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Read as part of QueeReads. Not a plot-oriented book. VERY canlit-y. Still enjoyed it and it was very much the right kind of book for the state I was in (brought cat to the ER and waiting around to see if she'd pull though (and she did))

Guessing at the start/end dates. Started strong but petered out in a way that was rather unsatisfying. Found it on a list of books with intersex rep, and I think this is inaccurate - Swan is trans/altersex (she intentionally transitions to mixed sex characteristics). She is not intersex. Some of the other characters /might/ be intersex but it would really more accurately be varsex representation than intersex because they're not really specified as intersex, just that they have variant sex characteristics. I did appreciate reading a book where being varsex was so normalized that the cause of the sex variation (i.e. natural genetics, intentional transformation, etc) wasn't worth mentioning in the bulk of the cases.

This month's pick for Intersex Book Club. A little nervous because I've been told there's SV at the beginning, but thinking I should get reading anyway.

Read as part of Intersex Book Club. I found the time jumps rather jarring, and the ending felt rushed. The book was full of gratuitous violence; it seemed like the goal was just to be edgy. The intersex rep was more explicit than I'd expected. Unfortunately it seemed only there for shock value. This may be why Elphaba's intersexuality got dropped from the adaptations - the author doesn't actually think or conceive of her that way and just wanted to be edgy. As an intersex person it feels kinda gross to have being intersex treated this way.

Fell out of the habit of tracking my reads and am trying to backdate things. Read this for Intersex Book Club. It's a run of the mill collection of science fiction, very little was relevant to the premise of "stories of marginalized scientists" :\

The intro has me jazzed. It really is frustrating how so many #intersex people will try to distance our community from disability and then are surprised Pikachu that we continue to have problems with pathologization, bodily autonomy, epistemic power, eugenics, etc. Positioning intersex as "not a disability" reinforces the medicalizing ableism that hurts both intersex and other disabled people.

I learnt a lot but came out with a bad taste in my mouth. The book was too often uncritical in ways that were frustrating. Like his discussion of agriculture in the Amazon: he couldn't just do the logical thing and promote landback. Also disappointing how he doesn't take indigenous sources of information like oral history seriously. Also also disappointing to see him treating Jared Diamond like a legitimate source 😬

This book has some good essays! Some will stay with me for the emotional punch that Hillman landed. Some got me thinking about something I'd never thought about before.

But the essays are not organized in a way that makes much sense - they don't thematically build on each other and feel random in their order. The tonal whiplash makes for a tough read. Some of the essays are needlessly confusing. It makes me feel like the book wasn't edited. Little things like how two different essays are titled "Education" add up to feeling like this isn't a finished product.

Favourite essays: - Education (the first one) - Chang - Present - Condition - Okay

CONTENT WARNINGS: - Medical sexual violence in essay titled "Out" - Mention of sexual violence in essay titled "Reshaping"

Read for Intersex Book Club. Had some good essays, but the sequencing was poorly organized and there was a lot of tonal whiplash.

For people who want to get the highlights of the book, I'd recommend reading:

Special - medium length, introduces her early background as someone with CAH Pray - short musing on disability-intersex solidarity Lessons - short musing on how her childhood affected how she saw her body, gets at fat-intersex intersection and Jewish experiences Education - short, a bit nauseating, but it stood out for me as punchy Change - longer essay, on how she got involved in ISNA - if you read one essay from the book I'd make it this one Swallow - short essay on stopping HRT Present - medium, on intersex outreach in queer spaces Condition - medium, on intersex outreach in the prairies Okay - short, poem about what she wishes her mother had known