D. H. Lawrence and Trans Issues

Image of D. H. Lawrence from Dawn of the Unread, Issue 7
Transgender Pride Flag designed by Monica Helms with added trans symbol

Those who think J. K. Rowling a hateful transphobe (which she isn't), had probably better look away now as we discuss D. H. Lawrence's essentialism in relation to questions of sex and gender identity.

 

For whilst Lawrence clearly understands the role that culture plays in, for example, the construction of feminine identity - see the article 'Give Her a Pattern' [1] - and concedes that you can have cocksure women and hensure men [2], he nevertheless insists that biology ultimately plays a determining role and that this forecloses the possibility of transitioning from one sex to another, no matter how extensive the hormone treatment, how radical the surgery, or how convincing the end result may be.

 

In Fantasia of the Unconscious, Lawrence writes:  

 

"A child is born with one sex only, and remains always single in his sex. There is no inter-mingling, only a great change of rôles is possible. But man in the female rôle is still male. 

      Sex - that is to say, maleness and femaleness - is present from the moment of birth, and in every act or deed of every child. [...] 

      We are all wrong when we say there is no vital difference between the sexes. There is every difference. Every bit, every cell in a boy is male, every cell is female in a woman, and must remain so. Women can never feel or know as men do. Man, acting in the passive or feminine polarity, is still man, and he doesn't have one single unmanly feeling." [3]

It's thus pretty clear where Lawrence would stand vis-à-vis the current debate around trans issues. And just to make this even clearer, we might read the following passage on organ transplantation (including xenotransplantation) in relation to sex reassignment surgery: 

 

"Every nose, every stomach is different, actually, from every other nose and stomach. [...] Noses and stomachs are not interchangeable. You might perhaps graft the end of one man's nose on the nose of another man. But the grafted gentleman would not thereby have a dual identity. His essential self would remain the same: a little disfigured, perhaps, but not metamorphosed. Whatever tricks you may perform, of grafting one bit of an individual on another, you don't produce a new individual, a new type. You only produce a disfigured, patched-up individual. [...] 

      It is sickening to hear scientists rambling on about the interchange of tissue and members from one individual to another. They have at last reached the old alchemistic fantasy of producing the homunculus. They hope to take the hind leg of a pig and by happy grafting produce a marvellous composite individual, a fused erection of living tissue which will at last prove that man can make man, and that therefore he isn't divine at all [...]" [4] 

 

Again, I think it clear what Lawrence would say about the idea of sex change operations: he would not approve, not accept, and scornfully dismiss. In the same essay, Lawrence also indicates that he would regard those seeking medical assistance to transition from one sex to another as being mentally ill in some manner: 

 

"The truth about man, before he falls into imbecility, is that each one is just himself. [...] Every man has his own identity, which he preserves till he falls into imbecility or worse. Upon this clue of his own identity every man is fashioned. And the clue of a man's own identity is a man's own self or soul, that which is incommutable and incommunicable in him. Every man, while he remains a man and does not lapse into disintegration, becoming a lump of chaos, is truly himself, no matter how many fantastic attitudes he may assume. True it is, that man goes and gets a host of ideas in his head, and proceeds to reconstruct himself according to those ideas. But he never actually succeeds in this business of reconstructing himself out of his own head, until he has gone cracked. And then he may prance on all fours [...] or do as he likes. But whilst he remains sane the buzzing ideas in his head will never allow him to change or metamorphose his own identity: modify, yes; but never change. While a man remains sane he remains himself and nothing but himself, no matter how fantastically he may attitudinise according to some pet idea." [5] 

 

Clinically speaking, I don't know how fair or accurate an assessment this is, but it should be noted that transsexualism is no longer classified as a mental disorder, but regarded as a sexual health issue. And it's somewhat surprising - if not disappointing - that a writer whose fiction is so profoundly queer and so richly perverse, should also reaffirm conventional notions of identity, integrity, and sanity.   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] 'Give Her a Pattern' can be found in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 160-65. Whilst arguing that womanhood is in part an adaptation to male ideals and fantasies, Lawrence nevertheless insists that beneath this pattern lies "a real human being of the feminine sex" who comes with her own logic of emotion.   

[2] 'Cocksure Women and Hensure Men' can also be found in Late Essays and Articles, pp. 123-27. 

 

In this piece, Lawrence makes a dubious comparison between human beings and chickens in order to advance his argument that whilst a woman can certainly act in a cocksure manner, it's best if she retain her hen-like nature; "quietly and busily clucking around, laying her eggs and mothering her chickens". Similarly, whilst men today are often "timid, tremulous, rather soft and submissive", it's preferable that they be cocksure and boss the human farmyard. Indeed, Lawrence says that when the sexes play one another's role and throw the natural order out of scheme, it invariably has tragic consequences.  

[3] D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 131. 

 

This may or may not be true, but Lawrence is obliged by the terms of his own philosophy, based on vital polarity and sexual otherness, to believe this. The amusing thing, however, is the fragility of this metaphysic. For although he insists on the essential and immutable nature of sex, Lawrence also says it's important to keep boys and girls apart in virgin purity, as even casual mixing and familiarity threatens their "male and female integrity" and risks the "dynamic magic of life" [ibid., 132].    

[4] D. H. Lawrence, 'Education of the People', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 101. 

[5] Ibid., pp. 101-102.