beep beep

thematically, i think in a play about the social vulnerability of women, having a character be a trans woman just makes sense as a way to provide depth to that idea. specifically, i love the concept of beatrice's view of men being informed by her own experiences as a closeted trans woman (it's amazing what people will say in front of you when they think you're one of them) and as someone later facing sexism and transmisgoyny.

usually when someone does a trans reading of this play/character, they look at beatrice's famous speech about wishing she was a man and interpret her as a trans man, which is perfectly valid! but this idea started for me with the simple thought that i wanted an out and accepted trans character to play with rather than a closeted one who cannot transition, just as a matter of personal preference at that particular time and with this particular text. but then i kept thinking.

as above, the concept of beatrice reading men for filth in the context of having lived among them is great. the "oh god that i were a man" speech is extremely disparaging of men and what they claim to be vs how they actually wield their power. what she wishes is that she had the power that men have automatically in her society--felt all the more keenly because there was a time when she was able to wield that power and she gave it up to be happy, to be herself, to be free in a different way. (here is where i sometimes imagine beatrice regretting ever transitioning, believing that her own happiness and health is less important than having the power to protect hero's happiness and health, because i love angst.) but now that the worst has happened, she is reduced to begging a man for help and it's demeaning and infuriating and tragic.

i also love turning on its head the line "i cannot be a man with wishing, therefore i will die a woman with grieving." being a trans person, dealing with internalized transphobia, knowing that transitioning will put a target on your back, wishing you could just be the gender you're born as--but no amount of wishing will make her not a woman. i think she loves herself and her gender but the play is focusing on points of conflict so that's what i'm talking about here.

in a play about misogyny, the vulnerability of women, and the hypocrisy of men, a trans woman has a unique perspective on both masculinity and femininity both as genders and places in society. (in the ideal version, i think john would be a trans man to mirror this experience, but that would require him to be rewritten to have actual depth and personality and all that is a different essay). there is also just a particular kind of strength that comes from having to carve out and defend your identity in that way which i think fits her very well.

lastly, a couple of other miscellaneous things from the text that can tie in:

beatrice recounting "a double heart for his single one" meaning both "i loved him twice as much as he loved me" and "i loved him as two people: [birthname] and beatrice"

[Beatrice is] an unmarried woman dependent upon the hospitality of her uncle. This is the same position that Rosalind in As You Like It occupies at the court of her uncle, Duke Frederick, but there marriage is not the constant topic of conversation—and, of course, Rosalind manages to make her escape, together with her cousin Celia. In Much Ado About Nothing Beatrice and Hero are the young women of the household, and it is expected that they will marry. [...] Beatrice is not an heiress [...and] her position is more precarious than Hero's. [...This] will return, more vividly and painfully, after the humiliation of Hero, when Beatrice longs to revenge her cousin and must instead enlist Benedick's aid to fight with Claudio: "O God that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the market place" (4.1.303-304). It is worth noting that in other Shakespearean comedies of this period the heroine does become a man, at least for a little while. Portia, Rosalind, and Viola all cross-dress, assuming male costumes and names in order to perform some act of rescue, release, or revenge. But Beatrice has this option only in the wishful form of a condition contrary to fact. Much Ado About Nothing is a play that engages topics like male bonding and female disempowerment, for all the powerful figures in Messina are men.

—Marjorie Garber, Shakespeare After All

This is such a great point because women disguising themselves as men is such a hallmark of Shakespeare's comedies! And this is a play about, in many ways, the various masks we wear--and yet Beatrice's desire to hold the position of a man (power) is the subject of a tragic and impassioned speech rather than a lark of crossdressing. In Much Ado, that gender boundary is utterly impassible; which sets us up in a very interesting way for a trans reading.

Because in this reading, Beatrice DID transcend that divide, which is exactly why she can't do it again. The pressure for her to perform femininity is all the higher because she has to "prove" and "earn" her place as a woman. She doesn't get to masquerade as a man and have a funny little adventure. Her being brash and outspoken is already pushing it.

Or, to look at it from the other direction: Beatrice already spent half her life dressed up as a man, pretending to be one. The play is now set in a time where, narratively, that opportunity has passed. That plot arc has already happened. That trick won't work a second time.

I think there is a parallel to Lady Macbeth here--another woman begging a man to do violence for her. But in Macbeth that desire is largely selfish, while in Much Ado it is to serve the protection of another woman. So often in Shakespeare, it is the women who get shit done, who take things into their own hands (sometimes, but not always, via crossdressing) so when a woman can't do that it feels significant and intentional. Beatrice is such a strong character and yet still helpless in the face of gendered power dynamics.

Masculinity in Much Ado is also very linked to credibility, which is another reason the ol' crossdress maneuver wouldn't work. It's not just about gendered power dynamics, but also class. Who outranks who? Who has had favor conferred upon them by a prince? Who has their masculinity revoked for being too young or too old or too dumb?

We see this perhaps most keenly in Act 5 scene 1. First, a confrontation between Leonato and Antonio vs Pedro and Claudio. Antonio is enraged and questions their masculinity, calling them cowards and pale imitations of men for their actions against Hero; when they leave and Benedick arrives, Claudio jokes about how "two old men without teeth" tried to fight them.

And then Benedick rebuffs their attempts at joking around and issues his challenge to Claudio. Immediately they seek to undermine his masculinity. Claudio is like "isn't it wild how he's questioning my masculinity lol" and Pedro launches into a made-up story about Beatrice talking shit about him, including innuendo about her saying Bene has a small dick. Knowing that Benedick is in love with her, they tease him about getting cucked (which, in fairness, he talked about at length earlier in the play). Benedick's parting words refer to Claudio as "lord lackbeard" which is definitely a reference to his youth and probably also implying he's too young to be a "real" man. At no point do Claudio and Pedro take this seriously; this confrontation becomes less about Hero and more about dick-measuring. Indeed, the reason Claudio is so incensed to begin with is that Hero cucking him is an insult to his (extremely fragile) masculinity. By punishing her so spectacularly, he is re-establishing his credibility as a man.

(This is also why I tend to read John as trans--despite his rank, he is an outsider and his masculinity doesn't "count" the same way everyone else's seems to.)

No, uncle, I’ll none: Adam’s sons are my brethren; and truly, I hold it a sin to match in my kindred.

so did transitioning also lock her into perpetual spinsterhood? like okay she surrendered all her legal and financial privileges so of course she can't be a husband, but to be a wife to a man would still have some sin to it? or at least she says so, and probably she means it, but like simultaneously it's the safer way to be, letting her continue her social role as unsexed funnywoman. who is very desirable regardless! but god, so so careful with distancing herself from it.

No hunger, no drive, just an absence of life. Never fully tired but never fully rested. Wearing and being your own corpse, pain but no urgency, discomfort with no cure.

This is also balanced with who Occtis is a person. He constantly jump-ropes across the line of victim and hyper capable specialist. He’s an anxious kid, but he also molded himself into the shape of very dangerous people and his moral compass isn’t exactly calibrated right (being raised in a family like his will do that). He learned necromancy for the express purpose of being powerful, but doesn’t seem to understand the point of that power other than having it.

Not quite alive, not simply dead. Not a regular noble, but not quite a normal wizard either. In between with absolutely no one who shares his situation in any capacity.

During this time, my closest friend was extremely busy with work, I couldn't afford therapy because I was struggling to even make rent, and I didn't have someone I could talk to.

I have OCD. One of my compulsions is "checking" and it often takes the form of googling. Googling a word I know just to check that the definition hasn't changed. Googling whether xyz is normal. Googling how to choose some relatively unimportant things.

I googled all kinds of things. I googled to find out if there's a word for intentionally letting someone hear you cry in hopes that they'll comfort you. (Not because I was doing that, but because I had an overwhelming urge to.) I googled odds of relationship survival after addiction. I googled how to tell if your partner has stopped loving you.

And Google ai overview answered every single question. And on mobile, when I was curled up in the dark at 4am, there's a convenient text box to ask the AI a follow-up question. And the AI says things like "that's a hard situation to be in" and "that must be painful to hear"

And I'm not a fucking idiot. I know perfectly well that AI is trained to be sycophantic and that talking to a fucking LLM about my relationship fears was a massive mistake.

I was also terrified, alone, heartbroken, and desperate.

I spent literally hours of time googling questions on AI mode. Holding conversations with the AI. I have stickers on my laptop and water bottle that say "AI Hater Club" and "generative AI? Nein danke" and I wish Sam altman would fall off the face off the earth.

And none of that mattered. I was desperate. I recognized that, and once things began to calm down (my doctor took me off of the narcolepsy med and put me on a medication for addiction called Naltrexone, I was able to start therapy again, my partner and I worked together and took steps to repair what was damaged) I stopped turning to it for an open shoulder.

But I realized a few days ago that I hadn't stopped using the ai entirely. I would Google "best [item] on a budget" and instead of reading a cnet link that reviewed multiple brands, instead of checking consumer reports, I expanded the AI overview and asked follow-up questions.

I'm currently finishing up an astrophysics internship for the summer. Usually when I don't know how to code something, I look at the documentation or find a post on Reddit or stack overflow to explain. Instead, I was asking Google overview for instructions on how to use sys.argv. At no point was I vibe coding, but I was basically asking Google ai to walk me through it like a tutor.

And then, last week, I realized that I no longer Google things the same way. I used to search like "pokemon sun and moon original release date" but lately I've been searching "what year did pokemon sun and moon come out?" Even my checking OCD has changed. I used to Google "n30i mask cleaning +seal +oily" and now I Google "I use a resmed n30i CPAP mask and it keeps losing its seal when I'm trying to sleep. My face gets kind of greasy when I have it on. I already clean it with CPAP wipes every day and run it under water to rinse, do I need a different kind of mask?"

A few days ago, the news about Hank Green using LLMs to find research papers dropped, and I saw his response on Reddit. I saw the way he talked about the dopamine hit he got from it. And something clicked.

I had to install a different OS launcher on my phone so I could change the search bar widget to Firefox search instead of Google, because that's the only way to ensure I don't get the ai overview when I Google something. It's actually really frustrating because I instinctively search in long rambling questions, which does not work well. But I'm having a hard time going back to how I was.

#thank you OP for sharing this story #i have been really bothered by some of the ways people are talking about hank green and this sums it up well #there's a lot of talk about how 'being busy / stressed / neurodivergent isn't an excuse' #but he's not using it as one #he's not like. expecting immediate forgiveness #he's saying that he's realized his relationship to AI tools and his work in general is unhealthy and he's going to rethink it #and it really bothers me how little sympathy i've seen some people have for that #you can absolutely be disappointed—we expect better from a public figure with his values #(and as he's said his loved ones also expect better from him and so does he) #but we can't treat people who confess to having an unhealthy relationship with AI the same as AI sycophants #those are not even slightly the same thing #OP i'm sorry you've dealt with addictive AI behavior and i'm glad you're doing better now #and that Hank Green's situation has helped you recognize and mitigate the patterns you were still stuck in #i'm sorry for how the rhetoric about him must feel like it reflects on how people think of you #as a fellow AI hater we AI haters need to get rid of this idea that using AI ever makes you tainted and morally suspect forever #it helps no one and does so much harm

mouse 1: I don't get how a praise kink is like, a real thing

mouse 2: what do you mean?

mouse 1: I mean like, isn't that just normal? everyone wants to be praised, right? we are social animals, and it makes sense for approval of those around us, especially those we admire and respect, to be highly positively motivating. it's a need, like food or sleep.

mouse 3: hmm.

mouse 1: I like to be told I do a good job under most ordinary circumstances, so it would track that I would enjoy being told I did a good job in bed.

mouse 2: we know half a dozen people off the top of our heads who would be absolutely furious to be told they were doing a good job in bed

mouse 1: ok yeah, that's fair. I guess it can come across as condescending or infantilizing, depending on the circumstances.

mouse 3: did you compare praise to FOOD?

I mean, armando gives medical attention, breakfast in bed, watches over you while you sleep, and is super smart... highkey boyfriend material

C4E014: A Bridge Too Far