What does it mean for fantasy to collapse? And how does one differentiate between the multiplicity of desires? These are excellent questions, and worth lingering on, since they touch some of the fundamental elements of Lacanian theory.

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“They aren’t even good at it” is what I have found myself thinking more and more often since the MAGA regime has taken power. The thought isn’t in reference to Musk’s DOGE attacks on the federal infrastructure (though the application there certainly would be apt) but to the MAGA/Christian Nationalist/US-fascist attempt to embody a certain masculine imperial vibe to which they purportedly aspire. We shouldn’t be surprised I suppose; Hannah Arendt warned us long ago of the banality of evil, and the peculiar smallness that inclines a person to embrace fascism is hardly a secret. These are people who want to see themselves as masculine kings and nobles harkening back to the chivalric myths of medieval Europe and noble illusions of classical Rome, and they are just bad at it.

What does it mean to be brave? Is courage simply the eradication or conquest of fear? In a world that emphasizes integrating our feelings and listening to our bodies, courage often appears as the exception—a virtue defined by overriding those very signals. To be courageous, we are told, is to deny fear and act anyway, to master what threatens us. But is courage really the triumph of mastery? Or—as readers of my earlier essays may anticipate—does courage emerge instead through failure and lack, precisely where the fantasy of wholeness collapses?

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This letter is written to and for Christian trans women. If that is not you then you are welcome, invited even, to listen in but know that the further you are from that social location, the less this is written “for you”. I hope that listening in our our conversation might bless you. The letter draws heavily on the work and theory of James Baldwin and Julia Serano and I hope that you will go to the original page to read the citations if nothing else.

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Paul’s introduction:

Last week I reflected on how self-help culture feeds on our fantasy of wholeness, always dangling the next habit, hack, or method as the key to completion. This week I want to press further into that same restless dynamic, but from a different angle: contentment. If self-help promises freedom through mastery, consumerism promises peace through satisfaction. Both miss the point of desire.

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Paul argues in this essay that self-help can’t help but fail. Its very solutions feed the problem. But here’s the twist: their failure is good news. The comfort, mastery, and wholeness they dangle before us is an impossible fantasy—one that keeps us addicted to the next promise of completion. To see through this fantasy is to take a first step toward freedom. My aim is not a nihilistic rejection of growth, but an invitation to reimagine what life, transformation, and even virtue might look like once we stop chasing the mirage of wholeness.

This manuscript (which I have taken the liberty of translating to the best of my ability) is one I stumbled across at, of all places, Moody Library at Houston Baptist University. Across the page were scrawled the words “Can’t let this get out”. Details among the marginalia as well as certain syntactical peculiarities lead me to believe this to be one of several missing articles from St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica. Even the briefest of scans will make clear the reasons that this article has been so scandalously disappeared from the annals of philosophy and theology.

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Here is the original essay

Here is the Glossary I mention in the essay

Here is a Link to the original essay in written form.

And you can find a copy of Vineyard USA's Position Paper 7 HERE

You can find a written version of the essay here: https://open.substack.com/pub/billieiswriting/p/queerness-is-a-blessing?r=1ghvoy&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

After this episodes will shift to dropping twice a week or so until I run out of back catalogue. Episode 4 will jump forward in the timeline of my writing to the present as an audio edition of my most recent essay Queerness is a Blessing.

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Links for this piece:

* Hidden on Substack https://billieiswriting.substack.com/p/hidden?r=1ghvoy

* Lazarus on Substack https://billieiswriting.substack.com/p/lazarus?r=1ghvoy

* Mae Dean’s Coming Out Webcomic: https://reallifecomics.com/comic.php?comic=june-30-2020

* Robin Brook’s Coming out Webcomic:

https://twitter.com/assumptionprime/status/1437818373124001797?s=20&t=L66QUpOFb1MFOcdbpPyb9Q

* Literature thoroughly debunking the discredited “autogynephilia theory” https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0038026120934690

1. My Coming Out Post: https://billieiswriting.substack.com/p/my-coming-out-post?r=1ghvoy

2. Hidden: https://billieiswriting.substack.com/p/hidden?r=1ghvoy

3. Sehnsucht: https://billieiswriting.substack.com/p/sehnsucht?r=1ghvoy