Men

It is so very telling that this book, when trans identities are mentioned, sings from the approved songbook but still got racked over the coals for being transphobic. a trans man is beaten on the street exemplifying the existing rabid hate for the group, seeing a trans woman amongst the taken men elicits outrage that she is unfairly lumped in with the men's sins, trans roommates are invoked to model how women have always lived along trans identities in peace and solidarity. Is the accusation the book/author is transphobic because her mentions of transness are so few? Or is the problem that her premise is based on a Y chromosome, and biology is now inconvenient. When Y the Last Man was released, everyone ate that shit up. What's changed?

I found Newman's The Country of Ice Cream Star ambitious and wanted to read more of her. It helped that this book came with more controversy: tell me not to read something and you bet I will. But I found it difficult to identify with any of the characters. Oh, she finds the honesty in a scene so well: fantasising about a life without a husband and child but not really meaning it, that sex scene where she has to get her partner to come after her own passion is sated, the sensation of breastfeeding, plain truths like "when she saw she hurt me, she was filled with the exulting malice of the victim who can at last wield power". these blew my mind. but getting to understand a character, and why they make their choices? No. So maybe I'm too dumb, or maybe I need to read it slower, but I didn't connect with the book as a whole.

And the ending was baffling to me. It's in her head? or Poppy's head? then why do we have the other narrators? I wanted to find a proper breakdown of this book but all I'm seeing is: It's transphobic trash, or blind allegiance because it made the TRAs mad.