Highlights from the Void, 2017

As the surreal hellscape of 2017 winds to a close, it’s time to look back on the past year of blogging and pick out some high points my dear readers might have missed. So, for your enjoyment, here are ten of Alyssa’s proudest creations of 2017.

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Highlights from the Void, 2017
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Give Me Your Girlhood

I wrote in my review of Kim Fu’s “For Today I Am a Boy” that one of the most emotionally resonant incidents in its protagonist’s life is when she, upon encountering her first transmasculine person, experiences a fit of inchoate, perverse jealousy: “Give me your girlhood, John, I thought nonsensically. You don’t want it? Give it to me. I want to be the woman you would have been.”

I claimed in that review that this feeling is common among transfeminine people. The truth is, I have no idea if indeed this sentiment appears in many of us. What I do know is, it has long gripped me.

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Give Me Your Girlhood

Mysterious as the Trans Side of Mulan

[CN: brief suicidal ideation]

It’s a tradition in queer communities in general and trans communities in particular to analogize stories and turn subtext into text.  With so few writers writing about us, and so few writers who dare to write about us getting mainstream attention, seeing ourselves in stories that refuse to name or acknowledge us is mandatory.  This is something all humans do, often before we know why we’re doing it.

I have a lot of feelings about Mulan.

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Mysterious as the Trans Side of Mulan