Transsexuality as a Process

[bcholmes]

Continuing this thought process:

Part the Second: What Does Process Mean, Anyhow?

I've been thinking about the idea of "Transsexuality as a Process", as it was articulated in the panel description. I'm coming to the conclusion that I don't think we ever really described what it was that we meant by "transsexuality as a process".

I mention this because I recall certain things that charliegrrrl has said, and my reaction to them help to inscribe the boundaries of the thing I'm talking about. Here's an example. She writes, "We can't seriously believe that our regimen of hormones and surgery, which is less than half a century old, will be around half a century from now." Me, I think, "how's that relevant?" I'm not looking for pages and pages of description of each hormone shot or surgery. That's not what I mean when I say, "Transsexuality as Process". A fictionalized instance of the Transsexual Road Map would probably make for a pretty boring read.

So then what do I mean? Well, this post is an attempt to put some words around it.

Now, at the basic level, some of my criticisms of most of the stories on the list of Stories That Include Trans Content relate to absences. It bugs me that we don't have instances of coming out, or the threat of losing jobs or family members.

In many ways, these trans depictions in sf are like trans pr0n: the characters in the stories usually have no agency. Everything is done to them. They get to reflect on what's happening, but they don't negotiate their own steps. Take Commitment Hour. The shtick is that we're on the eve when the main character has to make a commitment to one gender or the other (because of the set up of this particular environment), but even that character's agency is taken away from them.

charliegrrrl has stated, a few times, that she enjoys sf-as-thought-experiment. I'm not annoyed by these kinds of stories, and I enjoy a certain amount of that kind of thought experiment myself. Take Steel Beach, for example. The story pose questions: what happens to our sense of gender identity, when our bodies can be changed almost as easily as our clothes.

I think, though, that I read books (and especially watch movies) in a very different way than some people. Let me try to explain with an example.

I was talking to epi_lj over dinner Sunday night, and he posed a question (that had originally been posed by lcohen): does metaphor satisfy my desire to see trans-as-process. What I said was, "yes, in fact, it does."

The example that came to mind, immediately, was Neo's journey in The Matrix. I said, then, that I viewed elements of Neo's journey in The Matrix as having a trans subtext. From the very beginning of the film, Neo is questioning. Ultimately, he gets to a point where he has to decide if he takes the red pill or the blue pill. And at that moment, he undergoes transformation.

Here's the point, though, that I want to make about The Matrix: there's a key sequence in the film. Neo is lying on a bed in the Nebuchadnezzar, undergoing medical treatments to strengthen his muscles. Dozer says, "He's going to need a lot of work." But so much of it is out of Neo's control. There's even that exchange where Neo asks, "why do my eyes hurt?" and Morpheus replies, "You've never used them before." Were it not for this sequence, I don't think I'd really identify it as strongly with a trans journey. That moment makes or breaks the metaphor for me.

I think that what I look for in books and films are these moments. My gut just sort of identifies with them and says, "whoa, something's going on there that I totally recognize."

By contrast, although I enjoyed Steel Beach's questioning of how identifications change in Varley's future, I never felt as if I had one of those identifying moments in the story. The story feels to me as if it is not about people like me. I confess that I'm confused by that: I would have thought that the experience of questioning gender and unthinking the meaning of identity would be very familiar. But no. I think the problem is that Varley's thought exercise is an almost-entirely cerebral exercise. In my opinion, it lacks any real, visceral moment that connects with me.

Let me talk about another moment that really connects with me. In Perdido Street Station, there's a scene in which Lin is creating a sculpture of the Re-Made Mr. Motley. At one point, she's moved to ask him what he was, before being Re-Made. The text reads:

He sighed.

"I wondered when you'd ask that, Lin. I did hope that you wouldn't, but I knew it was unlikely. It makes me wonder if we understand each other at all," he hissed, sounding suddenly vicious. Lin recoiled.

"It's so... predictable. You're still not looking the right way. At all. It's a wonder you can create such art. You still see this —" he gesticulated vaguely at his own body with a monkey's paw "— as pathology. You're still interested in what was and how it went wrong. This is not error or absence or mutancy: this is image and essence..." His voice rang around the rafters.

For me, this moment reaches my memories of being asked The Dumb Question by someone I wanted to be close to. I feel Motley's annoyance and disappointment as my own. And the moment is captured in a way that doesn't paint Lin out to be a stupid character whose sole role in the story is to be the person who asks The Dumb Question. Lin has her own judgements about Motley as Motley is judging her. It feels real.

My reading of Neo's journey as a trans journey is based in subtext and metaphor. My identification with Mr. Motley's situation is based on subtext and metaphor. And I really like those moments. But I especially like the same kind of moments emerging not as subtext, but as actual bona fide text.

Another example that I used in the panel (and about which charliegrrrl and I disagreed) was Neil Gaiman's Sandman story, A Game of You. For me, this story contains three key moments that grab my attention. And the character that's at the centre of those moments is a trans woman named Wanda.

The first happens when George sends nightmares at the group: Wanda's nightmare involves her profound fear of surgery, and her ambivalence about SRS. Not ambivalence in the way of "I don't know if I want this or not," but "I don't know how I can do this given my fear." It's a good moment, although the weakest of the three, in my opinion.

The next moment happens as members of the group plan to head off to The Dreaming. Wanda is excluded, allegedly because she's not a Real Woman™. She doesn't leave the story at this point; we continue to see her, dealing with her feelings of being abandoned. And ultimately, because she is left behind, she dies. Now, charliegrrrl hates this point in the story. For her, the moment Gaiman invoked the "not a real woman" explanation, she takes it to mean that the author's message is that Wanda is not a real woman. She presumes that Gaiman is saying this as the truth of the story, and she resents Gaiman for suggesting that. And I can see how one can feel that way.

To be clear, I have a lot of negative emotions about this moment in the story. It affects me because it reproduces those crushing moments where trans people are excluded in institutional ways. We are told that the magic used can't apply to her, and she has no ability to challenge it. It's horrible, and angry-making.

But it's true that I think that it's an important moment to capture, and I like having read it. It's like watching Lector's escape in The Silence of the Lambs. It's not that I support serial killers violently murdering their guards and escaping incarceration while wearing someone else's face. But it's a gripping film moment.

The third moment involves Wanda's funeral. Wanda is buried by her conservative, religious parents who cut her hair and put her in a suit. We're forced to sit through and watch that indignity, and it's profoundly uncomfortable. But I think sitting with that discomfort is important.

Even though I am not comfortable with Gaiman's scenario, I don't dismiss the story as the product of bad politics. It feels questionable at moments, but I don't dismiss him. By contrast... hmm... let me try to think of an example. Ah! Crygender, by Thomas T. Thomas. There's a book written by someone who wasn't comfortable with what he was writing. And it shows. It's awful. Just don't read it.

What I'm saying is this. For me, when I talk about "Transsexuality as a Process", I mean that I want to see stories that don't just focus on the event of sex change and What It Means In The Grand Scheme of Things. What I want to see are stories that show that transness is an aspect of people that leaks into many parts of their lives (and many different times in people's lives) and manifests itself as a number of events that are just a little bit different. I want a collection of moments that resonate, but are a little off the beaten path.

Further, I'm saying that when I read books such as I Will Fear No Evil or Steel Beach, I feel that I am reading a tour book for another country. It tells me how to find the museum, and the city hall, but it doesn't tell me how the people live, and what that really feels like.

Contains references to Crygender, The Matrix, I Will Fear No Evil, Perdido Street Station, Commitment Hour, The Silence of the Lambs, and a lot of spoilers around A Game of You

Comments

Hmm.

[kalikanzara.livejournal.com]

(If I post, I feel like I'm going to put presure on myself to go write another 500 words. If I don't post, I might decide I don't need to write 500 more words tonight...)

I've been wracking my brain trying to come up with a process story as an example, 'cuz I think I'm right there - the one sticking in my craw at the moment is from Bujold, and I think you said you hadn't read A Civil Campaign - again, though, it's done out of circumstance, similar to the "done to" the character. It's not exactly clear how much the character desires what's done, though I believe it is clear he is happy with the choice.

I'm trying to think if Chalker gets to it or not - A lot of Jack Chalker stories involve transformation, and there is some gender shift mixed in, but again it's done to the main character(s), not (generally, IIRC)...self-willed. I may have to re-read a bit to be sure.

[firecat]

I think the problem is that Varley's thought exercise is an almost-entirely cerebral exercise. In my opinion, it lacks any real, visceral moment that connects with me.

I'm not coming from a trans perspective, but I feel exactly this way about Steel Beach.

[redbird]

I wonder if this connects to the phrase I found years ago, coming out as process: that no matter how fully I accept that I'm queer I'm still going to have to keep telling people, or correcting them, because if I don't I'll be assumed het whenever I'm not with a same-sex partner in a context where we're obviously partners. Being bisexual in a culture where that was and long had been treated as absolutely normal and unremarkable would be different--I wouldn't be assumed to be het in the same way, even if most people were.

Even if there were a one-day no-muss-no-fuss way of changing gender, it would still be different for someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about it and wanting that change, or probably for anyone in our culture, even someone who doesn't have a strong conscious sense of gender identity, than for someone in the Varley stories, where it's mostly about as major a decision as getting a haircut.

[charliegrrrl.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I could have sworn several people at the actual panel asked you if you would be satisfied with metaphorical representations of transition, such as the Motley/Neo examples you mentioned. And at the time, you said no. You wanted literal, actual representations of the transsexual process. I could be misremembering, but that's certainly one of the things I was responding to at the time, and in later discussions.

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

"be satisfied with" is, to my ears, a problematic phrase. I think I get something out of the metaphoric representations like the ones I describe above. But I also feel very strongly that:

1. Many overt trans metaphors (such as The Identity Matrix) are far too reductionist for my tastes. They focus on the event of change of sex, and act as if that event lives in a sort of isolation that seems foreign to me. One of the big absences, for me, is agency.

2. While I think stories like The Matrix provide me with some interesting exploration of experiences that I recognize, I still think that future worlds should include instances of trans people. I don't think the availability of metaphor obviates actual representation of trans people. Lyda's book, Archangel Protocol, includes a trans walk-on part. I like that. The book isn't "about" trans experience, but it serves to say, "hey, trans people exist, and will continue to exist." I think that's important.

Ian Hagemann (another WisCon regular) talks about his experience of reading future stories in which no characters are identified as non-white. He says that he always develops the impression that at some moment in that fictional universe's history, the race wars occurred, and all the non-whites were eliminated. And, he says, he finds himself very focussed on why the author isn't discussing that element of the story.

Future worlds that have no trans people suggest to me that we've been eliminated.

My impression is that you keep equating "process" with "transition". That's another one of those areas where I think we've been miscommunicating.

[charliegrrrl.livejournal.com]

Hi, interesting points!

One thing that jumps out at me, though... I can't walk down the street without seeing tons of people of color. But even in San Francisco, I can go for days without seeing another transgender person. (That I know of, of course.) So it's perfectly "realistic" for a story to have no trans people, but not at all realistic for there to be no people of color. The issues are very very different, and conflating them does a disservice to people of color as well as transpeople.

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

Hmm... I'm of two minds. I understand the point you're making, and I grok that there's real danger in trying to conflate those issues, but at the same time, but I think that there are some things that we can learn across lines of identification.

Cultural theory, for example, has a long history of influencing queer theory in good and important ways.