Things We Saw Today: Daniel Mallory Ortberg’s Interview on Coming Out as Trans

Ortberg, co-founder of the much-missed website The Toast, sat down with writer Heather Havrilesky to discuss his new identity.

Ortberg announced his transition just days before the release of his new book, The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror, a collection of strange and wonderful short stories based on fairy-tales. Where Ortberg’s first book, Texts From Jane Eyre, delighted and beguiled like a flurry of boudoir tricks, The Merry Spinster goes much deeper, brilliantly undermining our crustiest assumptions about gender, cultural expectations, and the wide world around us. I met him last weekend in Pismo Beach, California, for a conversation about the mysteries of gender, attraction, identity, and the joys of realizing “I can want things,” as he put it.

Both Ortberg and Havrilesky are among my all-time favorite writers on this here Internet, and to have them paired up on this piece is a gift. You should set aside a good amount of time to consume the whole important and illuminating interview in New York Magazine’s The Cut.

(via NY Mag, image: The Merry Spinster/Holt Paperbacks)

• Alternative Rotten Tomatoes Will Offer Aggregated Reviews and Ratings from Only Female Critics https://t.co/Y7zFPuJ1dw via @indiewire

  — Miranda Bailey (@mirandambailey) March 13, 2018

• Doctor Strange will be joining up with Team Science Bros. (Bruce Banner and Tony Stark) in Infinity War and Robert Downey Jr. talks about adding Cumberbatch’s sorcerer to the “Science Bros. mix” but some of us know that there are only two true Science Bros. and their bro-ship is inviolable. (via CBR)
• Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s production company will begin using inclusion riders.  (via DailyDot)
• Behind the scenes with that explosive opening sequence of The Last Jedi. (via io9)

What did you see today, Science Bros.?

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