I think many are assuming their new name will be Mal, which I don't think is the case. It's fine as a sticky-note for now, of course.
I thought that this was going to be a post about Mitt Romney.
The binding panel is only sewn into the front, so one's lungs are not unduly compressed,
The major thing is, of course, congratulations to Mr. Ortberg on figuring out his identity (the announcement said he'd be moving to male pronouns, right?). But while it's totally irrelevant, I read the binders piece when it came out, and was completely confused by the above line. How does something compress your breasts without encircling your torso with the compressive material? When I think of a garment that's compressive in front, and regular stretchy in back, it seems like the compressive panel would just sort of sit ineffectively in front of your torso and the stretchy back would stretch out to compensate.
I know it's like the least important part of this, but I've been really wondering what's going to happen to Dear Prudence. Are they going to change the name of the column? Find a new Prudie? I mean presumably he's not going to want to keep using a female name on Slate.
Also as a fellow ex-evangelical (and her writing on evangelical culture is some of my favorite of her stuff), I'm wondering how this is all working with her family. She seems on remarkably good terms with them, despite her parents still thinking (I think? I found an interview with her mother that seemed to say as much) that you can't be gay and christian. (Not that she's christian, so in a sense it doesn't matter.) I can't help but wonder how this is all going to play out.
Oops, forgot to check pronouns in the second paragraph. Argh. Stupid me.
the announcement said he'd be moving to male pronouns, right?
Yes; their preferred pronoun appears to be "they" until then.
Drat, I jumped the gun. 'They' it is. That seems like an odd choice to me -- if you know where you're going to end up, reasonably soon, why change pronouns twice? But obviously not my call.
As pointed out on MeFi (and which I'd also noticed), Nicole has started using he to refer to Mal very very recently, so even though the link in 7 is dated today, if it was based on conversations that are say a week old it may well not be up-to-date.
The binding panel is only sewn into the front, so one's lungs are not unduly compressed,
More or less diametrically opposite in point, I now wear ridiculously big floppy bras, now that I'm not actually trying to support anything. As long as they have adjustable straps so that they don't scoot lower and lower throughout the day.
(They're not quite comfortable yet because the skin underneath is still tender, which is annoying because it makes it seem like I'm being inauthentic or some dumb thing when I wear something uncomfortable like this.)
I assume Nicole is the significant other?
10 was supposed to go somewhere about binding sports bras, which agreed with LB's point, but I lost track of that.
Your bras are full of sketchy kittens right? Must be hard to focus in that environment.
5: The first "Prudence" was a man and I think he used female pronouns for his writing as Prudie.
13: My heart is full of sketchy kittens. But yes, they do escape.
11: No, best friend and co-ran The Toast. Nicole is married to a very rich dude, and did the big "get people to remove the articles from Atlantic" thing recently that you might have seen.
Did the tattooist ever come through, or just flaked some more, or what?
He's dead. There's no need to discuss his failings.
I really don't think there's anything to be gained by figuring out how much blame each parent gets for raising Ben Stein.
19: You're right. Please accept my humble apologies, Herb Stein. You always seemed like a decent person to me despite your unfortunate associations.
16: That was Harper's, not the Atlantic.
Congrats on the transition. I hope when they do settle in a new name it has the same satisfying tonality of "Mallory" as a one word reply to many of their tweets.
Congrats on the transition. I hope when they do settle in a new name it has the same satisfying tonality of "Mallory" as a one word reply to many of their tweets.
Excerpt from the latest Shatner Chatner (recommended):
It's not that no one should have this name, or that you think there are bad names to have, it's that you have to be realistic about yourself and what names suit you. If you had the necessary personality, then you could feel free to name yourself after four different characters from a Maugham novel, or a Roman general plus the name of the guy you sat behind in eighth-grade algebra that sounded cool.
17: She fired me for being too difficult to work with, and at such a preliminary stage for such a minor transgression that I didn't think she'd actually seen me be rightfully difficult yet. (Literally this is what happened: she said, "I think we should make the cats larger. People often regret that they didn't go large enough, afterwards." I said, "Okay, let me think about that. That will shorten the space between the cats and make them look more crowded - I just need to pause and think about what it will look like," and she said, "I can't work like this.")
Then I went to a tattoo convention with the purpose of mastering my pitch to tattoo artists so that we could more quickly ascertain if we were a good fit, and I made myself talk to a dozen artists, and came away with about 6 leads - two local, one in-state, and four more in Portland. Currently working with a local artist and feeling very optimistic.
It sounds like she's given to catastrophizing.
I feel like heebie could use some assertiveness training with regard to professional services.
31: Yes, she should have said, "You can't fire me! I fire you!"
I've been having some annoying non-cancer breast problems and I'm supposed to wear sports bras at all times (except while showering and changing from one sports bra to another I suppose) and it's weird to me how much self-awareness about that changes how I perceive the world. I do look marginally sporty while I'm changing, which I certainly never did in a bra bra. But even though I liked the binder piece and I'm super conflicted about looking feminine, I know that I wouldn't want to try binders even on healthy breasts and that does seem worth knowing.
It's been interesting to watch the Ortberg evolution. I'm a little jealous of having a clearly defined identity and I look forward to hearing more.
put on a shirt over the binder and I saw a look on my own face I had never seen before. There was joy in it, and amazement, and utter delight.
This is so odd to me. The best I can get from myself when I look in the mirror is amused contempt.
Have you seen their selfies? I too find the joy etc. amazing and unfamiliar, but it's there.
She's so young. She might have been named "Mallory" because her parents were Family Ties fans.
Anyway, the concept of binding your chest just seems painful. Like what you would do if you heard everybody talking about asthma and decided to try it for yourself.
I was surprised at how pleased I felt when I read the blog post the other day about their transition. I guess I felt like they finally had some relief. Maybe? I dont know. It just felt nice to read about.
40: if you follow the link in 35, that's kind of a fair review!
38: On the list of body modifications that trans people do/get to reduce dysphoria, I think binding is relatively low on the potential-for-pain scale.
42: I haven't tried binding, but that's a sensitive area that I think could get quite painful if mistreated. Presumably people who do it manage to avoid pain mostly, I hope, but you'd have to know what you were doing.
Possibly people who aren't me are better at breathing with their diaphragm and thus less impeded by chest compression. My music teacher said I was doing it wrong.
She also said I was tone deaf, which is one of the reasons I trust her opinion.
These binders are not full of women.
I used to have problems finding sports bras that felt rigid/tight enough to jog in but didn't constrain my breathing. The secret turned out to be - as always - to spend a lot of money on the right bra.
I haven't tried binding, but that's a sensitive area that I think could get quite painful if mistreated.
Yes, binding can be not just uncomfortable but dangerous; there's lots of information out there about how to do it safely.
But even though I liked the binder piece and I'm super conflicted about looking feminine, I know that I wouldn't want to try binders even on healthy breasts and that does seem worth knowing.
It's interesting how these things play out differently for everyone. I'm a non-ambivalently quite femmey femme type, but I think I might find it fun to play with binding. (I haven't actually tried it, though.) Shirts would look so different! My torso would be all interestingly... compact!
50: I think I'm biased by current pain, probably. Being able to actually wear men's shirts and look good in them would be amazing, but I have a hard time believing binding would get me to that. If someone nearby offered me a binder, I would definitely try it on. (And I could easily make this happen when I say it that way, but I never have.) But (I think) I'm not going to pay $33 for one even though that's really not much worse than a regular stupid sports bra from Target.
(Lately I've been having particularly weird and intense gender whatever, not dysphoria at all but still misery. But I think this is probably even less interesting to other people than it is to me and it doesn't amount to anything anyway.)
The obvious new name for them is Irving Ortberg.
Autocorrect. Irvine Ortberg, obviously.
Being able to actually wear men's shirts and look good in them would be amazing
Personally, I'd settle for being able to wear man's shirts and keep mustard off of them.
Women probably get less mustard on their shirts because the waist is fitted.
See, if I had a binder I'll bet I could drop mustard on the waist of my shirts.
There are a few items of clothing that I absolutely loathe wearing flat, because I look so masculine. I never experienced gender dysphoria until I put on a crewneck shirt while flat. I look so masculine that it's really distressing.
V-neck shirts, scoop neck, boat neck are all better. Sweaters are easier than shirts in general, and cardigans and kimonos are my favorites.
(I don't wear my sketchy kittens outside of work, mostly.)
And in fact, I do objectively look more masculine than most of the women on the flatties FB group. I'm more muscular, my shoulders are broader, etc. (That said, there's a wide range of how masculine different people are comfortable looking on that site, obviously.)
On the internet, nobody knows if you're a CrossFitter.
That's just really wrong. Never mind.
On the internet, Crossfit is the functional inverse of being a dog.
Men's dress shirts from a dozen years ago are cut so voluminously that I could never get enough muscles for them to show. That's why I don't even try.
I don't think I've updated the group on my Crossfit gym owner. He closed down the gym two years ago, and now is into the following things: eating adrenal glands, unicycling nude in gold paint, podcasting with Deepak Chopra, "sun-staring" (this is what it sounds like), and drinking his own urine.
Our gym quietly disassociated itself from xfit with the latest changing of the owners, and now bills itself as "functional fitness" and "quality movement" and things like that. We do not stare at the sun.
The sun gives life and power. It is our ultimate energy source. If you can summon the strength to stare upon it each day, you too will enjoy life and power.
I'm not even sure about the proffered rationale for that one because I can't handle the FB video of the urine drinking. You get energy and improve your health somehow?
My journey with the ancient practice of sun gazing, began in Arizona, a little over three years ago. I had discovered an incredible diet that was to save my life, by the same man named Hira Ratan Manek. He was originally from India, and is commonly referred to as HRM.
HRM has literally subsisted, and lived off of the sun's energy since June 18th, 1995.
https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_sol67.htm
64: He sounds like a guy who doesn't do anything half way. If you're going to get weird, why settle for getting just a little bit weird?
69: There was an Indian prime minister that did that. He talked about it ion 60 minutes.
Somehow I latched onto the idea -- I suppose I viewed it as a non-violent equivalent to Raskolnikov killing the pawnbroker. By drinking my urine I would become fearless and free!
I managed do it a couple of times, but I could still never muster up the courage to tell this girl that I liked her.
You forgot to stare at the sun while drinking your own pee. Classic rookie mistake.
I used to have a friend who drank her own urine. She explained that it's full of nutrients because your body can't absorb all the vitamins it ingests the first time around. Which okay, but why not get fresh vitamins in new food? But I figured it wasn't hurting anyone. Then she started to proselytize about it, and then one day she told me that she knew global warming was real because the difference in ambient temperature when she stood in full sunlight, vs. when she stood in the shade, was so much starker than it had been when she was younger, so she knew the sun was getting stronger. This finally disturbed me so much I started to avoid her. I haven't seen her in years.
I've just been wasting my piss, like a sucker.
She explained that it's full of nutrients because your body can't absorb all the vitamins it ingests the first time around.
I believe this was the argument that the Indian Prime Minister made for this practice. Also what my bunnies told me when I asked why they ate their shit.
Let's all list the most disgusting thing we drank. I'm start: Keystone Light.
she knew global warming was real because the difference in ambient temperature when she stood in full sunlight, vs. when she stood in the shade, was so much starker than it had been when she was younger, so she knew the sun was getting stronger.
What's even the theory here?
I guess on some days the difference between sunlight and shade feels bigger than others, though I'm not sure why that should be. It's all the same temperature, just the effect (somehow) of the sunlight on skin, right?
If I stared at the sun more I would understand better.
Healthy air filters out the rays that stimulate Morgellons. There's ayurvedic homeopathy that kind of helps, but it only goes so far, you know what I mean?
God, I know another guy who is fundraising constantly and hitting me up for money for his Morgellons-exists documentary. Sometimes I have to admit that California stereotypes are true, although in even more fairness these are all carpetbaggers who moved here.
In the new London Review of Books review of the new Joni Mitchell biography, it straightforwardly says that since 2010 Joni Mitchell has been suffering from Morgellons, a debilitating disease that causes the following things to happen to the skin. Had to look it up to see if it had been shown to be an actual disease in any way. Maybe that's why I hadn't heard mention of it in a few years. Nope, not yet!
Possibly a volunteer for your network of ayurvedic homeopathy distributorships, though you might have a tough time collecting proceeds.
Nutritional supplements are pretty much completely uncontrolled-- you could buy bulk alfalfa, have him pack that into gelatin capsules, print bottle labels, and sell those at the Morgellons club-- credit card transactions only, he gets a generous cut of the profits, very generous if he can move 3 kg/week.
When my mother in law was visiting, I noticed that she wasn't drinking water with meals. I asked her about it, and she said that she had heard that you weren't supposed to drink cold water with meals." I was boggled, but I said, "That's fascinating. Where did you learn about that and why would that be?" She didn't really tell me her source, but she said that it was supposed to make the fat congeal. A few days after the visit I got an e-mail telling me that she had found another source which said it was fine to drink cold water and she was planning on resuming drinking water with meals.
The funny thing was we had watched a Michael Pollan show and she was speaking very critically about bad nutrition advice, e.g her parents' doctors telling them to choose margarine over butter. Then she talked kind of judgment ally about parents who sent their kids to school with junk food (or let them by it themselves) and said that there was so much ignorance about nutrition and it really ought to be covered in schools. When she worked, she was an elementary school teacher and I was kind of frightened by the idea of her teaching children about nutrition.
Hey, guess who knows people with alfalfa fields?
86: Eh, more in keeping with the spirit of the enterprise to just take what you need in the middle of the night. Maybe tromp down the surrounding area while you're at it.
(Which somehow reminds me of the year my brother and I spent part of the summer forts under the vetch in the hayfield. That turned out to be A Bad Thing To Do.)
Of course the man with a well in his basement knows alfalfa growers.
One time a copy told us that pot smelled like wet alfalfa. It turned out that he probably was only busting really shitty growers.
I saw something on twitter recently about how Proud Boys drink their own, and each others', urine as a right of passage. Before they do it they stop drinking water and eat a lot of asparagus.
When I was in first grade I read some art book about Vincent Van Gogh and next to a close-up of one of his paintings of the sun the caption said something like "Van Gogh, who dared to stare at the sun..." so I figured I would too. I've told myself that that's why I have to wear glasses ever since.
Barry's mom: Don't look at the eyes of the sun.
Barry: But mama, that's where the fun iiiiiiiisssssss.
97 It's easier than doing a hundred burpees.
Peep just needed a sassy friend to be like "Oh gurrrl, don't drink your own urine." For lack of a sassy friend, urine was swallowed.
I think peep's story is very touching. And inspirational, in a "what doesn't kill me, makes me stronger" sort of way.
To the tune of the chorus to Sam Cooke's What a Wonderful World:
Now I never claimed I'd swallow my urine
But now I'm tryin' to pee
And maybe by swallowin' my own urine, baby, then
I can win your love for me...
On international women's day, we have binders full of men instead. What a country!
This is the kind of quality thread that I have missed.
If you aren't willing to drink your own urine and report back, I question your commitment to quality discussion.
What I really admire is that peep waited for a thread about urine-drinking to share.
Just as, long ago, urple achieved his apotheosis and became urpledesius (originally urple-Edesius), Unfogged's god of the feast, so this day arise, good peep, and take up thy mantle as Peepeesius (or peep-Bibesius), Unfogged's god of potation...
109 is great, I had a very similar thought though not so artfully expressed.
And now I live in fear that one day my time will come.
You either die young or live long enough to drink your own pee.
Gosh! Actually, I'm fairly certain that the topic of urine-drinking has come up before, and I said something about the prime minister of India on 60 minutes, but discreetly omitted any mention of my own participation. Apparently, I sensed the blog needed some excitement yesterday.
111 not that. Never that. But some other apotheosis awaits.
112.last thank you for your service.
Decades ago, I heard something about monks in Mongolia drinking urine after having eaten psychedelic mushrooms. Fake news, I bet.
113: Yes, I was 16 or 17. By now I'm not nearly flexible enough.
Urple tried for 'god of a truly novel sex act' but IIRC got gazumped by Urban Dictionary, so, y'know, if you want to put in a bid...
(Meant to make clear I was riffing off 104 btw)
Omg Tilda Swindon is 2 rows away at this screening of Okja.
Show her this thread, because Orlando.
121: You spelled my name wrong. Also please turn off your phone.
That was amazing. Tilda is a goddess.
Angel, technically.
I haven't seen an official announcement, but Ortberg has a youtube channel named "Daniel Mallory Ortberg", so I'm presuming his name's Daniel.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRPIdvEpSZP7diCU3B7tAcg
Was just at an afterparty and Tilda was there but I missed my chance to meet her.
I know. Since you were so shy I went off to have sex with James B. Shearer instead.
And your husband? Who did he go off and have sex with?
James B. Shearer. The man contains multitudes.
I don't think she's married. Was she with her older partner or her younger partner?
Long time partner: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandro_Kopp
The reindeer thing is true, and sensible: the mushrooms contain varying quantities of two psychoactive substances: bufotenin and umsomethingelse. Either of these on their own has very disagreeable effects, but balanced out they give you interesting shamanic experiences. The only way to be sure of getting a 50/50 balance is to take a very large sample. Reindeer will do this for you. Selflessly, they will eat every mushroom they find, and then pee out a balanced mixture of the two substances which you can take in small doses. That's the theory at any rate, though I have never tested it. I don't think the right mushrooms grow in the regions where I might have had access to reindeer piss. Even then, persuading a reindeer to co-operate might be troublesome.
Ume and I are in the mountains south east of osaka, where there are nice Japanese people to forage mushrooms for us. For one night only, we have lived as feudal lords.
141 I thought it was muscarine.
141.last that sounds delightful.
Ortberg's latest newsletter about book tour dates ends:
"If you see me, call me Daniel, if you'd like. Just between us."
So Daniel's looking pretty official at this point.
"If you be my body guard, you can be my long lost pal. You can call me Betty and Betty, when you call me, you can call me Daniel."
Looks like a slow phase-in on social media - his IG now has Daniel too. Maybe the official announcement / in-person switch is tonight's book signing.
Feel free to use the song if you're lurking.
I guess I'm not an intellectual-property lawyers. You probably should check with Paul Tsongas and Chevy Chase.
lawyers s/b lawyer. The rest of that is unimpeachably correct.
142: tonight we live as weary harassed business people with an early morning flight to rouse us from the airport hotel. On the other hand, we have chairs. In Japan, at at rate, time travellers back to feudalism from the 21st century would notice the absence of real chairs long before they got round to whinging about dentistry.
Ortberg's parents are complainants in a church sex scandal: http://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2018/march/bill-hybels-misconduct-willow-creek-john-nancy-ortberg.html?share