Something That May Shock and Discredit You (2020)

Something That May Shock and Discredit You is a memoir, arranged in the form of a series of essays, by the American writer Daniel M. Lavery. It was published on February 11, 2020, by Atria Publishing Group. The book explores topics including gender and gender transition as well as popular culture and theology.

Something That May Shock and Discredit You is Daniel M. Lavery's third book, and the first one written after he began his gender transition. The book is composed of 41 self-contained essays, divided into 22 "chapters" and 19 shorter and more experimental "interludes". Various genres and subjects are explored in these essays; recurring themes include Jacob wrestling with the angel and Lavery's Christian upbringing.

The book received positive reviews, with reviewers generally describing it as cohesive and insightful despite its unusual structure and tone. It was praised for avoiding common tropes related to the subject of gender transition.

Background

Lavery's writing career began with The Toast, a feminist website that he cofounded with Nicole Cliffe in 2013. In 2015, he published his first book, Texts from Jane Eyre. His second book, The Merry Spinster, was published in 2018, a few days after he came out as transgender. Something That May Shock and Discredit You was Lavery's third book, written after he began his gender transition.

Lavery grew up in an evangelical family, and themes from Christianity feature prominently in Something That May Shock and Discredit You. In the book, Lavery describes "a rootless homesickness that translated quite neatly, for a religious 11-year-old, into heaven-longing; later it would translate quite neatly, for a nervous 31-year-old, into transexuality". Between the ages of 5 and 22, Lavery engaged in Bible study several days a week for several hours per day; he has described biblical characters and stories as "wallpapered in [his] brain".

In 2019, Lavery reported his father, Menlo Church pastor John Ortberg, for allowing a congregant - Lavery’s brother - with "obsessive sexual feelings about young children" to continue having unsupervised interaction with children. Lavery subsequently cut ties with his biological family and revised the book two weeks before its publication to remove positive characterizations of his father.

Title

The phrase "Something That May Shock and Discredit You" comes from a scene in The Simpsons in which Lionel Hutz is attempting to discredit Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, a witness with an eidetic memory. After the witness correctly states what tie Hutz is wearing, Hutz responds "I have something to tell you, something that may shock and discredit you" while visibly attempting to remove the tie, and then claims he is not actually wearing a tie. Lavery told Sam Sanders that "in that moment, it felt like there was so much about, you know, masks coming off, layers coming off [...] pretty early in the writing process, I landed on that title." He explained to Calvin Kasulke that Hutz "pretends he's not [wearing a tie], but he is, and it does not in fact discredit the person he's talking to. It discredits himself."

Publication

Something That May Shock and Discredit You was published on February 11, 2020, by Atria Publishing Group. It has 256 pages.

Content

Something That May Shock and Discredit You is a memoir that discusses gender and gender transition as well as popular culture and theology, through a series of personal essays. The book includes 22 chapters as well as 19 interludes; all of these are self-contained essays, with the interludes generally being shorter and more experimental than the chapters. Various writing genres are represented, including chivalric romance, bible stories, and Westerns. Recurring themes include Jacob wrestling with the angel and Lavery's upbringing as a Christian. Essay titles include "Chapter Titles from the On-the-Nose, Po-Faced Transmasculine Memoir I Am Trying not to Write", "How I Intend to Comport Myself When I Have Abs Someday", and "Captain James T. Kirk Is a Beautiful Lesbian and I'm Not Sure Exactly How to Explain That".

One essay from the book, titled "Sir Gawain Just Wants to Leave Castle Make-Out", is made up of two sections. The first is a rewriting of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as a play made up entirely of text messages, while the second revisits Lavery's early experiences of romance:

Perhaps it would have been better for me if I could have seen the movie 'Velvet Goldmine' or heard of the Smiths at that age instead, and transitioned at fourteen. I might have called myself Trenton and had a cis boyfriend at fifteen; I might even today be five foot ten instead of five foot seven and a half inches tall. But I did not have access to 'Velvet Goldmine' or the Smiths; I had access to Alannah Myles and Sir Gawain and the church and was going to have to make do with what I had.

In an interview for Electric Literature, Lavery told Calvin Kasulke that the book "feels more memoir-adjacent than memoir" because it includes "mostly the thoughts in about a 20 to 24 month period of my life immediately preceding and then in the first year and a half or so of my transition, and then also every thought that ever led me to that point." He told The Wall Street Journal that while he wanted to be open about his thoughts and feelings, he also "wanted to keep a lot more privacy around" the details of his relationships with others, and that obscuring the latter allowed him to elaborate on the former.