Thursday, 30 July 2020
Progress on writing Gender Euphoria
Hey Everyone, just wanted to give you all an update on how the book is coming along.
So, after a VERY busy July spent writing, I have finished the first draft of my essays for Gender Euphoria. my number of essays and wordcount should account for 35-40% of the finished book's length, with the rest being made up by contributor essays.
Obviously I'm going to need to spend some time doing revisions and redrafting my portion of the book's content, but that first draft is sorted and out the way.
In terms of contributor essyas, we've had four of five of our 17 contributor essays back so far, and all of them have been of really high quality. Two of them so far made me cry while doing edits. I'm feeling really confident this anthology is going to be something really special by the time it's done.
The plan is to hopefully, by the end of August, have all the contributor essays recieved, edited, redrafted if needed, and ready to a publishable standard. At that point, I basically just need to pick the final running order of the essays, write any connective sections, and get the manuscript draft to Unbound's editors.
i am condfident still that, by the end of August, we should have a first draft of the full manuscript ready for editing. If we can manage that, hopefully we can keep that ball rolling and get the book out pretty fast.
I'll give everyone more updates in the next month to let you know how progress develops.
Thank you all again so much for your support
Laura Dale
Top rewards
Ebook
Collectable
Comments
Hi Laura
If I set to work today I can produce an essay within a week or so. If you are interested in receiving and reading it I would like to contribute. My contemporary literary attempts have been poems, one book published in February this year and 5 poems in an American anthology, also 2020. Otherwise my essays have been for graduate and post graduate work. I am 68, live in the UK, married, non-binary, bisexual - gender euphoria can be a hard experience to keep going.
I am very much looking forward to reading your book. It is good to have a British (European) perspective.
Kind regards
Stef Jakobi
posted 4th August 2020
Hi Laura
As an aside, please may I add something of my own experience from elsewhere and hope that it is some interest. In fact, I am just an older white man from London who as a field biologist has worked on French Polynesia (Tahiti) since 1995 and been resident for the last 17 years. This is a place of fascinating (for me) gender and sexual fluidity. For example, my neighbours both sides in my block are post-op transsexuals. Basically, local people at least, distinguish between 'mahu' who are normally gay men and openly so, even from early school days. Mostly, they are transvestites and it is common practice here for a family to raise the first boy as a girl with the somewhat old-fashioned idea of them playing a social role, looking after children (a bit like maiden aunts from my era) and doing traditionally 'women’s jobs', usually in catering or embroidery. This is the case in all Polynesian societies. I have seen transvestite primary school teachers, a transvestite leading the choir in the Catholic cathedral and once I counted five serving in McDonalds. Trans people are called 'raerae'. Many are post-op and life is more difficult for them, a number turning to prostitution, but there is one who works in the government assembly. As I said, it is difficult but not compared to elsewhere as many, like my neighbours find partners and settle. Raerae are extremely visible and I once read that they form around 6% of the population in the capital, Papeete. Mahu and raerae don’t always get on too well. At some levels they competitors. That aside the other thing that I observe here is extraordinary fluidity (remember I grew up in working-class Tottenham in London from the 1950’s!). Female homosexuality on Tahiti seems to be even more common than male, which I think is not the case elsewhere, but of course, I don’t really know, just I’ve just read that. There are many 'garçon manqué' dressed as boys which we used to call 'butch'. As a man, it is rare here to meet a woman who had not previously had a relationship with a female, and many change regularly. My girlfriend here goes to karaoke with her lesbian cousin and her girlfriend, and a trans female. We have had two of her adolescent nieces stay with us and both started going out with boys but changed to girls. One of the girls was adopted by her lesbian aunt and her girlfriend. I hope this is of some interest as I think it is one difference that I will notice when I retire to England this year. I apologise for anything that may be unknowingly insensitive or worse, anachronistic.
Good luck
Trevor
posted 4th August 2020
Hello!
posted 30th October 2021