This is clear from the opening paragraph, which describes an early sexual encounter with the author’s partner, Harry Dodge. To a very real extent, it is a love story, if an unconventional one. How to explain that for some, or for some at some times, this irresolution is OK-desirable, even (e.g. How to describe Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts To a very real extent, it is a love story, if an unconventional one. Neither do I want the male gender that transsexual medicine can furnish and that the state will award me if I behave in the right way. How to explain, in a culture frantic for resolution, that sometimes the shit stays messy? I do not want the female gender that has been assigned to me at birth. It binds an account of Nelsons relationship with her partner and a journey to and through a pregnancy to a rigorous exploration of. “Trans” may work well enough as shorthand, but the quickly developing mainstream narrative it evokes (“born in the wrong body,” necessitating an orthopedic pilgrimage between two fixed destinations) is useless for some-but partially, or even profoundly, useful for others? That for some, “transitioning” may mean leaving one gender entirely behind, while for others-like Harry, who is happy to identify as a butch on T-it doesn’t? I’m not on my way anywhere, Harry sometimes tells inquirers. Maggie Nelsons The Argonauts is a genre-bending memoir, a work of 'autotheory' offering fresh, fierce, and timely thinking about desire, identity, and the limitations and possibilities of love and language.
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