‘A Disobedient History of Trans Literature’ was the name of the lecture given by a man, Harry Josephine Giles, who identifies as trans.

It was hosted by the Glasgow Zine Library.

Giles’ whinge factor is about 100/mph

65 people attended the online lecture. The lecture was interpreted live by two BSL interpreters and the event was also live captioned.

Therefore I assume Giles was also paid too.

His constant hair flicking made Blaire White’s seem casual.

Giles has ‘they/she’ pronouns and gave a trigger warning that later he would use ‘historical words’ to describe trans people (i.e. transvestite, transsexual, etc) and that there would also be gun violence in a video that he would show.

Giles said he had been working on the content of the lecture for a ‘long time’.

So long, of course, it was only last minute that he realised it wouldn’t be a lecture on the whole of trans literature, just the novel.

Also cop the brilliant typo of ‘undermine’.

Giles had wanted to do the talk because of the effect a novel called Nevada had had on him when he was just an ‘egg’ (i.e. hadn’t realised he was trans yet).

Giles said the novel ‘enabled elements’ of his ‘transition’.

So I had a look at the first couple of pages of Nevada as it’s available on Amazon in preview.

It begins with Maria being choked by girlfriend Stephanie and faking an orgasm.

By page 2 we learn that Maria is really a man due to a detailed description about his orgasm.

The character is very dysphoric but being given head is a favourite sexual activity.

Oh and the character also hates his girlfriend, but this is ‘honesty’.

Giles didn’t explain to us that the novel is basically pornographic and probably wouldn’t be a suitable book for younger people and I’m sure the Glasgow Zine Library couldn’t be bothered to check either.

Giles’ lazy exploration of trans fiction then moved to Leslie Feinberg’s ‘Stone Butch Blues’, published in 1993.

Despite repeatedly saying memoir wasn’t of interest to him, he admitted that Stone Butch Blues’ main protagonist was likely to be very autobiographical.