i guess the only thing to do is live tweet myself hate skimming jill soloway’s new book
oh my god 
WITHIN DAYS
oh NO is this book going to make me hate kathryn hahn
i fully expect the patriarchy to be toppled by the end of this book
C for straight
yes go on
LADIES those lumps in your tits? ȶɦɛ քǟȶʀɨǟʀƈɦʏ
it’s impossible to read this book without getting a picture of a person who milked their parent’s transness for everything it was worth
it really confirms beyond a shadow of a doubt that ali pfefferman is a straight up avatar of jill soloway
it feels like one of those coming of age films where the awkward protagonist introduces her one popular friend to her secret passion and her friend takes it up and becomes super successful and celebrated and instantly forgets the main character
A LEGACY OF QUEERNESS
a third of the way through and it’s still nothing but transparent behind the scenes trivia but clearly this is a clever ploy to lure the patriarchy into a false sense of security
“now, i know what you’re thinking”
leave it to jill soloway to expect you to be impressed by the phrase “somewhat queer”
i should emphasize that by this point in the book jill is, as far as anyone including themselves is aware, a straight cis woman making a tv show about her trans parent while basically knowing *nothing* about trans women
who is this book for?? other than nanette stans
(not a joke btw)
guys guys it’s fine they talked to jenny boylan
“will probably help some”
imagine having ALREADY SHOT the transparent pilot before realizing this
SHOOT ME IN THE FACE
lol no it means across, the word for bridge is pons, guess no one at penguin could be bothered to crack open the old wheelock
uhhh
how long before someone tells jill about this thread do we think
this is fascinating, an activist yells at jill for having transface in the show and jill responds by saying that maura might end up genderqueer, this tells you an *enormous* amount about how jill soloway understands gender
lol @ the implication that standard stanislavskian acting technique is radically queer
i remember learning that moppa is what jill already called her parent and that was why it was in the show but in fact it is, a little weirdly, reversed
*sighs* what’s the difference jill
first appearance of van barnes, who eventually will accuse tambor of sexual harassment
aww yeh gimme that radical trans content baby
woof
i give you: the Topple Principles
WILL IT CHANGE THE WORLD
(my phone is at 1 percent lol but we will resume toppling when i get home)
aaaand we’re back folks, the patriarchy better watch its back cuz we still got *checks watch* uh a lot left
a flawless sentence
ok buckle up kids it’s getting Heavy
oh mel sounds GREAT
call me old fashioned but i was not expecting jill soloway to describe eating pussy as “gross in the abstract”
kind of a weird takeaway from the argonauts but really just look at the citation structure here, it’s like a seventh grade kate chopin paper
epic
ok, like, alcohol is called liquid courage bc it’s courage in liquid form, you can’t call your sister “liquid faith” unless she’s a.. beverage
ohhh dear
“we had a shaman come” checks out
...was it tho?
this book is an embarrassment to lesbians everywhere
uh huh
believable dialogue
a Relatable Sports Metaphor
(yes folks, we’ve entered night mode)
never ask a question unless you want to get ratio’d, jilly
jesus
CALL BACK
friends i do not know how we got here
nooooooooooo
oh god. another manifesto.
what the FUCK
“could it be?” i asked myself. “was i the most interesting person in the world??”
exquisite
*sets it down, backs away slowly*
i regret to inform you that the fantasy football passage was not over
note for now that this paragraph is being narrated from the present, in which as far as has been publicly indicated, jill does not identify as a woman, and yet there is this “we” that clearly means “we women.” expect more of this.
first mention of tambor’s “moods,” which has already been quoted in press for the book. the “this” he never got refers to the aforementioned topple principles, which jill briefly recaps to reassure you that tambor was an outlier
i know you won’t believe me but there is *another* numbered list of platitudinous maxims, this one from jill’s therapist
lol sure
three-fourths through, and i have to say, i’m beginning to worry that the patriarchy *might not* be toppled by the end...
i am: exhausted / i want: to die
...did you?
this is obviously supposed to be deep, but note again how jill is treating “being a creator,” as they say in la, as something on par with being a gender
“hello, 9-1-1? yes, i’d like to report a list... no, another one...”
nothing could lower my opinion of you more than writing “how beautiful could that be” about literally theybies
now we’ve known since the beginning this book would be a parody of non-binary discourse but it’s telling that jill dreams of everybody seeing “pure soul” before gender, i guarantee you almost everyone would *hate* this, including most trans ppl
a definition of trans: please leave my pure soul out of this!!
ah the two genders: the icy streets of chicago and.. marshall field’s?
the question of the hour
at the risk of stating the obvious: being trans or non-binary for the attention doesn’t make you not really trans or non-binary, it just makes you annoying
“so glad that the world was finally catching up with feminism”
“little did i know it, but it was *i* who would be toppled”
a true hero
i could remind you that most white women voted for trump but instead i will simply note that “a shadow of a black balloon the size of the planet” is an embarrassingly bad metaphor
oh boy oh boy oh boy
“but sarah, we have to shoot there! i already promised the cast and crew we would go to that land! a land promise, if you will”
this is quite literally a call back to the earlier section on being non-binary, as if being made to choose, uh, not zionism were some kind of oppressive binaristic thinking
“i don’t have a lot of things in common with jared kushner, BUT”
what eventually happens is that they don’t shoot in israel... and then jill goes to israel and shoots b roll with a small crew anyway
...and then while in a car jill encounters a riot (?) of some kind (it’s implied but not confirmed that it’s started by palestinian resistance fighters), which is very frightening and not at all reflected on save a brief word about privilege
oh my
”the best sex, which we were really good at”
wait wait wait i thought you “don’t really identify with the word female or woman”??
also, let me get this straight, so the door is like.. an escape room?
they seem to actually believe this
OH MY GOD IT HAPPENED
i want to take a moment to apologize for ever doubting that the patriarchy would be toppled, i didn’t *tears up* i didn’t have faith you know? i needed a little *sniff* a little *whispering* LIQUID FAITH
ok lol i need to take a shower
oh good, a hamilton analogy
note that for hashtag me too purposes, jill is, once more, a woman
another perfect sentence
oh bless
“then oprah came in”
imagine being this out of touch
omg here we go
“believe her,” i replied
bullshit
props for honesty i guess
won’t someone think of the legacy ??
uhh
“just like our israel compromise”
“i didn’t want to do the wrong thing, but i was really trying to avoid doing the right thing” —jill soloway
THE STAKES. COULD NOT. BE HIGHER.
*very don corleone voice*
we’re really at full traffic accident now
holy fucking shit
LIKE MICHAEL IN THE GODFATHER
in the year 2018, penguin books published a memoir in which television creator jill soloway jokingly compares actress trace lysette to fredo corleone from THE GODFATHER II, in which—recall!—fredo WAS EXECUTED FOR BETRAYING AL PACINO
JILL IS AL PACINO IN THIS SCENARIO
last chapter stay with me ladies
that spongebob meme where the guy yells “my leg!” but with “my legacy!”
as far as i can tell this family metaphor is utterly sincere
now we are in a barely intelligible passage on consent
like.. what?
i am almost certain these are sentences
it’s like someone poorly transcribed a slapdash q&a response
“yes, this person, let’s give this person a book, 250 pages i was thinking?”
the revolution will be funded
why the flying fuck would i want an x on my driver’s license
god i keep thinking it’s over but it’s NOT
by the way “transbrella” is a ridiculous word that literally no one uses except for jill soloway
SALUTE THE YOUTH
aaaaand now we’re back to emphatically *not* being a woman
this is the most important paragraph in the whole book: jill does not want to be cis, despite having numerous times referred to themselves as part of a “we women” in this very book!
in conclusion, jill soloway is what we could call a fairweather woman: a woman when it’s politically advantageous, and not, when it’s not. this doesn’t mean jill’s gender isn’t what they say it is. it just means their gender isn’t insulated from their shameless opportunism
but bc we can’t be done yet, jill has the balls to thank trace lysette in their acknowledgments
ick.
well what have we learned? not much, folks. we already knew that jill soloway was a shameless opportunist capitalizing on the queerness of the ppl around them. we did learn that jill is a terrible horrible no good very bad writer, which is i have to say a little baffling
we also learned that jill soloway appears to still believe that van barnes and trace lysette should not have gone public with their accusations, and that all conflict should have been kept “in the family,” which jill emphasizes by USING A MAFIA ANALOGY
finally we learned that jill soloway appears to have known NOTHING about trans people when they started making transparent and appears at present to still know extremely little about trans people, despite the trans entourage they surround themselves with for insurance
thank you all for your courage and bravery through this harrowing ordeal, and i hope that one day we can all take a group hike and hire a shaman to cleanse our souls of this very bad book
let us end, as we must, with a full list of everyone who gave this book advance praise: cheslea handler, amber tamblyn, jane campion, norman lear, sarah kate ellis, margaret cho, daphne merkin, chris kraus, susan stryker, meredith talusan, sarah schulman, and susie bright
good night, sweet thread~
