transatlantic38

Some other people have responded talking about the essay in general, but I thought I'd try and respond to the specific points that you found confusing with my own interpretation. This is of course subjective. I liked this piece because it gave me food for thought like this.

> But three days into an interview she wanted she seems to have changed her mind?

There are two time periods in this line at once. "I wish I had said" is talking about what she wishes now that she had said to him at the time. The tip off is the "had said" is referring to the time period in which she responds to the dean and is in past tense, and "I wish" is present.

> After that there's an explanation of plots in fairy tales that switches jarringly again into another line I'm not totally sure how to interpret about bread. Its also the title, I expect it to be important.

"Fuck the bread" is literally something her mother said to her, but also subtextually saying "fuck academia" (and maybe even the more broad "fuck societal standards of success"). This is the chain of associations that builds up the metaphor:

1. In fairytales, the characters are given impossible tasks. <List of examples>

2. In the fairytales, completing these tasks defines their worth. Characters who do not complete the tasks drop out of the story.

3. Getting a job in academia requires her to complete a list of impossible tasks. She cannot complete it.

4. Even basic tasks in society are impossible during the pandemic, like bread making. These basic tasks are part of appearing successful.

5. "Fuck the bread" == fuck 3, fuck 4, define yourself outside of impossible tasks and do not be a bit character in a fairytale.

> This I don't really get how she goes from wheat to needing machete to cut it to questioning why they want a job

Given the rest of the piece talking about how working in academia was a useless task, I think this is about wasting her time on something so frivolous instead of her basic needs (bread?). But that does go against the title. I'm comparatively pretty unsure about this association.

It's a deliberate decision to convey immediacy and urgency. Using present tense makes the memories read as closer and still unknown territory instead of farther removed and already determined, which matches the emotions of the memories that the author is trying to convey.

Consider the emotional difference between:

> It is summer, and the ice cream is melting.

> It was summer, and the ice cream melted.

These types of literary choices are a core part of writing prose at an advanced level the same way that camera angles and color palettes are a part of cinematography. Grammar "rules" don't really exist in creative prose, it's ultimately about using words to convey meaning however you can.

I appreciate this, thanks. Answering these kinds of questions can feel like unwrapping bandages in front of strangers. So it's good to hear that it helped somebody out. Thank you for your empathy.

I'm not that poster but I can elaborate. Basically your physician couldn't easily use "biological sex" as a blanket term to accurately asses the risk factors and health needs of a medically transitioned person. Our sex is "otherwise complicated."

The reason for this is that medical transition, primarily through the mechanism of hormone replacement therapy, actually changes some aspects of biological sex and the associated risk factors at a "nuts and bolts" level even though its not touching every single aspect of biological sex. It's not purely cosmetic, though that's a common misconception. Hormones ultimately control a lot about how human bodies express sex and the associated medical factors. In reality "biological sex" is composed of multiple sexually differentiated systems within the human biology that can theoretically operate somewhat independent of each other, and changing the dominate hormone in your body will flip or at least shove a lot of those systems towards the other end of the distribution. I guess a way to phrase this in developer terminology would be that "biological sex" is sometimes a leaky abstraction.

As a personal example: despite my birth sex, it would be a mistake for my doctor to ask that I routinely get regular breast cancer screenings in the same way it would be a mistake to ask a cis man to regularly screen himself for breast cancer. My risk of breast cancer is much lower than a cis woman's and comparable to a cis man's. But at the same time I have absolutely zero risk of prostate cancer, and it would also be a mistake to try and test for that based on any possible symptoms I'm having. An ideally perfect doctor would be able take my history and be cognizant of what risk factors of biological sex, exactly, which conditions were associated with, and then be able to map that onto my body to figure out what I'm at risk for. As you can probably imagine, this is very difficult to do. A lot of times what makes a condition linked to sex isn't actually understood in the first place.