Brought to You by the Letter M

[bcholmes]

I've always been rather fond of this French phrase, used in some writings about Vodou: Les Morts, Les Mystères, et Le Marassa. The ancestors (who've passed on), the spirits (the Lwa), and the sacred twins (Vodou has many symbols relating to reflections or twins; sometimes the spirit world is imagined on the other side of the mirror). Mostly, I think I like the alliteration. There's something about it that appeals to the part of me that loves words.

But while I'm talking about M-words, I wanted to talk about a few that mean a lot to me. The first word comes from my kanzo ceremony in Haiti. While I was there, a picture hung on a wall beside me. The picture was a chromolithograph of St. Claire of Assisi. The image represented my Met Tet -- the Vodou spirit who watches out for my well-being.

Weirdly, on my more recent trip to Haiti, I spent a day in Kenscoff, and while I was there, a young man started talking to me in Kreyòl. I didn't understand what he said, so I just said, "Bonjou" and waved at him. As I was walking away, I noticed that he had a picture of St. Claire on his necklace. A moment later my friend Laure told me, "he said that he thinks he knows you." I smiled, and wondered. It was one of those little coincidences that made me think.

St. Claire is, in many ways, hugely coincidental for me. I mean, some people know that the 'C' in my name stands for Claire. My father's name was Clair. I grew up in Sarnia, on the bank of the St. Clair river, which drains into Lake St. Clair.

My mind gravitates toward coincidences, loving to imagine patterns that might be found there. It's possibly why I'm a conspiracy nut, among other things.

But ever since I first saw the chromolithograph, I've wondered: what is that thing that she's holding? Turns out it's called a monstrance. "A receptacle in which the host is held," according to dictionary.com. From Middle English. Monstrare. To show. Or portent. See monster.

Neat coincidence: monster is a word that means a lot to me, mostly because of an excellent essay by Susan Stryker called "My Words To Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix -- Performing Transgender Rage". In that essay, Stryker suggests that perhaps it is time for trans people to reclaim the word monster, as 'queer' and 'dyke' and 'slut' have been reclaimed.

Stryker quotes Peter Brooks: "whatever else a monster might be, it 'may also be that which eludes gender definition.'" Mary Daly links the monster to trans people in her paper, "Boundary Violation and the Frankenstein Phenomenon." Trans people are monsters. Monstrous by society's reckoning.

The monster is an artificial thing. A constructed creature. And that we are. But also, the word monster comes from a Latin word, monstrum, meaning "divine portent". And it's that part that I find very interersting. Stryker writes:

It came to refer to living things of anomalous shape or structure, or to fabulous creatures like the sphinx who were composed of strikingly incongruous parts, because the ancients considered the appearance of such beings to be a sign of some impending supernatural event. Monsters, like angels, functioned as messengers and heralds of the extraordinary. They served to announce impending revelation, saying, in effect, "Pay attention; something of profound importance is happening."

I've told a number of my friends, most of whom don't Get It, that I consider trans-ness to be a spiritual experience. My spiritual identity is hugely, intricately linked to my trans identity. And it amuses and pleases me that the word, monster, has these relationships to divinity and trans-ness. I am a monster, happy to challenge people's sense of natural. And I am like the monstrance, containing the host.

The general perception of monstrousness is a pretty superficial one. An article I read, recently, put it rather succinctly. Talking about the 2003 film, Monster, about the life of "lesbian serial killer" Aileen Wuornos, the article talked about how most people fixated on the rather banal fact that super-beauty Charlize Theron made herself ugly for the role:

Charlize [Theron] not only had her face altered like Nicole [Kidman in The Hours], she also had imperfect teeth installed and appeared with very bad early 80s hair -- and put on weight. With this, we learn that Theron is not just a pretty face and a leggy blonde, and the fact that we know she really doesn't look like Lee heightens her status as a great beauty and performer -- she is now a star willing to transform herself for the right role. Make no mistake, the back story of Charlize, an attractive heterosexual woman who willing endures a transformation into the ugly, deranged, and "dykey" Lee [Aileen Wuornos] has aided the marketing of the film. She is such a stunner that it took hours of makeup to make her appear otherwise! (Her transformation is featured on the film's official web site.)

And it seems like, for most people, that's what monsters are about. Ugly people. Ugly appearances. Ugly lives. We no longer view the monster as saying "Pay attention: something of profound importance is happening."

What appeals to me about monstrous identity is its tendency to point out problems in society. It's easy to say that Aileen Wuornos was a "lesbian" and a "prostitute" and a "serial killer". There's something even vaguely exotic and titillating about it. And it makes for much better lunchroom conversation to talk about how Charlize Theron made herself ugly than to talk about what role Aileen Wuornos' life played in her eventual end. Think about this paragraph, from the same article:

But during the shooting of [director Nick] Broomfield's follow-up [documentary], Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer, Lee [Aileen Wuornos] is resistant to this search for explanations. Her story has changed. She now insists that she killed simply to rob. She wants forgiveness. She doesn't want her past revealed because as Broomfield theorizes, this may delay her death through some humanitarian appeal, and she just wants the State to hurry up and murder her. [...]. Lee refuses any sympathetic pathologizing on her behalf. What is a concerned social scientist/cultural theorist to do?

The Wikipedia article about Aileen says:

After her first death sentence, Wuornos often said she wanted it all to be over. In 2001 she began fighting to be executed as soon as possible. She petitioned the Florida Supreme Court for the right to fire her legal counsel and stop all appeals, wording her request so as to forestall any objection: "I'm one who seriously hates human life and would kill again." Due to her mental instability, some have argued that she was in no state for them to honor such a request.

I was recently watching a DVD set called The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell. In it, Campbell recounted a story about two police officers, and a suicidal man. They discovered this man about to jump to his death from a great height, and just as one of the officers grabbed him, the man threw himself over the edge.

The officer held on to the man and started to be pulled over the edge. They both would have fallen to their deaths, except that the other officer managed to stop their fall. Afterward, some people asked the one officer, "why didn't you let go? His weight was pulling you over the edge; why didn't you let go and save yourself?"

And the officer replied, "I wouldn't be able to look at myself in the mirror if I'd let him die."

Campbell went on to opine that this story exemplified a profound spiritual experience. He said that he believed that at some level the officer recognized a deep truth: that the suicidal man was really another manifestation of himself, and that feeling was stronger than the animal instinct to survive.

I think that's a powerful story. But how far away from that spiritual experience are the people who put Aileen Wuornos to death?

I think that Wuornos' story is the sort of thing that many postmodernist theorists mean when they talk about introducing crisis. What Judith Butler means when she talks about trouble, or exposing problems. And I think that embracing my own monstrousness is a powerful way to channel that crisis. To say, look, much of this society is broken at the fundament. And the only way we're able to go on is by not looking at the fissures too closely.

Pay attention: something of profound importance is happening.

Here is another anecdote that I find very powerful:

On January 5, 1993, a 22-year-old pre-operative transsexual woman from Seattle, Filisa Vistima, wrote in her journal, "I wish I was anatomically 'normal' so I could go swimming. . . . But no, I'm a mutant, Frankenstein's monster." Two months later Filisa Vistima committed suicide. What drove her to such despair was the exclusion she experienced in Seattle's queer community, some members of which opposed Filisa's participation because of her transsexuality -- even though she identified as and lived as a bisexual woman. The Lesbian Resource Center where she served as a volunteer conducted a survey of its constituency to determine whether it should stop offering services to male-to-female transsexuals. Filisa did the data entry for tabulating the survey results; she didn't have to imagine how people felt about her kind. The Seattle Bisexual Women's Network announced that if it admitted transsexuals the SBWN would no longer be a women's organization. "I'm sure," one member said in reference to the inclusion of bisexual transsexual women, "the boys can take care of themselves." Filisa Vistima was not a boy, and she found it impossible to take care of herself. Even in death she found no support from the community in which she claimed membership. "Why didn't Filisa commit herself for psychiatric care?" asked a columnist in the Seattle Gay News. "Why didn't Filisa demand her civil rights?" In this case, not only did the angry villagers hound their monster to the edge of town, they reproached her for being vulnerable to the torches.

When I read stories like this, I must confess that a whole life of defensive behaviours want to kick in and mediate my reaction. I want to take responsibility, somehow, and find the thing about me that I can change so that groups won't hate people like me. If only, I think, I can figure out how to be less of an eyesore, they won't hate me.

Maybe I can educate better.

Maybe I can blend into the background better. Be less obvious. Take up less space.

But then another part of me realizes what's going on and says, "Now hold on. Being angry about this is a completely valid response. Calling people on their shitty behaviour is totally appropriate."

And this, I think, is a key difference between the monster of the Frankenstein movies and the monster in Shelley's book. In James Whale's classic Frankenstein, the creature is stupid, and dangerous. It wants to be loved, but it inadvertantly murders a little girl. There's tragic pathos, yes, but we still feel like we understand the villagers who find it necessary to destroy the creature. Much has been said of Whale's monster, inspired perhaps by Whale's homosexuality: "Whale's creature externalizes and renders visible the nightmarish loneliness and alienation that the closet can breed."

(An aside: Ian McKellen played James Whale in the movie, Gods and Monsters).

But, like Susan Stryker, I identify with the monster from Shelley's original book: I look at the rejection that people like me experience at the hands of the so-called normal people and I harbour this incredible rage.

Like the monster, the longer I live in these conditions, the more rage I harbor. Rage colors me as it presses in through the pores of my skin, soaking in until it becomes the blood that courses through my beating heart. It is a rage bred by the necessity of existing in external circumstances that work against my survival.

I guess I've been thinking about all of this because of a recent attempt to work through my feelings about the label "mutilation". What I wanted, then, was to deconstruct the word. I imagined telling a story about my friend, who underwent breast reduction surgery because her breasts were causing back pains. At some point in this story, I expected to appeal to a listener's sense of compassion and say, "don't you see how profoundly hurtful it is to call such a thing mutilation? And can't you see how similar that is to the trans situation?"

But now I'm doubting that course of action. Now I find myself thinking that maybe it's better to embrace my mutilation like I am striving to embrace my monstrocity. You want to call me mutilated? Well, you're right. I am mutilated. And monstrous. And I want that to scare you shitless, because now you have no idea of what I'm capable of, and no concept of the type of threat that I pose to the artifacts of society that you love.

Comments

[futabachan.livejournal.com]

Now hold on. Being angry about this is a completely valid response.

Damned right it is... Filisima was a friend of mine, and one of only two transwomen my age that I knew during my first transition attempt. You don't get to do that to my friends, and expect me to shut up about it.... *growl*

[futabachan.livejournal.com]

That particular Stryker piece has been bouncing around in my head since I read it just before transition. The bit that I've always taken away from it is that "angel" and "monster" share an etymology... and that therefore in the center of the monstrous, one generally finds the angelic (i.e. connection with the numinous).

I think we've already had this conversation, actually....

[firecat]

Well - way to deconstruct "mutilated"!

There's a monster living under my bed
Whispering in my ear
There's an angel with a hand on my head
She says I've got nothing to fear
She says, whooo-ahha hey la la, you shine like stars
Whoo-aohaha hey la la, you shine like stars
And fade away -- Erik "Everlast" Schrody, "Put Your Lights On" (Santana,
_Supernatural_)

In a way, I think the more people who declare them/ourselves monsters the better. Labeling something or someone "monstrous" is society's way of shutting its eyes and putting its fingers in its ears and shouting "LA LA LA" - which is not a useful response to most realities.

[lovecraftienne.livejournal.com]

OMG. I think I'm in love with you.

I've been using the "villagers-with-torches" metaphor for many years. In fact, just saying "pitchforks" to my sweetpea has become a code for "I feel in danger here".

May I link to this? I have quite a number of people on my flist who should read this. May I also suggest you consider publication?

Seriously - thank you for this. I'm a little overwhelmed yet, to come up with something more useful to say.

[cigfrain.livejournal.com]

through some strange alchemy, you have found all the dark little pieces that float around in my own head on this topic - from the spirituality of the condition to the embrace and remaking of the monster - and polished them into fine, bright jewels hung in a lacework of clear, humane thought.

which may sound fatuous, but is exactly the way i feel, reading this.

thank you.

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

Feel free to link. And thanks for your kind words.

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

Wow! Beautiful, scary, and very thought-provoking. If she agrees, may Laurie Toby Edison and I use this as a basis for a blog entry?

[activegnome.livejournal.com]

Thank you for sharing, it was a very good read with a number of profound points.

[dashingdeviant.livejournal.com]

I clicked through from lovecraftienne's link. Thank you so much for writing this; I'm overwhelmed as well, how you said how society feels about us...but thank you.

[tay-en-pointe.livejournal.com]

i too would love to link this, with your permission, of course. it goes dead right along with some things i posted last night.
thank you for sharing this profound post.

[leex.livejournal.com]

In an entry as diffuse as this one, I'm sure different parts strike different people in their own way... But the thing that immediately jumped out at me was the part about the policeman. All my socialist politics and my human rights invective are originally based on that simple feeling, this we're all people here.

That's what keeps me going, and that's why being shunned stings so bad - you're just being denied the mutual courtesy, the identification. You're wholly alien. And I guess the positive side of this reaction of mine forms the basis of how I behave differently as a non-op transgirl: I become a lot more outgoing, a lot more talkative... I'm basically burying people in opportunities for empathy, in ways they can relate to me and, by extension, every queer like me.

That sounds somewhat heroic, but it's not. I've overextended myself and fallen apart more than I care to remember. But I piece myself together again, brush myself off and have another go - Someone has to break the first lance in the charge, someone has to knock the first brick off the wall. Someone has to be out there.

In that way, yes, I've been a monster from the get-go. Simply the act of being seen is revolutionary - transpeople don't walk the streets, they hide as is only proper. No hand of friendship is extended towards them, because the consensus is that they don't deserve it. Extending your own hand can really throw people with this mindset for a loop.

You're so very right - not about the reclamation of the word, but the reclamation of the idea. Anyone who's willing and strong enough for it should be out there, kicking people's holy houses either subversively or aggressively.

Pay attention: something of profound importance is happening.

[malada.livejournal.com]

Personally, I think more in terms of living the shamanic experience rather than being monsterous. The shaman has stepped outside the normal world and returned... changed. They have knowledge and power that is both respected and feared.

In many ways, shamans are monsters - their experience of being Beyond the Norm has twisted them, they are feared and often avoided; but they were also healers, visionaries, even teachers. People in trouble run from the monsters - but they'll go to the shamans.

-m

[dtale77.livejournal.com]

Tay_en_pointe, linked this, and I am so glad she did, I am a friend of hers. I will be honest, I almost feel like a hypocrite. Living all my life accepting everyone for who they are, yet never really giving much thought to the transgender community. I guess I also thought there really were not that many transgender individuals. I am learning more and more now and thank all of the people who have welcomed me into their hearts, and lives. Thank you for such wonderful piece of writing and helping me more to understand the hardships and feelings that are felt amongst this community. I am very touched by what I just read.
Much love and thank you again.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

To most of this I have no reply yet because for one, I'm still mulling, for another, I haven't had time to click the links yet (I'm still at work), and for a third, I'm not sure that I have a useful reply. However, I recently read a galley copy of a book called "Deadly Masquerade." (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0882822667/qid=1119556575/sr=8-3/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/002-9133446-6991243?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) It was sent to me by a friend of mine who used to work for the publisher as an editor. It was a terrible book in most senses. However, what really shocked me was the relative attention given to the "crimes" in the book.

I don't know if you know the story or not. It's apparently a true story. I had never heard of the circumstances before. The story is that a woman moves to Burbank, California with her kids and there falls in love with a special effects artist for a film studio. In a half-asleep moment, he admits to her that he knows somebody who's killed someone and gotten away with it. It ultimately turns out that the woman whose party the couple goes to is the aforementioned killer but also that she is trans.

The construction of the title makes the author's relationship with the situation clear, however. "Deadly," refers to the murder. "Masquerade," refers to the person being trans. On the surface, it's immediately apparent that she considers the person's identity a masquerade. (Nominally she explains it as a way to evade capture by the police, but the reasoning doesn't seem to matter.) However, the *construction* is even more interesting. It's not even the killing that gets center billing. It's the "Masquerade." "Deadly," is relegated to an adjective modifying "Masquerade." Not only does that express the author's relationship with the situation, but seems an indication that the killing is seen as in some ways some sort of side-effect of the person's transness.

The thing that amazed me most, though (and this is how I was reminded of it, when you talked about the attitude of the SBWN and the quote: "I'm sure," one member said in reference to the inclusion of bisexual transsexual women, "the boys can take care of themselves.") was that the woman who wrote the book considered absolutely crucial to differentiating between sanity and insanity, between goodness and twistedness, the refusal to consider or the consideration of the trans woman as a woman. Key to her own sense of righteousness in the story is her absolute refusal to refer to her by her name (legally changed) or use female pronouns or refer to her as a woman, and key to her own sense that her by-then husband was beyond redeption was his continual use of her name and his considering her a woman. It was often such that it was hard to determine if she was even really that upset that the woman had killed a person so much as she was concerned that she'd been "duped" -- led to believe along with everybody else and the world at large that this "man" was a woman.

I can't recall if she used the term monster at any point, but the use of it in its common connotations was clearly implied.

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

This makes me think of the wrenching section "Speak Bitterness" from Chuck Pahlaniuk's new book, Haunted, in which a transwoman goes to a women's group and ... trouble ensues.

[azhreia.livejournal.com]

The bit that I've always taken away from it is that "angel" and "monster" share an etymology

interesting. and admittedly, I don't have a great deal of time before I head off to work to actually look into this right now, but from a few desultory searches I'm not finding the connection easily.

this particular theme is one that would fit neatly into my current writing, so I was wondering if you had any ideas about finding the connection between the two. I'm happy to do the research, I just need a place to start.

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

Please feel free. And thank you for the kind words.

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

Feel free to link. Thanks for stopping by.

[lovecraftienne.livejournal.com]

I had that happen, here in Kitchener. I had been a volunteer for two years with the local Sexual Assault Support Centre (KW-SASC), and a well-liked and useful one. I took a lot of shifts taking crisis calls.

The staff knew about my past, but agreed with me that it wasn't anyone else's business.

Then someone else found out. I was on vacation at the time, camping, and only found out when I got back that they'd had a meeting about the Cait problem, WHILE I WASN'T EVEN THERE TO SPEAK FOR MYSELF.

I wrote a resignation letter immediately, for a few reasons (one, I don't believe financially crippling a women's org is a good feminist thing to do, two, I don't want them messing about focusing on their trans issues when there are women who need our help on the line, and three, I don't like being the centre of attention -anytime-). And I pointed out how the person who'd outed me had broken the rules - one should never triangulate a problem, said the rules explicitly - and was going unpunished, while I lost the chance to do some worthwhile and, to me, healing work.

I never went back. It was ten years ago this summer.

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed reading this. I don't know if I've got anything useful to contribute to the discussion.

I think there is an interesting thing going on in our culture, and I think it has to do with the whole "individualism uber alles" theme, where monstrosity is always the fault/responsibility of one person (usually the monster, but as pointed out in the theme that ate my friendlist the last few days, when it comes to rape, it's usually the victim). And yet in any reasonable, remotely objective reading of each situation, I can't avoid looking at the surroundings, all the "non-monster" things, and they do contribute.

Basically, yes, I agree, the monster does mean "pay attention!" and we mostly don't.

[cigfrain.livejournal.com]

your response to that situation was extraordinary, especially in comparison to a somewhat more recent similar event here in the US, and shows a great deal of ethical consistency... something we very much need if we are to shed some of our worst stigma. very nicely done.

[lovecraftienne.livejournal.com]

Thanks. It was awful. I'm no saint, though. The woman who outed me came forward a year later and tried to apologise, and I wouldn't even take her call. Never have. Told the intermediary, if you want forgiveness, ask a Christian. I'm not one, and not inclined to give it. Feeling guilty? Suffer.

[cigfrain.livejournal.com]

hehehe... that response is very much in keeping with my own attitudes.

you rule :-)