NNRM #6: A Rotten Girl

by Jenna Topaz

“In her WhatsApp messages, Lisa, my new editor, remarked on how witty she found me. Like most people with issues around self-esteem, it was difficult to not immediately fall in love with her. The only thing that stopped me is that she was obviously straight; not even mostly straight until several cocktails in, but absolutely millimetre-precise straight. She had a long-term boyfriend, Roman, who she seemed mostly exasperated with, but affectionately, like a pet. I understand this is normal for heteros. (Trans girls would never participate in puppy play.)”

I needed a palate cleanser after I've Got a Time Bomb. So, naturally, I decided to re-read another book about a trans woman who systematically destroys her own life.

As a trans woman, you are taught that anonymity is safety. You've been inculcated with a hyper-vigilance about the emotional state of everyone around you. You learn how to shrink yourself, to always present the least offensive, least hate-crime-able version of yourself to the people around you. It's not lying, it's just... bending the light around you, so you turn invisible.

But it's exhausting, hiding. We need our families - our real families, the ones that hug us and tell us we're okay, even if only through the pages of a book.

It's just... nice to be seen. It's nice to see a book that confronts our collective propensity towards self-annihilation with a wink and a smile and a "Cis people, am I right?". Or maybe less "wry smile" and more "So anyway, I started blasting". Fortunately, Jenna Topaz has impeccable aim.

She pulls out each individual brain worm, and takes a magnifying glass to it, and the damage it does, and lets it shrivel up and die in the light of the sun. It's as clear as day: you can't hurt yourself without also hurting the people around you, the people like you. In this vicious, absurd world that hates us, existence is resistance.

"We have to be guerrillas, ninjas, vampires. Supping from the beast when it is mostly safe to do so, but never forgetting it is the enemy.”

This is a story about a trans woman pretending to be a gay man to write gay romance for straight women, and it reads all of those groups for absolute filth, and I am so here for it.

4/5

Ebook available at a bunch of places.