On Transitioning

Ralph Bates and Martine Beswick in Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde 

(dir. Roy Ward Baker, 1971)

 

 

I always smile when I hear someone claim they were born in the wrong body ...

 

For it has to be one of the most ridiculous things that anyone can say; not only does it presuppose a metaphysical subject in a Cartesian manner, but it hints also at the transmigration of souls.    

 

However, so powerful has the so-called trans lobby become, that we're all obliged to sit up and take notice whenever a man claims that he is really a woman, or a woman claims she's really a man. 

 

That is to say, not only born in the wrong body, but trapped in the wrongly sexed body as well and thus in need of medical and surgical assistance in order to reassign their sex and ensure that their physical appearance and sexual characteristics resemble those associated with their identified gender. 

 

This is termed transitioning - a process that can take many months or even several years [1]. Indeed, some non-binary or genderqueer individuals may spend their whole life transitioning; continually redefining and re-interpreting who and what they are, without ever arriving at a fixed identity. 

 

Unfortunately, whilst this sounds like fun, turning a process into a goal or an end in itself, can also be dangerous. For according to Deleuze and Guattari, prolonging a process indefinitely is what produces the unfortunate figure of the false schizophrenic, who invariably ends up in a mental institution [2]. 

 

Like D. H. Lawrence, whom they quote, Deleuze and Guattari argue that the aim of any process is the consummation thereof: "The process should work to a completion, not to some horror of intensification and extremity wherein the soul and body ultimately perish." [3]  

 

It's concerning that many who choose to experiment with gender identity and transitioning seem to fall into this trap of pushing a process into a goal, which might help explain why the rates for suicide, self-harm, and depression amongst the trans community in the UK make for grim reading [4].  

 

Ultimately, making a transition (or a becoming of any kind) involves crossing a threshold to the unknown. And if that promises a new life, or a completely different state of being, so too is it to flirt with death. 

 

In other words, there is a certain negativity inscribed within the process of transitioning. It's not simply fun and games; unlike gender bending, which involves dressing up and challenging norms and stereotypes by highlighting the performative character of gender and is usually free from any dysmorphia or concerns about which body one has been born into [5]. 

 

So, to those who are determined to transition, I would issue a gentle word of caution. But of course, who am I to advise anyone on anything; I'm not a trans individal, don't know any trans people, and my knowledge of this topic has mostly been shaped by my taste in films, pop music, and French philosophy ...    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] It should be pointed out that transitioning cannot simply be conflated with sex reassignment surgery. Many individuals with gender dysphoria who choose to transition, don't go under the knife and think of transitioning in more holistic terms, involving mental and social factors and not just physical changes.

 

[2] Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane, (University of Minnesota Press, 1983), p. 5.

[3] D. H. Lawrence, Aaron's Rod, ed. Mara Kalnins, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 166.

[4] According to the Stonewall website, 48% of trans people in Britain have attempted suicide at least once and 84% have thought about it; more than half (55%) have been clinically diagnosed with depression at some point.

[5] Note that I'm not dismissing the importance of gender bending. In fact, I think crossdressers, drag queens, and androgynous looking pop stars play a vital role in helping us to better understand issues around the cultural construction of gender identity. 

      I discuss this in chapter four of Philosophy on the Catwalk (2011), where I write in praise of those who playfully separate the signs of sex from biological being and refuse any destiny that rests upon anatomical fact; i.e., those who enact the Wildean teaching that the first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible. 

      See also my short post from December 2012 entitled 'Life's a Drag': click here.

 

 

Lord, Open Thou My Lips ...

Andreea Anghel: 

Le Noir's Jesus Wound as a Vagina (2017)

saatchiart.com

 

I. Lord Jesus Crucified, I adore the Sacred Wound in thy most holy side ...

 

It's always amusing - and important - to be reminded that Christianity is not only a form of moral fanaticism but sexual perversion; that Jesus was not only full of his own righteousness (to the extent that he believed himself the Son of God), but gloried in his own suffering as a form of passion, only finding his consummation when nailed naked to a cross wearing a crown of thorns. 

 

The faithful to this day still delight in masochism and martydom and have a fetishistic fascination with the Five Holy Wounds left upon the body of their Lord [1]. Such loving devotion to the physical signs of cruelty inflicted upon the body of Christ - or what we might term stigmatophilia - has recently attracted the attention of scholars working within the area of queer studies and it's to their research that I turn here ...         

 

 

II. Domine labia mea aperies ut cunnum meum laude ut cantem

 

For those historians and theologians who choose to examine the life of Jesus through a queer lens, the question of his gender identity - and its representation in medieval art - is of significant interest. 

 

They are particularly fascinated by the gash in his side which undeniably appears to resemble a vulva, thus implying that the resurrected Christ - risen in his wholeness - possessed both male and female sex organs. This intersex (and gender-fluid) Christ figure radically challenges the more conventional ideas of him as purely male and, indeed, as a divine embodiment of the masculine ideal.                

 

In other words, long before J. G. Ballard and David Cronenberg fantasised about the new flesh and the flowering of wounds into sex organs that promised the possibility of perverse new pleasures, medieval Christians were opening their prayer books and touching and kissing images of Christ's wounds, to which they assigned miraculous properties.

 

Obviously, this was performed as an act of religious veneration. But to deny the kinky aspect would be absurd; believers were surely aware, for example, of the linguistic associations in Latin between the word for wound and the word for womb (vulna / vulva) and dismbodied wound images were often explicitly - not just symbolically - connected with the female sex organ from which blood seeps and new life is born [2]. 

 

  

III. Ostentatio Vulnerum

 

I'd like to close this post with another astonishing artwork ... Believed to be by Giovanni Antonio Galli and painted c. 1630,  it is usually known in English as Christ Displaying His Wounds, but could just as fittingly be called I'll show you mine, if you show me yours.

 

I think most people would agree that it's an obscene and profoundly disturbing work; for the Christ figure appears to not only invite us to inspect his wound - which he draws open for this purpose - but to touch it and penetrate it, just as he challenged his apostle Thomas to do (John 20: 19-29). 

 

Again, one can't help thinking of Crash [3], in which that nightmare angel of the expressways Vaughan assumes the Christ role and flaunts his injuries and scars to his disciple Ballard whilst unfolding his perverse teachings centred on the mysterious eroticism of wounds. 

 

Indeed, I think that just as Vaughan imagined the whole world ending in one apocalyptic car crash, Christ secretly desired the flagellation and crucifixion of all mankind ... But that's a post for another day ...  

  

 

Source of image: 

Wikimedia Commons

  

 

Notes

 

[1] Jesus received numerous injuries in the course of his Passion, but medieval piety liked to particularly focus upon the five wounds associated directly with his crucifixion, i.e., the nail wounds on his hands and feet, as well as the wound made by the lance which pierced his side. Many prayers from this period, as well as later poems, paintings, and pieces of music inspired by the Sacred Wounds of Christ, have been preserved. The Rosary also helped to remind the faithful of Christ's suffering; for whilst the fifty small beads refer to Mary, the five large beads represent the Five Wounds of Christ. 

 

[2] Some medieval artists carried this idea to its logical end point and showed a human body - either that of a baby or a fully-grown adult - being birthed from the side wound and cleansed in the life-giving blood of Christ. This body is often said to symbolise the Church. 

 

[3] J. G. Ballard, Crash, (Jonathan Cape, 1973). 

 

 

To read a related post to this one on stigmatophilia and sexual healing, click here. 

 

 

My Night in Raval with Ken and Barbie - A Guest Post by Katxu

El Raval is a notorious neighbourhood in the Ciutat Vella district of Barcelona. A place where - I'd been told - anything goes and gender is completely fluid. This, apparently, placed me under a compulsion to visit. And so, despite my doubts concerning the validity and, indeed, desirability of such a claim, I decided to venture forth one night and take a peek. 
 

The first liquid bodies I encountered were puddles of piss left by drunks and stray dogs. Sidestepping these and the unfortunate beings that made them, I made my way to a restaurant which boasted haute cuisine on the menu and low-life outside its doors. Wealth and poverty never really meet; they simply ignore one another even whilst living side-by-side (though sometimes the rich like to slum it and the poor like to riot). 
    

I watched the parade of people pass by: tourists from the UK; immigrants from South America and Asia; prostitutes from Eastern Europe; and a colourful assortment of home-grown queers. I suppose the latter best exemplified the fluidity of gender I'd been promised, but I couldn't help thinking that they seemed more fixated by - and fixed in - sexual rules and roles than the most conventional boy and girl next door.

I also thought of all the writers who have described such scenes and the painters who have depicted these very streets - the Carrer d'Avinyó is in the nearby Gothic quarter. Is it really so transgressive and so liberating to celebrate all that mushrooms beneath a red light and to unconditionally love everything that flows like Henry Miller?

Feeling a little tipsy, I went to powder my nose in order to clear my mind. When I got to the washrooms, I found that the doorknobs on the two doors facing had been replaced with dolls' heads; an ironic gesture of postmodern barbarism. One had long blonde hair and one had short dark hair - I'm not sure, but I think it was Barbie and Ken, both looking decidedly worse for wear. 

As I was in a hurry and in no mood to try to puzzle out which head to turn, I decided to reach for Barbie. But before I could place my hand on her poor battered head, a man shouted and said that the Barbie cubicle was reserved for cross-dressers and transgender individuals only; that I should wait for Ken's cubicle to become free.      

I was going to challenge the curious reasoning - I was going to ask about fluidity - but instead I just decided to turn on my heels and go home with my un-powdered nose in the air. 

Katxu is a keen observer of life in Barcelona. Originally from Burgos, she likes to read, to paint, to cook, and to enjoy the company of her plants on the balcony of her apartment overlooking Sants Estació and from where she can smile at the Sony sign.

Katxu appears here as part of the Torpedo the Ark Gastautoren Programm and I am very grateful for her kind submission of a text written especially for this blog, and, indeed, for permission to use the photo taken of her last year in Sitges.