I keep forgetting that I meant to put all the commentary related to the publications themselves in a blog field that keeps that commentary tied to the "official summary". So sometimes I have to go back and "fix" things later. (Like today.) In fact, there are a lot of LHMP entries where I keep meaning to go back and systematically sort out where the various bits of text should go. The difference is fairly invisible to anyone who reads the blog as it comes out, but if you're reading publication entries from searches or through tag links, it affects how easy it is to find my associated commentary.
Such is the awkwardness of legacy systems! The LHMP started out on my LiveJournal, with a "flat" structure of the single text field. When my highly-talented web people started designing how the LHMP would work on this site as a specialized function, we had to tackle how I wanted to divvy up the information from those original all-in-one blogs. Obviously, the summary of the publication was a key element. (With all its assorted meta-data.) But I often (though not always) had a more meta-discussion that was more about me reacting to the article than about the article, and I wanted to keep that separate. (Except for the times when it made more sense to interleave it in the summary, where I had to flag it more carefully as my commentary.) But those original blogs sometimes also included text unrelated to the LHMP entries. And if I wanted to keep the superficial appearance of having the "same" blog as the original (only on a new site) then I couldn't simply strip those parts out and ignore them.
But now comes a different logistical consideration. Because if my commentary on the LHMP articles goes in a "commentary" field tied to the LHMP entry itself, rather than the framing blog text, then the vast majority of my LHMP-related blog posts won't have any "blog text" at all. And the blog text is what shows up in, for example, the website's front page field. (Though this problem doesn't affect my RSS feed, because that uses the whole blog+LHMP entry, rather than using a truncated portion that might end up being empty.)
And now you now why my webmasters sometimes give me That Look when we talk about features. I tend to have a fuzzy "grand vision" approach to web design. They have to make it work. And once they've set something up that will work as programmed, I have to remember to actually use the structures as they're intended in order to get the effects I claimed I wanted.
Oh, and having explained all that, I'm now remembering why I keep defaulting to putting my LHMP commentary in the opening blog field: because currently the commentary field doesn't display in the blog view, only in the LHMP entry view. Argh. Well, put that on the list of things to tweak, and let's put it in both places for now.
# # #
Klein's book belongs more to the category of high-concept lit-crit studies than to more strictly historical studies. I'm not saying this to criticize it, but simply to situate it. The focus on various body parts is a clever conceit, but has a tendency to skew the significance of the topics she's chosen to discuss.
The focus on analyzing the narratives of cross-dressing, rather than studying the behavior and psychology of the actual historic people involved (which are far less accessible) excuses, to some extent, the way the text defaults to considering the subjects of the book always as women, and to a large extent as assumed-cis women who are employing strategic disguise. This, after all, is how the contemporary narratives about these people treat their lives. And so, as a study of the narratives (as opposed to a study of the people) it makes sense.
But it means that Sapphic Crossings is a book that is unlikely to appeal to those who are looking for historic resonances for a modern transmasculine experience. In all the discussion of the "meaning" of breasts, there is no mention of how they might participate in gender dysphoria, and it's difficult to tell whether that's because dysphoria is never hinted at in the historic narratives, or because it isn't part of what Klein is interested in studying. But never fear, the next book I plan to discuss works from an opposite default: treating all such historic cases as transgender narratives. Neither approach is ideal from a general history point of view. But together--with the understanding that the books each take their position for a particular analytic purpose--they can provide a richer background.
Comments