Something That May Shock and Discredit You Quotes

“As my friend Julian puts it, only half winkingly: “God blessed me by making me transsexual for the same reason God made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine, so that humanity might share in the act of creation.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“Even if I never read another book, I’m still a person with intrinsic value, and later I’ll be a river.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“It was one thing to be a man, or wish to be a man, or live as a man, in a coffee shop or with a friend or alone in my apartment or out in public, but to be a man in relation with my mother meant being not-her-daughter.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“Chapter Eleven: In Which I Interview Every Man Who Refused to Walk Through a Door I Held Open for Them Before Transition and Inform Them that They Are Retroactively Gay Now”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“Is there anything gayer than refusing to ask someone out, then holding them personally responsible for the silent, ever-increasing intensity of your feelings until they tell you casually they’re going on a date with someone who asked them out, then exploding with despair? Almost certainly, but no one will tell me what it is.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“I mean, if I were thirty years younger—if I were twenty five years younger—if I were eighteen years younger—God, if I were just ten years younger—if I were a year and a day younger—if I were a month younger—if you'd asked me just five minutes ago, four and a half even, if I'd picked up on the first ring instead of the third, I'd transition. Hell, I'd transition. Oh my God, I wish I could transition. Ask me again, but sooner. Come back yesterday. Come back a week ago. What good are you to me now, when I'm—this? Where were you when there was still summer in my heart? Come back a month ago, a decade, but come back to before I had to forgive you. Just come back and ask again; I'll wait if it takes forever this time.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“Trying not to transition was the hardest work in the world. The nicest thing about transition was letting go.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“Kids, Daddy used to have the greatest rack in the tristate area.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“Transition had not always been true of me, but I found that the more place I allowed it in my life, the further back it cast its roots. Whether or not the birthright had been mine to begin with or ever intended for me, I found the burden easy and the yoke light.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“I often described my sudden shift in self-awareness as feeling as if a demon had entered my room in the middle of the night, startled me awake by whispering, "What if you were a man, sort of?" into my ear, then slithered out the window before I could ask any follow-up questions.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“I had grown comfortable at the thought of my body as a public resource that I was responsible for holding in trust. I had been charged with its maintenance and general upkeep, and on the strength of such a relationship had been able to develop a certain vague fondness for it, while also maintaining a pleasant distance. Don’t ask me; I just work here, was my attitude. I can let the supervisors know when there’s a problem and they tell me how to fix it.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“are you up
if so do you want to play frisbee and die for each other
—Hyacinthus to Apollo, ibid.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“Trans people: Always mesmerized, held, fascinated, and ultimately defeated by reflective surfaces. What's that, you say? A mirror of some kind? Hold it up to me so I might gaze at it with longing and dissatisfaction.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“There is a certain type of beautiful boy who plays Ultimate Frisbee and invites you to come watch his game,” I said, “not because he is vain and self-centered, although he maybe is, but because it is the only way he knows how to invite someone to share in his particular joy, and I think maybe the only thing I have ever wanted is to be a very beautiful, very dead, gentle boy that everyone gathers around and looks at.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“On the one hand, here is death: stagnant, permanent, immobilized, silent, unvarying, inactive, formless, characterless, shrinking, constrictive, irreversible. On the other hand, here is transition: active, forceful, adaptable, energetic, animated, expansive, full of possibility, capacious, comprehensive, vital, ambitious.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“Resolutely cheerful, unrepentantly sentimental, unfortunately prone to Peter Pan syndrome, in a bafflingly nonspecific relationship with a tall, beautiful woman, deeply enthusiastic about terrible hobbies, a tendency toward overdressing, neglectful or at the least careless of his health—Gomez Addams could have walked out of a pamphlet on trans-specific medical care from Vancouver Coastal Health.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“Chapter Thirteen: In Which I Rescue Masculinity by Taking Up Weight Lifting, Heroically It’s subversive and important when I do it.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“The idea of tending to anything that belonged to me—my home, my clothes, my appearance—was unbearable, because everything at that time depended on my not having a body. Washing the dishes meant acknowledging that I had hands to wash them with, a stomach to fill, a hunger to address, a body to nourish.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“Here is the other Mode of Gay Feeling: You still look fantastic, but your stomach hurts and you will never get out of bed. You have learned that rolling your sleeves up over your forearms is very useful to you, sexually speaking, but the person you love and the people you sleep with have absolutely nothing in common, including what they think of your forearms.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“Nobody is asking me to apologize for anything, but I still want to, if only for the pleasure and the sweetness and the release of being forgiven.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“Do you have trans on the menu? Is it possible to get a cup instead of a bowl? What's the smallest amount of trans you have available? I'll take that.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“As soon as I allowed myself to consider the possibility of transition, not as it related to other people but as it related to me, I had to fight not to transition every day.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“you trying to take my life away from me?). I’d have to do my best to calmly reason away: “You can keep your life! You’re not like me. Someone would have told you if you were like me! You’d definitely know by now if you were like me. Even though I didn’t know I was like me until quite recently, and it came as quite a surprise. Oh, no—maybe you are like me. Maybe you would never have known that you were like me as long as I’d never told you, but now that I’ve told you you’ve started thinking about it, and once you start thinking about it you can’t stop, and now you are going to have to transition—my God, it is contagious! Get everyone else out of this coffee shop, for the love of Christ, if you want to maintain persistent gender continuity—it’s onsetting rapidly, this gender dysphoria, and I don’t know who it’s going to claim next!”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“My childhood was not especially useful to my adulthood, which I found bitterly disappointing.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“There’s something truly wonderful about referring to a procedure as specific as a bilateral mastectomy with a term as blandly ominous as “top surgery.”
Is it serious, Doc?
Yeah, son. I’m afraid there’s nothing to do but schedule you for top surgery.
What parts of me will be affected, Doc?
The top.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“I have been, and sort of am, a good woman. I could be, and sort of am, a good man. Neither option is forbidden to me, and I don’t believe there is an inherent virtue in, I don’t know, “lifelong gender consistency.” One is not better or worse than the other, and I don’t believe that a shifting sense of identity is wrong, or a sign of unwellness.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“Everyone with a lick of sense loves Morticia, but what is Gomez Addams, besides “an obviously transsexual man”?”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“Being a woman is hard, but I was good at it, I think is the underlying anxiety. Nobody fired me; I quit. I know I'm not trying to look pretty anymore, and I apologize to all those who have to look at me, because I used to try and I'm not enough of a man yet for it to not be a problem. I promise to work very hard to look like Victor Garber so you can look at a handsome man in three years' time minimum.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“There is sometimes a tendency, at least among the trans men I have known, to treat testosterone therapy at the outset as if one were the first to order french fries at the table: tentative, looking to others for guidance and support, a half-frantic desire not to be the only one. If I have some, will you have some? I know you'll have some—is it possible to get a half order? This is for the table, not just for me. What's the smallest actual amount of testosterone that you can medically offer me? I'll take that, but can you put half of it in a to-go box before you bring it out? I'm sharing with friends.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“I also had the sense that there was something distinctly impolite about [transitioning], like agreeing to go out for pizza with a group of friends and, just as we were being led to our table, announcing, "I think I'd rather have birthday cake for dinner. Does anyone mind if we leave now and go bake a cake somewhere?" And my friends might agree out of politeness and affection, but their hearts wouldn't really be in it, and I would in fact have trespassed on their good natures by asking, making such an outrageous, selfish request.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You