WEBVTT - Torrey Peters’ Never-Ending Transition 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:02.440 Hi there, It's Ruby Jones and I'm back to share 0:00:02.480 --> 0:00:06.279 another episode of Read This, Schwartz Media's weekly books podcast, 0:00:06.800 --> 0:00:10.120 hosted by editor of the Monthly Michael Williams. It features 0:00:10.119 --> 0:00:13.600 conversations with some of the most talented writers from Australia 0:00:13.680 --> 0:00:16.880 and around the world. This week, Michael is chatting with 0:00:17.000 --> 0:00:22.600 best selling author Tory Peters. As always, Michael is here 0:00:22.640 --> 0:00:24.640 to tell me a little bit more about the episode. 0:00:24.800 --> 0:00:27.120 Hi, Michael, Ruby Jones, welcome back. 0:00:27.480 --> 0:00:32.080 It's great to be back, so Michael. Today's guest Tory Peters. 0:00:32.320 --> 0:00:34.920 She burst onto the scene with her debut novel in 0:00:34.960 --> 0:00:39.120 twenty twenty one, and since then, with Trump's reelection as 0:00:39.280 --> 0:00:42.080 US president, there have been all of these attacks on 0:00:42.280 --> 0:00:45.800 civil liberties, and the assault on trans rights across American 0:00:45.840 --> 0:00:50.120 society has been particularly horrifying and far reaching. So what 0:00:50.159 --> 0:00:53.280 does that mean for trans artists who are working in 0:00:53.320 --> 0:00:54.200 the US today? 0:00:54.480 --> 0:00:57.440 Yeah, it's a really good question, Ruby. How does one 0:00:57.480 --> 0:01:00.400 go about producing new work that manages to be personal 0:01:00.520 --> 0:01:05.039 and political and provocative but also unabashed, that doesn't feel 0:01:05.040 --> 0:01:07.800 like it has to represent an entire community or be 0:01:07.880 --> 0:01:12.240 consumed by trauma, or has some responsibility to respond to 0:01:12.640 --> 0:01:17.119 this kind of incredibly malignant government that's denying your very existence. 0:01:17.520 --> 0:01:20.479 It's a horrifying thought. But you know, like I do, 0:01:20.560 --> 0:01:23.560 believe that great art thrives in response to tyranny, and 0:01:23.680 --> 0:01:26.840 great artists find ways to do what they do, to 0:01:26.880 --> 0:01:29.600 be funny, to be fierce, to be themselves in the 0:01:29.600 --> 0:01:34.840 face of these terrible external forces. And Tory Peters epitomizes 0:01:35.000 --> 0:01:38.920 that idea. She completely understands the weight of expectation. But 0:01:39.120 --> 0:01:41.640 her new book shows that she is a great artist 0:01:42.080 --> 0:01:45.880 and capable at once of these kind of really serious 0:01:45.920 --> 0:01:50.280 ideas but also just tremendous fun You mentioned her twenty 0:01:50.320 --> 0:01:53.080 twenty one novel Detransition Baby. That was this kind of 0:01:53.200 --> 0:01:57.440 huge publishing sensation, and it was a kind of mainstream 0:01:57.480 --> 0:02:00.800 literary success. It won all these wards and accolades. The 0:02:00.840 --> 0:02:02.440 New York Times said it was one of the great 0:02:02.720 --> 0:02:06.080 books of the twenty first century already, and it was 0:02:06.120 --> 0:02:08.720 a wonderful book. But can only imagine the pressure that 0:02:08.760 --> 0:02:10.720 puts on a writer to follow it up. What do 0:02:10.840 --> 0:02:13.240 they come out with for the next book, How do 0:02:13.280 --> 0:02:16.280 they manage to be both a significant trans writer and 0:02:16.320 --> 0:02:20.639 also a significant writer regardless of questions of gender and context. 0:02:21.080 --> 0:02:24.440 Right, And now, of course comes Tory's second book, stag Dance, 0:02:24.440 --> 0:02:27.880 which is actually a collection of stories. So can you 0:02:27.880 --> 0:02:28.880 tell me a bit about them? 0:02:29.080 --> 0:02:32.040 Yeah? So, stag Dance is a collection of four stories, 0:02:32.120 --> 0:02:35.120 and each one falls into a fairly specific genre. So 0:02:35.200 --> 0:02:37.640 the first one is called Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones, 0:02:37.680 --> 0:02:40.480 and that one's kind of spec fiction. There's this imagined 0:02:40.560 --> 0:02:44.160 gender apocalypse. Then the second story is called The Chaser, 0:02:44.240 --> 0:02:46.840 and it's a kind of teen romance that owes as 0:02:46.960 --> 0:02:49.920 much to kind of Brideshead Revisited as it does to 0:02:50.880 --> 0:02:53.839 let's say, Twilight. But don't worry, no vampires or wear 0:02:53.840 --> 0:02:57.400 wolves here. It's just gender anxiety all the way. Then 0:02:57.440 --> 0:03:00.360 the third story in the collection is the titular Story, 0:03:00.360 --> 0:03:03.240 and that one's basically a short novel. Stag Dance is 0:03:03.280 --> 0:03:06.320 the story about a group of lumberjacks who are planning 0:03:06.320 --> 0:03:08.880 a dance where some of them are going to attend 0:03:09.080 --> 0:03:12.320 as women, and it's this kind of incredible story of 0:03:12.400 --> 0:03:16.760 jealousy and betrayal and identity. It's fantastic. And then the 0:03:16.840 --> 0:03:19.440 last story of the collection is called The Masker, and 0:03:19.440 --> 0:03:23.640 it's this horror infused Las Vegas set exploration of kink 0:03:24.080 --> 0:03:27.760 and difficult choices. Each of the four stories is incredibly 0:03:28.320 --> 0:03:31.480 arresting and entertaining, surprising in their own way. Each plays 0:03:31.480 --> 0:03:36.120 with genre and gender with equal flair and confidence. Language 0:03:36.160 --> 0:03:40.360 is absolutely on point, the voices are compelling. It's a 0:03:40.440 --> 0:03:43.400 thrilling read, and I can't recommend it highly enough. This 0:03:43.480 --> 0:03:44.800 chat was a lot of fun. 0:03:47.920 --> 0:03:51.320 Coming up in just a moment. Tory Peter's never Ending Transition. 0:03:57.560 --> 0:04:00.800 Of the four stories collected in stag Dance, both infect 0:04:00.840 --> 0:04:03.920 Your Friends and Loved Ones and The Masker were self 0:04:03.920 --> 0:04:07.440 published by Tory almost a decade ago. They were published 0:04:07.440 --> 0:04:11.040 as independent novellas part of a publishing project that Tory 0:04:11.080 --> 0:04:14.200 extended to other trans writers who are unable to find 0:04:14.240 --> 0:04:18.039 homes for their writing. In the interviews about stag Dance, 0:04:18.120 --> 0:04:21.600 Tory has said she's less interested in the binary between 0:04:21.640 --> 0:04:25.080 men and women and more interested in the binary between 0:04:25.200 --> 0:04:29.320 CIS people and trans people and how false and reductive 0:04:29.360 --> 0:04:32.600 that idea is. In the book's acknowledgment, she refers to 0:04:32.640 --> 0:04:37.560 her never ending transition, otherwise known as ongoing trans life. 0:04:38.040 --> 0:04:41.120 I wanted to begin with the book's long gestation period 0:04:41.320 --> 0:04:44.240 and the ways in which it reflects an evolving sensibility, 0:04:44.640 --> 0:04:49.479 an ongoing transition for its author. One of the products 0:04:49.480 --> 0:04:51.719 of that kind of genesis for this book is that 0:04:51.760 --> 0:04:55.520 it's a decade worth of work in the one book. 0:04:55.920 --> 0:04:58.040 And I'm curious about the ways in which when you 0:04:58.080 --> 0:05:02.880 look back over those first novellas, how much your appetite 0:05:02.920 --> 0:05:04.800 for what you want to do as a writer has changed, 0:05:04.800 --> 0:05:06.480 how much your capacity for what you want to do 0:05:06.520 --> 0:05:09.200 as a writer has changed, And how hard it was 0:05:09.240 --> 0:05:12.320 not to get under the hood and tinker and rewrite 0:05:12.320 --> 0:05:13.120 your earlier self. 0:05:13.240 --> 0:05:16.600 Well, had I had the permission to do so. I mean, 0:05:17.040 --> 0:05:19.360 I think I'm a better writer now. So I went 0:05:19.400 --> 0:05:22.480 back to go polish the sentences. And the thing is, 0:05:22.520 --> 0:05:26.000 in twenty sixteen, I was like angrier than I was now. 0:05:26.080 --> 0:05:28.920 I was more like kind of punk and angry. And 0:05:30.080 --> 0:05:34.719 when I started polishing it, the thing is like, it's 0:05:34.760 --> 0:05:37.280 hard to have polish and anger at the same time. 0:05:37.360 --> 0:05:40.840 And as I started polishing the sentences, yeah, they were 0:05:40.880 --> 0:05:44.760 getting better, but they were also getting less urgent. I mean, 0:05:44.800 --> 0:05:47.279 I was putting the book together in like twenty twenty three, 0:05:47.400 --> 0:05:50.680 twenty twenty four, where you know it was pre Trump 0:05:50.760 --> 0:05:54.320 and pre What's Happened in the UK, but I had 0:05:54.320 --> 0:05:56.920 like an inkling that it was coming, and I was like, 0:05:56.960 --> 0:05:58.520 you know, if I'm going to start this book with 0:05:58.600 --> 0:06:01.359 it with something, I want to hand the mic to 0:06:01.400 --> 0:06:04.400 somebody who's angry and wants to speak about it. And 0:06:04.440 --> 0:06:08.200 that's really myself from ten years before. So I actually 0:06:08.360 --> 0:06:11.320 just got rid of all my changes, went back to 0:06:11.360 --> 0:06:15.080 the original. And the original was full of typos because 0:06:15.120 --> 0:06:18.599 I was really of the belief that, like everybody should 0:06:18.600 --> 0:06:20.719 be writing, and that the idea that you have to 0:06:20.760 --> 0:06:23.040 have an immaculate page is actually a thing that keeps 0:06:23.040 --> 0:06:24.120 people away from writing. 0:06:24.440 --> 0:06:27.960 I like the typos of punk, and I'm not going 0:06:28.040 --> 0:06:31.240 I'm going to turn off the little suggestions. I am 0:06:31.279 --> 0:06:32.599 too punk for that little lie. 0:06:32.920 --> 0:06:35.400 There were like some typos that were like pretty embarrassing. 0:06:35.400 --> 0:06:40.279 There was I misspelled Columbia, which is a country I 0:06:40.360 --> 0:06:43.000 now live in. I spelled it like the university, and 0:06:43.560 --> 0:06:47.400 that really kind of confused the class origins of one character. 0:06:48.080 --> 0:06:51.839 But there aren't typos in this version. But at the 0:06:51.839 --> 0:06:54.480 time I was like, I want everybody to be writing. 0:06:54.640 --> 0:06:56.359 I want everybody to be telling us stories, and I 0:06:56.360 --> 0:06:58.479 think that, like, you know, there were people I know 0:06:59.000 --> 0:07:03.719 who didn't go to college and in fact would be anxious, 0:07:04.320 --> 0:07:07.039 you know, even just crossing a college campus. But like, 0:07:07.080 --> 0:07:09.720 I don't belong here. I do have, like, you know, 0:07:10.160 --> 0:07:11.760 a college education, and I want to be like, it 0:07:11.800 --> 0:07:14.760 doesn't matter the reason you're writing. What writing's for is 0:07:14.800 --> 0:07:18.280 to move people. And I wanted, especially a lot of 0:07:18.280 --> 0:07:21.880 the trans girls who are around me, to not feel like, oh, 0:07:21.920 --> 0:07:24.320 if it's not super polished, I can't put it into 0:07:24.360 --> 0:07:27.520 the world. It's like, no, you're mad, You've got something 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:30.280 to say, put it in the world. And this is 0:07:30.320 --> 0:07:31.360 going to be example of that. 0:07:31.720 --> 0:07:35.960 I'm interested that younger self fueled by anger and urgency. Yeah, 0:07:36.240 --> 0:07:40.200 I'm curious about the relationship between finding a rightily voice 0:07:40.800 --> 0:07:43.920 and finding a personal identity and the ways in which 0:07:43.920 --> 0:07:46.760 they dovetailed or the one was an expression of the other. 0:07:47.160 --> 0:07:52.360 Well, I think this collection has a series of different voices. 0:07:52.400 --> 0:07:54.640 But I do think that I developed a kind of 0:07:54.680 --> 0:07:58.480 sensibility out of that, which has to do with not 0:07:58.560 --> 0:08:01.680 explaining myself very much. By the time I was writing 0:08:01.760 --> 0:08:05.800 Due Transition Baby, I'd gone through a series of fights 0:08:05.840 --> 0:08:08.560 with other trans women. I wasn't like sort of starry 0:08:08.600 --> 0:08:12.720 eyed about the idea of easy solidarity along identity lines. 0:08:12.760 --> 0:08:16.400 You know, I understood that communities aren't constantly falling apart, 0:08:16.920 --> 0:08:21.480 people are having difficult times. And also I've ran into 0:08:21.520 --> 0:08:24.000 plenty of trans people who don't like my writing, you know. 0:08:24.080 --> 0:08:25.600 So it was like, I can't say I write for 0:08:25.640 --> 0:08:28.600 all trans people except for the like, you know, thirty 0:08:28.600 --> 0:08:32.080 percent who hate what I'm doing or something. So you know, 0:08:32.120 --> 0:08:35.000 I began to think more about kind of affinity and 0:08:35.400 --> 0:08:37.920 writing for people with whom I have affinity. And also 0:08:37.960 --> 0:08:40.560 the fact that, like a lot of the books that 0:08:40.640 --> 0:08:43.199 I was reading when I was reading The Transition Baby 0:08:43.280 --> 0:08:46.200 were by CIS women a little bit older than me. 0:08:46.559 --> 0:08:49.040 That was the time that Fronte was, you know, really big, 0:08:49.120 --> 0:08:51.760 and I realized, I'm reading all these books play like 0:08:51.800 --> 0:08:56.880 Divorced This women because Divorced This women especially went through 0:08:56.920 --> 0:08:59.640 something like a transition. They had to start their lives 0:08:59.720 --> 0:09:03.480 over and like not get better. And so I began 0:09:03.600 --> 0:09:05.959 to sort of think about writing as when I say 0:09:06.000 --> 0:09:08.720 it's like to move people, it's also sometimes to speak back, 0:09:08.800 --> 0:09:10.920 you know. Early on, I wanted to speak back to 0:09:10.920 --> 0:09:13.960 all the trans women around me. I slowly began to 0:09:13.960 --> 0:09:16.280 want to speak back to these divorced women who were 0:09:16.320 --> 0:09:19.080 writing books where they were asking questions just like mine, 0:09:19.080 --> 0:09:21.720 but slightly askance, and I wanted to be like, well, 0:09:21.760 --> 0:09:25.160 look at my perspective, and that sort of decision to 0:09:25.200 --> 0:09:28.560 speak back, but also to speak back without necessarily always 0:09:28.559 --> 0:09:30.840 explaining myself as though I'm the outsider. 0:09:31.280 --> 0:09:33.880 It's my favorite thing about your writing. And it hit me 0:09:34.000 --> 0:09:36.600 with The Transition Baby, which was the first of yours 0:09:36.640 --> 0:09:39.280 that I read, but is the exhilarating thing of the 0:09:39.400 --> 0:09:41.720 confidence of saying, no, this is the world the story 0:09:41.720 --> 0:09:45.640 exists in, and it's your job. Whether it's lumberjack slang, 0:09:45.840 --> 0:09:49.040 or whether it's whether it's the very particular conversations going 0:09:49.040 --> 0:09:52.720 on in a trans family in New York, whatever it is, 0:09:53.280 --> 0:09:56.080 you can be a reader wherever and catch up with 0:09:56.120 --> 0:09:57.120 this at your own space. 0:09:57.200 --> 0:09:59.400 Yeah, And you know, give I think I give readers 0:09:59.440 --> 0:10:01.280 credit for being able to do it. You know, I 0:10:01.280 --> 0:10:03.600 think it's kind of condescending to readers to basically be like, 0:10:03.679 --> 0:10:07.240 let me slow down for you and and essentially ruin 0:10:07.840 --> 0:10:10.280 the momentum of a story because I actually think you're 0:10:10.320 --> 0:10:13.400 like too stupid to understand it. You know, I tend 0:10:13.400 --> 0:10:15.679 to give my reader's credit. There was like a really 0:10:15.760 --> 0:10:18.760 funny tweet when you transition baby came out of like 0:10:18.840 --> 0:10:23.360 this grandfather sending his gay grandson, like a series of 0:10:23.679 --> 0:10:26.960 what is a twink? What is a bareback? Like? What 0:10:27.160 --> 0:10:31.320 is like all these different you know, and it was like, 0:10:31.559 --> 0:10:34.000 that's what I want, you know. It's like, look, you 0:10:34.080 --> 0:10:38.040 have resources for figuring out that grandpa. His resource was apparently, uh, 0:10:38.800 --> 0:10:40.240 his grandson by text. 0:10:40.320 --> 0:10:46.240 But you know you can probably history probably the best. 0:10:46.679 --> 0:10:48.680 I mean, it was really like, I don't know, I 0:10:48.720 --> 0:10:50.640 just give I give people credit for it. And and 0:10:50.840 --> 0:10:53.679 I think that sensibility shows up, you know, even now 0:10:53.679 --> 0:10:58.480 where it's like in this new book, the biggest piece 0:10:58.520 --> 0:11:01.600 in it is written in lumberge slang, which I don't 0:11:02.000 --> 0:11:04.200 explain at all, and so people are like, oh, you 0:11:04.240 --> 0:11:06.559 didn't explain the trans terms. I was like, well, I 0:11:06.559 --> 0:11:10.720 don't even explain obscure lumberjack slang that nobody knows, you know, 0:11:10.920 --> 0:11:13.560 and that some of it has given me the confidence 0:11:13.559 --> 0:11:16.360 to basically be like, you just get in it, you 0:11:16.480 --> 0:11:19.520 go hard, and that actually, if you're doing that people, 0:11:20.080 --> 0:11:23.680 people will keep up, whether you're doing trans brookline or 0:11:23.720 --> 0:11:28.080 whether you're doing Turn to the Century Lumberjack dances. 0:11:28.559 --> 0:11:31.280 This is a digression. But I'm curious as a reader, 0:11:32.360 --> 0:11:35.079 is that what you like to be thrown in? Do 0:11:35.120 --> 0:11:38.440 you gravitate towards books that encourage you to do the 0:11:38.440 --> 0:11:39.199 work to make them? 0:11:39.400 --> 0:11:41.600 I mean, sometimes, you know, I think that the thing 0:11:41.640 --> 0:11:43.680 is like I've been trained to have the books be 0:11:43.800 --> 0:11:46.200 easy for me, and I've been trained by school to 0:11:46.280 --> 0:11:49.120 think if I don't understand every single word, I'm like 0:11:49.200 --> 0:11:52.000 somehow failing the book. And I think that that's not 0:11:52.080 --> 0:11:55.560 a natural inclination. Sometimes people will tell me with the 0:11:55.600 --> 0:11:58.600 Lumberjack stuff that like, I read this book the way 0:11:58.640 --> 0:12:01.200 that I felt when I was a kid, when you're 0:12:01.240 --> 0:12:02.840 reading a book when you're a kid and you just 0:12:02.880 --> 0:12:07.000 like don't know one word persons. The most magical reading 0:12:07.040 --> 0:12:09.360 I had for myself as a kid was oftentimes where 0:12:09.400 --> 0:12:12.120 I was like trying so hard to build a world 0:12:12.240 --> 0:12:14.440 and being like I think this is what that word means. 0:12:14.480 --> 0:12:15.920 I think this is what that world. But there was 0:12:15.960 --> 0:12:18.959 like all this possibility and all this texture to it. 0:12:19.360 --> 0:12:22.120 And my joke is that like, oftentimes when you don't 0:12:22.200 --> 0:12:25.480 understand things that people are telling you, you'll pay attention 0:12:25.559 --> 0:12:27.360 to so much more things and you end up with 0:12:27.400 --> 0:12:30.640 a much more textured experience when I go to the 0:12:30.720 --> 0:12:33.400 car mechanic, you know, he opens up the hood of 0:12:33.400 --> 0:12:38.720 the car and he's like, your alternator is something something 0:12:38.760 --> 0:12:41.480 with the camshaft or this or that, And it's like, 0:12:41.600 --> 0:12:44.800 I'm struggling to understand what you're selling me, but I 0:12:44.960 --> 0:12:47.760 sure do know that I'm at the car mechanic right now. 0:12:48.000 --> 0:12:50.880 The experience of being at the car mechanic is incredibly 0:12:51.000 --> 0:12:55.679 vivid because I have so little idea what you're saying. 0:12:56.480 --> 0:13:00.920 That is actually a really interesting experience and language that 0:13:01.120 --> 0:13:05.640 is not so frequently captured in what is often valued 0:13:06.000 --> 0:13:08.480 in language right now, which is either language that is 0:13:08.559 --> 0:13:13.360 quite transparent or readers that are so knowledgeable that they 0:13:13.400 --> 0:13:17.480 can read a whole passage of Joyce and know every 0:13:17.520 --> 0:13:22.760 single reference. There's something interesting about struggling and about creating 0:13:22.840 --> 0:13:26.160 context and texture and possibilities that might not exactly be 0:13:26.280 --> 0:13:28.360 what the author is saying or that might not be 0:13:28.480 --> 0:13:29.640 like correct. 0:13:30.440 --> 0:13:32.479 And one of the ways you get to do exactly 0:13:32.559 --> 0:13:37.920 that so effectively in stag dance is through genre as well. 0:13:38.000 --> 0:13:41.440 Like so you mentioned speculative fiction, but you know there's 0:13:41.480 --> 0:13:46.120 also horror, there's teen romance. By playing with genre, you've 0:13:46.120 --> 0:13:49.800 got convention, which helps set up expectation, and then you've 0:13:49.800 --> 0:13:52.040 got the freedom to take that way you take it. 0:13:52.240 --> 0:13:54.679 That's absolutely right, It's very well said. Some of it 0:13:54.720 --> 0:13:58.920 is that, like, these genres have been so developed that 0:13:59.679 --> 0:14:02.800 it's saves me a lot of work. In fact, your 0:14:02.800 --> 0:14:04.800 finds and loved ones, Like there are these guys on 0:14:04.840 --> 0:14:08.720 the Road who are like hunting the main character. It's like, 0:14:08.720 --> 0:14:11.679 if you've read The Road by CORNK. McCarthy, if you've 0:14:11.720 --> 0:14:14.959 seen Mad Max or whatever, like, you don't really need 0:14:15.000 --> 0:14:17.079 to explain their motivations. You can just be like their 0:14:17.160 --> 0:14:20.640 hunters on the road and just like gesture that was great. 0:14:20.800 --> 0:14:23.040 That would have been a whole chapter of explaining something 0:14:23.080 --> 0:14:25.640 that everybody already knows. And I can just sort of 0:14:25.680 --> 0:14:28.040 like point over there and be like, yeah, you know 0:14:28.160 --> 0:14:30.960 those guys and then get on with what I care about, 0:14:31.000 --> 0:14:34.840 which is the relationship between the two women in the book, 0:14:35.280 --> 0:14:37.360 which you know, there are people who want to know 0:14:37.440 --> 0:14:39.240 everything about those hunters on the Road and they want 0:14:39.280 --> 0:14:41.440 to know that entire world. And I discovered I'm not 0:14:41.560 --> 0:14:42.320 that kind of writer. 0:14:42.680 --> 0:14:45.320 Tell me about the choice of teen romance as a 0:14:45.360 --> 0:14:49.360 set of generic conventions that are useful to playing well. 0:14:49.440 --> 0:14:54.600 I like the fact that teens don't know anything that 0:14:54.680 --> 0:14:57.600 sounds condescending by I mean it actually with a lot 0:14:57.600 --> 0:15:00.880 of respect. At the time, like, you know, people were 0:15:00.880 --> 0:15:04.000 talking about trans stuff and it was just nobody was 0:15:04.040 --> 0:15:06.520 hearing each other. Everybody had their sort of arguments that 0:15:06.520 --> 0:15:08.720 they'd already pre digested, and they're just sort of like 0:15:08.800 --> 0:15:12.720 bumping their predigested arguments into each other. When it came 0:15:12.720 --> 0:15:15.160 to trans stuff, nobody was convincing each other of anything. 0:15:15.800 --> 0:15:19.320 And I was thinking about the last time that happened, 0:15:19.400 --> 0:15:22.280 I think, you know, in a massive way in the 0:15:22.360 --> 0:15:26.440 United States, was over the Vietnam War, and that out 0:15:26.440 --> 0:15:29.440 of that came new journalism, where the journalists were sort 0:15:29.480 --> 0:15:31.360 of like, I can't tell you facts and figures anymore 0:15:31.360 --> 0:15:35.360 because nobody believes them. There's no shared reality and these 0:15:35.440 --> 0:15:39.920 kinds of facts, and so journalists started taking the techniques 0:15:39.960 --> 0:15:44.800 of novelists Johan Dideon, Tom Wolf, Gayta Lease, and they 0:15:44.840 --> 0:15:47.400 started writing sort of things that were like, let me 0:15:47.440 --> 0:15:50.320 just try and get to an emotional truth and then 0:15:50.520 --> 0:15:54.760 never mind all of the facts and figures around it. 0:15:54.880 --> 0:15:58.600 Something similar has happened with not just trans stuff, but 0:15:58.640 --> 0:16:02.520 with any kind of idea sort of thing. As soon 0:16:02.560 --> 0:16:07.560 as a reader says, this is a story about misogyny, 0:16:07.960 --> 0:16:11.560 everyone's sort of got this liberal arts discourse, the analysis 0:16:11.600 --> 0:16:14.520 that can just be snapped onto it. This is a 0:16:14.560 --> 0:16:19.280 story about homophobia snaps in place. You know, certainly transphobia 0:16:19.440 --> 0:16:21.280 the same thing. And so one of the things that 0:16:21.480 --> 0:16:24.800 was fun was writing number one is fun to write 0:16:25.360 --> 0:16:27.760 from the perspective of like a bro. That was fun, 0:16:27.840 --> 0:16:30.520 and like having a bro who didn't know anything about 0:16:30.520 --> 0:16:33.880 his own emotions. But then two, to not have him 0:16:34.000 --> 0:16:38.280 understand his own feelings meant that if he doesn't know 0:16:38.320 --> 0:16:41.720 what he's feeling exactly, it's harder for a reader to 0:16:41.760 --> 0:16:45.560 come in with their predigested analysis, and then you just 0:16:45.800 --> 0:16:49.480 have to feel what he's feeling. So the teen romance 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:53.840 story is a story of a kind of bro athlete. 0:16:54.680 --> 0:16:58.680 Cis white guy who starts hooking up with his roommate 0:16:58.960 --> 0:17:03.440 and it's clear what his roommate is. They end up 0:17:03.440 --> 0:17:06.800 treating each other cruelly. They love each other. He can't 0:17:06.800 --> 0:17:09.640 admit that he loves his roommate, but they love each other. 0:17:10.359 --> 0:17:12.960 And you know, you could say, like, well, is he 0:17:13.160 --> 0:17:16.000 cruel and in love? Because he thinks that Robbie is 0:17:16.040 --> 0:17:18.080 a boy and he's secretly gay, and this is a 0:17:18.119 --> 0:17:23.439 homophobic story. Is he cruel? Because Robbie's very feminine and 0:17:23.480 --> 0:17:26.560 he disdains femininity, and this is a story of misogyny. 0:17:27.160 --> 0:17:29.679 If you know that this is written by Tory, you 0:17:29.680 --> 0:17:32.880 could say, well, maybe Robbie's a pre transition trans girl, 0:17:32.920 --> 0:17:35.760 and this is a story of transphobia. But actually it's 0:17:35.960 --> 0:17:37.960 all of those things and none of those things all 0:17:38.000 --> 0:17:40.600 at once, And so you actually just get to sort 0:17:40.640 --> 0:17:43.919 of the emotions that this character is going through without 0:17:44.040 --> 0:17:47.000 quite being able to name them, and therefore you can't 0:17:47.040 --> 0:17:50.080 sort of bring a lot of your pre digestive analyses 0:17:50.160 --> 0:17:54.119 to what's happening. And my hope then is what you 0:17:54.200 --> 0:17:58.200 discover is the character who's supposed to be the trans character, Robbie, 0:17:58.240 --> 0:18:01.560 the feminine roommate, as all the things that the strong 0:18:01.640 --> 0:18:05.359 cis character is supposed to have. That character has agency, 0:18:05.720 --> 0:18:09.000 that character is able to state his desires, able to 0:18:09.080 --> 0:18:12.800 sort of carry through a plan, and the character who's 0:18:12.800 --> 0:18:16.000 supposed to be the sort of like strong centered character 0:18:16.440 --> 0:18:18.600 has all the hallmarks of a trans character where there's 0:18:18.640 --> 0:18:21.920 a big gap between how he wants to be and 0:18:21.960 --> 0:18:24.919 how the world perceives him, and he's trying to close 0:18:24.960 --> 0:18:28.240 that gap through performance, through like acting out in a 0:18:28.240 --> 0:18:32.040 certain way. He's full of shame, he's sort of stuck 0:18:32.520 --> 0:18:34.359 in that. He knows he needs to make some sort 0:18:34.359 --> 0:18:36.760 of big move, but he can't make that big move, 0:18:37.160 --> 0:18:40.879 and as a result, both love and sex are closed 0:18:40.920 --> 0:18:42.439 off to him and the way they might be to 0:18:42.520 --> 0:18:46.280 somebody who is trans but pre transition or something like that, 0:18:46.320 --> 0:18:49.880 Like those things that are supposed to be trans are 0:18:49.960 --> 0:18:53.000 actually things that the Cis character goes through, which is 0:18:53.080 --> 0:18:56.159 kind of my larger point that we're all kind of 0:18:56.200 --> 0:18:57.480 going through this stuff. 0:18:58.160 --> 0:19:00.160 I think that's what I love about that story is 0:19:00.200 --> 0:19:06.480 the sense of uncertainty and play isn't just for your characters, 0:19:07.040 --> 0:19:09.840 but it is also an active engagement with your readers 0:19:09.840 --> 0:19:12.000 and their expectation of what they get from a Tory 0:19:12.040 --> 0:19:15.000 Peters story as well. That in this collection, and I 0:19:15.080 --> 0:19:16.880 might be wrong, but I would say you can count 0:19:16.920 --> 0:19:19.439 on the fingers of one hand the number of characters 0:19:19.480 --> 0:19:23.040 who identify as trans. That doesn't mean that their relationship 0:19:23.119 --> 0:19:25.840 to their gender, to their identity, to all this stuff 0:19:25.880 --> 0:19:32.000 isn't actively in play, But it's not about self identified 0:19:32.040 --> 0:19:33.280 trans identity as such. 0:19:33.359 --> 0:19:37.280 Yeah, I'm actually very uninterested in trans identity. The longer 0:19:37.280 --> 0:19:39.359 I've been trans, the less I know what it means 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:42.359 to be trans. And for me, being trans is like 0:19:42.480 --> 0:19:45.159 I'm kind of standing with a bunch of other people 0:19:45.720 --> 0:19:47.879 and we have each other's box, you know, in a 0:19:47.960 --> 0:19:50.639 sort of political way, but in a sort of like 0:19:50.720 --> 0:19:54.040 antological like are we the same in some like you know, 0:19:54.480 --> 0:19:57.600 deep deep way, Like no, I don't necessarily see that 0:19:57.680 --> 0:20:01.080 we are. This person has come from the east and 0:20:01.160 --> 0:20:02.639 I have come from the west, and you know, I 0:20:02.640 --> 0:20:05.400 have people arriving at this place from all cardinal directions, 0:20:05.400 --> 0:20:09.919 from all different types of experiences metaphorically speaking, and I 0:20:09.960 --> 0:20:13.159 don't understand many other people's experiences. I don't understand Like 0:20:14.040 --> 0:20:17.040 you call yourself trans, but like it was because you 0:20:17.080 --> 0:20:19.360 talk to your therapist, and your therapist suggested it and 0:20:19.359 --> 0:20:22.600 it sounded good to you. Well, like that sounds totally 0:20:22.640 --> 0:20:26.800 alien to me given my experience, and somebody else's experience, 0:20:26.800 --> 0:20:30.480 and what I've been through sounds totally alien and weird 0:20:30.520 --> 0:20:33.560 to them other than we're all here. So I don't 0:20:33.600 --> 0:20:35.399 really know what it means to be trans. And then 0:20:35.440 --> 0:20:36.960 once I say I don't really know what it means 0:20:36.960 --> 0:20:39.359 to be trans, then it doesn't really matter whether you 0:20:39.400 --> 0:20:42.280 call yourself trans or not. I'm just kind of interested 0:20:42.320 --> 0:20:45.520 in the experience of, Oh, you have weird gender feelings, 0:20:45.840 --> 0:20:49.439 and you're like interested in essentially having my back or 0:20:49.480 --> 0:20:52.800 me having your back, or us understanding each other. So 0:20:52.880 --> 0:20:54.800 I don't really care what you call it. I'm just 0:20:54.960 --> 0:20:58.400 interested in what those experiences might be that they got 0:20:58.440 --> 0:21:02.399 you here. Recently, I ended up on a reddit that 0:21:02.480 --> 0:21:05.880 I had to do with ozimpic and making your own 0:21:05.880 --> 0:21:09.200 ozimpic or your own GLP one, whatever those things are, 0:21:09.680 --> 0:21:13.760 and the formats in the reddit discussions we're almost the 0:21:13.760 --> 0:21:17.159 same as what you find in a transreddit. Whereas before 0:21:17.160 --> 0:21:21.240 and after photos arguments about whether or not one should 0:21:21.320 --> 0:21:26.000 conform to these conventional beauty standards, the transversion is like, 0:21:26.040 --> 0:21:28.679 why should I have to pass? Why should I not 0:21:28.760 --> 0:21:30.639 get to feel beautiful in this way? Why should I 0:21:30.680 --> 0:21:32.920 have to take hormones? Why should you have to take 0:21:33.080 --> 0:21:36.879 hormones to be trans? All these things? So the experiences 0:21:36.920 --> 0:21:42.920 are like emotionally so resonant, and the identities have nothing 0:21:42.920 --> 0:21:45.600 to do with one another. I feel the same thing 0:21:45.640 --> 0:21:47.800