why are we here? just to buffer?

Il m'était si humiliant de devoir cuisiner ces mets infâmes que l'intervention de M. de Broglie, le conseiller d'État du premier, qu'il dut qualifier auprès de sa femme de courtoise mais ferme et qui visait à chasser de l'existence commune ces relents plébéiens, fut un soulagement immense que je dissimulai du mieux que je le pus sous l'apparence d'une obéissance contrainte. (L'élégance du hérisson, Muriel Barbery, Folio Gallimard, p 16, emphasis mine in this and all following quotations)

could not figure out what kind of clause the que was introducing (independent? relative?) and i attached "de courtoise mais ferme" to "sa femme" even though that didn't make sense because i didn't know what else to do with it and sa femme was right there. spoiler alert: i forgot that qualifier takes de 😩

It was so humiliating for me to have to cook such loathsome dishes that when Monsieur de Broglie--the State Councilor on the first floor--intervened (an intervention he described to his wife as being "courteous but firm," whose only intention was to rid our communal habitat of such plebeian effluvia), it came as an immense relief, one I concealed as best I could beneath an expression of reluctant compliance. (The Elegance of the Hedgehog, trans. Alison Anderson, Europa Editions, p 20)

okay. yeah. that makes sense. the variety of punctuation is a massive aid to comprehension. the word order also solves the problem of distance between modifier and modified. putting the relative clause so far away from its parent noun ("l'intervention") was really confusing. mean to meeee.

the next two are essentially the same construction, subject-verb inversion with verb in some form of past tense subjunctive followed by que introducing an independent clause in the conditional:

Eussé-je le loisir de croquer dans le mètre étalon que je me taperais bruyamment sur les cuisses en lisant et un beau chapitre comme « Révélation du sens final de la science dans l'effort de la "vivre" comme phénomène noématique » ou bien « Les problèmes constitutifs de l'ego transcendantal » pourrait même me faire expirer de rire, foudroyée en plein cœur dans ma bergère moelleuse, du jus de mirabelle ou des filets de chocolate coulant aux commissures. (pp 64-65)

imperfect subjunctive, then present conditional.

Sabine Pallières eût-elle été une bonne portugaise née sous un figuier de Faro, une concierge fraîchement émigrée de Puteaux ou bien une déficiente mentale tolérée par sa charitable famille que j'aurais pu pardonner de bon cœur cette nonchalance coupable. Mais Sabine Pallières est une riche. (p 131)

pluperfect subjunctive, then past conditional, which is the same relationship that the tenses in the first example had to each other.

i think it was the "que" that really threw me in both examples, because [independent clause in the subjunctive functioning as an if-statement] + [independent clause in the conditional functioning as a then-statement] isn't really that out there all things considered, and neither is subject-verb inversion, especially in the subjunctive i feel like. but i also had a lot of trouble making sense of the content of the first example because while i do know that le mètre étalon is a concept in philosophy, i didn't really understand why we were biting it. mostly it was the que though, because this didn't strike me as a time when a que needed to be included. but i do often see que used in subjunctive or conditional constructions so i think this might be that kind of thing? translations:

Had I but the leisure to bite into the standard meter, I would slap myself noisily on the thighs while reading, and such delightful chapters as "Uncovering the final sense of science by becoming immersed in science qua noematic phenomenon" or "The problems constituting the transcendental ego" might even cause me to die of laughter, a blow straight to the heart as I sit slumped in my plush armchair, with plum juice or thin driblets of chocolate oozing from the corners of my mouth... (p 58)

this translation reads as pretty awkward to me but i think it is essentially accurate. and i think we must be biting the standard meter because this whole chapter is about her smell test for philosophical works which is basically to eat something really tasty while reading philosophy, and if the philosophy doesn't spoil the taste, and the taste doesn't spoil the philosophy, she knows she's in the presence of true art. i still don't really get it though to be honest lol. is the standard meter supposed to be tasty or not tasty in this situation?

If Sabine Pallières had been a good Portuguese woman born under a fig tree in Faro, or a concierge who'd just arrived from the high-rise banlieues of Paris, or if she were the mentally challenged member of a tolerant family who had taken her in out of the goodness of their hearts, I might have whole-heartedly forgiven such guilty nonchalance. But Sabine Pallières is wealthy. (p 109)

i knew what this one meant just from context, but because i had already run into this construction in the standard meter example, i wrote it down anyway. good to have confirmation the construction is working in essentially the same way in both cases.

i more or less understood the next one but wrote it down because i liked "tel un miraculeux insu":

Lorsque les lignes deviennent leurs propres démiurges, lorsque j'assiste, tel un miraculeux insu, à la naissance sur le papier de phrases qui échappent à ma volonté et, s'inscrivant malgré moi sur la feuille, m'apprennent ce que je ne savais ni ne croyais vouloir, je jouis de cet accouchement sans douleur, de cette évidence non concertée, de suivre sans labeur ni certitude, avec le bonheur des étonnements sincères, une plume qui me guide et me porte. (p 151)

i struggle to figure out how to translate "tel un x" phrases so i was curious to see what the translator would do with this. the translation renders the bolded bit as "like some witless yet miraculous participant‚ I witness the birth" (p 123). which is interesting...i'm not sure it would have occurred to me to attach miraculeux in that way. 'miraculeux' is modifying 'insu' and there is no noun corresponding to 'participant' (that came from the verb phrase "j'assiste"), but here the translator is treating "tel un miraculeux insu" as essentially referring to a person, whereas i think of 'insu' as something that belongs to a person (or maybe something that not-belongs to the person? lol) rather than the person themself. is it the participant who is miraculous, or is the miraculous part the fact that she participates unknowingly?

sidenote: from context and this book's whole deal i assume that this whole passage is meant to be an example of elegant french prose, but for me the experience of reading this sentence was akin to reading dumas. rolling my eyes and making the jerkoff motion starting four commas in. i'm getting a better sense for french style but that doesn't mean i have to like it lol.

with this last one, i couldn't tell if it was a mistake or a construction i'm not familiar with:

J'ai encore aujourd'hui du mal à considérer que les fleuristes et les coiffeurs ne sont pas des parasites, qui vivant de l'exploitation d'une nature qui appartient à tous, qui accomplissant avec force simagrées et produits odorants une tâche que j'effectue seule dans ma salle de bains avec une paire de ciseaux bien coupants. (p 231)

i was like wait what are these participles doing here. shouldn't it be "vivent" and "accomplissent"? the translation gives "the former living...the latter performing" (p 186). is that a construction? "qui...qui..." for "the former...the latter..."? i don't see it in wordreference. and actually i feel like the point is that both clauses apply to both florists and hairdressers. flowers and hair are both natural things that belong to everybody, and both florists and hairdressers exploit those things using sharp scissors...so i'm still not sure about this.

i also couldn't figure out "force simagrées". i was thinking of force as a noun and so didn't know why simagrées would be plural, but simagrées is the noun, and force is i guess essentially an adjective? i don't see such a usage in the dictionary, but the translation gives "an outlandish amount of playacting", and once i read that it did make sense. and i do feel like i've seen 'force' used in similar ways even if i can't find any examples at the moment. or maybe i'm thinking of 'fort' as used as an adverb intensifying an adjective? but this seems related...

okay just came across another "force [plural noun]" in a different book so screw wordreference i am looking this up in my trusty robert de poche:

force VI. adv. littér. Beaucoup de. Il nous a reçus avec force sourires.

but, if this is you, please hear me: this feeling is internalized transphobia. it's understandable, but you need to work through it. you are trans.

there are not "levels" to being trans.

there are material circumstances that can impact how transphobia impacts you. the more things you choose to do with your life that are prohibited according to assignment, the more you will experience transphobia, because transphobia is assignment enforcement. so yes, trans people who encounter these structural modes of enforcement are experiencing transphobia that those who are not encountering these structures are not.

(for example, I have not changed my name or gender marker legally. this means I have not experienced the specific mechanism of assignment enforcement that exists to restrict legal sexgender re-categorization. I have changed my sexed traits medically (hormones and surgery) so I have experienced the specific mechanism of assignment enforcement that exists to restrict bodily autonomy over sexed characteristics. these are structures, right?)

but we are all trans. avoiding these structures to avoid dealing with the transphobia inherent to navigating them is also experiencing the impact of this enforcement. whether you decide to go up against any specific enforcement structures or not, you are still trans. you are still experiencing living in a world that enforces assignment and punishes people for disobedience to it. you are still being impacted by this restriction on your autonomy, whether you openly fight any particular aspect of this restriction or not.

at a time when people are constantly promoting the idea that

nonbinary people "don't transition,"

nonbinary can mean being "detrans" or cisgender,

nonbinary people are "neither trans or cis" or "less trans" than other trans people,

nonbinary people are always assigned female at birth and transfems can't be nonbinary

we need to all understand this is an effort to insist that:

nonbinary people are somehow inherently, categorically different from other trans people,

that we do not have shared material interests or life experiences navigating the same structures of assignment enforcement, and

that TME nonbinary people should not work together with transfeminized people--nonbinary or not--for shared liberation.

this is some divide-and-conquer shit. we cannot allow this idea to flourish. it is dangerous.

i feel it makes me an arbitrator of knowledge and experience that i do not have and will detract from speaking on

here is what I think: no trans person is an arbiter. every trans person can only speak to their own life experience and accumulated knowledge.

some trans people spend a lot of time and effort collecting information about many trans people’s experiences (through talking to a lot of people, doing surveys and studies, etc). some trans people spend a lot of time and effort applying and modifying theoretical frameworks about oppression to form coherent analysis around trends in experience. these people can speak to the knowledge and understandings that they have about transness broadly, and can cite their sources and explain their influences that led them to these conclusions.

any legitimacy someone holds when talking about transness is not an innate quality derived from their identity; it is an earned, living, relational trust.

you can speak on your own experiences and whatever knowledge and understanding you have gained from engagement with these things. same as any trans person.

you might not know a lot yet, so you might not have much knowledge to offer in these situations besides anecdotes from your own life right now. that’s fine and is the case for many trans people.

in my opinion, as long as you are humble and honest about the limits of your own knowledge about transness when you speak on it, then you are responsibly wielding that label and not detracting from anyone else's experiences.

also there are trans people who are irresponsible with this all the time & claim anecdotes from their own life is in-and-of-itself proof of some universal truth about what it means to be trans. they're still trans. trans people grift and let themselves be tokenized sometimes. transness does not imply knowledge, authority, or investment in trans liberation in and of itself.

trans people are just people. there is no test. saying you're trans is just an honest report that you are not living your life within relational/medical/legal bounds of the sexgender assigned to you.

I think it's wonderful that you feel responsibility to treat discussion about being trans with gravity. it is genuinely a very good thing to move with respect for how these discussions impact other people's lives.

you do not need to deny yourself language to maintain this respect. in fact, your ability to advocate for trans people more broadly may strengthen when you claim your stake in the struggle directly.

slowly being crushed under the weight of having to be The Emperor since he was five years old (which is clearly a lot of pressure even though Aral and Cordelia seem to have done their best to shield him from the brunt of it when he was younger), finds out his dead father was a monster, is terrified he's going to turn into a monster too, tries to kill himself, runs away, ends up in indentured servitude in the middle of a tangled political mess and soon-to-be war zone, gets found by Miles (tries to help Gregor out with his emotional issues, Bad At It) and has to tell him what happened, gets captured, has to honeypot the evil opportunistic mercenary holding him prisoner so she doesn't just slit his throat, and then after finally getting out of that...has to go right back to being Emperor and help stop a war.