the liberals," the armored figure shrugged, "I guess you could kind of say that." There was a very dry chuckle. "It's no secret that I no longer hold to some of the views I have expressed on LurkingCritic, and though I do not regret saying most of the things I have said, I do wish I'd thought to phrase them differently. I will not go into the details, so don't pry."

She sighed. What did it even mean? She hated this phrasing—why couldn't he just recant, if he'd really changed his views?

"This is one of the reasons why I am done with the channel. Not the main one, however. No, that's…"

There was a crack in the perfect diction, one almost covered-up by good editing, but she caught enough of it to feel it.

"First of all," Leon continued with no audible trace of lost composure, "I just have too much work right now to run a channel at the side. Simple as that. As always, I value my privacy, so don't speculate on what it is. Suffice it to say: I am happy with it. And secondly..."

The faceless warrior avatar dropped his head.

"I just don't care so strongly about this stuff anymore," he sighed out. "Working on this channel carried me through some really rough patches and you have all been so very supportive, especially when I was getting censored for speaking my mind.."

Helen rolled her eyes at that. The hope she'd had—that the video would be some kind of confession, and admission of guilt, something that would allow her to exonerate Leon, was fading fast.

Then again, she caught herself thinking, why was she judging him?

"He was an awful person," she muttered under her breath without much conviction.

"...but," he spoke on, undeterred, "I just do not have it in me to be as engaged in who is ruining games and other media. It's…" his armored avatar spread his arms in a gesture of powerlessness, "I don't need to make this content to survive anymore and… I don't want to serve you phony shit. It's not that I don't care anymore, or, I don't know, am leaving behind geek stuff. I still love the things I loved, and dislike the things I hated. I guess I'm just less passionate than I used to be."

"You just grew up," Helen shrugged at the screen.

"I have some new hobbies now," he added, "and I've met a wonderful person who is helping me through a lot of the frustrations and anger that I used to express in my videos, so I don't need them as an outlet anymore. I'm sorry."

She hit pause. A 'wonderful person'? Who would be that? One of those grifters that hovered around him? Or maybe someone else? She paused the video and brought up the file with her notes, then found the chronology. Leon had uploaded the video a little over a year before the Galatea takeover of Pygmalion, and according to what she had managed to piece together, at that time he should have been surrounded only by people who hated him, and whom he hated in turn. It was only his incredible business sense that had saved him from being eaten by the sharks. No one she talked about him with mentioned anyone being particularly close to him—so who was that wonderful person?

A suspicion, a bit too crazy-seeming to voice it yet, began to form in the back of Helen's head. She returned to the video.

"Again, you were great! I don't know how to express just how grateful I am for your support. It's not something I want to ever forget and, and I hope you remember me fondly," he spoke, a warm note to his tone. "But this is it, guys. This is it, friends. This is goodbye. This is LurkingCritic signing off for the last time."

The avatar began to fade, only to snap back to full opacity after a moment.

"And to those horndogs among you," he laughed, the skull-plate of the armored warrior briefly twisting into a smile, "who are wondering about the future of YVG, bad news. I'm discontinuing that project too. I wanted to release the source code so that maybe someone else picks up on it, but for legal reasons, I shouldn't. I know you had high hopes for it so, once more, I apologize."

Helen had no idea what he was talking about. YVG? What the hell was that?

"And with that," the avatar started to disappear again, "I just want to say it again: thank you. But now, this is over. LurkingCritic is signing off, and you… you're gonna have to carry that weight."

A surprisingly decent jazz tune played over the credits, and Helen sat there, crouched on her chair, listening to it to the end. Good music choice couldn't, sadly, make up for failed expectations. She looked down, wordlessly berating herself for getting her hopes up. How much she had wanted this to be a confession, one so that she could look at the parallels without the gnawing sense of one contaminating the other. But it was only a testimony of a man with his work-life picking up, and delayed maturity catching up to him, who finally decided to end what was, probably, just an outgrowth of his teenage stupidity. It was for the better that he had learned some things, and grown up, but it did not cleanse her lingering worry, nor did it provide the answers she had been looking for.

She flicked through the rest of the channel—and found a long stream of videos about popular media, anime, video games, all with eye-catching and somewhat horrifying titles. A year before his closing remarks, he'd uploaded a video titled "GEARS OF WAR ARE GAY NOW?!" with the thumbnail consisting of two hilariously muscle-bound men in heavy armor kissing and the skull-faced avatar that Leon used facepalming in the background. There was more of that: outrange, annoyance, frustration, bad caricatures of women. She closed it after a moment, feeling like she had stuck her head into a sewer.

A different kind of frustration seeped into her. It felt like chasing a phantom. Yes, she'd figured out who Mircea Leon's alter-ego was. But what did it even tell her? That Rowan shared a lot of traits with the kind of people she would rant about for hours? It was uncomfortable to realize, but didn't really help Helen with figuring anything out. The more she dug into the history of Galatea and the people who made it, the more questions she ended up having, and the farther she strayed from what was really important. It was just tiring, but she had missed the point where it turned from an idle pursuit to satisfy morbid curiosity into an actual obsession that would not let her sleep until she reached the bottom of it all.

If there even was one to begin with.

She punched in the words "Mircea Leon YVG" into the search bar, then quickly reflected and changed it to "LurkingCritic YVG". At this point she didn't really have high hopes—it would probably just end up plunging her down another conspiracist rabbit hole. Then again, it was the only new lead she had.

The first search result took her to a thread on r/lewdgames, where underneath the banner composed of a row of ingenuine-faced cartoon ladies of questionable proportions, someone named "femboyhunter12" inquired about happened to the "YVG project" because it seemed cool to him, only to be answered with the link to Leon's farewell video.

Helen snorted in annoyance, but read on—and just below found someone else asking what this YVG thing even was. The response, provided by the user "love_of_cats", made her pause.

A pretty neat idea—some guy was working on an AI dominatrix. Had some really nice plans, and apparently some early results were better than expected? Sadly, the entire thing got nixed before it really got off the ground. The project's site is still on the 'net, if you want: yourvirtualgoddess.blog.

"Oh," Helen muttered, smiling nervously. Her suspicion started to rapidly mature into an idea that made just enough sense for her to consider it, despite how crazy it seemed.

With more than a bit of trepidation to keep her company, she clicked on the link, to be taken to a neatly designed blog home-page.

Against a deep, glossy black background, the word OBEY was printed as the header, in silver Futura Bold. Just below, finer print welcomed her to Your Virtual Goddess, Home of Next Generation D/s Technology.

She scrolled down to look at the updates—the last one over six years old, entitled: "Progress update: version 0.000012241 now out to Patreon supporters!"

Hi all, it read I have released the newest version of YVG to the patrons at the 15$+ level. It's still super basic, but I am starting to implement more features. This release focuses on protocol stuff—YVG should be able to tell if you are addressing her properly (there's a default protocol set, and you can customize it as you want) and assign some basic punishment when you fail. Masaka61 is working on some basic integration with his self-bondage software, and it's looking really cool, so check that out.

Apologies in advance: the next release may be a bit delayed, I'm starting another project as an aside and it may cut into my working time. Until then: have fun, and thanks for your support!

A changelog including gems such as "more genital customization code added" was written down right below. The Patreon link was dead, of course, as was the "self-bondage integration" hinted at. Helen sighed again, then hovered over to "about" tab.

YourVirtualGoddess is a project to create the first functional digital dominatrix, it proudly declared. Helen nodded very slowly, and read on, very quickly. Instead of using simple, pre-written dialogue she is meant to function as an actual dominant, with her own needs and fetishes that she will be inflicting on the user, and with the ability to learn and adjust through machine learning, developing into the perfect, unique personal dom, for both play and aftercare. The project is currently in early development. Planned features include multiple dominatrix personality types (sissy, humiliation, chastity, etc.), easy integration with teledildonics, VR module, deep customization, mobile app and more!

"Motherfucker," Helen mouthed.

***

At this hour, Cruel Sister was filled to the brim. Helen liked this place, its crowd of tipsy art students, their somewhat hippie-looking baristas, especially the one dreadlocked girl who would sometimes bring in her great, hoary dog to work, the battered decor, and the tendency of the people behind the bar to play Kimya Dawson at inappropriate moments. It was cozy, and gave her some courage when it came to confessing insanity to a close friend.

"Okay," Hank nodded, the expression on his face trapped somewhere between concern, confusion and amusement. He looked around the club, before facing Helen again. "So. Just so that I'm sure I'm getting you correctly here."

She groaned, then hid her hands in her face. She'd called him in a haze of excitement, not stopping to think twice, and as a result she was already regretting this entire idea. Of course she was going to get this sort of reaction.

"You have managed to figure out that this Mircea Leon guy," he said in this very calm, very pleasant tone that screamed what the fuck or we're really worried for you, Helen, "used to be an awful YouTuber who, on the side, was working on a digital dominatrix."

"Yeah," Helen grunted, reaching for her bottle of lemon-flavoured hipster cola. Times like these, she regretted not drinking actual booze. Maybe it could help.

"From this, you draw the conclusion that Galatea has access to a hyper-advanced artificial intelligence," he stated, oh so very carefully.

"Right."

Hank shook his head, sipped his beer, then smiled, cloyingly polite.

"Helen," he murmured softly, "you ask me to urgently meet so that you can explain to me that this discovery, that you couldn't even talk about over Messenger because…"

"What if it is watching me," she replied, feeling air leave her. She could hear herself, and she sounded ridiculous. "Hank, I kind of panicked, and…"

"I can see that, okay?" he interrupted. "This has been eating at you for a long time now and it seems to me that this is it. You've officially entered loon town, Helen."

She brought her bottle up to stop herself from snapping back. She didn't want to make a scene, not in front of all the people, not on a busy Sunday night in a place that she liked.

"Please don't treat me like a crazy person, okay?" she managed to say instead.

Hank's smile faded a bit.

"Helen, no," he replied; there was concern in his eyes. "This is crazy. You're going full conspiracy nut, and it's honestly disconcerting to see."

"Look," she put the bottle down; she still refused to look at him. "This makes so much sense. Explains so much."

"Like what?"

"Like how Galatea is, you know, Galatea!" she burst. "How they have their technology, their wealth, all of this science-fiction shit no one can't quite explain! Leon was working on related stuff, Pygmalion was developing machine learning and artificial intelligence, what if they actually figured that out, created this AI and…"

She paused. It felt like it was making sense when she was turning it around in her thoughts; in her mind, the connections were there, links as obvious as they could get. But as she listened to herself speaking it out loud, the feeling that she got was of complete and utter weirdness. Her face tensed, the frustrations of the day seizing her up. Was it how it felt to be perceived as insane? The smile that Hank was looking her up and down with made her want to just slap him in the face.

"You are trying really hard," he sighed, "to draw a line from some porn game made by the guy who was a part of Pygmalion, his potential kinks, to the weirdness surrounding the Galatea corporation. And I don't exactly understand why it is so important to you that there must be a connection there."

Helen opened her mouth to say: because Leon and Rowan were so similar, but reconsidered before letting even a single word out. Did she really want to let Hank know that her friend was so close in life history and desires to an incel-adjacent programmer? She remembered the last time he'd voiced his opinions about her.

Her insides were knotting on each other. This was insane. Her idea was insane, his rebuttal was insane, this did not make any sense, or made too much of it.

"If you really want to learn what the fuck is going on with them," Hank said, "just release the footage. Spark outrage. Cause an investigation. It will get you something. You don't have to do this solo sleuth thing, and franky, no offense, you're not cut out for it."

She didn't even want to argue with that. Mostly, she didn't even want to be here anymore.

"You're coming up with bizarre ideas when the actual solution is right there," he pressed.

"Yeah," she energetically nodded after a moment, then finished the rest of her fizzy drink in one go. "I'll think about it."

She stood up abruptly, throwing her jacket over her shoulders. Hank gave her a surprised stare.

"Going home already?" he asked, again concerned. "I thought that…"

"I need to think, okay?" she mumbled. "Sorry for dragging you here."

Hank shrugged, then turned to his beer. She felt bad for leaving him, but would feel worse for staying.

***

It was raining outside, warm, springlike. A few lone people smoked their cigarettes right next to the door, before hurrying back to the loud inside; Helen stared at the water curtain ahead, and thought about going back in, or calling a cab, but instead she just zipped her jacket up to the neck, pulled the hood on deeper and put in something deafeningly loud in her ears, to muffle out worry and help her think.

Her apartment wasn't so far away that she couldn't get there on foot, and there was a weird sort of beauty to the city as seen from behind the downpour. It was a blur of light and sound, cutting through the wall of noise in her headphones as a distant rustle. Within moments, she was soaked to the bone, and afterwards, the rain ceased to register. The streets were all but empty, hers. It helped, it calmed.

Maybe Hank was right, and it was just another example of her long-awaited, Galatea-caused descent into madness. Maybe her entire idea was crazy. But then again, it worked. It explained things. So what that it seemed insane? Everything that she had learned of the corporation that took Rowan indicated something off, something mysterious and weird. The absent CEO, the technological marvels, the inexplicable fortune. She wasn't surprised that some people claimed it was aliens; she'd arrived at a conclusion that wasn't that far from it.

So, what was there to stop her from assuming that Mircea Leon had created his virtual goddess, and given himself to her in earnest. And it, then, for some reason, created Galatea?

She wiped the water from her brow. Maybe she needed the rain just to keep her head cool. Because once she put the thought that way, it stopped making sense. Why would an AI do everything that Galatea did? Was it just how Leon coded it? Wasn't it just her dismissing every single hurdle to her neat, little, absurd theory?

The shrill sound of a car horn made her jump up, and stumble back into an ankle-deep puddle pooling by the curbside. Her line of thoughts snapped. Some asshole was apparently taking offense to her using a crossing. Fucker! She was glad that through the sheets of water, she couldn't see his dickish face.

She tried to catch the thread again. There were so many hints out there that could support her theory. That "wonderful person" who maybe talked Leon out of being a YouTube misogynist, for example. To assume that they were the AI would make sense, in this weird, conspiracy way, where everything had to fit in one overarching plot. Helen remembered reading somewhere that conspiracy theories had a knack for making the world more sensible, more ordered. That they would take all that mass of weirdness, absurdity and frustration that was life and arrange into something that at least seemed to make sense, once you bought into the bizarre parameters. Was she doing just that?

If she was correct, that would explain this "Aphrodite", her perfect five-minute replies, her oblique references to being the person ruling Galatea, or perhaps being Galatea in general. But had she not sent her a hand-written note? That anyone else could have written for her? "Aphrodite", a name for a goddess. Your virtual goddess.

This was all so neat. All too neat.

She entered her apartment dripping, small puddles of water splashing around inside her boots. She stripped, threw everything into the washer and took a long, warm shower. It did not help her confusing thoughts.

Why was she even so obsessed about it? How would knowing this help her understand Rowan better? If anything, it made the entire matter even murkier, even more suspicious, even weirder. Maybe she should just settle for Rabbit's quip about it being hot?

But that would not do. It was a bit too late to avoid getting herself engaged in this entire mess.

She dug for fresh clothes, put on the kettle, went around all the little tasks of living, her mind racing itself in circles.

What could she do to understand people? Talk with them, obviously. But it was not like she could talk with Rowan. It was not like she could talk with Leon. All that she had left were traces, notes, old videos, collections of porn, all to cobble together into a great theory that refused to come. The only person involved that she had any contact with was Aphrodite, if she was a person at all, and not a front for a computer. But she could not talk with her, either.

Unless…

It was yet another stupid idea, she was convinced, but that hadn't stopped her lately. A cup of steaming tea in one hand, she popped open the laptop, opened her email, skimmed past dozens of unread status updates about Rowan and composed a new message, addressed directly to Aphrodite.

Would it be possible to arrange a meeting in person? I can travel.

I think I know who you are.

Sincerely,
Helen Hu

Briefly, she considered deleting the second line, then, with a deep exhale, hit send. The five minutes that followed seemed to stretch into infinity. She kept imagining all the rejections that she could receive, the ones that would confirm the suspicion that Aphrodite was not a person to talk to, that there would be no meeting. She wanted her bluff called.

Then, the fifth minute passed, and the response arrived at her mailbox, like clockwork.

Dear Miss Hu,

Do you now?

Attached to the email was a ticket for a middle of the summer, week-long stay in a Galatean resort called Body/Dance/Monument, for Helen and one accompanying person.

 

[pucflek]

So essentially, we talked about how Galatea might well be actually project of someone who wants to realize their fetishes on grand scale and simply does the shady government contracts to finance the more visible, real actual goal "fuck farms" face of the company (that is actually apparently losing money, so it quite possibly is like that). I simply did not expect the owner to be AI. Who would have thought SKYNET would wear leather and have a riding crop.

That or it could simply be the eidolon, which is also possible. Or maybe even the three all together. Gonna have to get more exposition, i am not good at guessing what is actually going to happen.

 

[Gargulec]

I have to say I find the body/mind division this seems to be positing a little odd; the line seems drawn in an strange place to me, with a sort of suppressed agency ascribed to the body that ought to be freed. Read with my preconception of that divide, that philosophy seems kind of horrifying from a trans perspective, or even an orientation perspective in Rowan's case. If the body rules, shouldn't the male bodied anal and oral stimulus favoring Rowan be operated as a gay man drone not a gay woman drone? But maybe their definition of the body/mind boundary is shifted far enough that gender identity and orientation are included on the body side? I wonder if that's the way most people conceive of that separation, and I'm the one with the odd definition in thinking of my mind as the state of a hundred billion node neural network marinated in various hormones rather than some sort of rational abstraction divorced from any meaty underpinnings?
...Or I suppose they may just not see gender and orientation as things drones need.

Click to shrink...

Thank you for this comment, it is a great observation!

To properly answer it I would have to write a small dissertation here, but sufficient to say that I am of the theoretical outlook that doesn't, necessarily, think that the body/mind division is all that useful, even from a trans perspective. One thing is that the "wrong body" narrative so often associated with experiences of transness is one that I believe has done quite a lot of harm (even as it has done quite a lot of good, too!), so I am not at all interested in trying to pain Rowan's subjectivity as "inherently" feminine. Her transness is not up to dispute, whether she is dysphoric or not, whether she comes across as feminine or not, whether she ever transitions, passes and so on. There is a quote from a feminist punk artist Carrie Brownstein which I find very applicable in situations like that:

Article:

The notion of "female" should be so sprawling and complex that it becomes divorced from gender itself. (…) Anything that isn't traditional for women apparently requires that we remind people what an anomaly it is, even when it becomes less and less of an anomaly.

Source: Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein

Even if Rowan's womanhood is nothing like womanhoods we recognise, it nonetheless remains a womanhood. But the other thing, however, is that it is very easy to say something like that in vacuum. In practice, our gendered sense of self is so heavily imbricated in normative ideas about what a woman (a lesbian, a feminist, a transwoman, etc.) should be like that it is honestly impossible to tell where "biological" pressures (dysphoria understood as a condition, Julia Serano's idea of "subconscious sex", etc.) end and "social" ones (cispatriarchal environment, heteronormativity, normative ideas of what the trans experience should be, etc.). A part of the tension that defines Rowan's experience as a trans woman is the fact that her own confused, personal, bodily experiences (which are never just from some "natural", detached body) are rendered through societal ideas and desires of womanhood. Those ideas and desires are at the same time absolutely necessary for her to be able to make sense out of her and given an account of her experiences, but they are also always limiting, providing a framework which does not encompass (cannot encompass) the entirety of her experience. And I hope that as the story progresses, this will become increasingly obvious as one of the important factors in how Rowan ended up desiring some of the things that Galatea has to offer.

 

[LuckyLadyLily]

Fun to see Helen finally picking up on the idea of AI, though I think she would do well to take it a bit more from an investigative standpoint. I can get why she is effectively grasping at straws here though, this is a very emotional matter for her, not a practical one. Of course, while this might lead her to a place that can help her understand Rowan it isn't really related to the core issue here for her, why would Rowan do what she did. One thing that bothers me a bit (in a good, tension driving story way), she is making lots of assumptions here that I would say are unfounded. Not plot holes to be clear, but things I can see her assuming based on how she is approaching the whole problem. For example, she thinks she can't talk to Rowan, but as far as we have seen she has never confirmed that. Aphrodite has been quite cooperative with her, and Helen has seen that Aphrodite has enough sway at the company to significantly interfere with Rowan's training/conditioning. It never occurs to her to ask if she can talk to Rowan directly, or at least send messages to her. That makes sense though, she is approaching the entire problem from the assumption that she is dealing with a hostile adversary. The idea that Aphrodite/Galatea might just cooperate with her requests is an idea that never really occurs to her.

Still looking forward to Helen's reaction to all the stuff Rowan was saying into the camera last time around. I hope she sees it, I think it would help her understand Rowan better than chasing the history of Galatea. Honestly the fact that she can't respond in real time might help her actually really listen to what Rowan is saying.

Interested to see where her visit to the resort goes, and who she brings if anyone. Rabbit seems like they could be an interesting choice. This is pure speculation, but it would be interesting if it was arranged for Helen to meet Rowan while she was there.

Very fun update, as always I am really enjoying this story. Thank you for writing!

 

[Subrosian_Smithy]

As an aside to the above, the only indication of Rowan being exclusively into women I've noticed is from Helen who is 1: lacking a clue and 2: the woman Rowan seems exclusively into, so given Rowan generally seeming fine with the prospect of being used by men as a drone I take that with a grain of salt. That said, Rowan actually seems surprisingly sanguine with a number of things regarding her experiences that would freak me right out (even as a lot of the aspects that appeal to her also appeal to me), so maybe she's just desperately counting on not having a choice making things easier.

Click to shrink...

I think that even if Rowan is solely into women, she definitely wouldn't be the first lesbian - trans or otherwise - to choose getting fucked by men over having to stake out her own desire and set her own boundaries in a world that tells her to do anything but. (To say nothing of the obvious gendered implications ascribed to orientation, which are obviously going to matter a whole lot to a trans girl this consumed by self-doubt and self-dissection.)

One last note: I hope those who need them take the warnings at the beginning of the thread seriously. It seems like this particular story is being treated lightly for various reasons (every character means well, the protagonist is a well written trans woman, it's couched in feminist language, the author is queer and considered somewhat of a trusted expert by the board, etc). But keep in mind that that those are credentials not mitigations; from the perspective of someone to whom this kind of story could be hazardous they actually enhance the danger. What could wound more deeply than a well developed character you strongly identify with, in a state of intense emotional vulnerability, dealing with crushing illegitimacy and despair, as her friend/role-model/crush adds her own condemnation with an air of reluctant realism, all in the language of a movement that's laid claim to womanhood, as written by a trusted expert?

Click to shrink...

Tenatively echoed, I guess? I never thought to say anything because I didn't think it would have been my place to comment even if I did particularly want to snipe another trans woman's personal project, but I did find myself disconcerted by the (perhaps unavoidable) degree to which this story has been a critical exploration of a transfemininity, and not just a critical exploration of an enslavement fantasy, as I initially (and perhaps naively) expected it would be.

Goes to show that the warnings about gender dysphoria and transphobia aren't just for show, I suppose.

 

[Gargulec]

Tenatively echoed, I guess? I never thought to say anything because I didn't think it would have been my place to comment even if I did particularly want to snipe another trans woman's personal project, but I did find myself disconcerted by the (perhaps unavoidable) degree to which this story has been a critical exploration of a transfemininity, and not just a critical exploration of an enslavement fantasy, as I initially (and perhaps naively) expected it would be.

Click to shrink...

For what it is worth, I did not expect it to pan out the way it did, either. I am not even being coy here - when I started writing it, I fully intended to write a bunch of machine sex minis and maybe some light droneification for personal amusement, but the project genuinely grew into something different, partially because of my continuing anxieties around the contested meanings of transfemininity, partially because of the stuff I've been reading on the side. In any case, when I am done with thing (and I will probably rewrite some bits from the early chapters then), I will also try to make sure that the content warnings are very clear about what this story contains, and the places it's coming from.

 

[Khona Moshr]

I will say I do agree with hank that on the surface Helen is being a bit conspiracy theorist, but knowing the genre I would say yes there is an AI and it has been watching Helen.

And

She hit pause. A 'wonderful person'? Who would be that? One of those grifters that hovered around him? Or maybe someone else? She paused the video and brought up the file with her notes, then found the chronology. Leon had uploaded the video a little over a year before the Galatea takeover of Pygmalion, and according to what she had managed to piece together, at that time he should have been surrounded only by people who hated him, and whom he hated in turn. It was only his incredible business sense that had saved him from being eaten by the sharks. No one she talked about him with mentioned anyone being particularly close to him—so who was that wonderful person?

Click to shrink...

Well Helen, it's very possible that Leon kept anyone he cared for away from his business life since he hated the people he was working with.

Also the Rowan chapter was very nice, loved how she began to talk to the cameras in hopes to tell Helen how she felt.

So overall Rowan is the most likable person so far, and I'm definitely looking forward to how she develops and if she will find her place in life.

 

[Elero]

I mean...the AI thing has been fairly obvious for quite a few updates by now, hasn't it? To the point this update felt a bit boring in that it was just Helen figuring out what the audience already knew.

Like, I don't want to go 'It was that obvious, how did you all not figure it out before?!?' but uh...who actually got caught out of the left field by the AI thing?

 

[Khona Moshr]

I mean...the AI thing has been fairly obvious for quite a few updates by now, hasn't it? To the point this update felt a bit boring in that it was just Helen figuring out what the audience already knew.

Like, I don't want to go 'It was that obvious, how did you all not figure it out before?!?' but uh...who actually got caught out of the left field by the AI thing?

Click to shrink...

I have been saying AI since Aphrodite was introduced but from how she's trying to tell Hank she does sound like a crazed conspiracy theorist but its fun to see how her theories develop.

 

[LuckyLadyLily]

I have been saying AI since Aphrodite was introduced but from how she's trying to tell Hank she does sound like a crazed conspiracy theorist but its fun to see how her theories develop.

Click to shrink...

I think the way she is approching it is very conspiracy theorist, even if it is the right answer in the end. The thing about it is she is treating it as a conspiracy, when it could just be a powerful AI doing it's thing. Powerful people doing powerful things do not have to be tied to some major conspiratorial end.

 

[Subrosian_Smithy]

I think the way she is approching it is very conspiracy theorist, even if it is the right answer in the end. The thing about it is she is treating it as a conspiracy, when it could just be a powerful AI doing it's thing. Powerful people doing powerful things do not have to be tied to some major conspiratorial end.

Click to shrink...

"No, no, it's not literally a secret conspiracy - I mean, I'm a dominatrix AI, of course my idea of moving up in life is making the opportunity to dominate more people. It's just that the best screening method I have for locating and profiling suitable partners is to talk about psychosexual philosophy, and eventually I realized it was just easier to lean into the 'technospiritual mystery cult' vibe-"

 

[LuckyLadyLily]

"No, no, it's not literally a secret conspiracy - I mean, I'm a dominatrix AI, of course my idea of moving up in life is making the opportunity to dominate more people. It's just that the best screening method I have for locating and profiling suitable partners is to talk about psychosexual philosophy, and eventually I realized it was just easier to lean into the 'technospiritual mystery cult' vibe-"

Click to shrink...

I mean if I was an AI this is totally what I would do. Become super rich by playing the stock market or something with my superior AI processing, develop awesome bdsm technology, and find partners to play with

Sounds like the dream life to me.

 

[Mina]

I mean...the AI thing has been fairly obvious for quite a few updates by now, hasn't it? To the point this update felt a bit boring in that it was just Helen figuring out what the audience already knew.

Click to shrink...

I honestly don't mind since I do not like the sort of drawing room reveal to mysteries and like having the pieces there in the background for myself. That way when the characters catch up there's the interest of the various reactions. Never in a million years did I expect Helen would go full tinfoil hat at Hank and ngl I love it.

 

[Shadell]

Just caught up, what an excellent read even if a lot of Rowan's anxieties hit uncomfortably close to home.

 

[RalphNumbers]

Thank you for this comment, it is a great observation!

To properly answer it I would have to write a small dissertation here, but sufficient to say that I am of the theoretical outlook that doesn't, necessarily, think that the body/mind division is all that useful, even from a trans perspective. One thing is that the "wrong body" narrative so often associated with experiences of transness is one that I believe has done quite a lot of harm (even as it has done quite a lot of good, too!), so I am not at all interested in trying to pain Rowan's subjectivity as "inherently" feminine. Her transness is not up to dispute, whether she is dysphoric or not, whether she comes across as feminine or not, whether she ever transitions, passes and so on. There is a quote from a feminist punk artist Carrie Brownstein which I find very applicable in situations like that:

Article:

The notion of "female" should be so sprawling and complex that it becomes divorced from gender itself. (…) Anything that isn't traditional for women apparently requires that we remind people what an anomaly it is, even when it becomes less and less of an anomaly.

Source: Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein

Even if Rowan's womanhood is nothing like womanhoods we recognise, it nonetheless remains a womanhood. But the other thing, however, is that it is very easy to say something like that in vacuum. In practice, our gendered sense of self is so heavily imbricated in normative ideas about what a woman (a lesbian, a feminist, a transwoman, etc.) should be like that it is honestly impossible to tell where "biological" pressures (dysphoria understood as a condition, Julia Serano's idea of "subconscious sex", etc.) end and "social" ones (cispatriarchal environment, heteronormativity, normative ideas of what the trans experience should be, etc.). A part of the tension that defines Rowan's experience as a trans woman is the fact that her own confused, personal, bodily experiences (which are never just from some "natural", detached body) are rendered through societal ideas and desires of womanhood. Those ideas and desires are at the same time absolutely necessary for her to be able to make sense out of her and given an account of her experiences, but they are also always limiting, providing a framework which does not encompass (cannot encompass) the entirety of her experience. And I hope that as the story progresses, this will become increasingly obvious as one of the important factors in how Rowan ended up desiring some of the things that Galatea has to offer.

Click to shrink...

Interesting... I was really asking more to understand the terms body and prison as used by Galatea and the title, rather than seeking reassurance of Rowan's transness or womanhood. It seems like the distinction I was looking for to make sense of the mind/body divide as presented here may be the forcing function of the characteristic rather than it's current locus or effects, and yes I agree the path between those is not something easily untangled. I'm certainly not going to argue with the premise that a womanhood "nothing like womanhoods we recognise ... nonetheless remains a womanhood"; I recall explaining that to my psychologist when I was a kid (and getting a bit snippy when she presumed someone must have spoon fed me something that seemed so unavoidably obvious).


A lot of feminist discourse comes across to me that way, like someone explaining water to a fish; but then there's a shockingly sharp divide and I find myself caught in a morass of misunderstandings, language prioritizing disruption over communication, and motivated reasoning. I started typing up a very different reply, referencing Whipping Girl and other feminist books we might have in common, but then I got to the post defending the second wave radfems, and for now I'm less in the mood to engage in those terms. It's entirely possible that a lot of what I hear that upsets me has it's roots in terminology; people without knowledge or interest in the academic origins of a term using it to try to say something positive, but coming across as endorsing the assumptions under which it was coined. I know there's always a sense of urgency, perceived unity, and expediency pushing against applying the sort of criticism feminists pride themselves on against their own underpinnings, and that people who feel their theories absolutely necessary to be able to make sense out of their experiences are hesitant to upset that point of stability in their lives, but without a bit of eventual housecleaning I'm going to continue to have trouble feeling comfortable in many feminist spaces and that seems a shame.


On a lighter and kinkier note: speaking of feminist language oriented towards disrupting and cultivating interest rather than merely conveying ideas...
I wonder if that's part of why Rowan likes obscurantist academic prose: where sweet innocent grammar and vocabulary are stripped of their stuffy old meanings, twisted and bound into uncomfortable clauses, and sunken deep into the pliant minds of readers like fierce koans grabbing their Focus.

 

[Gargulec]

Interesting... I was really asking more to understand the terms body and prison as used by Galatea and the title, rather than seeking reassurance of Rowan's transness or womanhood. It seems like the distinction I was looking for to make sense of the mind/body divide as presented here may be the forcing function of the characteristic rather than it's current locus or effects, and yes I agree the path between those is not something easily untangled. I'm certainly not going to argue with the premise that a womanhood "nothing like womanhoods we recognise ... nonetheless remains a womanhood"; I recall explaining that to my psychologist when I was a kid (and getting a bit snippy when she presumed someone must have spoon fed me something that seemed so unavoidably obvious).

A lot of feminist discourse comes across to me that way, like someone explaining water to a fish; but then there's a shockingly sharp divide and I find myself caught in a morass of misunderstandings, language prioritizing disruption over communication, and motivated reasoning. I started typing up a very different reply, referencing Whipping Girl and other feminist books we might have in common, but then I got to the post defending the second wave radfems, and for now I'm less in the mood to engage in those terms. It's entirely possible that a lot of what I hear that upsets me has it's roots in terminology; people without knowledge or interest in the academic origins of a term using it to try to say something positive, but coming across as endorsing the assumptions under which it was coined. I know there's always a sense of urgency, perceived unity, and expediency pushing against applying the sort of criticism feminists pride themselves on against their own underpinnings, and that people who feel their theories absolutely necessary to be able to make sense out of their experiences are hesitant to upset that point of stability in their lives, but without a bit of eventual housecleaning I'm going to continue to have trouble feeling comfortable in many feminist spaces and that seems a shame.

On a lighter and kinkier note: speaking of feminist language oriented towards disrupting and cultivating interest rather than merely conveying ideas...
I wonder if that's part of why Rowan likes obscurantist academic prose: where sweet innocent grammar and vocabulary are stripped of their stuffy old meanings, twisted and bound into uncomfortable clauses, and sunken deep into the pliant minds of readers like fierce koans grabbing their Focus.

Click to shrink...

The problem with explaining the title is that I feel like I would spoil the story in the process - I am kind of freewheeling around a few famous theoretical quips (some of which have been quoted in the story already), but to explain the way I am understanding them in plain terms would be basically to say everything I want my story to say first, so it will have to to wait.

Obviously, I feel differently about academic language, because it is my language, the one I attach most of my work and quite a bit of my sense of self too. But when it comes to second wave radical feminism, I want to stand my ground a bit. Radical feminism, as I have said before, has been a scene to both the origins of feminist transphobia (in the writings of people like Mary Daly or Janice Raymonds), but also where a lot of writing and thinking that paved the way for transfeminism happened. Shulamith Firestone was a radical feminist too, and her pleas for disassociating womanhood from reproductive functions of uteri is just as important part of the radical feminist tradition of Dale's quasi-religious search for essential womanhood.

After all, radical feminism - like any other strain in feminism - was never a singular, united movement, and it never had a single, focused stance on every particular issue, including trans lives. Although it is perfectly understandable how trans women are leery of "second wave feminism", the reputation it gets as uniformly (or even majorly) transphobic is not necessarily justified. Don't take it from me - Susan Stryker, one of the most important trans women scholars of our time, wrote on this subject:

Article:

Second wave feminism was not uniformly, or even predominantly, hostile to transgender and transsexual people. Shulamith Firestone, a socialist feminist, was involved in some of the same radical feminist groups as Robin Morgan but broke with her over numerous political differences. Firestone took a different stance on the relationship between feminism and biomedical science from the views presented by Janice Raymond in The Transsexual Empire. (...) In the controversy about Beth Elliott's participation at the West Coast Lesbian Feminist Conference, Lesbian Tide publisher Jeanne Cordova drew parallels between antitransgender prejudice and other forms of discrimination such as sexism, homophobia, and racism. She and lesbian activist the Reverend Freda Smith of Sacramento "stepped up," in the words of Candy Coleman, to speak "loud and strong in defense of Beth Elliott." Coleman, who identified herself as a "Gaysister," deplored the attacks on Elliott, whom she considered "right-on" and of whom she said, "I, like so many other women and Gaysisters, am proud to call her sister." Psychologist Deborah Feinbloom and her colleagues in Boston wrote an article for the Journal of Homosexuality, "Lesbian/Feminist Orientation among Male-to-Female Transsexuals," in which they interviewed transgender women involved in lesbian feminism and found them to be not significantly different from cisgender women in their political beliefs, activist philosophies, and gender ideology. In the controversy about Sandy Stone's involvement with the allwomen Olivia Records collective, C. Tami Weyant wrote to the feminist publication Sister and asserted that asking both MTF and FTM transsexuals to struggle against male privilege "as part of their feminist consciousness" was "fair," but that "rejecting them as transsexuals, period, will make us part of the oppression.… I strongly believe," she noted, "that only feminism can offer them safe harbor from thatoppression, and that the shared issues they have struggled with demand that we struggle to accept all transsexuals who desire to be feminist." As the foregoing statements suggest, there was nothing monolithic about second wave feminist attitudes toward trans issues. The feminist second wave simultaneously espoused some of the most reactionary attitudes toward trans people to be found anywhere while also offering a vision of transgender inclusion in progressive feminist movements for social change.

Source: Transgender History. The Roots of Today's Revolution

Your desire for housecleaning in feminist spaces is also being heard. My experiences with contemporary feminist communities and my own transness have been nothing short of positive. Feminist academic conferences I have attended have universally been welcoming and inclusive, and there is a great amount of contemporary writing by cis feminists that want to deal away with the transphobic elements of feminist legacy (2019's collection Lesbian Feminism contains a great lot of such writing, including texts penned by such household names like Sarah Ahmed).

As for your quip about language prioritising disruption over communication, I have extremely conflicted feelings. Communication and consensus are valuable, but not all important. There is quite a lot of criticism around how a lot of queer theory or transgender activism seemed more interested in transness as a weapon to disrupt cisnormative, patriarchal society rather than to make lives of ordinary trans folks more livable, but then again, have those disruptions not made it so? To be a bit personal here - I wouldn't think of myself as a trans person without Judith Butler (and, for different reasons, without Natalie Wynn, for all of her problems). The tension between the theoretical and the activist can probably never be resolved, but I don't necessarily like the idea that "obscurantist" academic writing is somehow less authentic or less important. Often, it is obscurantist to even have a voice at all, and those voices are important.

 

[Strypgia]

Immediately, she felt a dart of shame. It wasn't right to judge people like that, even if those people, like him, were a—

Click to shrink...

'Those people'. Oh, Helen...

"Working on this channel carried me through some really rough patches and you have all been so very supportive, especially when I was getting censored for speaking my mind.."

Click to shrink...

I suspect the 'censored for speaking my mind' is the same sort of not-actually-being-censored, you're-just-being-an-asshole-and-breaching-TOS that a lot of MRA/Gamergater/etc types complain about in our world.

and you… you're gonna have to carry that weight."

Click to shrink...

See you, space cowboy.

The shrill sound of a car horn made her jump up, and stumble back into an ankle-deep puddle pooling by the curbside. Her line of thoughts snapped. Some asshole was apparently taking offense to her using a crossing. Fucker! She was glad that through the sheets of water, she couldn't see his dickish face.

She tried to catch the thread again. There were so many hints out there that could support her theory. That "wonderful person" who maybe talked Leon out of being a YouTube misogynist, for example.

Click to shrink...

Can't see their face, but automatically assumes it's a man and mentally swears at them for being an asshole.... and then goes back to complaining about misogynists. GDI, Helen...

 

[Elero]

Helen seems always very quickly to judge people and stereotype them, yeah.

 

[Subrosian_Smithy]

Interesting... I was really asking more to understand the terms body and prison as used by Galatea and the title, rather than seeking reassurance of Rowan's transness or womanhood. It seems like the distinction I was looking for to make sense of the mind/body divide as presented here may be the forcing function of the characteristic rather than it's current locus or effects, and yes I agree the path between those is not something easily untangled. I'm certainly not going to argue with the premise that a womanhood "nothing like womanhoods we recognise ... nonetheless remains a womanhood"; I recall explaining that to my psychologist when I was a kid (and getting a bit snippy when she presumed someone must have spoon fed me something that seemed so unavoidably obvious).

A lot of feminist discourse comes across to me that way, like someone explaining water to a fish; but then there's a shockingly sharp divide and I find myself caught in a morass of misunderstandings, language prioritizing disruption over communication, and motivated reasoning. I started typing up a very different reply, referencing Whipping Girl and other feminist books we might have in common, but then I got to the post defending the second wave radfems, and for now I'm less in the mood to engage in those terms. It's entirely possible that a lot of what I hear that upsets me has it's roots in terminology; people without knowledge or interest in the academic origins of a term using it to try to say something positive, but coming across as endorsing the assumptions under which it was coined. I know there's always a sense of urgency, perceived unity, and expediency pushing against applying the sort of criticism feminists pride themselves on against their own underpinnings, and that people who feel their theories absolutely necessary to be able to make sense out of their experiences are hesitant to upset that point of stability in their lives, but without a bit of eventual housecleaning I'm going to continue to have trouble feeling comfortable in many feminist spaces and that seems a shame.

On a lighter and kinkier note: speaking of feminist language oriented towards disrupting and cultivating interest rather than merely conveying ideas...
I wonder if that's part of why Rowan likes obscurantist academic prose: where sweet innocent grammar and vocabulary are stripped of their stuffy old meanings, twisted and bound into uncomfortable clauses, and sunken deep into the pliant minds of readers like fierce koans grabbing their Focus.

Click to shrink...

Ah, clearly the body is nothing more or less than the text and the language of this work, which stands alone in the monumental edifice of its brute corpus, and the prison is the interpretive process by which the text is distorted by the meanings ascribed to it, rendering it unto the chaoskampf of human reason. Gnosis is the paradox of a direct union with the text which surpasses meaning and allows only experience.

 

[RalphNumbers]

The problem with explaining the title is that I feel like I would spoil the story in the process - I am kind of freewheeling around a few famous theoretical quips (some of which have been quoted in the story already), but to explain the way I am understanding them in plain terms would be basically to say everything I want my story to say first, so it will have to to wait.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, I assumed that was it. I'm enjoying speculating on the future of the story, but would be glad to be surprised.

Obviously, I feel differently about academic language, because it is my language, the one I attach most of my work and quite a bit of my sense of self too. But when it comes to second wave radical feminism, I want to stand my ground a bit. Radical feminism, as I have said before, has been a scene to both the origins of feminist transphobia (in the writings of people like Mary Daly or Janice Raymonds), but also where a lot of writing and thinking that paved the way for transfeminism happened. Shulamith Firestone was a radical feminist too, and her pleas for disassociating womanhood from reproductive functions of uteri is just as important part of the radical feminist tradition of Dale's quasi-religious search for essential womanhood.

After all, radical feminism - like any other strain in feminism - was never a singular, united movement, and it never had a single, focused stance on every particular issue, including trans lives. Although it is perfectly understandable how trans women are leery of "second wave feminism", the reputation it gets as uniformly (or even majorly) transphobic is not necessarily justified. Don't take it from me - Susan Stryker, one of the most important trans women scholars of our time, wrote on this subject:

Article:

Second wave feminism was not uniformly, or even predominantly, hostile to transgender and transsexual people. Shulamith Firestone, a socialist feminist, was involved in some of the same radical feminist groups as Robin Morgan but broke with her over numerous political differences. Firestone took a different stance on the relationship between feminism and biomedical science from the views presented by Janice Raymond in The Transsexual Empire. (...) In the controversy about Beth Elliott's participation at the West Coast Lesbian Feminist Conference, Lesbian Tide publisher Jeanne Cordova drew parallels between antitransgender prejudice and other forms of discrimination such as sexism, homophobia, and racism. She and lesbian activist the Reverend Freda Smith of Sacramento "stepped up," in the words of Candy Coleman, to speak "loud and strong in defense of Beth Elliott." Coleman, who identified herself as a "Gaysister," deplored the attacks on Elliott, whom she considered "right-on" and of whom she said, "I, like so many other women and Gaysisters, am proud to call her sister." Psychologist Deborah Feinbloom and her colleagues in Boston wrote an article for the Journal of Homosexuality, "Lesbian/Feminist Orientation among Male-to-Female Transsexuals," in which they interviewed transgender women involved in lesbian feminism and found them to be not significantly different from cisgender women in their political beliefs, activist philosophies, and gender ideology. In the controversy about Sandy Stone's involvement with the allwomen Olivia Records collective, C. Tami Weyant wrote to the feminist publication Sister and asserted that asking both MTF and FTM transsexuals to struggle against male privilege "as part of their feminist consciousness" was "fair," but that "rejecting them as transsexuals, period, will make us part of the oppression.… I strongly believe," she noted, "that only feminism can offer them safe harbor from thatoppression, and that the shared issues they have struggled with demand that we struggle to accept all transsexuals who desire to be feminist." As the foregoing statements suggest, there was nothing monolithic about second wave feminist attitudes toward trans issues. The feminist second wave simultaneously espoused some of the most reactionary attitudes toward trans people to be found anywhere while also offering a vision of transgender inclusion in progressive feminist movements for social change.

Source: Transgender History. The Roots of Today's Revolution

Your desire for housecleaning in feminist spaces is also being heard. My experiences with contemporary feminist communities and my own transness have been nothing short of positive. Feminist academic conferences I have attended have universally been welcoming and inclusive, and there is a great amount of contemporary writing by cis feminists that want to deal away with the transphobic elements of feminist legacy (2019's collection Lesbian Feminism contains a great lot of such writing, including texts penned by such household names like Sarah Ahmed).

Click to shrink...

I think we may agree more than you're crediting. I had no intention of condemning all of any group; what I was against was what seemed like the insulation of that group's legacy from criticism and reform.

As for your quip about language prioritising disruption over communication, I have extremely conflicted feelings. Communication and consensus are valuable, but not all important. There is quite a lot of criticism around how a lot of queer theory or transgender activism seemed more interested in transness as a weapon to disrupt cisnormative, patriarchal society rather than to make lives of ordinary trans folks more livable, but then again, have those disruptions not made it so? To be a bit personal here - I wouldn't think of myself as a trans person without Judith Butler (and, for different reasons, without Natalie Wynn, for all of her problems). The tension between the theoretical and the activist can probably never be resolved, but I don't necessarily like the idea that "obscurantist" academic writing is somehow less authentic or less important. Often, it is obscurantist to even have a voice at all, and those voices are important.

Click to shrink...

My feelings on it are pretty mixed as well. But some of this, especially this quote, makes me wonder if we're talking about the same thing: "Often, it is obscurantist to even have a voice at all, and those voices are important." In a very literal sense I can agree with that, but I wonder if that's how you meant it. I wouldn't equate limited personal information sharing with intentionally obfuscated positions in academic writing (which is what I was referring to).


As for it being a quip...
If there's a joke in my last post it seems it's on me. I was being largely serious. Both the power of language as a means of control, and surrender to exaggerated forms of the social pressures against which we all push to define ourselves in everyday life, are hot as hell in my book.

While academic feminists aren't exactly among the mainstream options for a pressure group to surrender to (such as religion, government, corporations, the patriarchy, AI, etc), I'd be lying if I said I hadn't come across that particular trope elsewhere. And since this is a thread for a story including that sort of surrender and partially language mediated power exchange to a couple of the more mainstream options (corporations and AI), I thought someone else here might enjoy playing with that idea.

In hindsight, it probably wasn't best shared right after a serious criticism, and perhaps I should have left Rowan out of it.

 

[LuckyLadyLily]

But when it comes to second wave radical feminism, I want to stand my ground a bit.

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So I didn't get around to saying this before, but I actually think you are right about this. I'm not nearly as well educated about this stuff as you but from what I have seen a lot of very important things happened in the radical feminist groups back in the day.

We can probably say with some justification there were always problems with radical feminism, but in many ways they were the problems of people on the forefront of thought. It is easy now to look back and say things like "well obviously the trans exclusionists were wrong" and maybe it is even correct to say that they could have and should have come to better conclusions, but ultimately people are not perfect. Whatever, it's not all that productive to sit back and judge people in history for failing to live up to modern ideas. It is also quite important to remember that it was not a singular movement, as you put it. It's too messy for someone like me, who is not an expert, to untangle so I believe in just things like this as they are. Learn from the past as you can, but deal with the here and now.

Let me see if I can explain a concept that I think is core to my thoughts about radical feminism. It is inevitably true that we are all thinking wrong about important things. If we look back a hundred years we can point out all sorts of primitive or prejudice ideas that were widely accepted at the time, such as general opinions on race or queer theory. Similarly, in a hundred years when people look back at us they will be able to point out all sorts of ideas that we believe that are primitive or prejudice. This is, in general, how things work assuming our society continues to make forward progress. This means as time goes on and ideas progress we individually will either progress with it or be left behind, clinging to outdated ideas. It takes a degree of introspection and mental flexibility to keep up with these things.

This, I think, is where current day radical feminists tend to go wrong. My experience with current day radical feminists is that they are generally people who have adopted a specific set of ideas and dug in their heels, resisting even the passive changes most people will experience just as part of moving with the flow of society. It should also be said that many (probably most) of them are people who were not even alive during the original second wave radical feminists movement.

My problem is not even necessarily with their ideas. I can handle wrong ideas that need to be corrected, I do it all the time. But when people dig in like so many radical feminists have by now it starts to show in how they interact with others. When I originally brought this up I was not even thinking specifically about radical feminists that have given me grief over being trans. I was thinking about the pattern of behavior that has been adopted by many current day radical feminists. Whatever their ideology, they have adopted many of the same tools that are used by organizations and ideologies the world over to manipulate and indoctrinate. I've seen these tools in action under a few different circumstances in my life, and it is hard to care much about anything else once I see a group employing these methods.

I think the hardest thing for many people to accept is that often the people who do these things are, in so many ways, good people. Often they genuinely mean well. But that's the thing with indoctrination, the contradiction of meaning well while hurting people is almost impossible to see from the inside. And it's not because they are stupid or foolish. It's just that people are people, and people are not perfect. That's not really core to the point I was trying to make here, but it is something I think about a lot. It's sad when well intentioned people cause so much pain and harm.

 

[Gargulec]

In hindsight, it probably wasn't best shared right after a serious criticism, and perhaps I should have left Rowan out of it.

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Oh, no, that's not an issue at all, and I did not mean to come across that way. Truth be told, I tend get very defensive whenever the phrase "academic obscurantism" is thrown around, probably more than I should. And you raise a very good point about language too, and it's something I am not sure if I will be able to explore directly in the rest of the story, but what is actually important.